augiewan.com

So there I was yesterday at work, typing away on an email when I got an IM from Sheila that said, “your post are about as fun to read as I don’t know say “Financial Daily”!!”.

At first I just stared at it in disbelief.  Now I know that I can write an interesting (and sometimes maybe even humorous) blurb now and then, so I started to reason in my mind that she just isn’t all that interested in the stuff I’d been writing about so far.  After all, I’ve just begun using my new blog and half the posts are about the Inavder Zim gallery I’m trying to get moved over from my old site.   “That’s it! Silly Sheila just doesn’t care about Zim”, I thought to myself.

So I started looking back at the posts I’d made so far.  Nope, they’re boring…   :p

What’s going on?  I mean, the few that I wrote a couple years back were pretty good, weren’t they?  I particularly adore the recollection of my emergency appendectomy.  And what about the musings about my shaved stomach after the surgery?  If that’s not your cup of tea, what about my marshmallow-in-the-microwave pictorial study?  It’s all golden, right???

The truth is that those were fun to write because I was writing about my life and things I found oddly amusing.  I love writing, and all I’ve been doing so far is posting some pictures, adding some content, blah blah blah… 

So what now?  Well, to beat a dead horse a bit more, I need to finish the Zim gallery.  I must finish SOMETHING I started after all.  But after that, I’ll try to relax a little with this blog thing and just write about what come naturally.  What will that mean?  I don’t know, so there!  Stay tuned… 

I just love website statistics. Of course, at work I have access to some wonderfully granular stats for FurnitureFind, but even for my humble little site here using Google Analytics I have access to some free and at times intriguing stuff. For instance, I just got my site back up and running just over a month ago and already during that time people from these 22 countries have visited in order of quantity of visits – United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Philippines, Egypt, Australia, Ukraine, Israel, South Africa, Uruguay, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, New Zealand, Lebanon, Japan, France, and Poland. Even further, I see that these visits were split from 155 different cities (someone from Dublin really likes my site!) That just mystifies and at the same time excites me.

Then you get a glimpse in to *how* some people find your site. For instance, I saw today that someone came to my site from Google after searching for “how to draw a cartoon jalapeno”. Now I know that I’ve never written anything about drawing cartoon jalapeños before, so I went to Google myself to see what happened.

Sure enough, on the second page of results, there’s a listing for this site that reads…

Augie Bytes
I tend to draw in a comic/cartoon style most of the time. I feel more free to draw that way because of not …. Jalapeno Poppers too!!! Leave A Comment » …
augiewan.com/page/2/ – 45k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this

Those words are from two very different posts that were written years apart, but somehow they got mangled together in the mind of Google, and there you have it.

Well, that’s enough rambling for today, I must go mow the lawn! We have company from Arizona coming tomorrow…

So you were looking for a restaurant in your area called the Speakeasy only to land on some splash page filled with crazy looking cartoon characters? And then you clicked one of them and it brought you here? Amazing!

I’ll try to explain a bit. The domain thespeakeasy.com was purchased by a web design company that I co-founded with a friend known as Shemp back in the 90′s. It was to be a little playground for us to use to try out new ideas and promote creativity. Unfortunately the company (Dancing Ink Media) was dissolved. He kept dancingink.com and I kept thespeakeasy.com domain. I’ve planned for years to actually produce a comic called theSpeakEasy with many of the characters you saw on the home page and still hope to. I was using my profile at ComicSpace.com to get those creative juices flowing, but that site is currently having database and hosting issues. So I wait…

In the meantime, I’m trying to get this new “blog” version of my personal site moving along while also trying to figure how best to move over some of my old content to this new layout. Of course, I have no time for any of this. Back to work!

NOTE: As I work on the transition from my old site design to this one, there will likely be new visitors coming in looking for a few specific things such as Invader Zim images or music by They Might Be Giants or Milla that are no-where to be found yet. I’m still trying to figure exactly how/if I want to integrate that content. If you’d like to keep up on that stuff, feel free to sign up for notices. (over in the right nav) You can unsubscribe anytime you’d like…

I’ve made some progress just getting WordPress set up and really like how many plug-ins and widgets are available. My personal sites have always been build by hand and I’m not use to relying so much on a pre-designed system, it’s been a challenge to just let go and not freak out that I can’t change little things…

I’ll be working on getting more of the content from the old augiewan.com moved over to this layout.  Then I can start getting use to the idea of posting on a regular basis and wow you all with my incessant babbling.

It’s early in the re-design process so I’m really not sure how this will turn out.  In the meantime, throw me suggestion if want.  I’m (obviously) using WordPress, so if you’ve got plugin or widget suggestions I’d love to hear from you too.

For now, enjoy taking a look through the invader zim sculptures, my first attempts at coloring with Copic markers, and other goofy comic art I’ve posted on my ComicSpace account…

Ugh… Don’t look yet!

I’ve just set this blog up with my host. I had taken one stab at blogging a few years back and got a staggering three entries posted. I’ve pasted them here as a “starter ” for anyone who actually finds this site. woohoo!

I’ve got to figure out how to change the design and images a tad. Must make better!!!

I’ve sat here trying to decide what to write about because quite frankly quite a few things have happened recently worth typing about. I keep going back and forth and can’t make a decision. OHHH!!! My honey’s home with my Chicken, Bacon & Swiss from Arby’s so nevermind! Jalapeno Poppers too!!!