Illustration Friday - Opposites

North Carolina - "It's A State"

Hey so I'm leaving on a road trip with my father tomorrow - to North Carolina. Yep, there's an art show in Asheville. I'm not going to be back until...next week. Next Tuesday. But hopefully I'll have lots and lots of time to write and draw and brainstorm and read and temporarily regain internet access so I can get updates on the Tigers (Um. Roast Kenny Rogers. Please.) and blog a little bit. There'll be something done for Illustration Friday...that I'll have to either do with my tablet or on paper, but if it's on paper then I have to bring my scanner. Darn.

So. Lots of changes with the blog. I'm not even going to get into it because it makes me so angry, but what you need to know is this. The blogspot address is DONE. I no longer have access to it, not even to put a post on it that says "No Blog Here, Go There Instead." It's the whole "If we move, how is Santa going to find us?" feeling. Although honestly? I may have four constant readers to this blog, one of them being me. Another being my sister. Another being my dad. And Steve (just waiting for me to get famous so he can say he knew it all along and never doubted me for a second.). Oh, and Libby. Who is going to say I didn't put her on the list. Even though she's right here.

Oh, and Clerks 2 made me laugh until I cried. But don't go see it. You won't like it.

I hated Pirates of the Caribbean too, by the way. The second one. It sucked in so many ways, and I'm disappointed that I'm not seeing a lot of critics take a stand with me on that one. Maybe I'll do a review of it later on. Superman Returns was a much better film.

As I Like It

Things that annoy me get changed, until the thing that annoys me becomes something I can at least tolerate. So you'll notice I did some fiddling with the template of the blog, adding the nifty banner at the top instead of the boring "Cartoon Violence" thing that was there before. This one even has a link to my website! Which...only has a link to here. That's stupid, you say...and yeah. It's stupid. Because I'm not planning on doing any full-fledged work on the website until I go back to school in August.

Maybe now you'll like the blog better? I hope so.

Soon to come - a new sidebar! With lots of cool tricky things! Sweet.

Tigs' update - ChiSox move to 6.5 games back as Tigers' Justin Verlander gets his 12th win of the season against the Oakland A's. The Sox, however, get spanked by the Rangers (10-3). And, for the first time in a long time, move into third place overall behind Boston (6 games back).

I don't think we'll win today though...it's on television.

Yeah. Blogger, You Suck Too

I had to throw a new template on the site just to get the sidebar back to where it was before the AdSense fiasco. And now, you'll notice all of my sidebar stuff is gone. Greeeeeeeat.

I need to figure out a way to completely get rid of anything Google-made on this page, so that it's all designed by me and not by anyone else. Google just ends up screwing everything up.

I'm sure I'll find something wrong with G-Mail after I use it longer...And when I do, you'll know! Muahahaha.

Just want to congratulate my Tigers for their taking two from the White Sox, and their gaining a game on them (5.5 games ahead, oh my brothers!). Now we have to concentrate on doing the same to Oakland.

Adios Adsense

Adsense. What a dumb idea that was.

I just got an e-mail saying this:

Hello Adam Holwerda,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the Google ads on your site(s). In the future, we may adjust your
payment for any days during which invalid clicks occurred in order to
properly credit advertisers for any invalid activity.

And so on. Who gets to decide what an "invalid click" is? I don't sit there and push the thing all day long, saying "cha ching" and laughing maniacally. I don't ever push the thing, as I read the terms of service beforehand! But this is dumb, because basically what they're saying is: "We don't want you to make more than fifty cents, so any time someone clicks and it's inconvenient for us to pay you the ten cents, we'll say it was invalid, and we won't pay you. Ha ha ha ha ha."

So I'm removing the stupid thing. It's not worth it. I don't want to have my blog look like crap just because I might get paid a dime once every other month or something ridiculous like that.

Adsense, you suck. Your ads are ugly, and now that I removed you some crazy thing is going on with my sidebar. You son of a beep sabotaging piece of crap robotic nickel hoarding backstabber.

The experiment: 2 months - 46 cents.
The experience: 0/5 stars.

By the way: Blogger? I HATE YOU TOO!

Audio...Bizzle. Downlizzle?

I did something today.

Something weird.

I took the first chapter and a half of my new novel, and...made an audiobook out of it.

With...Microsoft Sam.

And unfortunately I saved it at high quality, so yeah.

LIZZEN!

Diego Martinez Tells You How

You know about Wikipedia, the open source encyclopedia. Have you heard of WikiHow?

It's a collaborative how-to manual for everything. A pretty cool idea, started from the extensive eHow.

So I wrote an article for the site, based on my experiences. Believe it or not, it was the first article of its kind. When you type in 'comedy' on the main site, mine is the first on the list.

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Started-in-Stand-up-Comedy

Yeah, and at the bottom, where it claims the author is Diego Martinez? Apparently that's the pen name I chose for myself when I signed up for eHow. Weird.

(P.S. Someone's already edited my page, adding step 2, which I don't exactly believe in. But my name isn't actually on the thing, so I don't care too much.)

Nineteen Sense!

Wow.

I've finally earned some money with my blog using Google's AdSense, which might be the most pointless thing ever. It puts a little advert up at the top, and then if people click it, I get "paid."

It's like collecting pop cans on the internet, only you have to rely on other people to give you pop cans, and the pop cans aren't worth ten cents. I don't know how much they're worth.

EDIT: Apparently they're worth 9.2 cents. So. Once you subtract out the work it took you to collect the pop can, my comparison was pretty spot on. A click = a pop can. Thank you.

It's been up there for a while, and I just checked. I made nineteen cents. Can't wait till the check for that comes in the mail.

Yay.

Coloring Bible

Plaque To You, Bob

I Loves My Tigers

Yeah, yeah. I'm a fair weather fan, kinda. I've always been loyal to my home state team, the Detroit Tigers. Except we always sucked. Since I was born, anyway. Every Tigers game I've gone to, we've lost.

So I'd pretend I wasn't loyal, so that when we lost I wouldn't feel dumb for liking them. And also, there's an emotional drain watching a team you love lose again and again and again and again and again. It sucks.

Yep. The win against the Pirates today brings the record to 55 and 25. Thirty games over five hundred.

Thirty.

The next team on the list are the Chicago White Sox with 52 wins, 27 losses. After that, Boston has 48. Then the Yankees and the Mets battling for fourth.

I read today that June this year was the first 20 win month Detroit has had since 1979. You know something's good when that happens. Also, we've matched the pace of the 1984 Tigers, the ones who went on to win the World Series.

We're almost halfway through the season, and only need to win 40 of the next 80some games to get to the 95 wins usually required to get a Wild Card spot. But I don't think that will happen.

Instead: The Detroit Tigers are going to end the season with the best record in Major League Baseball. And I'm going to be the one who didn't count them out early.