Sunday, January 29, 2017


Working on the Art

It shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows anything about “Webcomics” (a term I now despise), that I don’t actually draw my characters. In actuality, I painstakingly create these tables of body parts and shade them. Each body part has to be done in multiple configurations and angles. The finished product is where I put together the various body parts like paper dolls.

OK, some people actually do draw them and scan them in… But the style I’m using can’t actually be drawn, so instead I use these elaborate templates. I know I’m not the only one who does this, and some very popular webcomics actually do use this method of re-using stock images.

Occasionally I actually go back and update my templates. It’s why since 2011 the characters have had hands. It’s why the female breast looked really weird in all of my older comics. I review these templates and make adjustments and improvements. Some call it “Art Evolution”, and I don’t do it every week.

But right now I’m reworking arms and hands. If I do it right, no one should actually notice. If I do it wrong, you still won’t notice, because I’ll just continue to use the old templates.

Oh, and I’ve made the eyes bigger again. I’ve noticed that bigger eyes seem to make the characters cuter. I’m sure Margaret Keane would approve.

Pax,

-f2x

Sunday, June 22, 2017


Welcome to Dullsville. Enjoy your (brief) stay.

Sometimes life is boring. Right now, I kind of like boring. Boring is comforting and safe. There’s something to be said about that… But I’m not bored.

I worry a lot. I don’t want to, but it’s something that comes natural to me. About 80% of the time, everything works out fine, and there was nothing to worry about. On the other hand, it’s the other 20% of the time I’ve got to be vigilant about. If I don’t watch out for those things and take care of them when they happen, the situation snowballs, and before I know it, I’m in over my head.

So right now, though things aren’t perfect, there aren’t any major issues. I’ve still got a lot of things on my mind because there are potential problems around the bend, and I’ve got to be ready for them when the time comes. However, as of this very moment, everything is safe and sound.

As I get older, I don’t experience the dreaded boredom. It’s boredom accompanied by dread. Because while I don’t know when, where, or how, experience has taught me that shit’s going down sooner than expected. I’m getting too old for this shit.

Pax,

-f2x

Sunday, January 15, 2017


Still Plugging mBlip

I don’t usually run ads on this website, but this is different. I put a little side banner up for my new site, and it’s going to stay there for a while.

Actually, it has another purpose. If you’re viewing this in a standard web browser, You’ll note that it pushes the rest of the side bar down further so you have to scroll to see it. For people who are just here for the daily joke, it keeps my silly attempt at making a comic out of view. Of course if you like to read my comic, it’s merely a flick of the scroll wheel away.

Other than that, I got over my cold, and generally I’m doing OK, but as they say on Facebook… It’s complicated.

Pax,

f2x

Sunday , January 8, 2017


Sick, again.

After recovering from my last illness back in November, I was hoping to avoid any further issues for at least 12 months. Alas, during the recent gift giving holidays, someone managed to give me a cold. ‘Tis the season.

OK, so I haven’t really had time to work on Deny From, and I’m starting to think adding it to Flush Twice wasn’t such a great idea. Obviously it wouldn’t really work on mBlip.com (which is doing awesome BTW), so perhaps I’m going to move it to Golden Soapbox? Yeah, I’m not really sure what to do with it. I just know that I really don’t have the energy to work on it at the moment.

And that’s what I love about mBlip! I don’t need to spend any effort on it to make it an amazing place to visit. It just automatically posts new things every day. If you haven’t tried it yet, you really should.

Well, that’s about all I have the energy for. Thanks for stopping by. The jokes are really going to suffer this week because I’m really under the weather right now. Hopefully we’ll have better stuff waiting for you next week.

Pax,

-f2x

Sunday, January 1, 2017


Happy New Year

OK, now that we got that out of the way…

Introducing mBlip!

As you may have read in the comic above, I have a new site that I’d like you to try out. It’s called mBlip, and it’s has all kinds of fresh content every day!

mBlip uses sophisticated software to bring you a pleasant and enjoyable media experience. And unlike Flush Twice, there’s never a “hiatus” on mBlip. The content is regularly updated by computers, so you can rely on it being there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year!

What are you waiting for? Try mBlip today!

Pax,

-f2x

PS- I suppose you kind of noticed that I’m a little bit excited about this new site of mine. Well, it’s been a while since I actually came up with an idea that really felt right, and somehow I was able to piece together all the technology to make it work. It’s a site that I, myself enjoy using, and I’m actually kind of proud of it. So how about it?

mBlip

Sunday, December 25, 2016


It’s Christmas Day

You know what? I’m not doing this. It’s Christmas day, and I’m taking some time off.

Sorry, but no thoughtful insights or pros. Also, this coming weeks jokes will be lame so deal with it.

Until 2017 gets well underway, I’m not going to let managing a website get in the way of my vacation.

Go spend some time with your friends and family.

Merry Christmas,

-f2x

Sunday, December 18, 2016


It’s the Hap-Happiest Season of All.

When you’re young, Christmas is a magical time that you look forward to, and revel in every year. Then you get older, and Christmas becomes this pedal to the metal shit-storm of too much to do and too little time.

Just driving home from work becomes a test of nerves as the holiday shoppers play demolition derby in every intersection. Stopping to pick up milk, eggs, and bread is like trying to get a seat on one of the Titanic’s life boats. This isn’t a war on Christmas; Christmas is war!

So in this week leading up to the holiday, I want you to know that I’ve said a prayer for all of you to get through this season safely and sanely. Don’t forget that it’s not about the petty mayhem surrounding you, it’s about those precious moments you get to have with the people you care about the most.

Pax,

-f2x

Sunday, December 11, 2016


Deny From

So a couple of years ago, I decide to register denyfrom.com. I’m not actually linking to it, because I never really developed it, and at this time I intend to let it expire when its time is up on February 11th. Nevertheless, I rather liked the premise, so I’m going to add a “Deny From” category to Flush Twice. Since most of what I’m going to publish is a lot of shitty CIDR blocks that need a second flush to get’em down the drain, it should fit in nicely.

So what is this premise?

It’s about unwanted crawlers and bots on the internet. You see, in the old days, most of the botnets were individual’s infected PC’s. While some of them still are, the current trend is to use compromised hosting accounts. So basically server farms. There also seem to be certain rogue countries (Notably China/Ukraine/Russia) that also mercilessly hammer websites with their spambots.

The good news is that these hackers/bots are easy to identify. You just look at your visitor logs, and when you see an IP address trying to do things on your site that a typical person could not even imagine doing, cross reference that address with an IP address information site to see if it was coming from a rogue nation, or a hacked webhost. Then you collect all the associated CIDR’s and run them through an optimizer before dumping them into your .htaccess file’s “deny from” list.

The goal is to achieve a reduction in unwanted hacking attempts and improved analytics. Once you block all the bots, then the rest of your visitors are the actual humans you built the site for in the first place.

Of course not everyone wants to go through the trouble of looking through their visitor logs, so I’m going to post my “deny from” lists here. People can simply copy and paste them into their own .htaccess files, or leave comments on the merits of denying all the IP addresses I keep adding to the file. (People leaving comments? Ha! Like that is ever going to happen.)

Some groups really hate this idea and feel that bots should be free to roam, rape and pillage every WordPress blog with endless login attempts, referral spams, comment spams, exploit seeking, and content scraping activities. To them, blocking these IP addresses seriously impairs their ability to piss on someone else’s parade in hopes that maybe they can compromise other people’s sites and use them to bolster their clients’ analytics, or maybe get you to buy their security product.

Why are you bringing this shit here?

Because I can.

No seriously. I thought about doing it before, but I didn’t because I couldn’t figure out how to keep it separate from the main attraction: The jokes and comics! But in case you haven’t noticed, you don’t see these side posts in the main blog. I’ve solved that problem, and if all you want to see are the jokes, and maybe the comics, then that’s all you have to see.

At the end of the day, it just means another menu option under a new category, and that way I don’t have to be bothered with running yet another entirely separate site to express a sub-genre of my many neuroses.


Besides, it didn’t feel right to put it on GoldenSoapBox.com, which is a site that I also maintain. GSB is already exceedingly boring. But it has a really good tomato soup recipe. Be sure to visit it if you like recipes, Linux, and more of my little side rants. The deviled eggs are simply to die for!

Pax,

-f2x

Sunday, December 4, 2016


Got a new TV

Last year, I never would have imagined that my living room would end up looking like this. I used to have a 40 inch TV sitting next to a computer desk and chair. The TV acted as a second monitor. On the other side of the room sat a couch with two end tables… Oh, wait… You’ve probably seen it in my comics, because Brandon’s living room (and the entire house) was based off of my own. There are some differences, but I literally modeled my house in 3D and used it for the set design.

So in the early part of 2016, something went wrong with my back. Way wrong. As a result I decided to get a rocker/recliner, and I tossed out the computer chair. So now I sit comfortably on the other side of the room with a wireless keyboard in my lap. It helped my back a lot, but I had to forgo the dual screen setup because the smaller monitor was now too small to be useful. I also had to switch the resolution from 1080p to 720p so I could easily read the text from across the room. Needless to say, I had to move a lot of things around.

Now I had been using this 40″ TV as a monitor since I bought it back in 2010, and over the past year the TV had been glitching badly, and it finally got to the point that I decided to replace it. Naturally I also took this as an opportunity to upgrade from 40″ to 50″. Believe it or not, the new TV was a little too big for the arrangement, and I had to rethink the living room layout again.

So… I actually have a console piano in my exceedingly small living room. It was Christmas present from Grandma Sauer back in 1979. This is one of those things not depicted in the comic version of my house, but nevertheless it’s here. Well it got moved against the wall where the TV stand and desk used to be and has become the new TV’s “stand”. I know it sounds kind of hokey, but it actually looks pretty good. In a way it looks like the TV is mounted on the wall, and there just happens to be a piano under it.

Of course the new TV looks great. They all do. Even my old TV looked great when it was working right. That’s the funny thing about TV’s today… They all look good because they all look the same. It’s just a big black rectangle up against a wall, and when you turn it on it’s a vibrant window to another world… or in my case, it looks like a really large computer monitor sitting on top of a piano.

Pax,

-f2x

Sunday, November 27, 2016


Secret Santa Sucks

My family started doing the “Secret Santa” a few years back, and I really dread it. Every Thanksgiving we have to draw names from a hat. I suppose I should be grateful since I only have to buy but one gift. In years past, the gift giving was getting out of hand, so it’s nice that the family elders decided to reign that nonsense in.

But this year I drew my sister-in-law’s name. Why can’t I get an easy one, like one of my aunts or uncles? Up until a few years ago, I’d just ask my mom, but she’s gone now, and I really don’t care to face conundrums like this on my own.

Of course, I want to get her something she would enjoy, but to be honest, I don’t really know what that would be. It doesn’t help that outside of family gatherings, we don’t really have any sort of relationship.

I suppose in times like this it’s best to play it safe. I need a gift that is pleasant, and not controversial. Yes, I’m almost certain that we’re looking at some sort of gift basket for women. Maybe I’ll order something from the Bath and Body Works website. Wish me luck.

Pax,

-f2x