I think I remembered why I was putting off this C-Mix idea for so long... It was pretty brutal to draw. Usually I can finish a C-Mix within 2-3 hours, but this one took... uh... longer! I nearly posted this saying "without" instead of "within"... I think I need sleep. Anyhow, I'll try to get these comics on time again... Last week's was especially late. Perhaps recordly so at 5 days.

Though I've got a bunch of projects I should focus on, I feel unusually listless. I guess it hasn't been long at all since getting El Cacto chapter 2 off my shoulders... Maybe I'll choose something in a couple weeks and start poking and picking at it slowly like it's some kind of unsatisfactory meal. I'm not even sure what I'm on about, so I'll just leave things at that for now.

I'm not sure how, but I've managed to keep productivity to a minimum for the past couple of months, it seems. C-Mix is always so last second these days... I've got a whole week to work on one little comic, yet I can never seem to have it up earlier in the day. For the record, I did do half of yesterday's comic the day before, though. Rabble rabble, we've all heard this story many times before.

I was pondering taking a good old-fashioned break from Cloudflash Mix after hitting the 200th comic... 'Cause, y'know, I totally don't already have enough free time on my hands. My Flash projects are pretty much at "why do we even exist?" status right about now... so I guess I won't be touching them until I can decide between chocolate cake and chocolate cake. Speaking of which, Skutieos pointed out the missing storyline from An Improved Society. Just how did C. Rookter come to make his decision?! I must admit, that idea is interesting me. It just so happens that I've wanted to do more with C. Rookter, too. He wasn't really meant to be a Cloudflash character when I created him, then I went ahead and decided he could make a few cameos here and there... but cameos are not enough! He needs to make a real comeback! So, that's one thing you can possibly expect in the possibly near future... unlike El Cacto chapter 3, which I haven't touched yet. I haven't even written the script for it! I should maybe get on that sometime...

I haven't animated anything for ages... and I didn't even finish any sort of game last year... What kinda shoddy Flash site is this?!

Well, it didn't take too long to decide to go ahead and make the additional chapter of An Improved Society. I dunno exactly how long it'll be... I suppose we'll just have to see how long it takes C. Rookter to find out how to make his decision. In the main story's timeline, this takes place after page 3 and before page 4 of An Improved Society. I feel it should be said that this lost chapter contains spoilers for the main story, such as revealing Alt's name before he introduces himself!

An Improved Society: Chocolate Cake has come to an end. I ran out of ways to make C. Rookter question which slice he should eat, if any at all, or if it even made a difference. I knew from the start I had to overcomplicate things a little and then end it in a stupid way where he doesn't even really think about it. I'm slightly disappointed in the ending, myself, but oh well. Now then, to possibly consider doing a real project (see: things that'll probably be blown off for at least a few weeks)...

As I partially expected, some things on the forum got messed up when I upgraded phpBB from v3.0.1 to v3.0.2 to v3.0.8; however, I'm insisting on using the latest (and greatest?) version, so I'm not just going to upload the backup I made before doing any upgrading. In order to fix quick reply, polls, and other things that might possibly be broken, I'm deleting the forum, which is why you can't access it right now. I'll be uploading a fresh copy of phpBB3's files momentarily, so then things should all work properly... just we'll have to live with the default subsilver2 style until I can turn it back into the Cloudflash style you all know and love. Go get a drink and/or something to eat now so you can be back in time for the best F5 party of the year!

edit: Okay, the forum is up and running again. Polls and quick reply work and I tried to basically make everything the way it was before. There are a few things I've noticed and will fix soon, but feel free to post anything that you think doesn't seem right. Oh, and fun news! All avatars that were uploaded to Cloudflash broke. Those who were linking to an off-site avatar are in the clear, but I can't say the same for the rest of you! I do still have the avatars saved, but when I knocked on their door, they told me to go away and that they didn't want to buy anything. When I kept knocking and insisting they return to your profiles, they called the cops. So, that's how it is...

edit:edit: Avatars fixed themselves... I think.

I seem to have taken a liking to pulling stunts here on April Fools' Day, as you may have noticed over the past couple of years... That said, I setup a bunch of traps all over the forum. Half of them are pretty harmless, but you might wanna make sure you don't have any parents and/or young siblings in the room while browsing the forum today... and you might wanna not be a girl. Anyhow, I understand some people might get in a lot of trouble, so I added a link at the top of the forum that lets you disable the shenanigans. Simply click it and you'll be safe from my pranks for the day. Everything on the forum's index page and the disabling page are safe for work, so you don't have to worry about that. Of course, I'd like it better if you actually saw the tricks... but whatever, I can't force you. Happy hunting and Merry Mapling... whatever that means.

In other news, maybe I should mention this award thing I added to the forum, though everyone's probably seen it by now. I'm still sort of deciding on potential awards other than those gained from the Annual Cloudflash Awards For Contributions To The Site And Forum And Overall Community. There will eventually be some award things that anyone can get, not just these unique, annual ones. I guess I'll post more info on them when the time comes.

Also, I've been doing a little writing for El Cacto sorta recently... I'm still sorta working out the overall storyline and stuff, but I'm hoping to maybe get started on chapter 3 in the near future. With the sun no longer going down as early as 5 or 6pm, I'm starting to realize it's spring and that I should probably get on it. Otherwise, every project seems to have cast aside like a cactus with a spider crawling on it... or at least for the time being.

edit: Well, I dunno if anyone fell for it, but here's the explanation of my trickery this year. -The link to disable April Fools' jokes- redirected you to be logged out of the forum. I setup the separate page so people wouldn't be able to simply hover over the link and take note of the logout URL. There was nothing else, I was just bluffing in an attempt to make people paranoid to fall for the logout trick and to make them expect or look around for changes on the forum.

Well, it's a couple hours late to be in time for the last second, but the 200th Cloudflash Mix comic now exists. I didn't feel like going above and beyond or whatever, though this comic did still take quite a while to make... I suppose you could consider it special since this is possibly the first time I drew myself and C. Rookter in the same thing at the same time? Ah, C. Rookter... where would Cloudflash be without you? Y'know, drawing all the stripes on his shirt is a real pain. Yes, I'm well aware of the fact that his stripe pattern changes to a new one in the third/fourth panel. I couldn't be bothered to redo them entirely just to make them match up when I'm sure nobody would notice, anyway. It's C. Rookter... he doesn't have to make sense.

Anyhow, I figure this is as good a time as any to ramble on about things. As some of you were already aware, I haven't had a job at all this year since I quit my job last year. You'd think I would've gotten something done in all that time, but you can bet your ass I didn't. It does seem like the norm for me to slack off for the first few months of the year, start projects up in the middle, then finish one or two things near the end of the year... I'll modestly admit it was a brilliant strategy that, in the long run, allowed for maximum productivity, but this pattern is not a good one for this year. You see, I've applied for some electrician course and will be starting it in October this year. It just so happens I'll likely have to move to another town to take it. I still have to make living arrangements for those six months of raw electrician training, so I'm not yet sure if I'd take my computer or have internet or whatever. So, updates might stop entirely when the time comes... or things might possibly continue on as usual, I guess it depends how tough all that stuff is. Though I kinda feel I wanna animate something this year, I can't guarantee there'll be much new content this year seeing as I wasted all this time being an MMO addict, I'll be starting a new job in a few days, and I've gotta be all serious/boring in the last few months of the year as well as the first few months of the next year.

I hope to at least get El Cacto chapter 3 done this year, though it probably won't be done in spring as I originally estimated. This year's annual "random new project that bumps El Cacto into summer or later" is an approximately 52 page manga project. The story is sorta divided into 5 "parts", so I might release each "part" as it's finished. So far I have rough drafts done for 16 pages, 14 of which are the first "part". It's another sorta romance story, but this time I'm putting a little more effort into having some comedy and making it appeal to a more general audience. I'm hoping to have it done no later than May 21st and my estimates say it should take around 130 hours or so of work to finish it. I'll keep the details on this project to myself for now since I don't really have anything worth showing yet. You may be thinking to yourself something like "Damnit, Danno, why can't you just work on El Cacto?" To answer your potential question, I still need to iron out the details for El Cacto's overall story... also, it's annoying drawing old Mexican villages and a general Mexican setting seeing as I pretty much don't know anything about those things. I live in Canada, Mexicans don't even exist here! I oughtta take the story's setting out to some miscellaneous wasteland like they do in DBZ and Bleach... now there's an easy enough setting to draw.

I guess I'll continue C-Mix for now, but I might lay it to rest if I feel like it's interfering with this project or El Cacto too much... or if I'm feeling whimsical. I think I'd like C-Mix to at least hit 300 comics someday, so here's to the next 100!

This whole "working" thing is worse than I recall... and I haven't even really started doing actual work yet. I've decided I can't be bothered to make a comic for tomorrow. This decision may occur consecutively until I feel spick-and-span.

Well, I haven't worked on anything for around 2 weeks now. Work's been quite a drain, plus a certain aspect of my life has me sorta down. I might have the first "part" of the project I mentioned before done by May 21st, but certainly not the other four "parts". How disappointing of me. Also, I've been considering making a short DFO animation since it would probably be easy enough to finish before inevitably being blown off.

So... I'll be heading off to fly to Dallas, Texas in a few hours. Assuming I get there as planned, I'll be spending most of my stay in Greenville, Texas. For the uninformed, I'm going for love. There's a girl named Felicia in the small town of Quinlan that I've known for over 5 years online and I've come to feel she's everything I want, which is how she also feels about me.

Different people have different views on love and relationships... Some simply want a partner for the sake of having one, some pick their partner based on looks first, some deceive their desired partner into liking them by hiding their flaws, some people are just plain whimsical... I can't really say other people are wrong on their opinions, but those sorts of relationships would just be too worthless to me. I don't live for sex and I don't think it's something people should feel the need to brag about; for me, it's gotta be just one person forever, I'm not willing to experiment with other people or rush into a relationship with some easy woman to make people think I'm cool. I'm not sexist, I don't assume all women share the same "bad qualities" and that my goal should be to find one that doesn't complain quite as much or whatever. My idea of love is to share common opinions, beliefs, and tastes; to be completely honest and trust each other; to want to spend time together with it never feeling like a chore; to be physically attracted to each other; to sincerely want each other to be happy; to comfortably be yourselves and accept that, to never have to put on an act; to understand each other. My belief is that many relationships fail because one of the above didn't apply or because the couple didn't realize that what they want in a relationship are very different things, such as a person expecting to go out to movies and such vs. a person that'd be fine playing video games all day. Anyhow, this kinda love feels like something that's pretty rare in real life, like it's more suited to video game storylines or something... As someone that doesn't drink or do drugs, it's hard to find someone I can see eye to eye with seeing as pretty much everyone enjoys such things.

Some are wary about people online... I personally think pretty much everyone acts the same way online that they would in real life. Perhaps some wouldn't argue or troll the same way in real life, but I think it's their true self and that it's the same idea. Unfortunately, it seems as though Felicia's parents don't like me since I'm an online person (or they might have other reasons, I dunno)... They've prevented her from contacting me and circumstances are preventing her from being able to just walk out on them or whatever. So instead of going on a trip to see my girlfriend, I'm putting myself at risk and going against some odds in hopes of getting a chance to be with her in the future. I'll admit I don't feel entirely safe going to a big city in the US alone, but I generally assume people there will have some decency, especially in broad daylight on busy streets. Biking on the highway between Greenville and Quinlan could be pretty risky if some dicks drive by, though...

I'm quite in love with Felicia, so I'll just have to try what I can to get a chance. Hopefully I won't be mugged, attacked, or killed. I think the odds of such things happening are pretty low, but you never know. My flight is scheduled to return me home late on June 27th; if I don't show any signs of life around then, I guess you can assume something happened to me and you probably have sufficient information to look some news up online for Greenville and/or Canada.

As you can perhaps imagine, I've been planning and handling things recently and haven't been in a very creative mood, which is why I haven't done anything productive. I might get back to making new content sometime after I get back, though I'm making no promises. If by some freak chance these are my last words... Follow your aspirations with guts, everyone. I'm sorry for my disappointing creations or lack of creations, but I hope you've enjoyed them to some extent and felt you got to know me a bit through them. A man's gotta do his best, win or lose. I love you, Felicia.

Well, I've returned in good condition. When I got out there, I felt a bit like Kaiji after he returned to the surface world... I was on my way to achieve great things, but there would be various obstacles to overcome, so it was no time to just be happy. Not everything went exactly according to my plans, so I had to come up with some alternatives or tackle the situations head on to proceed, such as walking 9 miles in 34 degrees Celsius from a Greyhound bus stop to Greenville, Texas and getting a classic case of sunburn. It was a pretty rough ride in that heat, but, with several breaks in the shade along the way, I handled the 13 miles on a bicycle to reach Quinlan... then I just had around 4 or 5 more miles more to get to where she lives. I didn't wanna waste time refilling my water or getting something to eat since I was so close, so I kept going. Out of water, I was lying in the shade at the side of the road preparing for the remaining mile or two. I heard an ambulance and saw it stop around where I was moments ago, then they drove up to me and asked if I was the guy that was just lying there. After briefly telling them of my adventure, they gave me two bottles of water and generously drove me the rest of the way. Having been on such a venture and having caused them to waste their time driving out all that way already, how could I refuse? They said my story was unique and wished me luck, I made my gaudy entrance by ambulance, then I saw a very worried Felicia seconds later. Her parents were nice to me; they were fairly understanding and they didn't try to stop us at all. I don't believe in fate or whatever, but it felt as though I was sorta guided to her despite the hardships. The four days I spent with her were the best days of my life and the moment I left her at the airport was the most painful and sad, far more difficult than any other part of my trip. I hope I can visit her again before too long...

Anywhosel, that's enough blogging for a while. Back to only writing about things related to Cloudflash's scarce updates.

Two months after ironically (or highly predictably) putting C-Mix into hiatus immediately after saying I wasn't planning to do so, there is a new comic. I might try and get the ball rolling again, but there are a couple of other things in my life that demand some attention. Well, I guess only time will tell if I'll continue making mildly amusing comics. Find out in the next incredible episode of Dragon Ball Zeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

C-Mix is still rolling along; so far, so good... I doubt I'll do anything extravagant for Cloudflash's anniversary this year (not that I did anything that amazing in the past). A couple of my projects are interesting me again, but where's the time? Perhaps it's high time I uninstalled the MMOs on my computer... whatever the hell "high time" means. I had to Google that phrase to make sure I wasn't crazy and just making it up. There are things I need to do and too little time to spend pissing around playing repetitive games. I guess I'll do that next Friday... Farewell, spending hours a day grinding; perhaps we'll reacquaint ourselves again next year.

I suppose I might as well post about the new awards I added... As I mentioned in April, I was planning to have awards other than the ones from the ACFAFCTTSAFAOC. They're pretty pointless and stuff, but some may find them amusing and they make the right side of the forum look pretty maybe. So, that's that. There's a list of the awards available... more will be added eventually.

Well, it's been 7 years now. Cloudflash keeps on keeping on and you apparently still visit it. To celebrate, I've made 4 new Cloudflash Mix comics! I must admit I wanted to have "Cloudflash Dream Battle" done for today instead, but it kept becoming more and more impossible... At first I was saying to myself "it should be done in time if I just add one character to the game everyday"... then it became "just two characters"... then "three characters a day, probably gonna have to pull a couple allnighters"... As I felt my goal drifting out of reach, I eventually gave up on that thought and figured I'd try to at least have a few C-Mix comics ready to go. Some of you may recognize #209... The Flash file actually corrupted last year, but I was exporting the comic in PNG format as a precaution, which pretty much had all the line art. Frustrated that I could no longer work on the comic, I posted my incomplete version on the forum, then made something else later. I guess I wasn't using other art programs at the time 'cause I recently thought of the simple solution of editing it in one of those since they can... well, be edited. Flash is crappy about that, but it was easy enough to erase the overlapping lines and get colouring when I used something else.

This year hasn't been as productive as previous ones, and it's likely to stay that way or even get worse due to my upcoming electrician course. I'm hoping to have Cloudflash Dream Battle done by the end of August or perhaps in early September... though I probably should've worked on something more in demand, but it just happened to inspire me recently. El Cacto is, yet again, gonna be way later than it should've been... I do hope I can do chapter 3 this year, though I can't guarantee it since I won't be able to recklessly work on it at the last second like last year.

I might add a few new awards to the forum later today... I hope to also do some updates to the site's comic pages and design/create some sort of section for my artwork this year. I'm fairly motivated currently, so maybe I'll get a thing or two done. I hope my things amuse you to some extent, Cloudflashians. These things of mine aren't exactly top notch, but I know I like to create stuff and let you get to know a bit more about me: my humour, my artistic capabilities and style, my interests, my experiences, my views. Let's create some more good times for another year.

Today's comic is accurately based on what happened at my old job. There were numerous spills of all kinds. I used to think that fruits/vegetables were probably washed somewhere along the way and that it wasn't really necessary for me to do so, but I recommend you do wash them since I know firsthand how careless the people in the warehouses are... and that's only one of the steps along the way for the food to make it to your local grocer. Sometimes we'd be advised to kick the food to the side and let the janitors do their thing, other times we'd be told to try and shove the undamaged looking food back into the box, and other times guys would do that on their own without consulting a supervisor and carry on like it never happened. You should also know that the gloves everyone wears there are very dirty; they touch dirty water, ice, mud/dirt, the floor, blood that leaks from the boxes of meat, miscellaneous garbage that may or may not have touched crushed fruits and/or other spills, etc. Sometimes the boxes are sorta open and people just happen to touch the stuff inside when they lift the box. Anyhow, wash your fruits and vegetables, ya.

So like... most forumers are surely aware of it already, but I'll post, anyway. I'm flying to Texas on September 11th to see my girlfriend again. I'll be back on September 24th. I'm sure it'll come as no surprise that I didn't make any comics in advance for the next two weeks. Knowing me, you can expect that there'll be no updates in my absence and that there's a good chance I won't make up for it. As excited as I am, I doubt I'll be going to sleep tonight, so maybe I'll make a comic and post it in advance for the 15th... Also, it's unfortunate that I seemed to lose my focus on Cloudflash Dream Battle, so it hasn't been touched much for the past couple weeks. I definitely intend to finish it sometime... I won't let it rot away like many of my other projects in the past have; it has too much progress for that. Anyhow, just thought I'd mention that stuff. So long, suckers!

Well, I'm back again. I was apparently too lazy to make an announcement saying so last night. Hisho said he forgot my instructions on uploading a new C-Mix comic, which is why that didn't happen. I'll perhaps make something later or just upload his work if he actually made something while I was away. I don't really have any interesting story or adventure to speak of; my visit this time was agreed upon and I got a ride. It was quite nice to be able to spend so much time with my girlfriend and just live through some average days together. My electrician course starts in a week and I'm not sure if I'll have internet right away, so I might be silent for a little while. If the course isn't too overwhelming and if I don't have internet, there's a good chance I'll be doing productive things, at least.

Lousy way I hold my pen sure cramps the hell out of my hands when I draw... Sorry about the late C-Mix and the lack of one last week. I couldn't even use my computer last week and I was apparently too lazy to make up for it later. My electrician course is pretty bearable so far, so I'll try to keep C-Mix going for a little while. I'm kinda leaning towards yet another hiatus since most of my ideas suck, though. I dunno what else I intended to say; I'm drawing a blank here. I'll leave it to your imagination to make this announcement seem more meaningful.

There's a pretty decent chance I'll give C-Mix the ol' heave-ho to hiatus in the near future; I'm just not feeling too up to it lately. It's quite unfortunate that I didn't really do any of the projects I intended to do this year, and the odds of any of them being completed are fairly low. We'll see how things pan out, though, so to speak. Anywhosel, C. Rookter is back! Cloudflash presents An Improved Society: Man's Best Friend. C. Rookter's cameo in C-Mix#210 was pretty much just a coincidence, but it brought forth important questions:
When did C. Rookter have a dog?
How did he get his dog?
What kind of dog was it?
How did it die?

Find out all these questions and more in this brand new chapter of An Improved Society. Updates will be irregular; most likely at least once a day until it finishes since that's just the way An Improved Society rolls.

An Improved Society: Man's Best Friend is now over. It's nice to create something so simple/lazy once in a while... When I'm actually putting effort into my drawings, I assume most people don't even look at the drawings for 10 seconds (unless they're really captivated, but I doubt that happens often with my abilities)... There is a certain sense of wasted effort on such things since they take hours to draw... Alas, I must make my serious projects look better so they aren't branded worthless at first glance. It's also nice to do this vague/stupid (brilliant)/C. Rookter-based humour without having to worry about punchlines or, well, anything else... An Improved Society pretty much writes itself. I hope we'll see another chapter of An Improved Society before too long...

My right wrist appears to be sprained, so I can't really use it for drawing at this point... not for drawing with a tablet, anyway. I can still draw with a mouse for now, so I decided to do some pixel art. I recently decided I wanted to replace the post icons on the forum, so this seemed like an opportune time to do so. Behold! New post icons to make your topics look more interesting or something at a glance!

I'm sure this is real heartbreaking news, but because I deleted the default post icons, topics that were previously using them no longer have any icon at all.

I'm sure you've all been waiting for them, and now they're here! A few new post icons! I have a few others in mind that I might create/add eventually.

And though this is hardly worth a mention, I've decided to finally remove that little Twitter thing on the homepage. I thought it'd be a quick and easy way for me to post half-updates, but I sure as hell couldn't be bothered to go all the way to Twitter's website for that. Also, as I'm sure you've already noticed, C-Mix is seemingly back after a 5 week hiatus. The updates are still wobbly for now, but I'll perhaps try and get them sorta consistent again. Having school on Thursday, perhaps I should give up my Gun x Sword reference and choose a different update day...

I've been meaning to change some other default images on the forum for ages... though I never really had anything in mind before. I decided to go with some fairly whimsy stuff. You might need to refresh excessively or clear your cache to see the new images, unfortunately. You'll wanna get right on that 'cause the forum's a crazy disco party now! ... That is, if there are any unread topics.

Topic read? Forget about that plain white page from before... From now on... topic read? SOCKO! That trash is done with! ... Until it gets a new post. Anyhow, so that's what I was up to for a bit... I was too lazy to do C-Mix, but perhaps I'll make up for it later.