MPK Adventures http://www.murpheek.com/mpkadventures.asp Murphee K dot com - Officious Website Subscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with Pageflakes An afternoon lunch http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=128&ct=8
Today is Valentine's Day.  Guys!  Here's what wikipedia says about this holiday in Asia: "Thanks to a concentrated marketing effort, Valentine's Day has emerged in China, Japan and Korea as a day on which women, and less commonly men, give chocolate or flowers."

...

OK, so I could get in trouble for saying that.  Whatevs, I AM WILLING TO TAKE THE RISK.

So, ho-kay, some news:  so I've started broadcasting in the live webcast on a weeknight basis?  Sometimes I broadcast a mini light show, sometimes I broadcast myself practicing music, and most of the times it's pretty mundane.  But other times -- like last night -- I broadcast the creation of a new comic by screencasting my desktop as I'm editing it.  As before, I used ustream for the live streaming, but for the screen capture, I used VH Screen Capture Driver.  Both were free to use, but admittedly the latter took me a couple of tries to set up (although once it was correctly configured, it was pretty reliable).

The other news is that we're looking for a new drummer since Chris (of the Monistats) is leaving pretty soon.  (Thanks for playing with us and good luck!)  If you are interested in playing pretty fast (but not too fast) punk music, please do let me know!

Attributions:  the romantic background pic in all panels was taken by JasperYue of flickr.
]]> GP wishes you a happy (pi-1) day. 2008-02-14T08:56:22-06:00 The TODO list http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=126&ct=8
So, ho-kay, if you haven't already heard, we are playing a show tomorrow (Jan 30th) at 1982 Bar, hooray!  We -- that's me, Will (from The Factor), Chris (from Forward), and Chris (from The Monistats) -- have been practicing together for about a couple of months now, and quite honestly, if it weren't for this show, we wouldn't have been practicing so hard and frequent.  But I think we're ready.

Whether or not I am ready -- given the live webcast and the impromptu light show that I plan on putting on -- remains to be seen.

Speaking of the live webcast, I do plan on broadcasting all 4 bands, so please stay for Hoyt & The Hotheads, then us, then The Monistats, and then Padded Cell.  And since the show at 1982 isn't exactly a public event, I can't broadcast anyone willy-nilly; the latest episode of TWiT actually made me realize the potential liability issues.  But ANYWAY, fans:  feel free to dance real silly!

Crap!  All this ranting and I still haven't talked about the comic!  OK, so Will has on a The Ergs! t-shirt because he's been trying to get me into the band despite of my insistence that I could never ever like any band where drummer/singer Mikey Erg was involved in more than Dirt Bike Annie.  In fact, if you go to the live show, you'll see the influence DBA has had on me.  I guess all I'm saying is that I'll try not to hold DBA against them anymore, k?

Attributions:  the background pics in panels 1 and 4 were taken by rpongsaj and emdot of flickr, respectively.  Background pics in panels 2 and 3 were taken by me during the shooting of the video promo for the show, the result of which can be seen here:

Thanks sterlo for filtering out all of my awkward, nervous answers!
]]> GP stutters uncontrollably in front of the camera. MUST SEE! 2008-01-29T21:12:58-06:00 In the dark of my apartment http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=124&ct=8
Ever since daylight saving time, I've been bothered by how dark my apartment is when I enter it.  Yep, I have issues.

Attributions:  the wall background pic was taken by OiMax, and the hallway background pic was taken by elle_rigby.  I've used pics from these two excellent flickrers before in this and that comic, respectively.  Thanks again guys!  Lastly, the floor background pic was taken by newcomer MrsBinParis.

On a recent flight to Seattle, I was listening to a lot of explosions in the sky.  Explosions.  In the sky.  Plane ride.
]]> GP dares you to tempt fate. It's fun! 2007-12-15T19:41:51-06:00 Select Start tryout http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=123&ct=8
Other lines I've considered:  I don't need no meat products, I'm a PUNK ROCKER!  I don't need no sex, I'm a PUNK ROCKER!  Wait.

Attributions:  all the background pics were taken by me this time, and thanks to Select Start for letting me use their images in the comic without all of their permissions.  (Permission?  I don't need no permission, I'm a PUNK ROCKER!)  I've been mentioning those guys so much lately, this is probably the last time in a long time I'll do that again; unless, of course, they ever let me try out for them.  I'm thinking I could sing or play guitar/piano, but then I thought maybe I could be a conductor!  That would be either super duper cool or super duper dumb 64.

Guys!  Speaking of video game music, check out this awesome video game halftime show put on by the Cal band, aka. my new favorite school band:
]]> GP is about as punk rock as this comic having a regular update schedule. 2007-11-15T09:58:38-06:00 Where I've been (hiding) http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=121&ct=8
I actually haven't been playing Guitar Hero, which makes today's comic a four-panel lie-a-thon.  What this comic really is is a way into telling you about the recent backend upgrade to this website.  This is about to turn extremely geeky (if it wasn't already), but summarily, this site has now been upgraded from MS Access to MS SQL Server 2005.  And not only that, it's using Godaddy's SQL Server backend.

I certainly haven't seen any guides on the Internets on how to do this, so I'm hoping that people doing a search would benefit from my experience.  Here are some of the things that I've done to do this:
1) Downloaded a local copy of SQL Server 2005 Express and converted my MS Access database to SQL Server automatically.
It's always a good idea to test locally, so I wanted to convert my DB into a local instance of SQL Server.  This article helped me tremendously.  The author even put out a Word document which tells step-by-step how to migrate an MS Access DB into SQL Server.  Pretty cool!  Essentially, after this step, I was able to update my connection string to point to my local instance of SQL Server.

Also, I had to re-check my code once I've migrated to SQL Server.  I've had some issues regarding the datetime type that I had to fix.
2) Exported my local instance of SQL Server into a CSV file.
There are many ways of deploying a SQL Server instance, but unfortunately Godaddy stipulated that I can only import my DB via a CSV file.  Lame!  So this meant that I had to find out how to first export my DB into a comma-separated text file, and then use Godaddy's importer to deploy my database.

I think the easiest way of exporting a SQL Server instance into a CSV file is via SSIS, but I haven't been able to do that because what I had was SQL Server Express.  Doubly lame!  I felt pretty stuck for a while until I found several shareware apps online that would do it automatically.  The one that I downloaded was pretty crappy as it would only export half the rows in a table at a time, so I don't recommend it.  But I'm pretty sure that you can find one that's better.
3) Created tables in Godaddy's SQL Server and then imported my CSV files into Godaddy.
This is pretty straightforward:  while creating tables in Godaddy's SQL Server, I made sure that I had my local instance open so that I knew which type to give to each column.  There's one BIG gotcha that I had to call customer service for:  in order to set a column as nvarchar(MAX) in Godaddy, I had to set the column as nvarchar with length of -1.  THIS IS A BUG THAT GODADDY'S CUSTOMER SERVICE SHOULD NEVER EVER HAVE HAD TO ADDRESS.  I initially felt angry at the support guy since he totally did not know what I was talking about, but then I felt really bad for him later on because this is essentially a programmer error.  What's worse is that this is an easy fix.  ANYWAY.  Once I imported my tables into Godaddy, all I had to do was...
4) Update my connection strings to point to Godaddy, upload my files with the updated connection strings, and then did a small victory dance.
This is easy because Godaddy provided me with the proper connection strings.

So far, I've tested the backend by putting out a Project Wonderful campaign for a short period of time, and it hasn't gone down since.

Attributions:  the background pics in panel 1 were taken by Addictive Picasso and Yeah Im Kenny.  The background pics in panel 2 were taken by Dominic's pics and irina slutsky.  The background pics in panels 3 and 4 were taken by Okaggi and ricardo.martins, respectively.  I've been listening to a lot of Select Start, so I made them a shirt that exists only IN MY MIND.  Also, Dirt Bike Annie still exists in my mind, so I used a shirt of theirs as well.
]]> GP, this means you'll regularly update the comic now, right? RIGHT? 2007-10-14T17:30:22-06:00 Hokey Pokey http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=119&ct=8
So here's the deal. Ever since I moved back to FL (a month ago), I've been doing a lot of catching up with people, which is cool coz I haven't seen you all since forever. Of course, the consequence of this is that my regular routine became all screwy. And worse yet, the way things are going, it looks like the new job is going to take up most of my time. I mean, we already had sprints, man!

What this means is that I cannot update the comic during the weekdays, so what I'm going to do is to keep the same update schedule (every 15th), except that I'll update on the following Monday if the 15th happens to fall on a weekday. As a webcomic, having an erratic update schedule is bad, but in truth, the webcomic became less important ever since I've moved back.

But at any rate, I've been doing waay too many touristy things and I'm taking a break from that. I got things to do and people to ignore, er I mean, insult, er I mean, be really nice to.

Speaking of people, hey man, are you in facebook? If so, and you already know my phone number, feel free to add me. I'm going to poke everyone after this just to see what happens. (Read: hey man, please don't put me on your Enemies list!)

Attributions: the background pic in panel 4 was taken by RowdyReptile. The other was taken by me! Since I was in Jax a coupla' weeks ago, I threw in a Yellowcard shirt in there (they are from Jax, I think). Plus I recently got some Jimmy Eat World CDs from lala so I threw them in there as well. The fact that the guy and the girl ended up with blue and pink shirts, respectively, happened completely by accident I SWEAR.
]]> GP(MPK) has broken fingers and is typing via telepathy 2007-08-19T15:33:39-06:00 Moving in the future http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=118&ct=8
Also, in the future, comics will write and draw themselves.  Then I can finally retire from this non-money-makin' business and not live off the interest.

Jesus Hella Christ, moving from Texas to Florida was a lot harder than I expected.  Apparently I've accumulated a lot of crap over the years, and I don't really want to go through the process again anytime soon.  How I repeatedly did it in college, I cannot recall.

There's a lot of things going on right now.  And a lot of things on the website remain unaddressed.  I don't know if you guys notice, but I've been using antiquated technology for several years now; namely, MS Access DB. (I know I know, for shame!  It doesn't scale AT ALL!)  And that is the fundamental reason why this website keeps going down intermittently.  I would like to import my database onto a more scalable DB so that, later on, I can convert this website onto a better CMS like Wordpress.  I've been avoiding web programming all of my professional life, and I think that it is something I would like to get better at.  Plus there's some music to attend to which, I confess, I've placed in the very, very back burner during my time in Texas.

And probably most important, I officially start my new job tomorrow, which means that most of my focus will be on that.  Why I'm telling you this is so that you know why I've changed my comic's schedule to update only every 15th.

Attributions: the background pics in panels 1, 3, and 4 were taken by AMagill, billsaturno, and AMagill again of flickr, respectively.
]]> GP(MPK) forgot how to un-miniaturize all the crap in his pocket 2007-07-15T10:50:24-06:00 Origin of Song http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=117&ct=8
I kinda rushed this comic a little bit, in both writing and drawing -- I don't know if you can tell.  But the truth is, I'm about to embark on a major change in my life and I quite honestly have been scrambling for the past several weeks.  That is all I'm going to say about that.

Why do I suddenly feel so emo?  THANK YOU PEOPLE WHOM I'VE MET AND WHO'VE ADDED NEW DIMENSIONS TO MY LIFE, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I'VE KNOWN YOU FOR TWO YEARS OR TWO WEEKS.  kbye.

Seriously, though, the people who believe in me -- thanks man!  This is an exciting time, and I can't wait to let you all know how it all goes.

Attributions:  the background pics in panels 1, 3, and 4 were taken by jessicafm, xctmx, and Made Underground of flickr, respectively.
]]> GP(MPK) is hitting the ground running, over and over again 2007-06-15T20:22:24-06:00 The Consequence of Clapping http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=115&ct=8
There's this one movie theater in Willowbrook (up in North Houston) that I hate, hate, HATE going to; it's always crowded, it's smelly, and it's almost a guarantee that a baby will cry.  But I always go there just to witness everyone clap in unison when the movie ends.  It's insane!  Imagine:  a bunch of people clapping at a projector screen!  It totally threw me off the first time I witnessed it, and I assumed that it's just an aberration.  But no, IT HAPPENS EVERYTIME.  I highly recommend you check out this feat of mass hysteria yourself; it's like church but without the religion.

Attribution:  tons of thanks to all the cool people at flickr -- you guys always make my comic hella less drab!  This time, the background pics for panels 2, 3 and 4 were taken by Maggiejumps, J Blaine and Jesus Presley, respectively.  I really liked Jesus Presley's shot; I make special mention of it (normally I don't) because the way I do the comic is:  I first draw the comic and then start searching for pictures to match it.  So, finding a perfect shot is almost always a freak accident.  ANYWAY, thanks again!  Also, I've recently completed collecting most (if not all) of Minus the Bear's albums, so I figured it's high time that I rip off showcase their shirt designs in the comic.  Lastly, the screen shot in panel 1 was the last image ever hosted on thegia.com.  Someone please bring that website back to life!
]]> GP(MPK) requires a chorus of boos to reverse the effect. 2007-06-01T09:19:22-06:00 The Last Word http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=114&ct=8
Man...Why is it that everytime I'm about to fly somewhere I end up w/ a morbid comic about airplanes and my persistent fear of riding them?  (Like this other one.)  I guess that's what happens when you base your comic on real life.  Anyway.  Speaking of morbid, consider for a bit what the future generations would think about the words that we leave on this here internet in 2180.  Someday, I'm going to look back at what I wrote in this website and I'll cringe or maybe throw up a little.  In fact, yup, I'm doing a little of that right now.

Hey!  I haven't been in town for a while, and check it, I might go see The Ergs so come say hello!  "I hella haven't seen you in a long time, holmes" is probably what I'll end up saying; it'll be great catching up!  But eventually we'll arrive at that awkward silence phase where we'll wish for a smooth escape, the way road trip passengers opt to look at the scenery or fall asleep.  But no.  We'll just be there, standing there, staring at each other, until, yes, we slowly approach, look deeply into each other's eyes, our mandibles slowly loosening, longing for...whoa, whoa, wait, let's just be friends, ok?

Attributions:  The background cemetery pic in panel 4 was taken by Ahron de Leeuw.  Thanks man!  As for the other three panels, I took 'em.  Lastly, I couldn't find any of The Ergs! T-shirts online, so I made up a generic black Whoa Oh records T-shirt instead.  I hope you don't mind, Mr. Jonnie Whoa Oh!
]]> GP(MPK) strives to live until 2180 so he can disabuse any future generations' misinterpretations. 2007-05-15T05:52:48-06:00 In which I get amputated http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=113&ct=8
This comic stems from my childhood pastime of chasing dragonflies and making them fight each other.  I suppose I wouldn't have appreciated it either if I were faced with the same predicament, but then I would have thought, hey man, HE'S JUST A KID.  Just know that I realize now how cruel I was back then is all I'm sayin'.  I'm also sayin':  dragonfly overlords... YOU CAN READ?

Sorry for the late post, btw.  I encountered some angry bees on the way home?

Blonde Redhead's new album, 23, is amazing, and I recommend you take it for a spin.  It currently sits atop my list of top 10 albums of 2007.  (And while you're at it, read last year's list.)

Of course I can't end this post without some mad proper disseminations to several gents and madam moiselles who have allowed me to surreptitiously rip off remix their work!  Say hello to MGShelton who has captured a sunset (or sunrise) somewhere in paradise.  Props are delivered also to cleverswine for a clever bedroom shot.  The Antisolipsism poster in panel 4 was illustrated by Zombie Lincoln.  Astute readers would now know that I read Dinosaur Comics.
]]> GP(MPK) had childhood insect trauma? 2007-05-01T10:44:07-06:00 Finger Tapping http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=112&ct=8
Have a relationship with a musician (particularly, a pianist) and I contend that the scenario in the comic will transpire.  I can prove it.  I KEPT NOTES.

And ladies of Christmas past and present!  Sorry for my bad, yet mildly amusing, habits?  I am forgiven, yes?  EH?  EH?

Attribution:  the background pic for all panels was taken by jawcey of flickr.  Mad propers dispatched promptly from me to you!  Also, I seem to be listening to a lot of Pinback lately.  I don't know why.
]]> GP(MPK) plays you like a fiddle. 2007-04-15T13:06:23-06:00 Prognostication http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=111&ct=8
First, I wish an advanced happy birthday to my sister (that's her on panel 4) who annually tries in vain to catch up to my age.  She'll never get closer to the lead I've established a year before she was born.  HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT, SIS?

So, ho-kay, about the comic.  Lately, I've been concerned with health issues:  specifically, musicians and their tendency to disregard seemingly small things like repetitive strain injury.  Guys, I heartily admit:  I'm that way too!  I used to think, "Dude...that's boring.  Also:  MAKE ME A SANDWICH," but then I started aching around the neck and wrist, so I began to take heed.  There's a symposium later this month at Rice University concerning medical problems that affect performing musicians.  (There's a piano performance in there too!)  If you happen to be in Houston and are a hypochondriac like me, this event might interest you.

Attributions:  the background pics in panels 1, 2, 3, and 4 were taken by NikiSublime, axeldeviaje, theopie, and joshp of flickr, respectively.

Happy April Fools'!
]]> GP(MPK) recommends reading backwards for a BONUS comic. 2007-04-01T18:20:19-06:00 Emotion Engine http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=110&ct=8
[3/16 Update]:  Order has apparently been restored!  I don't know exactly what caused yesterday's problems since the problem occurs intermittently, but I suspect that there were too many connections being opened and not closed.  BAD BAD BAD!  Anyway, onward with yesterday's post!

There's an OK news article over at Wired News today about Koji Kondo, the dude guy DEMI-GOD who composed the theme song for Super Mario Bros.  (Read: OK as in "satisfactorily written" and not "would have been better if it weren't for the mere mention of that dude from G4, Tommy Tallarico...yes, I'm still mad at you, G4, for killing TechTV!").  Guys, I totally confess!  I didn't really know who composed that theme until now!  And I call myself a VG music fan!  My excuse is that I didn't keep track of video game composer dudes until I started playing Final Fantasy 6j.

ANYWAY.  About the comic.  I was watching a scene in Good Will Hunting one night where the main guy asked the therapist about finding the RIGHT one and the therapist then proceeded to answer with a long-winded story about the Red Sox and love-at-first-sight and how you just "know" it and he pretty much answered it in a very unscientific way.  I came away feeling kinda jilted.  Incidentally, I started reading A People's History Of The United States by Howard Zinn, which was mentioned in the movie, and I find out days later that the main guy -- the actor/screenwriter, not the character -- actually lived next door to Howard Zinn when he was a kid.  Previously thinking it was a hearfelt recommendation for a book, now I feel like I was lied to BY THE ENTIRE MOVIE.  But then I remembered it was ALL FICTION and I calmed down, but still, did it really have to be so FICTIONAL?

Firefox users!  I highly recommend you download the Popup ALT Attributes extension, which fixes a bug in Firefox that prevents you from reading the entire, multi-row alt text of an image and/or link.  You don't have to -- NO ONE'S FORCING YOU TO -- but I do believe you'll get a lot more of the "hidden" funnies this way.

Lastly, of course, some attributions are in order:  the background pics in panels 1, 2, 3, and 4 were taken by pikkus, Zach Klein, Patrick Denker, and elle_rigby of flickr, respectively.  Flickr is totally awesome!  It allows me to easily search for images with the CC Attribution License.  Sexy!  Also, I like Mates of State and Dr. Frank (of MTX).  (I should read his blog; I always learn a new word whenever I hear a new MTX song.)
]]> GP(MPK) avers that you've found the RIGHT person once you've both uttered the same punchline to a comic in unison. 2007-03-16T11:00:23-06:00 Ward Off the Suck http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=109&ct=8
Today's comic is sort of a follow up to a previous comic about musicians and their insatiable need for compliments.  Let's face it, artists -- especially musicians -- love getting the mad props.  Props are like their energy pellets if musicians were Pac-Men.  Or energons if they were Transformers.  Or mushrooms if they were Super Marios.  Or E-tanks if they were Megamen.  Man, I miss playing video games.  Forget this blog post noise, I'm playing Final Fantasy.

Speaking of compliments, some attributions are in order: the background pics in panels 1 and 4 were taken by sor and OiMax of flickr, respectively.  Background pics in panels 2 and 3 were taken by yours truly!  Mad, self-congratulatory props to ME!  BWAHAHA!  Also, I like The Unlovables! (NOTE:  Music starts to play when you enter their page.)
]]> GP(MPK) is on FF10 and has some catching up to do. 2007-03-01T15:23:30-06:00 Top 10 Albums of 2006 http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=108&ct=8
Lads and ladies, I'm not gonna lie!  This entire comic was an excuse to proclaim my undying love to two albums that came out in 2006:  The Art of Distraction by Karmella's Game and Select Start's self-titled debut.  There were others that I came across and got my attention (namely, Bring It Back by Mates of State and Friendly Fire by Sean Lennon) but none of them had the staying power as the aforementioned albums.  But quite frankly, I wasn't exactly scavenging for new music last year, ergo, there goes my music critic CREDIBILITY.  (Also, GP, aren't top ten lists supposedly done at the end of the year?  Short answer: no.  Long answer: AW, HELL NO.)

Full disclosure: I've played with both Karmella's Game and Select Start in the very very distant past.

Anyway.  I heartily recommend you check out The Art of Distraction.  It's a very dance-y album and there's a ton of reviews out there that will attest to this, and I will add that it had somehow accomplished that elusive act of distilling happiness.  It's happiness, IN A CD-SHAPED BOTTLE?

Also, guys in KG:  if you guys are reading this and are ever in need of a fifth member to play guitar/keyboards/vocals: GUYS, AS IF IT'S NOT OBVIOUS BY NOW, I AM SOO THERE.

Speaking of defecting to another band, I recommend that you guys check out Select Start's debut album as well.  Here's my review of it:

OK, do you guys remember how disappointed you were after seeing Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within?  And then years later, after seeing The Lord of the Rings trilogy, you felt as if LotR should have been what The Spirits Within wasn't?  (No?  Dammit, just bear with me.)  Well, I'm a video game soundtrack collector, and Select Start's debut should have been what all those orchestrated video game soundtracks tried to be.  You hear it and you say to yourself, "Why have I been listening to these crappy orchestrated OSTs all these years?"  (It's true because I did say it to myself, and I said it out loud, hence I HEARD IT TOO.)

There is something in Select Start's debut that tells you that it didn't go through any of the beauracracy that might have gone into the making of any orchestrated OST; the passion and sincerity is still intact with Select Start's renditions.  The music is alive and very intimate, as opposed to sitting from far away.  OK OK OK, so it might not help that I actually have the volume cranked up all the way to 11 (nor does the fact that I've seen an SS show personally -- literally at an arm's length away from the violinist), but the fact remains: this is a SOLID piece of work.

And of course before I go, some attribution: the background pic in panel 4 was taken from kuroda of flickr.  Mad hilarious props to Boston and haircuts in the 70s.
]]> GP(MPK) had both albums in constant repeat for months now. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP. 2007-02-15T19:39:31-06:00 An Open Letter http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=106&ct=8
First things first, some attribution:  the background pic in panel 4 was taken from mtl2tky of flickr.  The poster in panel 3 was taken from The Pleasure Is Back.  Lastly, the T-shirt designs were taken from Sonic Youth and Karmella's Game.  Big ups to those bands for their music and for refraining from calling their laywers.

Speaking of flickr, I've recently switched to it as my favorite photo management and sharing service.  Here's my photoblog as it stands.  I used to host my photoblog via textamerica, but that ended when they no longer allowed free accounts.  As it were, I had to quickly revamp my Ambilight algorithm and that's without using the flickr API.  (One day, when I up-convert this site to either php or ASP.NET, then definitely I'll use the API.)  I'm neither going to write about how I did it nor recommend it:  the revamped version is an even worse hack than before.

Anyway.  The scenario in the comic happened after playing a show about two years ago when I was a keyboardist for Heist at Hand.  I wonder how they're doing these days?  I wonder also, if I've followed a different path -- different choices made, different priorities set -- how different would my situation have been?

ANALYSIS PARALYSIS!!
]]> GP(MPK) hasn't played out in a long time and misses it. 2007-02-04T21:53:36-06:00 Unlucky Query http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=105&ct=8
So, ho-kay, the joke in the comic isn't exactly the most obvious, but I still think it can stand by itself without further explanation. However, BECAUSE I'M SUCH A NICE PERSON, I'm going to give you a hint: the joke centers around an idiom involving "chimeras" and the act of "chasing" them. Knowing this idiom will make complete sense out of why I decided that a Chase Bank lobby would be the perfect setting. OH CRAP, DID I JUST EXPLAIN THE ENTIRE JOKE? No? Whew. OK. GOOD.

Incidentally, I've searched for that idiom in the Internet and found no satisfactory explanation. (Hell, not even wikipedia). I do know of one article that uses the idiom to describe the act of searching for true happiness and I DO believe I've just linked it so that you'd know that I'm not a liar.

So, having already explained the entire comic very UNINTENTIONALLY, I have to admit that I focused more on the drawings this time around. Perhaps next time it will be different? Speaking of next time, it looks like I might be able to keep up a regular comic update schedule after all: based on the last 3 comics, it would have to be monthly. But wait a minute, GP, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE MONTHY PLAYLISTS?!?!?

Oh, shut up.
]]> GP(MPK) uses ice magic in Castle of Ordeal. 2006-08-15T18:52:27-06:00 Scowling is frowned upon http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=104&ct=8
A friend of mine once said that it's not even worth putting on a fake, friendly smile because people can see through that.  And then I wondered, there just _has_ to be a way to detect someone's mood from their facial expressions programmatically.  I mean, c'mon!  Right?

At any rate, if you ever catch me down the hall donning an upside-down smile, I'm not scrowling at you; I'm either just debugging in my head, or working out a lyric, or writing a new comic...you know, stuff that can't be hampered by the rigors of slapping on a fake facade.

Have a nice day.
]]> GP(MPK) disarms you with a smile :) 2006-07-15T16:09:12-06:00 At the movies http://www.murpheek.com/archive.asp?NewsID=103&ct=8
Today's comic is dedicated to all the ladies I know out there.  Oh yes!  I express my scrumptious love to all of you, all at the same time (if you know what I mean, hubba hubba).

Anyway ladies, creepiness aside, I specifically dedicate this comic to three:  (1) a long lost one with whom I've recently reconciled, (2) one who just had a really crappy weekend and I wanted to make her smile, and (3) someone who I think is really really hott.

(Aside: Did I just unwittingly confess my love to a friend?  Fuuuuuuuck!  I'm in the 'friends jar' forever!!)

In comic news, you may have noticed that all comics are now searchable.  And you play a part in it!  I'm quite impressed with how easy it was to get my comic integrated with OhNoRobot: a couple of lines of javascript was all I had to add.

As a developer of in-house applications, I often times envy web app developers for the instant props that they get from internet users.  The fans treat cool web apps like godsend and, in the process, transitively extol their makers.  From that sense, I view their work -- their life -- as more glamorous.

Sort of like being a rock star.
]]> GP(MPK) would have had more dedications if he wasn't avoiding the glamour. 2006-06-15T09:48:20-06:00