Today while at the gym, I was thinking of all the random bills I had to pay that all seemed to be due at the same time. This included things like my car insurance, a recent doctor visit bill, the final payment on my credit card bill, some domain name renewals, and the hosting package for my podcast. I cringed as I paid all of them. However, I got to thinking a bit about how much having a website costs me personally and what I get in return from it. A reasonable person, especially in this economy, would look at the numbers and make cuts as needed.

So the facts:

I own 25 domains from various sites over the years. These include midwestpodcast.com (which was podcast convention that never got off the ground), adamantinearts.org (my old non-profit that closed a few years ago),  as well as a handful of domains I am managing for other people… free of charge apparently. This list also includes the important ones I am using for projects or will be using shortly. Given Godaddy charges around $11 per domain name, I have $275 per year in domain name fees.

I have Dreamhost hosting for my podcast, Krapp’s Last Cast. I use this mainly for their unlimited bandwidth, although, we have been on a year plus hiatus so the bandwidth usage is minimal now. However, we’re planning on starting again soon as well as launching a new podcast strictly for Dim Media. This costs me $7 per month (by paying for 3 years in advance). This costs me $84 per year.

I have Linode hosting for all my other other non-GAE projects. I use this to run the Dim Media site, this site, as well as a handful of other blogs for others. This is also, the cdn for one of my upcoming projects. I kinda need this. However, it is pricey and costs $330 per year.

So, that brings us to $689 annually to run all these sites.

Now, I make just less than $100 per year on Google ads – mostly from domain parking interestingly enough. The site that has the most non-monetary return is probably the Dim Media site. We refer a lot of our potential buyers to it and do a lot of marketing through it for our events. It is far harder to gauge if the money spent is made up for in the returns. However, Dim is its own business anyway, so it might be unfair to include it. Otherwise, it appears that I am in the whole nearly $600 per year in internet costs. Yikes.

I think my goal this year is to make that number at least break even through a combination of cutting out some things and trying to monetize more.

Status Update Webcomic. You in? email me.

I have been toying with the idea of starting a webcomic and need your status updates. Email me if interested!

The  Idea

Sites that allow status updates are all the rage anymore – most notably Twitter; but Facebook, MySpace, and many others have it as well. People just love to tell the world what is on their mind in a short little blurb. Heck, I use the twitters. My friends on Facebook and Twitter (the only such sites I frequent anymore) post a mix of interesting links and mundane “I’m going to lunch” type posts. However, more often than not, the context for the posts is lost and I find hilarity in the updates themselves. Sometimes, my mind wanders and some sort of Family Guyesque cut away sketch plays out in my brain.

So this gave me the idea to do a web comic illustrating these goofy scenarios. I have wanted to do a web comic for a long time, but  never had an idea that fit the short attention span best suited for web comics. However, I think this status update comic idea suits that perfectly… and YOU CAN HELP!

How You Can Help

So here is what I would need to start… I need permission from you to make use of your status updates for captions of the comics. Basically, I will pick out some that inspire some sort of comical scenario and illustrate a one panel comic. I’m tentatively thinking of publishing this three times per week. I promise I won’t poke fun at you personally and will link back to your profile should you wish.

I’m also thinking of perhaps having an exhibition of the comics in the future. It will encourage me to put a little bit extra effort into the artistic side. You’ll be invited

Imagine, that goofy status update you posted about that thing over there eventually turning into a comic for people to enjoy and perhaps part of an exhibition?!?!? Why would you not want to do it!

If you are interested in helping me get started, shoot me an email with the url to your status updates and I’ll check them out. I’ll get back to you shortly with any ideas I have. I’m hoping to launch within the next few months, but will start working on an initial collection of comics starting next week, so please email soon. Thanks!

My old buddy Jin and I have been planning on catching the new Wolverine flick together for a long time. I know it was leaked to unflattering reviews, but I really don’t care.

He is coming from St. Cloud and I am coming from Minneapolis. So we were thinking it might be cool to try to hit the IMAX in St. Michael. But thus far, the ticket sites were not showing anything for IMAX.

So i decided to google it. The first result was Comic Book Movie Forums / X-Men Movies / Will Wolverine be in Imax. Someone, like me, posed the question, “Will Wolverine be in Imax?” to which all the replies are some form of “who cares. That movie sucks” or “your mom is a slut”. Neat.

Now, I am fine with the Internet being full of crap like this, but I wish google had a way to filter it out. Yes, this matched my search description, but there was no real valuable information there. I’m sure through stumble upon or some hip crazy cool firefox extension, you can rank results. But, god damn google, isn’t the Skynet type AI you are running on smart enough to give me legitimate answers versus the ramblings of dipshit internet trolls?

End rant.

URLesque has published an awesome list of the most iconic internet videos.
My favorites from the list:

#95. Charlie the Unicorn
#92. Lightning Bolt
#90. The Machine Is Us/ing Us
#80. Bill O’Reilly Flips Out (We’ll Do It Live!)
#73. Powerthirst
#71. G.I. Joe Porkchop Sandwiches Mash-Up
#58. Whistle Tips With Bubb Rubb and Lil’ Sis
#32. Leprechaun in Mobile, Alabama
#7. David After Dentist

What???? No Technoviking?? and no buddy lee vs. DJ Gregg? Please note: I have a picture of the GI Joe in #71 on my fridge with the caption “porkchop sandwiches”. Epic.

However, in the mean time, I am doing some housecleaning. I moved my blog to a WordPress MU install so it is easier to update. Please be patient while I get things updated. I am hoping this will be the last time I jerk things around on here. Score. For your patience, you get a picture of a velociraptor being hugged by Jesus.

The site seemed like SEO fodder, but the footer info nailed it “Development Made Possible By Credit Card Debt” with a link to some spammy credit consolidation service. hahahha. I just love that line for any number of reasons!

Epic!

Here is the testimonial from Brian of REDA… quite entertaining and gives a good idea of Brian’s energy and how appreciative of what we did!

Flickr Photo Pool from last year too: