I discovered that the burn/dodge tool is really good at getting rid of JPEG noise. Now, when I started this gig, image quality wasn't my highest priority, but I'm the sort of guy who has the bad habit of wanting to do the best job he possibly can. Even with the right tools, cleaning still takes a considerable amount of time, though, which is why I need to suppress the unhealthy urge to make things as perfect as possible. For this release I used 4-bit PNG, which cuts down the filesize quite a bit. If you have a good monitor you may see some unevenness in the blacks; that's the sort of thing that I've decided I don't have the time to spend fixing. And though the internet's tubes are getting wider every day, going from 20 MB to 8 MB is a big difference.
The other thing is, I've been trying to make this less of a procrastination activity and more of a leisure-time activity. Thanks to /sci/ and /lit/, I've already fallen behind this semester. In a few weeks, though, I should be caught up. KnI and a few other interesting things are in the pipeline.
