Need advice from the welding experts.

[Tom Vogel]

Those are not really bad GMAW welds. A certain amount of spatter is a given, make sure your nozle is clean andyou could also use a stopoff (an anti spatter spray), on the adjacent areas that you want to get the spatter off. Or you could learn tig... thatll give you a clean weld. By the way, the stop start stuff is not done on mig, if anything, just an imperceptible side to side to make sure of bead wet in. (really... just imperceptible)
Someone is going to disagree with me on this... check the welding forums (Millerwelds or Hobart message board). Its funny how many guys see a nice tig weld and go about trying to make a simple mig weld look like a tig bead, even if it does nothing to add integrity to the weld. Kind of like the big chrome exhaust cans on the back of Honda Civics.