this blog of mine

June 3, 2017, joins several other hallowed days in my blog’s history when not a single visitor to the site was recorded.

I’d feel worse but I didn’t post anything yesterday, either. That’ll teach me to go content-free for a day.

I’ve finally started working on expanding the Posts I Like section of the blog, which you can see over yonder in the column to the right. A new link is at the top of the section, Selected lists, complaints and observations. This will direct you to a page that distills the 1,800 or so posts on this blog down to the dozen really worth reading.

I didn’t feel like combing through all 1,774 posts tonight so this will be an ongoing process. I may also add or remove posts in moments of whimsy or as I otherwise see fit.

Enjoy!

I’ve adjusted the logo of the site to include Super Spud, my comic creation from a hundred or so years ago. I made did the illustration and coloring while the shading was done by an online friend, jackrabbit.

I don’t quite like the way Super Spud is aligned (he’s a little too close to the edge, though not in the Donald Trump way–zing!) so consider this a work in progress that will be tweaked in the days ahead.

Still, it’s something and it’s not my ugly mug, so there’s that.

I’ve done a few tweaks to the site to make it more appealing to me and the bots that visit:

• simplified color scheme (header is now white), for a more spartan look that is all minimalist and such
• changed the logo from a cartoon image of me to a cartoonish image of me (I will change this periodically)
• changed the tag “bad design” to a category
• added Writing prompts as a category
• added Lists as a category (I need to add a bunch of posts to this; the criteria is that the post must be centered around a list, not simply include one
• done some experimentation with Font Awesome in titles and posts to add visual interest. For example, a book review could have a book icon that says, “Hey, this is probably a book review!” Like so:
• started tossing in more images to again make with the visual flair. You can never have too much flair, as we know.
• changed the titles to a cheerful green to make people happy for visiting
• continued to scrupulously avoid the use of emoji or emoticons

I’ll continue to make more tweaks in the new year. I’m also considering moving the site to a dedicated host that would allow me to spend less time on the plumbing and more time on writing inane posts.

On December 18, 2016, the number of people/bots/aliens that visited my site were: 0

I even posted a pretty winter picture that day. You could even use it as a nice wallpaper if you cropped it badly. Maybe just use it as is and add scrolling columns of “Damn snow” on both sides of it. The point is I had new content and no one came to look at it, not even by accident.

But that’s okay because the minor amusement value in pseudo-complaining about it more than makes up for the fact that over 7 billion people exist on this planet and on December 18th not one of them came by to have a look-see at this blog. And if one or more of them comes by today, they’ll see this post and maybe feel bad, which will provide further minor amusement value.

As I’ve noted already November 2016 has been a month of disappointments and general awfulness. This blog has been hit by inactivity on both ends–the author (me) has been flailing about and not writing and even the few souls who randomly arrive on the site completely checked out on November 25th as seen in the site stats below:

The gap you see means there were no visitors on that day. Not that this site has been hugely busy on other days, as the same chart shows. The taller bars represent 15-17 unique visitors. I tried calculating what percentage of the world’s population that is (currently over 7.46 billion and climbing) but let me just tell you: it’s a pretty small number.

I’ve also changed the header of the site to include an actual image of my mug (passed through a Prisma filter). Further changes are to come as I prepare for the bold, brash year to come that is 2017, the year when we all snap awake and laugh with relief when we all realize 2016 was just a crazy dream!

Also, I went to Metrotown today, not really considering that this is Black Friday weekend or whatever you want to call it. The usual madness of the mall was magnified about five times. I’d ask what was I thinking but I was clearly not thinking at all. But worming my way through the crowds before I decided escape was the only sane course of action did push me toward my daily step goal. See? Lemonade from lemons. I’m such a glass-half-full kinda guy.

The WordPress dashboard is surprisingly complete on my iPhone 6 but I can’t say that pecking out a post on the tiny onscreen keyboard is exactly fun.

Consider this then just another in my ongoing efforts to post to my blog on every conceivable type of device.

Next up: posting from a television!

When the jogging updates dried up in the second half of the month my general writing inspiration also withered away and so here I am well short of my post-a-day ratio on the final day of May. There’s a little under two hours left in the month as I write this and I could bang out ten lame haikus, one per post, in order to meet the goal of 31 posts for the month but that would be dirty cheating.

Instead, I will admit defeat and resolve to do better in June. On the plus side there is one fewer day in June than May, so that’s already aces, as the kids say.

Here’s a writing haiku I should probably print out poster-size and slap on the wall above my monitor and everywhere else:

Writing is easy
All you do is start writing
Remember, don’t stop

I’ve finally added a few more posts to the little “Posts I Like” thing over to the right (or at the bottom if you’re on a mobile device). These are posts that I find amusing/terrifying or somehow worth noting. Of note is the brief, tragic “Learning to Swim” saga.

Enjoy!