A Dozen Years In...

...and I'm still here.

In 2009, PC launched on September 29th with a post by my now absentee partner, Souldat/Deftig, entitled Kicking Things Off.

Little did I know that the "Hey, would you like to create a blog together?" would turn into 1000 posts (!) and ~462000 views? That sounds like a lot until you realize that you have to divide it by month, and then it becomes a slightly less impressive ~3200 views and almost 7 posts a month. Then, when you consider the "contribution" that bots play in those view numbers, and....

Bah. I'll still have a beer. Twelve years is twelve years.

In those early years, Souldat wanted us to promote the blog as a potential watering hole for WoW fans. I was on board with that idea except that, well, there wasn't a lot of content for us to promote. So we wrote. And wrote. 

And wrote.

We expanded to three contributors twice, but both didn't last very long. And I'm not very proud about being more vocal about one or two posts that one of the two wrote, either. But in the end, both moved on to other things, while Soul and I kept on going.

At about the point where I felt we were going to reach a critical mass in terms of eyeballs and commentary, our primary source of links, Righteous Orbs, closed up shop. Then The Pink Pigtail Inn. And WoW Insider stopped promoting blogs and blog posts. I guess we could have moved into using that newfangled Twitter to promote the blog, but I was never very fond of a platform where anything you say is right there in the public square to an extent that Usenet or blogging itself never was. And given my tendency to mouth off from time to time, I could get in some real trouble on Twitter. But despite the lack of direct promotion, we continued on.

Even Soul's declining contribution didn't stop me from just keeping with a (semi) regular schedule of posting 1-2 times a week.

By the time the WoW side of promotions was fading fast, I had already been experimenting with other MMOs, and I soon expanded my posts to include my adventures there. I also included pencil and paper gaming (such as D&D) and board games, aiming to broaden our gaming goals. 

***

While I still do pay lip service to our 'About Parallel Context', this blog has effectively become my own for over a half dozen years now. And until this past week, I haven't really acknowledged it. So this week there have been a few small changes here and there that allow me to bow to reality. 

Such as finally moving Soul to the "Past Contributors" section.

Or changing the title graphic to something a bit (?) more timely. I'll have to work on keeping that current, I guess.

I always wanted something like Rades did, with a gif of various scenes, but I'd have to pay for a gif builder, as I wanted a longer time between scenes than what the 'free' gif creators had. Or use a random pic selector, like what Ravanel Griffon did for Ravalation.* 

That aside, I'll continue to make some tweaks to the blog as I become more comfortable in acknowledging that I'm basically the only contributor left. So like the time I got an entire dorm room to myself my junior year of college, I'll put up a map of Middle-earth, my Dark Side of the Moon poster, and this one: 

My oldest has my poster now.

Okay, now it's time for some tunes:

 

And yes, I hit two birds with one stone by selecting Yes' Roundabout along with the Jojo's endings. There's a great interview that Rick Beato had of Yes' Jon Anderson, and one of the things Rick asked was Jon's opinion of the usage of Roundabout for Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Jon loved the use of Roundabout in the anime, because it allowed a new generation to get to know Yes' music.

This version of Tank! is from a local con back in 2018. That sax band lead in front? The one with the red tie? He also played in Ohio Wesleyan University's Park Avenue Jazz Ensemble concerts.

 

 

And you can't have a set of tunes without dipping into David Arkenstone's vast catalog. My wife and I saw him live at a Winter Solstice concert back in the late 90s, and his band was simply amazing. Twenty years on, he still looks really good.

*Damn, I miss her blog posts. Rav, if you're reading this stop in and say hi.

EtA: Corrected some grammar.