Happy New Year: 2011 in Review

First off I want to wish each and every one of you a happy and healthy New Year, hopefully whatever your entertainment last night you made it home safe and sound. 

Now onto the year that was for the blog...

2011 was an interesting year here for me at the blog, I tried to be a bit better about keeping to a schedule and content creation, and that well, failed abysmally, it wasn't through lack of desire or trying, but after doing a lot of research and soul searching on my part I found that I got more stressed and frustrated trying to stick to a schedule and it made it much harder for me to develop content for the site, so consider that a lesson learned.

This past year also marked a milestone for the blog, monthly traffic is now averaging over 200 hits per month, I want to thank my readers out there who are making that possible, I know that this thing has tended to stay barren for long stretches of time and I want to be better about that, Dollfie posts still lead the way on traffic and I am still working out a way to provide more of that content for my readers so we will see what happens there. 

2012 is going to be a blast, I am going to try to get to the point of smaller posts with fun content more often, little snippets here and there rather than great walls of text, hopefully that will keep my juices flowing and at the same time not burn me out trying to write a 3500 word article each week. 

In short, thanks for sticking with me, I am looking forward to a lot of fun yet to come and getting to know you all better, thanks for the traffic and the time out of your lives!

Merry Christmas!

Just wanting to wish my readers a safe and happy Christmas weekend!

Wherever you are, remember to hug the people you care about and tell them you love them, you never know when it could be your last time.

Peace on earth and goodwill towards men.

I am away for the holidays should be back just before New Years.

Looking backwards and forwards...

I always find it amusing to take a look back at blogs and see where they came from, what origianlly was intended versus what they became, you can see where an author started out with an idea and as traffic and interestes changed moved into a totally different direction, sometimes quite suddenly. Blogs are organic things and its amazing to see how they grow, sometimes completely out of control in ways that aren't expected.

This past week I did the same with my own humble piece of Cyberspace [do people even use that term anymore?] and found a fairly similar situation, what started out as an art blog with an anime influence, morphed into a full blown review and commentary site, and now is struggling to find its identity again with the advent of all the Dollfie traffic its been getting in recent months.

As I looked back I also realized all the FLUFF that I had posted, appologies for lack of updates, breaking schedules etc. and like a comment on a recent post pointed out, all that does is make the blog look bloated and me like a goof, so thats why in this last month there weren't any new updates, I was busy with a wedding, honeymoon and the holidays [although I am sorry for missing my Happy Thanksgiving post] so I didn't get any new content developed. But instead of posting about missing it, I just waited until I had something to post and insert a small appology.

The site content has been fascinating to revisit, from my early Manga and DVD reviews, to my most current VIZ Manga App review I saw the shft in the clarity of the writing into something more than just words, but it also brought forth the reality of writing reviews when you aren't on companies comp lists, it can be tough, you deal with your own budget and what you can gert your hands on at the time so it can be a bit sporadic. The shock is still the amount of traffic I get from the Dollfie articles, I am always scouring the net for new and exciting posts about this very niche hobby, sadly though there isn't always a lot out there that folks haven't yet seen.

So I am going to keep fighting the good fight, three years on the blog has changed formats and content but the passion is still there, I look forward to three more great [and productive] years!

Of Comments and Communication: Shout it Out!

For every blogger out there that lauches a professional career from their hobby, there are probably 10,000 that write for the sheet pleasure of it, their only gratification being the hits they get on their sites and the feedback of the community, so where does that leave the reader, and is there a responsibility to post comments? Step past the cut for a discussoon on blogs, comments, communities, and keeping a blogger posting.

Dollfie: Dollfie Dream Gathering Oct. 2011

Just a quick post this morning, but since this blog has taken more and more of a Dollfie bent I figured this was pretty important news...

http://www.volks.co.jp/en/dollfiedream/index.aspx#ddpj4

As you can see from the above pictures, the latest "Limited Release" Dollfie Dreams are on their way along with a bunch of new accessories [see the above link for a complete listing] along with the new accessories is the latest [4th I think?] iteration of Saber as a Dollfie Dream special edition.

Some beautiful new stuff there [along with beautiful prices] have fun, and if you get one of the new Sabers or outfits how about you drop a comment on the blog for all to see about your new purchase!