The second day of Blaugust and I'd like to assure everyone not every post here this month is going to be about the event. That really would be taking the metatextual high road, which I can't deny has its appeal, but no. There are more things in life than Blaugust.
This one is, though. It's in the nature of a set-up post and also a grab-bag of sorts, although it's a mighty small bag. You wouldn't get much shopping in this one.
Wilhelm opened the bidding yesterday with a complete list of all 98 runners in this 2025 Invitational but by this morning I see he's had to update that four times already. We're now up to 114.
I left a comment last night saying I wasn't sure how I'd keep up with all of them, not just in terms of time spent reading but, more pragmatically, how I was even go to know when anyone had posted anything new. In previous years, I'd been in the habit of adding every new blog to my Blog Roll but that was when almost all of them were at least somewhat related to the boroad theme and purpose of this blog, namely gaming and popular culture.
Last year Blaugust made quite an effort to spread the net wider and draw in bloggers from all kinds of non-gaming sources as well as vloggers, podcasters and who knows what all else, which was great for me as a reader, viewer and listener but it no longer seemed to make quite as much sense for to include all of them in the sidebar. Instead, I just whacked them all into my Feedly and followed them in private.
At the time, as I recall, the free version of Feedly had a limit on how many RSS feeds you could add. I seem to remember it being a hundred but I may have made that up. I'm pretty sure there was a limit, though, and I think I was getting quite close to it. Consequently, I wasn't sure how I was going to be able to follow all the dozens of new Blaugustinians. (Thanks to Gaudete Theology for the new collective noun - it rolls off the tongue a lot more sweetly than Blaugustians, which is what I'd been using until now.)
I was toying with the idea of making a separate category in the Blog Roll and adding them all there but I didn't relish all the cutting and pasting it would take. By this morning I still hadn't done anything about it and just as well, too, because the very first Blaugust post I read after breakfast was from Owls at Owlblog, (Aka Owls Of The Godless Internet.) who'd solved most of my problem for me!
Owls has put together an OPML file (I say it like I know what one of those is...) with RSS links to all the current Blaugust blogs. You can import the whole lot into your RSS feeder of choice with one click.
I cut and pasted the link into Feedly this morning and it worked perfectly. You do then have to go through them all and "Follow" them individually but that takes about 1% of the time it would take to add the whole lot the old-fashioned way. Thanks Owls!
I did also try the same trick with Blogger's Blog Roll widget but it wasn't having any of it. It didn't reject it but neither did it add anything at all. There may be some way of getting it to co-operate but although this year's new intake doesn't seem quite as wildly disparate as 2024's, I still think it's probably not going to be appropriate to add every one of them to the roll, so I'm not going to pursue it any further.
To give some idea of the challenges ahead, I read just the latest post from each of the new blogs I'd added, which was about a third of the total number of participants and it took me more than an hour. I know from experience that a lot of blogs will slow down their output as the event rolls on but this first week is going to be rough!
It's always fun to meet everyone for the first time, though. I was surprised to find several new Blaugustians posting in languages I don't read so those aren't going to be taking up much of my reading time. Nice to see the range of the event expanding, all the same.
Better yet from my perspective, there are a couple of blogs that seem to be primarily focused on images. I'm always happy to see more pictures in my feeds. And in that spirit I'm acceding to a request from Redbeard in the comments yesterday, when he asked for "more Beryl pics".
Here's she is, lounging in what used to be Mrs Bhagpuss's computer chair before it started to list to one side and rattle alarmingly. Mrs Bhagpuss bought a nice, new chair but Beryl had always liked to slip onto the old one whenever the opportunity arose, so I brought it into my study and now she sits on it behind me, keeping an eye on what I'm doing. She can also just about see out of the window from it so that's another attraction.
A few of the new blogs this year seem to be actual, old school web-logs or personal online diaries, which is very welcome. Takes me back to the old GeoCities days, when I used to randomly wander from homepage to homepage, reading about the small incidents in lives of people I'd never otherwise know.
There are also several music blogs, something both very welcome and, I think, a first for Blaugust. I wonder what contact pulled those in? Unfortunately from my point of view, the preferred linkage among them seems to be to Spotify, which I don't use, but if nothing else the presence of nusic-based blogs will empower me to make more music posts of my own. Like I need any encouragement...
That's almost it for the round-up but I'd like to call attention to two particular posts I read this morning, both of which had some very helpful, practical advice to offer. (Three, of course, counting Owls.)
The first was Calishat, who was talking about an app she's developed that goes by the name of Attention Junction. Or maybe it's a website she curates. I'm not sure on the naming conventions these days.
Anyway, whatever you call it, what Attention Junction does is "analyze the historical views of two Wikipedia pages, identify spans of
public interest as expressed by unusually-high page views, find
overlaps, and turn them into Google / Google News searches". It looks very interesting and I've bookmarked it to play around with later.
Finally, I'd very much like to highlight a post by Nick Simson in which he recommends an article by Ben Werdmuller called Evaluating AI. It's one of the most lucid, balanced and downright useful examinations of the ever-controversial topic I've read to date. What's more, it's not just of academic interest, it contains practical information and advice that I will certainly be referring back to as I explore, experiment with and make use of the various AI options and vendors in the future.
And that's my little trawl through the new stuff. Incomplete of course, since more blogs have joined since Owls compiled his list. I just hope I haven't missed anything amazing...
And so it begins. Did I say that last year? Let me just check...
Nope. But I bet I said it some year, on the First of Blaugust, because if keeping
a long-running blog tells you anything about yourself, it's how predictable
you can be and how many of your supposedly original thoughts and ideas are
just ones you had many times before and then immediately forgot.
Or maybe that's just me. I quite like it, actually, It does at least denote
some welcome element of constancy of character, which I was brought up to
think of as a good thing.
So, anyway, Blaugust. As I was saying
yesterday, it's even more welcome this year than usual because I'm low on the ideas
front just now, at least for things to post about that aren't alienating to
some and of no interest to most. It means I'm more than averagely grateful for
the leaning-posts of Blaugust's special-interest weeks and topic
suggestions.
Let's see what we have for Week One... hang on a moment, I think
Krikket has a list...
There we go! That's the Themes nailed down. And what topic suggestions do we
have within those headings? Just Week One will do for now, I think...
Week One – Welcome to Blaugust Week August 1st – August 6th
What made you decide to do Blaugust this year, and what are your
personal goals?
Did you start preparing for Blaugust before the August 1st start date?
If so, what did you do ahead of time to make sure you’d stay on
track?
Do you remember how you heard about Blaugust for the first time?
If this isn’t your first Blaugust, what keeps you coming back to do
this year after year?
Community Builder Bonus Prompt: Who are the Blaugust bloggers
who you keep reading all year round?
Let's have a bash at those, why not?
Why did I decide to do Blaugust this year?
Not quite as simple an answer as it might be. Most years the reason would
be "Because I always do it" or "Because it's fun". Last year,
though, it wasn't as much fun as all that, especially towards the end, by when
I was feeling quite burned out, trying to keep up with the immense volume of
posts from a record number of contributors while also hitting my 31 posts in a
month target.
By September, I was very much of a mind not to do Blaugust in 2026, by which I
really meant I wouldn't formally sign up for it. Every year a few people
shadow the event without filling in the registration form. I did it myself
before I took the wafer back in... ooh, look!
2015!
That was unexpected! It appears this is my tenth anniversary Blaugust. My
first was in 2015. Which of course makes this the eleventh time I've
participated. Except there was that one year we did it twice with
Blapril as well and wasn't there one year when it didn't happen at all,
or am I imagining that?
Of course, another benefit of having a long-running blog is you can go back
and check things like that. Give me a moment...
Okay, now that's weird. So, it seems that after making my 31 posts back in
2015, I didn't do another Blaugust for two years. 2016 and 2017 are just
normal posting months with no mention of the event.
Doing a little primary research, it seems that 2017 was the year the event lay
fallow, so that fits with my memory of how things went. But what about 2016?
Did I have such a bad time in my first Blaugust I didn't care to repeat it?
Let me check...
Don't burn out. Enjoy it. Keep it casual.
And here we go! On the last day of Blaugust I posted
a full account of my experience, in which it transpires that I hadn't signed up after all, only
shadowed the event, all the while acting as if I was part of it. And it seems
the reason I opted out of the opt-in was a requirement that you had to also sign
up to some service by the name of "Anook", which I didn't want to
do.
What the hell was Anook? Why was it deemed necessary? I don't recall ever
hearing of it again.
Interestingly, it seems from my review that I didn't enjoy my first Blaugust
all that much and for almost exactly the same reasons I found it a bit
stressful last year - too many posts by others to keep up with, too much
effort posting every day myself. Blimey, Charlie! If I'd known what was to
come...
I concluded by saying "If Belghast runs Blaugust again next year I'll think very carefully before
deciding whether to join in" and clearly what I thought, when I got to thinking, was that I wouldn't.
Then Bel skipped a year and in 2018 I signed up all official like
nothing had happened and I haven't missed a Blaugust since.
All of which means that, if we count Blapril, this really is my tenth Blaugust! Yay! Didn't miss it after all!
What are your goals?
Don't burn out. Enjoy it. Keep it casual.
Every year I've taken part I've hit the 31 posts. Sometimes that's been very
easy. Other times it's been a struggle. This year I'm going to let it be what
it will be. I do think that using the topics and suggestions will make it a
lot easier if I do decide to go all in. I mean, look at this post. It's
writing itself.
Do you start preparing beforehand?
I have done in previous years. I've planned my own series of posts a month or
two ahead of time. I've written things in advance so I had completed posts in
the bag, all ready to drop in on days when I didn't have time to put anything
new together.
Last year I had the bright idea of saving up the idea I had to celebrate
EverQuest's 25th Anniversary until August, so I could get the benefit
of all those extra posts during Blaugust. That worked really well, although in
the end I only used eight of the proposed twenty-five posts during the event.
I'm still working my way through the list even now, so I guess I could roll
out the remaining seven EQ25posts this Blaugust...
Othe than that, this year I have made no preperations whatsoever.
Do you remember how you heard about Blaugust for the first time?
Not exactly. I mean, I know vaguely how it happened - bloggers I followed
mentioned it or were participating in it so I came to it organically.
Precisely where my first sighting of the word "Blaugust" itself
occurred, though, I can't be sure but I said in that 2016 post linked above
that I first became aware of Blaugust the year before, 2015, which I believe
would have been a couple of years after Belghast came up with the original
concept.
So I wasn't there at the beginning but I arrived at the party not too long
after it started.
What keeps you coming back to do this year after year?
I think many of us feel the duality each year when Blaugust heaves its
mighty bulk into view.
It's so, so tempting to say "masochism", isn't it? I think many of us
feel the duality each year when Blaugust heaves its mighty bulk into view. It's
one of those things you both look forward to and dread at the same time. It's
fun but often it can be too much fun and too much fun is enervating.
I personally have no interest in all the awards and challenges, as can be seen
by the complete absence of any of the badges on the blog. If I'm brutally
honest, I don't just not care for them, I dislike them. Reminds me of being in
the Boy Scouts, something I never once in my life, even as a small boy,
thought was something I'd want to be associated with. Not my kind of thing at
all.
Conversely, though, it certainly is the community that brings me back every
year. It's a club, isn't it? And this is the Annual General Meeting.
When I was in the British Amateur Press Association (BAPA), which for anyone
who hasn't heard me bang on about it before was a kind of analog version of
blogging from back when the cutting edge of technology was a photocopier, we
used to have an AGM, usuallly held at the Central Mailer's home and often
involving an overnight or weekend stay.
It was a big party, basically, to which many of the people who contributed
zines to the bi-monthly APA came from all over the country and even from other
countries, since we had a few members from outside the UK at times.
Blaugust is basically that, only for a month and without the drunkenness and
fist-fights. It's when many of the people whose posts I read every week and
with whom I swap comments all year get together for a big party. Who wouldn't
want to come back for that every year?
And here we all are! Happy Blaugust everyone. Let's get the party
started!
(As for the "Community Builder Bonus Prompt: Who are the Blaugust bloggers who you keep
reading all year round?" I'm not touching that! It's "Who's your favorite child?", isn't it?
Let's just say "All of them" and leave it at that. I mean, obviously we
all know it's actually "some of them" but this way everyone gets to
feel they're included. And of course everyone is!)
Notes on AI used in this post.
For new readers, if I use any AI images or other artifacts or services in a post, I'll always annotate it in a footnote. My view on AI is that it's a creative tool like any other but in the current climate I feel it's polite to mention when it's being used so anyone with strong objections can, like, erm... I dunno... unsee it or something? At least not be fooled into thinking they liked it and then find out later they really didn't.
I like to use a lot of illustrations on the blog and abstract posts like this are notoriously difficult to break up with images so these are the posts where you're most likely to see AI. I use NightCafe almost exclusively, where I have a huge bank of free credits waiting to be burned and that's where both of these were done.
For images in these kinds of posts I like to pull out a phrase from the body of the text and throw it to an AI image generator to see what it comes up with. It's a game. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In this case I got an image I was willing to use first time, both times, which is rare.
The specific model I used for both was something called Virtual Utopia XL. It happened to be the last one I'd used for reasons I may get to in another post and I just left it as it was when I ran the new prompts.
As for the prompts, you can see them in the captions to the illustrations. Both had the same style instructions appended, namely "line art, color, retro-futurism". Again, those were already set, for reasons I may get to later in the month. Runtime was "Short" and all the weights were 50%.
Ahead of Blaugust, which begins on Friday, I thought I'd post a list of
everyone who's signed up so far. I knew there had to be one somewhere
because Wilhelm at The Ancient Gaming Noobposted a then-complete list of all the names and blogs a few days ago and he must have
gotten it from somewhere!
Turns out he's the one who's maintaining it this year and he's been kind
enough to format it and include a link (Which I won't include since I don't
believe Wilhelm has posted it himself yet.)
That's exactly 74 blogs which, by a wild co-incidence is exactly the same
number I claimed had signed up when I posted my Day One Blaugust post last year. I was a bit behind on the count then, as I recall, and by the end
of Blaugust the grand total had grown to an astonishing 119 so there's plenty
of room for more this year.
Do tag on if you fancy it. The sign-up form is
here.
More than half of the above are names I don't recognize, which is fantastic.
Lots of new blogs to check out. Looking forward to that most of all. I
guess I could start looking at them now but it seems like cheating to go peek
before the gun goes off.
Of course, in most cases it probably will turn out to be no more than a peek
and maybe a supportive comment. It took me a while to learn my lesson but I've
finally come to realize that trying to keep up with more than a hundred
bloggers, most of whom are trying to post every day for a month, is just too
much of a good thing.
A picture of Beryl, because you have to break the text up with something
and would you rather have AI?
If you add that to the dozens of RSS feeds in Feedly that already ping me
daily, some of them many times every day, it's not hard to see the potential
for burnout. And yet every year I somehow manage not to see it anyway
and pile in to that first week, trying to read everything.
By the start of the second week, I'm already feeling overwhelmed. Even the
inevitable drop-out rate as people find they didn't want to post every day after
all, or couldn't, or wish they'd never started, doesn't bring the flood down to
manageable levels. Last year I felt it particularly badly and made a promise to
myself that I wouldn't do it again next time. We'll see how that goes.
I always have a lot less trouble with the writing thirty-one posts myself
part. Thirty-one posts that anyone would want to read is another matter but
that's not part of the challenge. Maybe it should be but who would judge!
Even so, I also decided I would actively avoid the 31 posts thing this year. I
had a clever trick in mind. I wouldn't post on 1 August, so I'd automatically
have missed the target. Except then it occured to me that the challenge isn't
to post on all thirty-one days of the month but to post thirty-one
times during it. And that inevitably means that at some point I'd find
myself double-posting to catch up.
So I'm not going to make any rules for myself this year and I'm not going to
set up any special routines or series, as several other Blaugustians have
already said they're going to do. I'm just going to treat it like any other
month and post when I usually do. Probably.
Who knows, really? It's so easy to get carried away. And it's one of the
easiest times to just knock out a quick post because of all those prompts and
the wealth of other good posts to bounce off. So I'm making plans to not have
a plan.
The way my plans have been going lately, that's probably going to fall apart,
too.
It's that time again. It sure comes around fast. Which is a quote from... me! That's the kind of self-indulgent thing you can get away with if you have your own blog, which is why you should have one. And you! And you... yes, you, over there, lurking at the back...
Have you ever thought about it? Starting a blog? You have, haven't you? Or do you already have one but wish more people knew about it? We all do, those of us who blog but also those of us who only read other people, rambling on about nothing much which, let's face it, is what you're doing right now. Reading, that is, not rambling. I'm the one doing that.
Except for once I do actually have something of significance to say, which is that Blaugust is Back! (Do you get the almost irrestible urge to add "Baby!" to the end of that sentence? I did but as you can see I resisted. Almost.)
You can sign up here. Go on! You know you want to!
Oh, you want to know what you're signing up for first? Picky! Okay, so, what is Blaugust anyway? I'm glad I asked me that!
Let me direct you to Krikket's Introductory Blaugust Post, where all is explained. Krikket is standing in this year for Belghast, the regular ringmaster and guiding light of Blaugust, who has had to take a step back for personal reasons but who will still be with us both in spirit and the background. Here's how he explained the event last year:
"Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place each August which
focuses on blogging primarily and has started to include other forms of
serialized content over the last several years. The goal is to stoke the
fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to
mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more
regularly. Above all the goal of Blaugust has always been to prove to
folks that they can in fact sit down every day and create something
fresh and then share it with the world. "
That's it in a nutshell. It's a month-long showcase, store window and talking shop, where bloggers of all stripes come together to share what they've done and encourage each other to do more of it.
The core of the event has long been a challenge to post every day for the thirty-one days of August. There are some longstanding awards for hitting certain specific post targets:
Newbie Blogger Award – You did it! You joined
Blaugust for the very first time and we are extremely happy to welcome
you into this raucous community. As a result, we are going to recognize
your efforts just for signing up.
Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the month of August 2025.
Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the month of August 2025.
Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the month of August 2025.
Rainbow Diamond Award – You beat the original challenge and posted 31 times or more during the month of August 2025.
Over the years and most likely because this all began as a very gaming-blog specific event, Blaugust has become very gamified. Gamers tend to like that sort of thing. If you don't please don't let it put you off.
It's very important to stress that ALL of these targets and goals are ENTIRELY OPTIONAL. It's very much not a competition. There are no winners.
Or rather, there are winners and the winners are everyone who signs up and manages even one post. You are the winner because you started a blog! Or you dusted off that old blog you almost forgot you had and made your first post for years. Go on! You know you want to! Oh yeah, I said that already...
A little personal testimony: I blog all the time and I generally have no problems pumping out five long-form posts every week of the year but thirty-one days without a break is a lot. I've been doing Blaugust for a while and I've had to develop strategies to hit those thirty-one posts. I've come up with themes for myself, I've invented series, I've written posts in advance so I had a cushion to fall back on if I couldn't post for some reason on a particular day...
Honestly, I shouldn't be doing that. Maybe you should because those are all proven strategies that lots of people swear by but for me it's too much. You really have to find your own path here.
I enjoy Blaugust or I wouldn't do it but it can still be stressful. Mrs Bhagpuss knows nothing about blogging and cares less but she knows perfectly well what Blaugust is - it's that time of the year when I get irritable and stressed out for a month. Blaugust is not supposed to be stressful so don't let it!
Last year it got to me enough that I was considering opting out and letting things lie fallow for a year. I mean, Glastonbury does it... But as you can see, here I am again, because Blaugust is way too much fun to miss.
And that's the key takeaway: Blaugust is Fun. Or it should be. And Blaugust will shape itself according to your needs. It's not a one-size festival. It fits everyone.
If hitting those targets and getting those awards is your kind of fun then go for it! Post every day. Post twice a day! (Done that, don't recommend it...) But if it's not fun or if it was fun but not any more then stop. Take a break. Skip a day. Break the streak.
And that doesn't mean you have to drop out of Blaugust, either. Blaugust these days is more than just writing a daily post. There's a whole community built around it, one that persists throughout the year. Sign up, post once, you're a member. A Blaugustian. Forever.
There's a lively Discord channel you can and probably should join. You can link your posts there so everyone sees them, you can chat about the process, ask for advice, even meet up with other Blaugustians for gaming sessions. (I really should stop saying "Blaugustians". It sounds weird...)
And of course, since gamers made this thing, even the Community has awards and achievements:
Have a post count that gives you at least the Silver Award.
Of those posts, at least 5 should be directly inspired by a post by
another Blaugust participant. Make sure you provide a link back to the
post in question.
Engage with other Blaugust participants at least once per week. Read posts, leave comments, join discussions in the Blaugust Discord and share posts written by others on social media.
Guest post on another Blaugust participant’s blog – or have someone else guest post on yours!
Create or join in a group project – choose a topic, find some other
bloggers, and each post your own take on that topic on the same day.
To which all the same advice I gave earlier applies. If it's your kind of thing, go nuts with it. If not, just let it lie. Everyone wants you to do well in whatever challenges you choose to set yourself but no-one expects you to do anything more than you're comfortable with. And above all, everyone wants everyone else to have fun. The goal is to get to the end of Blaugust and be able to say "That was great! Can't wait to do it again next year!" Not "Thank god it's over. Never again."
I think that about covers it. Oh, you do have to SIGN UP to be included in the official count so don't forget to do that. Although if even that's a step too far, don't worry, you can still play. Every year there are a few people who shadow Blaugust, posting and commenting and being part of the whole thing without the formalities. If you'd be more comfortable as a fellow traveler rather than a party member, just tag along.
And that, I think, just about covers the essentials. There's lots more but we'll get to it when we get to it. More commentary, opinion and information is already available from the followng experienced Blaugustians and I'm sure many more will chip in before the whole bandwagon starts to roll on August the First. Be there or... well, just be there!
Now there's an image we're going to be seeing a lot of over the coming
month, with or without checkerboard squares behind it. Yes, it's August so it
must be time for that long-running festival of the written word, hosted by
Belghast and known to all as Blaugust - which, as one of this
year's new Blaugustians, samjc,
points out, is a pun that works best (Or possibly only.) when read in an American accent.
Speaking of new participants, this time around we have no fewer than
thirty-four, out of a total starting line-up of seventy-four. Belghast has
all the details, as always.
Without wanting to come across as a Debbie Downer (I'd say that ages me
but since I was already well into in my forties when the character first
appeared
on SNL, that really isn't saying much...) I do feel the need to point out that if
we had a record one hundred and three participants in 2023 and in 2024 we have
seventy-four, thirty-four of whom are new, that must mean well over half of
the Blaugust Class of '24 has opted out of a return engagement.
It's not surprising. Blaugust does take its toll. I'm mentally preparing
myself for the onslaught. It's not writing the thirty-one posts that takes it
out of me each year - it's reading the other several thousand.
The high attrition rate is also the main reason I've decided not to add every
single new entrant to the blog roll over there on the right. It's already
unfeasibly long, with a downward-sweeping tail that droops far out of sight
into a void where no-one's posted for years.
Worse, if I'm brutal, I have to own it has quite a few entries even at the
more active end that I have only ever visited during Blaugust itself, when I
try to be as assiduous as I can in reading everything. I finally decided in
the run-up to this year's extravaganza that I'd quite like my blog roll to
reflect the blogs I do in fact read, so this time I'm going to wait to see
which ones stick with me before I add any.
Instead, I updated the tab no-one ever notices, the one that's sat there for
five years or more, unchanged. Back when I added all the entrants to the 2019
Blaugust I called it The Crew, a reference to
the Whole Sick Crew from Thomas Pynchon's V that I don't
imagine I ever bothered to explain. I have renamed it with a much more
user-friendly title this time, so perhaps it will be of use to someone.
Dall-E 3's take on The Whole Sick Crew
I also added every last one of the new blogs to my Feedly feed, a process
made infinitely more manageable by means of Belghast's marvelous
OPML File. Thanks a mil, Bel! Saved me literally an hour or more of tedious googling,
cutting and pasting.
If, like me, you have no clue what an OPML file is or what to do with it,
don't fret. As with everything on the internet ever, trial and error is your
friend. (Really bad advice - do not take it!) I just copied the link
and pasted it into Feedly's "Follow" tab then all I had to do then was
click each entry to approve it and and boom! Every new blog added in
seconds.
That's my prep done. Now for the introductions.
This year, for reasons best known to himself, Bel has been quite insistent we
all begin with something he's calling "The First Post of Blaugust". We
already had "Getting To Know You"week but apparently that wasn't
enough. Now we have to do that bit you dread at the start of every training
course, where you go round the table and tell everyone two interesting facts
about yourself.
One of those facts about me, as you can plainly see, is that I can be
unecessarily sarcastic at times. Might as well get that out in the open right
away. Also, I think I'm funny even if no-one else does. There! That's two!
Bel introduces the idea in a post that also includes
everything you need to know about the event, so if you haven't already checked it out, now would probably be a good
time. The gist of the First Post is that "for your very first Blaugust post you take a bit of time and introduce
yourself and your blog." As I imagine anyone who's visited Inventory Full before will not be
surprised to hear, I don't need a lot of encouragement to talk about myself,
so that's kind of like pushing at an open door.
Of course, that does also mean I've done this sort of things a few times
already, so rather than repeat myself I thought I might just link to a few of
those posts.
Inventory Full started for real over a dozen years ago, back in 2011, but I
think the very first time I gave myself any kind of formal introduction was
for the much-missed New Blogger Initiative (Now itself incorporated
into Blaugust, of course, lest we forget, which I had until I typed this.) In
a post called
How The Bhagpuss Came To Be.
I summed things up like this:
"Inventory Full is my first and so far only blog, but I come from a very
long background of writing for relatively small, obsessive, responsive
audiences. I co-published my first fanzine back in the punk wars in the
late '70s, moved to co-publishing a comics fanzine in the early '80s and
went on to contribute to many more comiczines in the U.K. and U.S.A.
throughout that decade. I was also heavily involved in the APAzine scene
right through to the late 1990s.
Then I discovered Everquest and all that stopped, replaced by endless
posting on countless forums, primarily EQ's long-gone but never-forgotten
original TNZ. I used to post under a different name but sometime in the
mid-noughties, for some reason I now forget I needed a new identity. I was
sitting at work listening to the radio and two news items came on in quick
succession, one about the Oliver Postgate children's TV character
Bagpuss
and another a report about something terrible going on in Bhagdad."
And conflated the two to get Bhagpuss, obviously. Which is all very well and
quite true but doesn't really say much about who I am now.
I fleshed things out a lot more in a series of posts that got published as
part of Blaugust 2019. That was the year I was on chemo after having had bowel
cancer (Way to go to lighten the mood... I'm fine now, touch wood, cross
fingers.) so I had plenty of time on my hands, as can easily be seen from the
forty-two posts that month, my all-time Blaugust record.
That series of posts, to which I naturally neglected to give a meaningful tag
(Because why have one that might be useful when you can have eight hundred
that aren't?) purports to cover my musical tastes but actually works quite
well as a mini-bio. Perhaps not so mini, since it must run to at least ten
thousand words...
The most surprising thing about those posts is that most of the links still
work. I might go back and fix the ones that don't but then again I might not.
As the final line of the fifth post has it, onward and upward!
I am for the past but I'm more for the present and the future. Looking back is
fine but only in so far as it informs us about where we are and where we go
next. It's a resource to be exploited, not a museum to be curated; an
indication of where we come from, not a lost homeland to which we long to
return.
Easy to say but I reach state pension age in a few months. I have a lot more
past than I have future, that's a given. All the more reason to look forward,
then, I'd say!
In keeping with that thought, I'm going to finish up with a short list of my
current interests and obsessions, mostly related to various strands of popular
culture, which after all is the bedrock of this blog. I strongly suspect that
almost everyone reading this, assuming anyone still is, will know far more
than they ever needed to about my past by now, or at least they will if
they've followed those links and none of us can know the future so the present
is all we have left to cover here.
This blog started as - and still mostly is - a blog about gaming, specifically
MMORPGs. After twenty-five years I have cooled some on the genre but only to
the point where I now play MMOs for maybe one or two hours every day rather
than five or six.
I'm nominally still playing one or two older titles, mostly
EverQuest II, although I haven't logged in to that one for about a
month. My current obsession, which I don't think is putting it too strongly,
is
Once Human. It's the kind of game that I would never even have considered playing back
when I started this blog, when I would have reckoned it would be too fast and
action-oriented for me to cope with. Weird how getting older has made stuff
like that seem less scary and more enjoyable. Probably a post in there,
somewhere...
I'm also playing a lot more non-MMO games these days and writing about them
here. I was playing
Solasta
when Once Human arrived, at which point I dropped it like those friends you
make in Fresher's Week. I will get back to it when the frenzy fades. I'm also
playing
Wuthering Waves, a gacha game I highly recommend.
By the time Blaugust ends I'll probably be playing something else entirely.
I'm fickle with games these days and I like it better that way.
Musically, I'm bouncing around the table in the usual fashion between the
fading bleeps and trills of what's left of hyperpop, the autotuned majesty of
the avant-garde that somehow passes for actual pop these days (Seriously need
to write a post about that...) and the never-ending wonderland of YouTube's
recommends algorithm, which is where I developed my growing
appreciation for midwestern emo, Mexican trip-hop and Japanese noise-rock.
Trust me, there will be examples during Blaugust and you'll wish you hadn't
asked.
My album of the year at the halfway point, somewhat predictably, has to be
Charli XCX's BRAT. It's likely to be my album of the year at the
end of the year, too, unless Lana del Rey gets her country album,
Lasso, done by then. Any year there's a Lana album, that album is album
of the year. It's a given. it might even be a law.
BRAT, however, is much better to write to than any of Lana's albums, which
make me stop and listen far too much to be productive. Half the posts I've
written since BRAT came out were done with the YouTube
playlist
on LOUD. The others were done toNouvelle Vague, who I also find very conducive to creativity.
For TV, I am somewhat stuck in the past. I'm still working my way
through Roswell: New Mexico, which makes ever less sense and that's one
of the many reasons I love it. Only a few episodes left and I have no clue how
it's going to end. I hope it doesn't just stop in the middle like so many
shows these days. (Waves fist at clouds...)
I had to take a break from The Flash after the end of Season Four
because I realised I now strongly disliked almost every character in it. I was
constantly rooting for the villains to win, which of course they are
contractually obliged not to do, even though quite clearly they
would, in almost every case, seeing how utterly incompetent the heroes
are and how incapable of learning from experience they continue to be. Don't
get me started, right?
I have Dead Boy Detectives lined up as soon as I finish R:NM, so
at least that's relatively recent. Most of all, though, I'm looking forward to
the fourth and final season of Umbrella Academy, which I had no idea
was even going to be a thing. I thought it ended quite neatly with Season
Three so it shows what I know.
For reading, as always it depends a lot on what freebies I picked up at work.
I work in a very large bookshop and have done since the late 90s, which means
I've barely had to pay for a book in a quarter of a century and yet my house
is so full of the damn things I can hardly get through the door.
It also means that much of what I read hasn't been published yet and I can't
legally write about it, or at least review or quote from it - it says so right
on the covers of some of them. Plus I'm contractually restrained from saying
certain other things about the book trade on social media and I'm too paranoid
about what is and isn't allowed to say pretty much anything, which is why,
although I read all the time, there's very little about books on the
blog. Just wait 'til I retire...
I will say that I've just finished the proof for a book called
Small Bomb in Dimperly that will be published next month. Can't say
anything about it although I doubt the publishers will sue me for saying I
really enjoyed it.
Before that I read my first-ever Korean novel,
The Dallergut Dream Department Store, a million-copy best-seller in its country of origin, those sales figures
being by far the most surprising thing about it. I really enjoyed that one,
too, but I find it mind-boggling to imagine it as a mainstream best-seller,
which it must have been to rack up numbers like that. It's out here now so it
will be interesting to see how it goes.
I'm also slowly chugging through
Because Internet
by Gretchen McCulloch, my current bathroom book. I nearly did
linguistics at college. Dodged a bullet there.
Other than all of that, I'd like to mention our dog, Beryl. She's two
and a half and takes about that many hours out of each day to walk, which is
time I used to use for playing games. If you want to know why I play less than
I used to, that's the reason.
She's actually Mrs. Bhagpuss's dog but I'm lucky enough to have unrestricted
use of her. Beryl that is, not Mrs Bhagpuss.
Although...
Probably time I stopped. I think I've said enough.
I wasn't even going to post today but let's just give Belghast a big
shout-out for stepping up yet again to organize the annual festival of
blogging that is Blaugust. I can't imagine there's anyone reading this blog
who won't already have heard about it but every voice counts in getting the
word out so here I am, doing my bit.
Bel has
the full details
on how to sign up plus an explanation of what there is to do and an extensive
historical overview of how the event came to settle into the format we all
know and love.
Naithin
has neatly excised the specific contact details, which I have stolen and
pasted in below. I hope the links still work...
Right at the start of his post, Bel describes how very successful last year's
Blaugust was in terms of outreach. It certainly brought in a whole new bunch
of bloggers I'd never heard of and would never have read had it not been for
the event.
That's the fundemental purpose of Blaugust and it has to be welcomed. As with
all things, though, success does not come without its own potential drawbacks.
For me, the downside of the way Blaugust has expanded its reach so effectively
is that there are now more Blaugustian blogs than I could ever find time to
read, far less respond to.
Added to the sheer quantity, now that we've extended our remit far beyond gaming
and related topics, there are also quite a few blogs on that list that I rarely
read at all outside of Blaugust. It seems a bit weird to have a section on the
blog called "The Places We Go" when I actually don't.
Consequently, for the first time I think I'll hold back on adding every last
newcomer to my blog roll as they sign up, something I've been doing every year
since I first joined back in... whenever the heck it was. Seems like forever
ago.
I'm not going to remove any of the ones that are already on there, regardless
of whether I'm reading them regularly or not, but I think this year I will
wait until Blaugust is over before I add whichever new blogs I know I'm going
to keep following. I'm sure there'll be some great ones. There always are.
Other than that, I guess it'll be business as usual. I've already come up with
a series of themed posts to slot in whenever I need them so as to reduce the
stress of trying to hit that 31 post target. (Yes, I know it's just a
number...) If anyone's found the pace challenging in the past, I highly
recommend writing ahead. It really makes the whole thing a lot more fun,
although maybe that's just me...
For once, I've also picked a topic that won't go out of date and have to be
heavily revised before I can publish it, which was something I had to do
several times last year. Kind of defeats the point of preparing stuff if you
have to re-do it before you can use it.
I've written half a dozen posts so far. If I can just get another four or five
done before the end of July then I'm golden. In fact, I think I'll stop here
and use today's saved blogging time to go write another.
Simon Reynolds has a lot of blogs. Forty-four by my count. The only one I follow is blissblog, which I think might be the primary, if that's an appropriate term.
Reynolds, of course, is one of the more successful and widely-known music journalists of the millennium, having written for many publications, both print and digital. He's probably even better-known as the author of a number of critically and commercially successful books, like Rip It Up and Start Again and Shock and Awe, both of which I've read and would recommend.
As well as being a professional journalist and writer, however, he's also a high-profile advocate for both blogging and the blog format, which is presumably why the Guardian asked him to write a piece on the topic. I read it this morning, in conjuction with a blog post he wrote that goes into the subject in a kind of granular detail that would no doubt have driven his editor at the Guardian to a frenzy of blue pencil, which does rather make Simon's point about the reason for having a blog in the first place.
Unlike certain bloggers I could mention, Simon doesn't harp on about the supposedly spectacular decline in cultural importance and impact of the long-form, text-centric blog, something I feel is often over-emphasized, particularly by individuals who experienced a personal moment in the sun that's now passed into shadow. Instead, he draws attention to a particular aspect of the hobby, one which he feels has rather sadly declined.
It's a phenomenon he labels "inter-blog communication", a somewhat dry and formal description for the organic, whimsical, occasionally joyous way that an idea sometimes takes hold and runs across numerous blogs like a grass fire. In this I have to agree with Simon that "Blogging has become more of a solitary activity. A blogpost will be sparked by something "out there," or by something within, but rarely in response to another blog. "
He does qualify his observation with "At least, in this particular corner of the 'sphere", by which he's referring specifically to the once-fractious, fizzing collective of music-based blogs. I follow a few of those but I'm not going to pretend I was there when the kind of interactions Simon's missing were a fundemental feature. I suspect that, by the time I started reading music blogs, they were already, as they do seem to be now, inwardly focused and somewhat solipsistic.
The bubble in which this blog floats was originally concerned almost exclusively with gaming, specifically MMORPG gaming. With such a tight focus, perhaps it was always more likely that conversations between blogs would generate spontaneously but there also seemed to be more of a sense of collective responsibility back then.
There was always at least one blogger who'd take it upon themselves to post a round-up of what other blogs were doing, something that strongly promoted traffic between blogs and often encouraged a rolling discussion of topics of the moment, across several posts and numerous comment threads. It's been a while since we had anyone willing to take on that kind of self-imposed responsibility and I can imagine why. It must be a lot of work and the thanks are few.
It also seems to me that there used to be a significantly higher frequency of sporadic conversations breaking out across blogs, where one blogger posted something, another took it up and a few more joined on behind, all with posts of their own. It does still happen, just not as often. I've been posting here for more than a decade and I think it's hard to
argue that inter-blog communication isn't what it was when I started.
I could (But won't.) name the handful of bloggers in my blog roll who can still be relied on to start these kinds of conversations or keep them going, when they flare up. Ironically, I suspect it's the existence of a number of very extensive blog rolls, such as my own or Syp's, that can act as something of a drag anchor on the kinds of to and fro we used to see more often.
Even more ironically, I wonder if the very success of events like Blaugust, as they open out to include not just gaming blogs but blogs, vlogs and personal websites covering everything and anything, end up mitigating against the kind of mutual sharing of ideas that results in flurries of posts on the same topic. In theory, a wider topic pool should generate more opportunities for jumping in but I fear the effect my be just the reverse.
During Blaugust itself there's always an admirable degree of cross-pollination but when the event comes to an end it's not always clear how much of that continues. I know that, after years of joining in with Blaugust, The Newbie Blogger Initiative and other community-driven events, I now have a lot of blogs in my own blog roll that I rarely visit. It's not that I'm not interested in them once the events are over but there's only so much time I can spend reading blogs, particularly given I actually follow quite a lot of other blogs, on subjects that particularly interest me, ones, like Reynolds', that aren't in my blog roll.
In that Guardian piece, Simon says something I find a little paradoxical: "If community persists, it’s on the level of any individual blog’s comment box." This feels both true and untrue. I certainly value my comment thread more than any statistics Google or Blogger can give me but I know from grim, personal experience that commenting on blogs is a lot harder than it ought to be.
At least three times in the last week I've given up trying to post comments on blogs - after I've written the comments, too - because the technical challenge of getting the comment to register was just too onerous to overcome. It applies equally to Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr and any of the outlier platforms. All of them seem far more concerned with keeping unwanted comments out than allowing welcome ones in.
The supreme irony in all of this is that, when I wanted to leave a comment on Simon Reynolds' blog, letting him know that his observations on the decline of inter-blog communication had led directly to an example that had even leapt the barrier between blogospheres, and also to point him towards the Blaugust phenomenon, something I thought might interest him, I couldn't find any way to leave a comment on his blog at all!
As far as I can tell, blissblog doesn't accept comments. I can't speak for his forty-three other blogs...
In essence, though, I think he makes a fair point. Despite the barriers, I think I am more likely now to leave a comment on a thread than I am to write a full-length post of my own, linking back to the blog that inspired it. For example, this morning I left a comment at Time To Loot that I did consider turning into a post here, not least because it seemed as though Naithin was addressing a sufficiently broad and important enough topic to justify a full response.
Instead, I chose to write this, which is at least an example of the kind of communication, the decline of which Simon Reynolds was bemoaning, even if he'll never know about it.
His article and post have also inspired me to make a New Year's Resolution (Something I rarely do.) I resolve to try and be more mindful in 2024 about taking topic cues from other bloggers. I used to do it without thinking. It's really not that hard.
Of course, if this follows the pattern of most New Year's Resolutions, I'll have forgotten I even made it before January's out. That's why I don't make New Year's Resolutions.
If that happens, do feel free to remind me.
Or better yet, write a post about it.
A note on AI used in this post.
Both images created by DALL-E 3 via Microsoft Image Creator.
The prompt for both was the same: "Blogging has become more of a solitary activity. New Yorker Cartoon style."
Well, there's a masthead you'll be seeing a lot of this month. I must have spotted it atop half a dozen blogs this morning already and it's not even half past nine.
Unless you've arrived here randomly from Google (In which case Hi! Nice to see you!) you'll already know today is the first day of Blaugust, festival of the supposedly moribund yet actually still surpisingly lively pastime known as blogging.
I'm not going to go over what Blaugust is yet again. As Jeremy Paxman seemed to get a peculiar pleasure out of saying at the start of every episode of University Challenge until he retired last year, we all know the rules, let's just get on with it.
As of the first of the month, it appears we have seventy-seven participating blogs, up seventeen from just a few days ago, when I posted what I never thought was going to be the definitive list. I'm not going to attempt to keep that thing updated but I have at least tried to add all of the newcomers to my Blog Roll.
Despite my concerns as expressed last time, they all seem to have been accepted, so I guess three hundred isn't Blogger's high-water mark for these things after all. I must be over that by now although I'm blessed if I'm going to go through and count them all again.
As always, if anyone's participating and doesn't see their blog in the list to the right, drop me a comment and I'll add it. Ditto if the name isn't as you'd prefer or you spot any other infelicity. If you see your blog right down at the very bottom, just lying there like a mafia victim at the bottom of the harbor, it means Blogger can't find your RSS feed. Even Belghast's spreadsheet doesn't have a working one for everybody.
As I was adding the new ones this morning, I noticed several were hosted by NeoCities, the retro-revivalist version of the much-missed GeoCities platform. I take this as a sign of good things to come.
One of our new participants this year, Bitterly Indifferent, has a post up about how the current state of the WorldWide Web and associated services points towards a return to Internet Family Values. There's a link in the post to a piece in The Verge which is itself stuffed with links to corroborative evidence for the argument, some of which are quite interesting. I lost three-quarters of an hour last night sifting through them and some of what I read gave me ideas. If you like ideas you might want to have a look.
Not everyone likes ideas, of course. Ideas can be scary. If you're going to get through thirty-one days of Blaugust posting every day, though, you're going to need at least a few.
Fortunately, Blaugust comes with a set of ideas of its own as well as some weekly themes, for which there's a handy illustration I might just slot in here...
I'll probably try to include at least one semi-relevant post for each named week. This one definitely counts as a "Welcome To Blaugust" post. I made a list of fallback ideas of my own a while back and I might drop in a few of those if inspration doesn't strike, as it sometimes fails to do during Blaugust.
It's always as well to have a backup plan. Two years ago I riffed off the Pitchfork People's List and that carried me through the month very comfortably.
Last year, though, I decided I'd just wing it and honestly it did not go well. I made my thirty-one posts but on a few occasions I felt stressed and overall I enjoyed the event less than usual.
This time I've done some prep. Not only do I have my fallback ideas, I've already finished three posts that aren't particularly timelocked. I can slot those in whenever I need them. I'm also technically on holiday this week but I'm not going anywhere and the weather forecast is poor so I'll most likely knock out at least a couple more extra posts to stick in the Blaugust bank. That alone should see me through.
Added to that, the timing for the event is excellent this year. There are a whole bunch of big games and expansions launching or going into some kind of open access during August - Palia, Wayfinder, Baldur's Gate 3 and Guild Wars 2's Secrets of the Obscure - so that should give the gamers amongst us plenty to write about.
It's notable that I had to qualify that last paragraph. Time was when I'd have been safe in assuming every Blaugustian was going to be writing mostly about games. Those days are long gone.
It's probably for the best although I'm not wholly convinced that a community can coalesce purely around a shared interest in blogging. I've worked in a book store for a quarter of a century and I've had ample opportunity to observe book-buyers in their natural environment. While a love of books will get them all through the door, once inside they quickly split into cliques and clades that at best want nothing to do with each other and are not infrequently actively hostile.
That said, it was ever thus. (Geez. "Ever thus"? Who talks that way?) Even when we all wrote about MMORPGs there were lines drawn between game-specific blogs, general blogs, PvE blogs, PvP blogs, casual blogs and hardcore blogs. People just like to put themselves in boxes, I guess.
I know I do but that's one pecadillo I won't be posting about here...
Anyway, for one long month we're all bloggers together, whatever our tastes, topics, predilections or platforms. Longform, shortform, video, audio; Blaugust opens its arms wide to all.
As Wilhelm reminded us all yesterday, Blaugust is only a few days away now. We have sixty sign-ups so far, which seems like a lot to me, although I know we've had more in other years.
Wilhelm included a handy list of everyone who's signed up so far, including links, which I'm very happy to reproduce here. You can also find in a handy spreadsheet here, which Belghast will keep updating as new people join. There are always a few people fashionably late to the party.
I didn't just come here to piggy-back on Wilhelm and Bel's good work. I also wanted to mention that, as usual, I've added all this year's participants - the ones that weren't there already - to my increasingly unwieldy Blog Roll.
Seriously, it's grown like Topsy, if you want a really outdated reference. There are just shy of three hundred of the things on there now.
It's lively, too. More than sixty have posted in the last week; over a hundred in the last year. Not sure why people keep saying blogging is dead...
I'm guessing there has to be some limit to how many blogs the widget can hold but I'm finding what it might be extremely hard to nail down. The closest I've been able to find is a mention going back to 2012 of a limit of three hundred for blogs you can "follow" on Blogger, which may or may not be the same thing.
If that turns out to be the case, I'm going to have to do something I've always tried to avoid: cull the herd. That would be a shame because blogs do flicker back to life occasionally, sometimes after years of inactivity.
Until I run into the buffers, though, I'm minded to leave everything as is. Blogger handily timeshifts every new post to the top of the list, so it doesn't really matter how far the tail descends.
Unless, of course, you happen to have one of those blogs for which Blogger can't find a feed. When I try to add one of those Blogger accepts it but drops the entry to the very bottom of the list, which is where it stays. If that happens, it's highly unlikely you'll ever see any traffic from me.
It did happen to two of the blogs I added yesterday: Raindrop Blue and Mobile MMO Addict. Neither of those turns up on the first five pages of a Google search either, possibly because they're both relatively widely-used phrases. If I have a moment I might tinker with things a little to see if I can shift them but for now, just be aware that's where they went.
Scanning through the list for this post, I also noticed a couple of duplicate entries. For now, I'm leaving those, too. For all I know they have different functions of some kind. If one of the pairs happens to be yours and you'd like to lose the duplication, just leave me a comment saying which needs to go.
Similarly, if anyone notices any other issue relating to the name or description or url or whatever, please drop me a comment and I'll fix it - always assuming it's within my capacity to fix. I really don't know what I'm doing here. I just make this stuff up as I go along.
And with that, I'll wish all our Blaugustians a very pleasant, relaxing weekend before the madness begins on Tuesday.
It's always fun to meet everyone for the first time, though. I was surprised to find several new Blaugustians posting in languages I don't read so those aren't going to be taking up much of my reading time. Nice to see the range of the event expanding, all the same.
Posts
