2212: The Stat Connection

"Go to your Stats page and check your top 3-5 posts. Why do you think they’ve been successful? Find the connection between them, and write about it."

Daily Post, February 9, 2016

All right. Let's have a look, then. Since we're not that far into 2016 and WordPress doesn't appear to have an "all time" function to search top posts, I'll provide the top five posts (excluding the homepage, which makes up the majority of pageviews but doesn't tell me much) for both 2016 so far and 2015. In other words, these are posts that people saw the title of (probably on social media or via a search engine) and directly clicked through to, rather than simply checking my front page each day.

Here's 2016 so far:

And here's 2015:

All right. So let's get analysing.

Since I write about a wide variety of topics on this blog — regular readers will know that it's my personal outlet for venting about whatever is on my mind on any given day rather than any attempt to provide a coherent editorial experience — it's perhaps not surprising that not all of the entries in these two lists have something in common, but there are a few common themes along the way.

How to Do Stuff

Let's look at 2016, first. Both How to Win at Omega Quintet and Helping your Squad in Xenoblade X were written in 2015 (indicated by them not having the orange bar next to them), yet have remained consistently popular since I wrote them. The reason for this is that they are instructional content: guides for video games. Instructions or guides are consistent traffic magnets, regardless of the subject matter of your site, because one of the most common things people search the Internet for is how to do something. Video games sites often use guide content for current popular games to attract visitors to their site and guarantee a baseline of ad revenue, then cross their fingers that readers will click through to other, less "baity" content. It doesn't always work like that, of course, which is why we've seen a rise in deliberately provocative "clickbait" content across the board, not just in games journalism.

Anyway. The reason that my guide content for both Omega Quintet and Xenoblade X proved popular is that these were both games that had a specific audience, but neither of them were "big" enough for a commercial site to want to devote time and column inches to them. In other words, those searching for help when playing Omega Quintet and/or Xenoblade X would be out of luck when searching the big video games sites, but a cursory Google search would doubtless throw up my posts here fairly early on — indeed, at the time of writing, my post on Omega Quintet appears sixth in my (admittedly personalised) Google search results, embarrassingly with a typo in the preview text which I have now corrected:

It's for this reason that a couple of my other previous posts have proven popular over time: my post on How to Play Pocket Academy, for example, detailing the baffling and frankly illogical mechanics of Kairosoft's mobile-based school sim, rode high in my rankings for quite some time. I tell you: if you want traffic, write posts that tell people how to do stuff, and preferably how to do stuff that mainstream sites haven't covered.

The Power of Sharing

My most popular posts are always several orders of magnitude more popular than their nearest rivals, with perhaps the most impressive example being 2015's An Open Letter to Paul Glass, Slimming World Consultant, Upper Shirley. This post was pretty far from my more regular subject matter on popular media, particularly video games, and yet it was my most popular individual post for 2015. Why? Because it had the absolute shit shared out of it.

Paul Glass was the consultant at our local Slimming World group when I first joined, and his enthusiasm and belief in the programme was and is a big part of why I've stuck with it and had so much success over the course of the last year — I've lost six stone in a year, hopefully with more still to come off. When he revealed that he would be leaving the group to spend more time with his family in far-off climes, I felt it important to express my feelings about what he had helped me accomplish in such a way that I could be clearly understood. I'm shy and socially anxious by nature, and at the time I wrote this I'm not sure how confident I would have felt saying all those words in person, but writing them down on paper is no big deal: I can "fire and forget" that way.

Something told me that I should probably share this post a little wider than just my Twitter followers, though, and so I decided to make one of my extremely irregular visits to Facebook to post a link to the letter on the Facebook group for the Slimming World group in question. That one simple action caused that one single post to absolutely explode in popularity, as it was shared by group members, Paul himself, and subsequently by other people I'd never met involved with Slimming World in various capacities, either as group members or staff.

You never can quite tell what the next big viral sensation is going to be, but there is one thing that all my popular posts do tend to have in common:

The Passion of the Post

It is, I feel, no coincidence that my most widely shared, most popular posts are those in which I feel most passionate about the things that I am writing about. I am a person who, I feel, can express their passion for something pretty clearly through my writing. And indeed, due to the aforementioned shyness and social anxiety mentioned above, I find writing to be the easiest means through which I can express that passion to an audience that can — hopefully — appreciate what I'm saying, or at least respect it.

2015's most popular posts were all about passion, from my letter to Paul to Perhaps We Should Stop Insulting Fans of Japanese Games. Four out of the five posts above were about video games — four out of the five posts were pretty much about the same thing, in fact, which was critics' regular dismissive and unfair treatment of both Japanese game developers and the fans of the games they make — but these posts all resonated deeply both with myself and with the circle of friends I've cultivated on social media, most of whom share the same interests as me.

Consequently, much as my letter to Paul got shared far and wide, so too did The Joyless Wankers of the Games Press (actually written the year before in response to an absolutely atrocious review of Fairy Fencer F on my former stomping grounds of USgamer), Some Thoughts for Critics (a response to Jim Sterling's dreadful and ill-informed review of Senran Kagura 2), Hi Games Journalism, It's Time We Had Another Chat (a response to Mike Diver's equally dreadful and ill-informed review of Senran Kagura 2, a game which is a ton of fun but which proved to be a whipping boy for self-described "progressive" types on the grounds of the female characters' big jiggly breasts) and the aforementioned Perhaps We Should Stop Insulting Fans of Japanese Games (a response to an extraordinarily narrow-minded editorial on USgamer by my former editor Jeremy Parish, and almost certainly the reason he has me blocked on Twitter). I saw these posts get shared and reshared, not only on Twitter, but also on Facebook and Reddit, the latter of which I don't really use myself.

The things I had written had clearly got the strength of my feelings across, and other people felt like they could relate to them in some way — either agreeing or disagreeing — and this caused them to explode in popularity, at least in terms of numbers. The same, too, can be said for 2016's Why It Would Be A Mistake to Not Localise Valkyrie Drive Bhikkuni, an impassioned plea for the progressive loudmouths not to stop Senran Kagura creator Kenichiro Takaki's new game making it over to Western shores.

Bovril?

I'll be honest, I have no idea why a post from 2013 about beef-and-yeast-extract black sticky substance Bovril is my third most popular post this year so far, but oddly enough this post has been consistently popular: it finished 2015 in sixth place, just after my various rants at the games journalism industry and also ranked sixth in 2014, but only managed 19th place in its original year of publication.

It's not even a particularly exciting post: it simply describes what Bovril is and how I feel about it. It doesn't even appear on the front page of Google results for Bovril. But I guess it meant something to someone somewhere. Perhaps not many people write about Bovril on the Internet, and my post offered a safe space for Bovril fans to convene and share in silent contemplation of salty beef drinks. Or perhaps it's just one of those things that can't quite be explained.

So what can we learn from this?

There are a few things you can probably see my most popular posts have in common. To my eye, these things are:

A clear, conversational title that makes it clear what the post is about — i.e. a simple subject line rather than a "title" that tries to be clever or funny
Passion for the subject — clear emotion, either positive or negative, is infectious and relatable
Scope for sharing — be it a topic that a lot of people feel strongly about, or something that is written in such a way that presents a strong argument in favour of or against something
Complete honesty — even at the expense of a few "bridges" if necessary
Instructions on how to do stuff — particularly if nowhere else has published instructions on how to do that stuff

Not all of my most popular posts have all of the above elements — although I do make a specific effort to apply the "complete honesty" element to everything I write — but these are, by far, the most common factors that all of my most popular posts have between them.

I hope that's proved as enlightening for you as it has for me: it's certainly given me some food for thought with regard to what to write about going forward from here, so I'd say both as a writing exercise and an analytical investigation, this post has been a great success.

Thanks, Daily Post!

2197: Putting the New WordPress App Through its Paces

I was helpfully informed by my WordPress dashboard that there's a new WordPress app available for the desktop, so I figured I'd put it through its paces. I've used the mobile app for both iOS and Android a fair bit, so I was interested to see what benefit — if any — making use of a desktop app would have over just loading the site up in Chrome and making use of it.

Well… frankly, there's not a huge number of benefits, at least not for those who primarily make use of blogs hosted on WordPress.com. The main benefit is that the app contains the whole of the main "new-style" WordPress dashboard in local format, meaning that you can theoretically 1) use it offline and 2) write without the distractions of other browser tabs. It's also responsive to the window size, so you can scale the display according to what, exactly, you want to do with it: do you want to keep an eye on notifications, or do you want to write a full-on post?

You'll notice I pointed out that it makes use of the "new-style" WordPress dashboard, and that's an important distinction to make, because the new-style WordPress dashboard is emphatically not the same as the traditional wp-admin view. It's a lot simpler and cleaner, sure, and you can do most of the things you can do in wp-admin in the new dashboard, but there are, frankly, a number of issues that WordPress so far hasn't fixed with the main site that remain — and arguably are even more prominent — in the app.

Most notably, there are a significant number of flaws in what WordPress refers to as the "improved posting experience". Having been using this a fair amount since my initial reactions to it, I've noticed that there have been a fair few improvements and additional functions added so that now it is, roughly speaking, in line with the wp-admin-based editor. There are still some irritating factors, however, chief among them (for me) being the fact that even with the window at 1920×1080, the word counter is scrolled off the bottom of the screen so I have to manually scroll down to view it — sometimes even if my post is longer than a screen in height. This is just plain bad design, and seems to have been fixed in the Web-based editor through the use of a floating word count window in the lower right of the viewport. Apparently the locally stored version of the editor page used in the app hasn't taken this particular update on board, however; as I type this, my word count is once again disappearing out of the bottom of the viewport.

Another big flaw that requires less discussion is the fact that the Insert Hyperlink option does not include the option that the wp-admin-based editor does to search through your previous posts and link to them without having to look up the URL yourself. The absence of this from the "improved" posting experience is mildly irritating, and I have to wonder exactly why it was removed, since this is the exact opposite of an "improvement".

A few things do seem to work a little better in the standalone app, mind; when using the editor in Chrome, I've found that sometimes the cursor keys and modifiers behave in somewhat strange and unpredictable manners: sometimes attempting to move to the previous character or word with keyboard shortcuts inexplicably jumps to the end of the paragraph or somewhere completely unexpected, particularly if there a few different items of formatting (such as links or italics) used in a paragraph. So far, at the time of writing, as I type this, I've encountered no such issues — that doesn't necessarily mean that they're not there, but they shouldn't really be in there in the first place, so I've tended to assume they're a Chrome issue rather than a WordPress issue.

Since I originally looked at the "improved posting experience", too, I was pleased to discover that drag-and-drop images now work as they should: in other words, you can drag an image directly into the editor window and have it appear where the cursor was, rather than this simply being a shortcut to opening the "Add Media" window. So good job there!

Elsewhere in the app, you have access to the other features the WordPress dashboard offers, most notably site statistics and insights, allowing you to see at a glance how your most recent posts have been performing, which days you've been posting on and suchlike. The WordPress Reader system is also integrated into the app, allowing you to catch up on WordPress blogs you've subscribed to all in one place rather than having to remember to visit a bunch of sites. This is a helpful feature, but like everything else in the app, I'm not entirely convinced of the benefit of having it in a standalone app rather than just visiting the WordPress site in my browser.

All in all, then, the main benefit of the new desktop app appears to be little more than speed and a slightly more stable experience than the website under Chrome appears to offer. I suppose offline use is a benefit to those who are composing blog posts on the go using a laptop — or, indeed, catching up on downloaded Reader posts — but for me, this is some minor, not especially useful functionality, since I tend to compose my blog posts immediately before publishing them, which tends to mean that I have a stable Internet connection wherever I happen to be at the time.

I'll continue using the app for a while and see how I get on with it. If nothing else, its "distraction-free" nature due to its lack of browser tabs is quite pleasant, so it may prove to be a helpful way to concentrate, whether it's on my daily blogging "duties" or more substantial projects.

You can find out more about the app and download it for free here.

2031: Delayed Contact

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How would you get along with your sibling(s), parent(s), or any other person you’ve known for a long time — if you only met them for the first time today?

WordPress Daily Post, August 12, 2015

This is an interesting question! What it's really asking, I guess, is how I've changed over the years. And I'm certainly not going to deny that I've changed over the years — in some ways for the better, in other ways for the worse.

Let's consider the "big things" first. The first thing I'd want to address is my depression and anxiety. As anyone who has had a depressed or anxious friend will know, we can be a handful: prone to bouts of irrational emotion, having a tendency to back out of appointments and commitments because we're not feeling up to dealing with people, in some cases full of seething rage or unbearable grief at nothing in particular, which is difficult for anyone not living it to truly understand.

Now, I address this because I tend to think of my depression and anxiety as a "recent" thing, though on reflection it's something I've clearly been carrying around with me for a lot longer than I might have initially thought. It probably stretches all the way back to primary school, to be honest, when I was, yes, full of seething rage at nothing in particular and would often get into trouble at lunchtimes and breaktimes for the 10 year old equivalent of casting "Provoke" on a dinner lady or school bully.

Actually, to say said seething rage was at nothing in particular isn't quite accurate. It was something of a vicious cycle. I wasn't comfortable in who I was, and kids being kids would pick on me, sensing weakness. I'd then be upset — particularly when, as often happened, my friends abandoned me and sided with the "cool" kids (who were often also the bullies of the playground) rather than with me.

But this isn't specifically about my history with depression, it's about whether people I've known for a long time would get along with me — or if I'd get along with them — if we happened to meet for the first time today. And the depression and anxiety side of things is interesting to consider; these days, I'm a lot more open and honest about talking about it in most circumstances — sometimes needing a bit of a prompt or leading question — whereas in my childhood and adolescence, when, in retrospect, I was clearly suffering from both of these issues, I didn't recognise them for what they were and consequently didn't know how to deal with them. My first girlfriend even left me because she "couldn't take my moods" — though she did also cheat on me at the school prom, so fuck her, basically.

I digress, but the point, I guess, is that anyone I met for the first time now would have to be able to deal with someone who is aware of their own mental defects, be willing to support them when necessary and be willing to leave them the fuck alone when they need to be alone.

Now, onto other matters also worthy of consideration. Let's keep things self-deprecating and consider my personal appearance. At school I was fairly unremarkable-looking, though I had terrible hair (still do), bad skin (still do) and zits (thankfully long gone). I felt like I was a bit fat at school compared to some of my friends, but looking back at some old photographs, I really, really wasn't. I steadily gained weight over the course of my time at university and beyond until I got to the point where I was so uncomfortable I needed to do something about it — hence my joining Slimming World back in February. (As of tonight, I've lost 4.5 stone in total, incidentally.)

Let's be realistic: people judge each other on appearances, like it or not, and six months ago I was absolutely ashamed of my appearance. I didn't like going out because people would see me; I didn't like walking past windows because I could catch a glimpse of myself; I didn't like wearing any of my clothes because none of them really fit properly any more; and mirrors, well, no. Just no. I've always had something of a lack of self-confidence — again, this can be traced in part back to my school days; at primary school I was taunted on a daily basis for having "big ears", while at secondary school the aforementioned crap hair, bad skin and zits were picked on — but this was the absolute lowest point I've ever been.

Today, though, some 4.5 stone lighter, I know I still have some way to go, but I'm much more comfortable in myself and, when depression and anxiety aren't laying me low, I can actually notice myself being more open, confident and less embarrassed to be myself. Just yesterday I successfully made some small talk with the store clerk in Game when I was buying Splatoon and didn't come away from the experience thinking "they hate me" or "they think I'm disgusting", which are things I'd thought following a passing interaction in the past. And while this may not sound like much, with everything I deal with in my head, this felt like a noticeable and significant victory, and worth celebrating.

I'm conscious I'm talking generally while the question implies I should be thinking about specific people, but I feel these points are relevant; self-confidence is something that is important in your interactions with anyone, and while I'm certainly not in a position where I'd call myself "confident" or "outgoing" — I'm still an introvert at heart — I am in a position now where yes, I feel like I could meet someone new, have a conversation with them and not make them never want to see me ever again.

Finally, then, there's the matter of changing interests. My interests actually haven't changed all that significantly over the years; I've always been into video games, board games, computers, music, reading and writing. Perhaps the biggest change is in the "subgenres" of certain aspects, specifically my enjoyment of Japanese games, anime and other popular media. As many of you will know, a lot of this sort of thing is enormously polarising and very much an acquired taste, so if there's anywhere I think I'd struggle with if I were meeting an old friend for the first time today, it'd be with regard to these niche interests, and particularly a lot of the mainstream popular assumptions about what people who like that sort of thing are into. (That's a rant for another day, of course.)

There are people I've drifted away from due to diverging interests. There are also new friends I've made as a result of these diverging interests, that happen to converge in different places. That's how life goes; as much as we'd like to believe certain things last forever, sometimes we move on, we grow, we change, we become different people.

Ultimately I like to believe that I'm a decent person, and that anyone I've known for a long time I'd be able to at least get along with today. We became friends for a reason, after all, and in many cases friendships are struck up over that simple, indescribable "click" you get when you start interacting and realise that the person you're talking to is someone absolutely on your wavelength. It's difficult (though, sadly, not impossible) to get rid of that "click" once you've had it, and so, to finally answer the original question: I do think I'd get along with people I've known for a long time if I only met them for the first time today. Our relationship might develop differently to how it did in reality, but that's not necessarily a bad thing; true friendships allow you to get along regardless of circumstances and regardless of differences.

1754: Yet Another Exhortation for Websites to Stop Bugging Me

Page_1 As the years have passed, the Internet has undergone continuous improvement for the most part. It's now one of the most — if not the most — democratic media in the world, for better or worse, allowing pretty much anyone around the world to speak their brains on pretty much any subject they'd care to share with anyone who wants to listen. (This blog is, of course, a prime example of this in action; I'm still frankly bewildered anyone reads this at all.)

But not every improvement in the Internet has been a positive one. In fact, one thing specifically appears to be on the rise, and it's not at all a positive thing, despite usually being implemented with good intentions.

I am referring to websites that, within moment of you arriving, pop up a Google Hangouts-style chatbox in the corner of the screen, often featuring a photograph of some overly-chipper looking person, and invite you to "chat" if you need help.

Now, in principle this isn't a terrible idea. Those who are less familiar with the Internet will probably appreciate having guidance on hand — immediately, and without having to seek it out — should they run into difficulties. (That said, assuming that "those less familiar with the Internet" are too dim to determine that clicking on a link that says "Help" — as most (vaguely useful) websites offer — will actually provide them with assistance is, to be honest, rather insulting towards those who are "less familiar with the Internet". And yes, I'm primarily talking about old people.) Having a live person on hand is, theoretically, a great thing, as it means you can ask questions without having to work out what the specific search terms to describe the problem you're having are — and then discover the only vaguely useful search result is an unanswered forum post from three years ago of someone having the exact same problem and never resolving it, of course.

The implementation, however, leaves something to be desired. Take WordPress here, for example. I started composing this post and not five seconds after the post editor had appeared, up popped a little blue box in the corner of the screen cheerfully enquiring "Hello! How can we help?" It's distracting, it's annoying, it's patronising and it is, in this case, unnecessary: I have been using WordPress for… (checks) quite a long time now, and thus it's probably reasonable to assume I know my way around most of it — and that anything I don't know how to do I'm perfectly comfortable with looking up in help files and forums.

That doesn't stop this silly little box from popping up every few times I start creating a post, however — yes, it's not even every time I start writing a post. No, apparently WordPress believes that maybe two or three times a week I'll reach some sort of existential blogging crisis and rather than, as most bloggers would do, pontificate about it for a thousand words in a self-indulgent stream-of-consciousness post, I would like to "chat" with someone about it. I do not want to "chat" with anyone from WordPress. I would like them to be on hand if I have a specific question, but I'm more than happy to use the already established channels for that — I don't need live support.

And it's not as if this "live" support is particularly live, anyway. Owing to the fact that most chat support people are juggling a number of different conversations at the same time — each of which is with someone who has a markedly different thinking and typing speed from everyone else they're interacting with — it can often take minutes at a time to get a response. Not exactly "instant" messaging. And, okay, it's still quicker than waiting a day or two for an email response — or more, if you ever have the misfortune to deal with any sort of government agency via email — but the benefit of instant messaging is supposed to be that you can get an immediate response, and if that one benefit isn't even present in these ever-present "How can we help?" boxes, then there's no fucking point them being there in the first place.

I might write a letter. That's always seemed like the most satisfying — albeit least time-efficient — means of expressing your dissatisfaction. Although sadly, it's also one of the easiest to ignore in this digital age. But the recipient actually receiving and reading it isn't necessarily the point in many cases; often putting pen to paper is a cathartic experience that makes the frustrated party get a few things off their chest and calm down a bit. It may not resolve anything in the long run, but, speaking from personal experience, by golly does it sometimes make you feel better.

So that's how you can help me, WordPress. You can bugger off with your patronising little chat box, otherwise you might just find yourself on the receiving end of a sternly-worded letter written on actual paper.

Or not. I might just stop getting worked up over stupid little things like this and go and do something fun instead. Hah! That'll be the day, eh?

1704: The Improved Posting Experience

All right, WordPress, you win. After bugging me constantly with urges to try the "improved posting experience" while I was just trying to write my blog, let's give this "improved posting experience" a go and see if it's actually any better than the "posting experience" most WordPress users are accustomed to. Here we go, then.

So first up, it's pretty blue. This puts it in line with the main WordPress.com site, where those using WordPress.com to manage their blog and/or be part of the WordPress community of bloggers can tweak their blog settings, fiddle with multiple sites and subscribe to other people's blogs. In that sense, it's consistent; however, where it's inconsistent is with the rest of the WordPress dashboard, which is still the black and grey it's ever been.

Let's take a look at functionality.

There's drag and drop for images… sort of. You can drag an image file onto the post editor, but this doesn't automatically insert it into the post at the point where you drop it, disappointingly; rather, it simply brings up the regular media browser (which now doesn't match the new editor) and uploads the image, at which point you can insert it into the post where you left the cursor. (This didn't work first time I tried; I had to close the media browser, reposition the cursor, then open it again and then insert.) It also inexplicably forgets the default setting for image size that you might have been using in the "classic mode" (ugh) "posting experience".

As for other functionality, there's the same toolbar as the regular WordPress "posting experience" (no, I'm not going to stop the sarcastic quotation marks around that phrase anytime soon) but, like the media browser, it forgets your default settings, in this case whether you have the "kitchen sink" second row of buttons (allowing access to styles, underline, justification, text colour, special characters, indents, undo and redo — all pretty useful stuff) open or not.

Over on the right of the editor, there's a bunch of pop-open menus for the post's status (draft, scheduled, published), tags and categories, a featured image, whether the post will be shared on social media (and whether there will be a custom message), an attached location, a front-page excerpt, and the mysterious "advanced settings", which include… drum roll…

…a custom slug, the author of the post, the format of the post, its visibility, whether or not it's a sticky, and whether it allows likes, shares, comments and pingbacks. Hmm. Not all that advanced, really.

I can't really tell what's better about this "improved posting experience" to be honest, and in a number of ways it's actually inferior. It certainly looks quite nice — the pop-open menus on the right keep things very neat and clean, for example — but it has this improved look at the expense of ease of access to information and settings.

The standard WordPress editor may be more cluttered and rather more clinical-looking than the soft blues of the "improved posting experience", but it's also considerably superior. Information and settings can be popped open and closed at will — it's all open rather than closed by default — and the screen gives you much more information, most notably on the status bar at the bottom of the editor, where you have a word count and a "last edited" date — both of which are completely absent from the "improved posting experience". There's also easy access to all other aspects of your site via the left-hand side menu.

Also worthy of note: when I started writing this post, there was a button to switch back to "classic mode" which promptly disappeared when I saved a draft. Getting back to the standard editor required logging back into this site's dashboard, going to the post list and then choosing to edit my draft. Somewhat cumbersome.

I can see the intent behind the "improved posting experience" — it's to strip out all the stuff that might prove daunting to those less familiar with technology and software such as WordPress. It's an attempt to make it into a simple and clean blog editor along the lines of Tumblr. Trouble is, that's never what WordPress has been about; WordPress has always been the blog solution to go to when you want customisability and a lot of control over what you're posting, when and how — and without having to mess around with HTML and CSS for styling.

Perhaps the "improved posting experience" will encourage more new users to give blogging a serious go. And that's ultimately a good thing. For people like me, though, who have been using WordPress for years now, it's very much a step backwards rather than forwards.

1602: Search Terms

It's been a long time since I pored over my blog's stats — largely because I don't particularly care about them, since I'm writing more for myself than anyone else — but it's occasionally interesting to take a peek at the search terms that show how people have arrived at this 'ere site.

For the longest time, my blog's most popular post was this one, which features animated GIFs of stickmen doing various offensive things to one another. People would show up at my blog through search terms like "stickman sex gif" and the like — why on Earth were so many people searching for this sort of thing when there is far better porn available on the Internet? — and this, consequently, led to that post being consistently popular. Alongside that, some things I wrote ages ago about classic PC games Divine Divinity and No-One Lives Forever proved consistently popular, as did my guide on how to play Kairosoft's mobile game Pocket Academy.

It's only been fairly recently that those consistently popular posts have finally fallen off my top search terms — although, looking today, Pocket Academy is still there. Instead, we have a few newcomers.

First up was this post, in which I bemoaned the repetitiveness and utter stupidity of "[brand] sponsors [programme] on [channel]" bumpers on commercial TV channels — specifically, the infuriatingly asinine "Alpen Sponsors Characters on Dave" campaign, which features a middle-aged, bearded man speaking with a funny accent and saying painfully unfunny lines clearly written by a bored advertising executive who was apparently once told by someone that they were "really funny" more to shut them up than anything else. Since said advertising campaign is still running on Dave, it seems there's a certain degree of interest in this campaign — search terms include people asking who the guy is (I have no idea) and, so far as I can make out, why the fuck it exists.

It seems I've become a source of information on certain types of games and types of entertainment, too. Someone arrived today looking for a map of the Endless Road dungeon in Demon Gaze (while I am playing Demon Gaze right now, you won't find any maps here, sorry), while another person wanted to find out which of the in-game races had the most HP. (I have no idea there either.)

Alongside that, there are just plain bizarre pairings of search terms, the oddest of which is kiss x sis and doctor who, an unholy fusion of a somewhat ecchi anime and the classic, resurrected BBC sci-fi series from which this blog takes its name, but which I do not.

Then there's the person asking "is bovril good for you" — I have no idea, sorry, though with how salty it tastes, I doubt it — and "waiting for the phone to ring" which, I assume, led them to this post, or possibly this one.

It paints an interesting picture of the people I am somehow attracting to this site — or at least, the type of people that Google feels is appropriate to send over here. Everyone is welcome, one and all; I can't promise you'll find what you're looking for, but hopefully you'll stumble across something fun in the meantime.

1142: Hello

So after publishing last night's post (which, I'll be honest, was composed somewhat in haste after a lengthy Ridge Racer Unbounded session prompted it, immediately before my bedtime) I was rather surprised to receive an email from someone named Michelle at WordPress, who informed me that my post was going to be featured in the Freshly Pressed section of WordPress.com. Thank you, Michelle, that was very nice of you, and it was even nicer to receive an email that was clearly from an actual person rather than an automated robot. Big love to all of the WordPress team.

Taking Michelle's email to heart, though, it's entirely possible that there might be a few new visitors around here in the immediate future, so I thought I'd take today to (re)introduce myself for the umpteenth time, and explain a little about what this blog is for and why I number all my posts.

So, then. Hello. I'm Pete. I'm a 31-year old bloke from the grey and miserable isle that is Great Britain. I live in Southampton, which is a city that has been the focal point of my life ever since I left home in 1999 to go to university there. Over the years, I've flitted around a bit for various reasons (mostly work) but always ended up coming back to Southampton either temporarily (to see friends) or, as happened just before Christmas, permanently. Or as "permanently" as any place I've lived since 1999 has been.

I live in a nice flat with my girlfriend Andie. Technically I'm married to someone else, though the circumstances of why the person I'm living with is not the person I'm married to are terribly complicated and not something I feel particularly inclined to go into here. Suffice to say, if you look at blog posts from around May of 2010 you'll get a general idea of how I was feeling when that all went down, and besides, all of that will be resolved this year. (I will also note that there is no bad blood there — forgive and forget and all that — it's just something I have found difficult to deal with until quite recently. And no, I don't want to talk about it further.)

The above sort of brings me onto the subject of this blog, which you may have noticed I update on a daily basis. I actually posted a number of pieces on this site before beginning to post daily, but it was in January of 2010 (the 19th, to be exact) that I started a personal tradition that I still keep to this day: daily blog posts. Originally, these daily posts were part of a Twitter-based movement known as "#oneaday". This was a group who banded together in an attempt to post something — anything — once per day as a means of continually flexing our collective writing muscles. Many of the original participants — including the person who started the whole thing — dropped out of the running very quickly, but there were a number of us who kept it up all the way through 2010. In 2011, I attempted to coordinate a larger effort to get as many people posting regularly on their blogs and encouraging their readers to donate to charity. It was moderately successful — we raised about £200 or so, I think, which wasn't too bad considering the number of people involved — but ultimately most writers lost interest. It also became a bit too much work for me to manage by myself, but I'm not ruling out the possibility of organising something along the same lines again in the future.

Anyway, all that aside, I'm still going, and this post you're reading right now is my 1,142nd daily post in a row. I cover a variety of different topics on this blog according to what I'm thinking about at any given moment and, to a lesser extent, whether or not my girlfriend has complained that I'm being "boring". My strongest interests are video games (particularly Japanese role-playing games and visual novels, though if you mention TrackMania to me I can go for hours); music (I play the piano, clarinet and saxophone and occasionally compose stuff); board games; and, as 1,141 previous posts will attest, writing. I also use this blog as an "outlet" when I need to get some raw, honest words or thoughts out of my head and onto the page. I suffer with depression and anxiety (personified by the big black cloud "Des" in the header image) and find it helpful to talk about these things.

If this blog and its crudely-drawn stickmen aren't enough Pete for you, then you can check out my professional work every day at Inside Social Games and Inside Mobile Apps, and my "pet project" at Games Are Evil. I also hang out a lot with my video gaming buddies the Squadron of Shame on Google+, and if you either 1) would like to hear my delicious, fruity, full-bodied English accent or 2) are interested in "underappreciated" video games , then I suggest you have a listen to the Squad's irregularly-occurring podcast, the Squadron of Shame SquadCast. You can find the archives here, and a new episode on the subject of Spec Ops: The Line is coming soon.

#oneaday Day 968: Silence to 1K

As I draw ever closer to that elusive "1,000 daily posts" combo it becomes more and more difficult to think of things to write about each day. I'm very conscious of the fact that I have already repeated myself on several occasions as well as spent several posts on a number of topics where one would have perhaps sufficed (hello, Katawa Shoujo) but I have no regrets as to how things have gone so far.

I'm not saying there aren't 968 different things in the world to write about, obviously, it's whether or not I can say anything coherent about them — and whether or not I can actually think of any of them when it comes to time to write this blog, since I almost inevitably end up doing it as one of the last things I do each day. (Today is an exception — I've specifically decided to write this before I settle down to a bit of pre-bedtime My Girlfriend is the President). Sometimes when you have to write something, your mind just goes blank and the absolute last thing you want to do is write. I get it sometimes during my day job, when I play a game so unbearably tedious or awful that the mere prospect of writing about how tedious and awful it is fills me with a sense of deep melancholy. (Other times, however, it's fun to rip something that has clearly been crafted with no care or attention whatsoever a new one — or indeed to praise something that is worthy of praise.)

And yet despite occasional dalliances with writer's block, here I am, day after day, posting my inane ramblings to anyone who will listen. To my surprise, I have built up something of a small but apparently dedicated audience over the last few years I've been writing this. My distaste for the Facebook "Like" button is well-documented, but the WordPress "Like" button is another matter — it gives me the opportunity to see when new (or familiar) visitors have stopped by and felt the need to show their presence, which is genuinely nice to see. (WordPress' overly-positive emails make out that someone clicking the Like button is an absolutely massive deal on a par with being whisked away on a romantic getaway and proposed to in front of a sunset, but we both know you're just clicking a button.)

Believe it or not, as self-indulgent as this blog is more often than not, I'm very grateful to those of you who stop by and read/like/comment. I've said on numerous occasions that this blog isn't "for" anyone — the original remit of the #oneaday project was simply to get all the participants writing every day for the sake of writing, not for the sake of building an audience — but it is pretty awesome to see that, on occasion, something I post resonates with someone else somewhere else in the world. Ships in the night and all that.

Speaking of the #oneaday project, I have to toot my own horn a bit here — I'm pretty proud of myself for sticking with this for so long. Granted, with the number of words I've written across the last 968 posts I could probably have penned at least two or three novels, but that's not quite the same as having an "outlet". On more than one occasion I've been grateful for this blog as a means to share things I'm thinking or feeling with anyone who will listen — it's not always easy to do that face-to-face or over the phone, but bizarrely, announcing it to the entire world via the Internet is absolutely no problem whatsoever, largely because in that case you can simply express yourself and walk away without having to have any of those difficult "conversation" things.

But I digress. To my knowledge, the only other original participant of #oneaday's first year who is still going is the inimitable Mr Ian Dransfield of Play Magazine fame. Meanwhile, it looks entirely possible that the most pleasant Gemma Critchley is also about to start blogging again, which is nice to see. It's been a bumpy ride for daily bloggers, though — in the first year, a huge number of participants (including the "founder") dropped out within a week or two of starting; in the second year, I made a bold attempt to try and organise everyone via this "hub" site, relaxing the "rules" a little in order to (successfully) attract more people, and inviting readers to sponsor our efforts for charity. (In the process, I apparently pissed off one of the original participants who had not taken part since January of the previous year, who promptly posted an incoherent ranty post about how he was going to do things their own way, only going to prove my suspicions about said person. No, I am not saying who it was or what my suspicions were.)

This is now my third year of daily blogging and while the "community" feeling of blogging together with others is all but gone (for now, at least) it's still satisfying to know that I can look back on the last 968 days and know that at least some of this waffle is worth reading again. It may be narcissistic to do so, but I do sometimes enjoy just hitting the "Random Post" button and seeing what comes up. More than enjoying rereading my past posts, it's sometimes fun, sometimes sad, always interesting to think back on where I was in my life at that point — and where I might be another 968 days from now.

I guess I should start planning my 1,000 post party. Who can make a good cake?

#oneaday Day 865: All Change on Squad Mountain

Those of you who follow what I do over at the Squadron of Shame may have already noticed that some changes have been going on recently.

First up, longtime mainstay hosts of our podcast Chris Whittington and Jeff Parsons have moved on from their presenting duties to host their own show. Too Old For This… is a show for ageing, busy geeks who still like to keep up to date with the latest happenings in comics, games, movies, music and beer (lots of beer), and it's a great listen. Chris and Jeff have a great dynamic together and their show deserves your support.

With Chris and Jeff out of the podcasting picture over at the Squad, we're going to be doing a lot more in the way of our traditional "mission" podcasts whereby we investigate a "shameworthy" game thoroughly and then discuss it at great length. This decision came about partly due to the success of our show on Katawa Shoujo, which attracted a bunch of new listeners and community members, but also because it's something we've always done well — and something which is still very distinctive in the crowded world of gaming podcasts. That's not to say we won't be doing any more "topic" shows or "genre primers" — but a bunch of listeners have been clamouring for more "missions" for a while now, so it's time to give them what they want.

The long-term goal for the Squadron of Shame has always been to be a place for mature, wordy, niche-loving geeks to call home. The "Squawkbox", our freeform discussion board which I set up temporarily several years ago using WordPress. has been a good start to that, but I figured it was time we took it to the next level. We have a number of talented writers among our ranks, so I thought we should showcase that fact a little better. And those who don't want to write will certainly appreciate some interesting things to read and comment on.

Enter our new experimental Articles section, in which long-form articles can be presented, featured and archived separately from the main Squawkbox discussion. They still appear in the main feed, but have their own dedicated sections now. Over time, this part of the site will hopefully become populated with numerous long-form pieces from our members (and guests) about things they think are truly "Shameworthy". The categories I've put in place so far are largely games-focused, but there's no reason this can't expand to other media over time — the joy of using WordPress is that it's easy to tweak, poke and rejig everything as the need presents itself.

I'm excited about what the future might hold for our little site, and this is the first step towards that bright future. Be sure to drop by, join the conversation and let us know what you think.

#oneaday, Day 340: Blogrollin', Like They Do In Canada

I was going to write this post yesterday but then I got all wrapped up in the whole next-year thing, which you should read about if you're interested. It's the entry before this one. Which means it's after this one on the page. Which… oh, be quiet.

Anyway. To the point. I reorganised my blogroll yesterday. No, that doesn't mean I hung the toilet paper with the sheets hanging down the other way to normal, it means I sorted out the links in the sidebar. I nuked the lot and started again, because there were a bunch of defunct places that some people hadn't updated for ages and a few sites that just didn't exist any more.

Then I put out the call on Twitter for anyone who wanted to be included. I figured it'd be a good opportunity for me to have a chance to check out some other people's work, too. When you're writing a blog for yourself (particularly if it's a daily one) it's very easy to focus entirely on your own work and never pay any attention to what anyone else is writing. So, let's rectify that right now, shall we? Here's a bunch of the links I added yesterday and what they're all about.

First up, the fellow #oneaday survivors, who are well on their way to finishing their first year on the "job". You should check out all of 'em, since they've all got a veritable plethora of content for you to read and enjoy now. Like this dusty little corner of the Internet, all their blogs have evolved and changed over time, and hopefully they've all got something out of the experience, whether or not they intend on joining us next year.

So, in no particular order, then:

Game Design Scrapbook—Krystian Majewski's account of the trials and tribulations of developing an actual proper game that you'll be able to actually play and everything.
Halycopter—The daily blog of Jen Allen, editor of the slick and awesome Resolution Magazine, featuring candid thoughts on all manner of subjects.
Mat Murray—The man with the fastest Retweet finger in the West. He got married a short while ago and also takes nice photographs.
Mr. Writer—The #oneaday blog of Ian Richardson, veteran of Staffordshire (we salute you), motorsports enthusiast and aspiring journalist.
The Mirrorball—Daily blog of Mike Grant, Bristol-based writer and novelist.
Worthless Prattle Makes the World Go Round—Play Magazine's Ian Dransfield sets the world to rights with a variety of amusing posts and a classic Gran Turismo 5 tutorial video.

Next up, here's some of my friends, many of whom are members of the Squadron of Shame.

4X.Scope—Alex "Unmannedpylondronecommandsomethinglikethat" Connolly's blog, which hasn't been updated for a while but since he and his wife have been busy having a kid, I think we can excuse. Alex writes detailed, in-depth commentary on a variety of interesting games that you probably haven't heard of, and also draws rather well.
Alternate Course—Chris "RocGaude" Whittington's site, which he promises will provide a veritable cornucopia of audio-visual-textual entertainment in the coming year. Oh yes indeedy.
Cerebral Pop—As the name implies, this is a site that covers the more cerebral side of pop culture, run by a wide variety of delicious-smelling gentlemen, many of whom also frequent Bitmob (which I think I've been capitalising incorrectly for time immemorial).
First Time Flowing—Andre Monserrat's blog, deserving special mention for buying me a copy of Baldur's Gate today along with being a formidable opponent at Carcassonne.
Nice Guy Gamer—Cody Winn is the nicest person on the Internet. He likes video games, knit caps and kittens and writes about them here. Pay him a visit.
Press The Buttons—Matt Green is another ex-Kombo refugee and runs this gaming site with podcasting contributions from the sexygorgeous Brad Hilderbrand and Joey Davidson. Check in for some well-written commentary on games and the industry.
Rhymes With Chaos—Jesse Bowline's blog covers all manner of arty, musicy, gamey, geeky thoughts and opinions and is well worth your time. But what rhymes with "Chaos"?
Starfuckers, Inc.—The online home of Ashton Raze, formidable writer-about-games, man-about-town, hat-wearer, champion of DEADLY PREMONITION's cause and starfucker.
We Clock—Ian Scott appeared in my Facebook friend requests one day with a mutual friend, so I added him. His blog covers a variety of topics, from general geekery to eye-opening slice-of-life stuff. He's also an active member of the GOG.com and Reddit communities, so is a fountain of information on old games and Internet memes.

If I missed you, it's 'cause you didn't get back to me on Twitter. I know there's a couple of you out there but you're escaping me right now. Give me a poke in the comments and I will add your links to my sidebar (and this post) post-haste!

For now, enjoy all the hot and spicy content these fine folks have conjured up for you and I'll see you tomorrow.