A Green Mushroom

When I published my post about Belghast's passing the other day, I noticed this draft sitting in the backend of my blog CMS. It was drafted in August of 2023 and I had a few initial notes as seeds for ideas I could build out into a full post.  That's pretty typical for how I used to jot down thoughts that I would later craft into a full blog post. Without giving you the exact words, my notes essentially boiled down to the fact that Twitter was in rough shape and felt like it was on the way out, I was trying out Mastodon, and I was feeling a little unmoored on the internet. Now it's three years later and Twitter is essentially dead (for everything I used to use it for anyway), I haven't used Mastodon after that initial few months of 2023 experimentation, and the closest thing I have to a "home" social media is Bluesky. But even Bluesky just doesn't feel like a true home.  It feels like the place I go to scroll a few times each day when I want to get a puls...

Belghast was a longtime friend of mine.  At this point, we must have known each other for almost 20 years.  If you haven't heard yet... he passed away yesterday.  MassivelyOP has a write-up with some more details , so I won't go into those here. Looking back, my last post was almost 3 years ago.  I'm not going to focus on me in this post, but I just wanted to acknowledge that it's been awhile.  But, I couldn't let this go by without writing something. Belghast has always had a stream of consciousness writing style so I'm going to embrace that for this post and not overthink it. Bel created communities.  He was the heart of so many of them.  I originally ran into him in the early days of the blogosphere as it existed in the mid 2000s.  He made so many friends and so many connections.  At some point I got pulled into his orbit and into a few of the groups he was at the center of. And he was truly the center and the heart of so many of these com...

I jumped right into the previous post without actually explaining Blaugust.  So... what is it?  Blaugust is an excuse to get people blogging... in August.  Hence, Blaugust! I'm not the best person to pitch it, but Blaugust is put on by a long time friend of mine, Belghast.  Here's what he had to say about Blaugust for the 2023 kickoff: Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place in August each year that focused on blogging and other serialized content. 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. For years blogging has been dwindling, and in part, Blaugust was my attempt and reversing that course by compiling a bunch of veteran bloggers in one place and making it super easy to ask questions and get answers. The idea is that this festival of blogging can help reignite dwindling fires for the next year and give folks a sense of kinship as a...

I decided to participate in Blaugust this year for the first time in a few years.  My intention is to write 1-2 posts per week.  I don't have the time in my day to day life for daily blogging at the moment, but I thought this might be a nice blogging jumpstart after being dormant since the end of last year. Also, it really feels more important than ever to have your own little piece of the internet that you control.  With everything going on with social media lately, I thought it would be a good chance to look at this blog again with fresh eyes. The first thing that immediately jumped out to me was that my blog's website theme isn't really up to modern standards.  It was still serving up a different specific mobile site, and that's just not how things are done anymore.  I decided it was time for a new theme. For reference, I'm still using Google Blogger.  WordPress is actually the better toolset for owning and customizing your own blog-like site... but I us...

It's time to check in once again on my gaming to-do list.  I've loved this idea ever since a fellow blogger brought it up in the middle of Blaugust this year.  It's a good way to make a plan and keep tabs on the games I intend to play. So, let's check in for the first time since September.  Here's my current list: Fallout 4 - At the time I'm writing this post Fallout 4 isn't out yet, but by the time it's published we should be a couple days into the craziness of Fallout 4 launch.  I hope I like it.  I'm looking forward to exploring the world! [adding to list] StarCraft II Legacy of the Void  - StarCraft II is still my favorite RTS ever and the latest expansion should come out two days before this post goes live.  I'm interested to see how the campaign plays out and I'll probably end up giving online multiplayer another shot too. [adding to list] Star Wars Battlefront  - I played the beta every day this game was available.  I'm so ex...

Blaugust Conquest! Belghast released the final results for Blaugust today and gave out some fancy graphics (see above) to everyone who participated, did half the challenge, or finished the whole challenge. As you can see from my flair up there, I completed the whole challenge! I was moving steadily at about 5 posts per week before this challenge, but moving up to 7 days per week was a cool way to push myself. It was awesome to see all the content from everyone who participated this year!  Good job everyone!

Wow, what a month.   Blaugust was awesome! 31 posts in 31 days is a tall order, but so many bloggers have risen to the challenge. I ended up working ahead and scheduling posts out in advance, but I know there are a lot of the bloggers who diligently wrote posts every day. Congrats everyone!  We made it!  We made so much content and had a great time building our community! This was a fantastic event.  Thanks so much to Belghast  for organizing it and helping it along throughout the month.  It wouldn't have happened without him. Thanks everyone who participated.  We made it!  You guys all rock!

Blaugust is here! What is Blaugust you might ask?  Well dear reader, it's a time to try your hand at producing content every day. I've mostly fallen into a 5 day per week posting schedule, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do this event with the blogging and gaming community that I love. There are a ton of participating blogs, most are written but some are vlogs too.  We're all posting every day in August. Thanks to the amazing Belghast for organizing this event.  Make sure to take a look at his site over at Tales of the Aggronaut . He even gave us a writing prompt to kick off the event: What are you hoping to get out of Blaugust this year? Personally, I'm taking Blaugust as a challenge.  I'm right near the end of my video gaming backlog and I know I'm going to need to branch out and talk about other things more often very soon.  This is going to push me there faster.  I always end up touching on movies, books, shows, tabletop games...