it's a year later and yet another trip to japan

Ikebukuro, Tokyo, Japan train station

A little over a year ago I thought I had closed this particular blog down. Look at the posting history and you'll see I've written nothing here since December 22nd of 2013. I called that post "endgame" because I considered this blog truly at an end. But life never quite works out the way you plan.

I moved over and created a new blog with Wordpress. I called it the Arcane Science Lab. I expected to do Great Things on that blog, and I expected the world to beat a path to my new blog. After a year it's debatable what great things were done on that blog, and I can assure you that while I got a lot of followers, I saw no beaten paths leading to that new blog. If anything, while the traffic to this blog dropped considerably, it's still about an order of magnitude greater than to the newer blog on Wordpress. Considering the high hopes I had the and the hype surrounding Wordpress-based blogs I expected a lot more. While it's easy enough to blame Wordpress, I have to shoulder most, if not all, of the blame for its lackluster performance.

I don't advertise, so it's not like I'm loosing money due to lack of advertising. I've never advertised, and if anything, because I'm using the free version of Wordpress, it's Wordpress itself that's inserting ads into my posts. I know, I've seen them.

And so I'm thinking of moving back here, and opening up, this original blog again. And to get rid of some of the egoism involved, I'm renaming it (although the original link will have to stay, unfortunately). I'm also opening up commenting again, since I'll be keeping a more active "eye" on this blog. As for the Wordpress blog, I'm not sure what I'll do with that one.

I could, if I wanted to, try to merge the Wordpress content back into this blog. That's would be a bit of a task, considering I wrote some 120+ entries on that blog, including images. I'd have to transfer everything over and then somehow decommission (delete) that blog. It doesn't make a lot of sense to keep both going, although it might be a good idea to have both to keep from putting all my blogging eggs into one platform basket. Sorry for stretching that particular metaphor...

And so, in a way, I'm back, and the place is open for business. I'll be experimenting with layouts and what have you, as well as doing a bit of writing. Perhaps this will become the alternative to the ASL. I'm not sure what that means. Perhaps my  photography and trips should go here, while my "science-y" stuff goes on the ASL. Lots to think about going into 2015 and beyond.

Comments and thoughts welcome.

Happy New Year.