nbi

Racing Snail

by

Out of Advice

This month is of course the rescheduled Newbie Blogger Initiative… and I have been horrible at supporting it so far.  Normally I have filled my blog with various sundry related information about blogging, and if you really want you can probably still take some of that as completely valid.  I know this event works, but the problem is… at this point I just feel like I am out of advice to give without simply rehashing a bunch of old themes.  The truth is I really don’t know what I am doing, and while sometimes I put on the front that I do…  I spend the majority of my time winging it.  Sure before I wrote a single line on Aggronaut, I had planned a lot of stuff like the domain name and hosting provider, but that is not to say I didn’t have a much earlier not fit for public consumption blog on blogger.  Back then… I just started blogging, and it is I feel honestly good to just go make some mistakes on your own without the intervention of others.  My original blog was a semi-private ordeal talking about my life, my family, and all sorts of random events in large part surrounded on our sudden and bizarre desire to start camping.  I say camping… but what I really mean is hanging out at a lakeside resort in an RV.  It was real and snarky and sometimes raw… but it had a very specific audience of folks who actually knew me in real life.  Those people didn’t care about my gaming, and in most part would probably find it strange.

So when I created Aggronaut it was by purpose designed to be completely divorced from my real life.  The idea was I would have the real world blog for people who knew me… and then the other blog to talk about my passions.  That didn’t exactly work because I’ve found that while I can write in a mostly anonymous fashion talking about people and events from my real life setting…  I can’t exactly keep them out of my topics.  I’ve tried not to name names in my blog as a sort of “protect the innocent” fashion in part because my wife works in a very skittish profession.  I never wanted anything I might say to reflect badly upon her.  I would say that I probably filter myself a lot, but the truth is I really don’t have that many inflammatory opinions.  What I personally consider ranting about subject… I’ve often been told is just polite but impassioned discussion.  So as I sit down and try and thing of advice to give a budding blogger, I am really finding myself completely empty this year.  Just because I have been doing something longer, doesn’t mean I have any better grasp on how things should work.  I don’t know what I am doing… and it is perfectly okay to not know what you are doing.  I’ve somehow made that work for over seven years now, and I suppose I will continue to make it work for the foreseeable future.  I lack the ego however to tell you t hat my way is the correct way, because I know I don’t even know if it is right for me.  Next week I might get new information that makes me question everything about what I have done for the better part of this decade, and that is also okay.  Basically if you want to write…  just go write.

A Good Note

Racing Snail

Over the last few days I have become progressively more active in the Rift community.  There is something comfortable about coming back to this game, and I find myself obsessing with all of these little details.  The experience has been something akin to catching a movie on cable television that you have not seen at decades… and then having a sudden swell of feelings for how much you used to love that movie.  Coming back to Rift this time feels very much like dusting off a favorite tome and reading it again with new eyes.  There are some things I am coming to terms with, namely that unlike so many games… it is unlikely that I will find many of my closest friends interested in joining me.  As I have learned time and time again… Rift is not really their game and especially the AggroChat crew can rattle off a list of reasons why.  That said… it has always sorta been my game, and been something that I supported regardless if I was actually playing with it.  I’ve said time and time again that Rift is essentially all of the features I ever wanted in a video game compiled in one game… and they just keep adding more features as time goes on.  That said it is also a much harder game than I have grown accustomed to, and as a result for the last several years since the launch of Storm Legion I have struggled a bit to find my place in it.  I was extremely slow getting to level 60, and I am just now getting to 65, so the speed and difficulty of leveling was something I had a difficult time reconciling now that I am extremely used to the fast pace and ease of leveling in the “modern” mmo.  I’ve long said that my favorite time period in World of Warcraft was Wrath of the Lich King, and I’ve just realized that Rift is as though you stopped the clock in a time period before content started to get watered down to appeal to a wider audience.  That is not to say that Rift does not have a lot of solo-able features… but if you intend to play at the highest levels of the game you are going to need a group and dedication to your character.

Racing Snail

All of this aside I am in this position where I am really enjoying the depth of this game, and finding myself with this entire list of things that I want to accomplish.  One of the best parts of the game for me personally is the way that they have changed the wardrobe system.  Now when you pick up an item, you collect its appearance and can then assemble outfits out of these appearances without needing to fiddle with any of the actual loot.  The fact that there are also zero negatives like a gold sink associated with it, means I am constantly changing my wardrobes around, and I guess at times this is a positive.  Within the Rift forums and Discord there was a contest called “Planetouched Style”, the idea being that you assembled an outfit that represented a certain planar theme and then went out into the world and found a location that fit the theme to take a screenshot.  The first image was my entry, going for a sort of “Papa Legba” feel for it… and then finding an area out in Seratos that really shows off the deathyness.  Much to my shock… I apparently nabbed second place in the contest.  So I am now the proud owner of the 5th Anniversary edition racing snail…  completely with flames decorating the shell.  This goes nicely with my 4th Anniversary mount that I already spent damned near all of my time riding.  I am excited and humbled to somehow have managed to win, but it was a great note to end the day on yesterday.

 

Letter to New Bloggers

by

A Newbie Month

Letter to New Bloggers

This is one of those mornings where I apparently forgot to set my alarm clock and am damned thankful that apparently I only woke up thirty minutes late.  So everything feels rushed and it is not exactly the proper mood for a contemplative post.  Today marks a few things… firstly it is my mothers birthday and I have already remembered to send her a text so she would have a message waiting on her when she wakes up.  I will of course follow up later with a proper phone call…  but I wanted to get that early strike in there first.  Secondly this is the beginning of the rescheduled Newbie Blogger Initiative month.  This is something I have participated in since 2013, and feel a sense of obligation each year to do so again.  The problem is that after all these years I am questioning if I have any fresh wisdom to give out to the participants.  Blogging is one of those things that while we can commune as a group…  there comes a point where you are sitting in front of the tyranny of the blank page and only you can push through it.  We all have mornings when thinking let alone blogging is a difficulty, and for me this is one of them.  However as per my own statement… I am going to push through and make something happen.

So You Want to Blog

It seems like almost every year I start the proceedings off with something along the lines of that paragraph.  The truth is, only you can really look inside of yourself and see if there is a blog there waiting to spring forth into the world.  For me personally… I guess I was always a blogger and just never quite realized it.  I was extremely prone to posting “big damned walls of text” in on any subject I happened to be passionate about.  Early on the topic of choice were the White Wolf World of Darkness role-playing books or the Palladium system.  Later it became games as I even started writing reviews of Saturn and Playstation games for a small emulation and general gaming website.  I really came into my own when it came to MMOs and I haunted the forums of pretty much all of the games I played be it Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes or eventually World of Warcraft.  I had this burning drive to talk about the things I was interested in and to share my ideas, and while a lot of my topics were fostering the community…  a lot of them were just talking about my experiences.

On the forums for the server I used to play on… I became one of the white hats that regular rode in to chastise the evil doers, but at the same time freely shared game advice if I had any to give.  If you have ever found yourself doing these things…  chances are you really do have a blog inside of you waiting to get out.  Now the real challenge is trying to direct that unfocused information into a meaningful form.  Many bloggers will tell you that the secret to success is to pick a niche and stick with it… and become the be all end all site to go to for that subject.  That is probably some absolute truth, but it is also something I was never terribly good at.  This blog after all launched as a “Warrior Tanking Blog” just about as niche as you can possibly get… but the problem is I felt like a fraud doing that.  I was no real expert in being a warrior, nor was I an expert in tanking.  Both were things that largely came naturally to me, and it was baffling for me to try and explain what was largely pure instinct.  So I took a step back and decided to refocus on Raiding… until I realized that I wasn’t a particularly brilliant raider either.  We did what we did to win and at our own pace, which isn’t exactly a sterling example of the craft.  As a result I kept setting up branding and then knocking them down… until I finally wound up with this simply being “my blog” without any other pretense, because “bel saying things” was a focus that I could actually stick with.

You’ll Need a Name

Ultimately where I am going with this… is that you are going to need a name to call your blog.  Some people have created perfectly brilliant names… that they quickly outgrow when they go through a similar digression like my own blog did.  I am lucky that “Tales of the Aggronaut” was fairly generic and that I could keep adapting it pretty easily to whatever I happened to be doing.  Aggronaut was my attempt at a clever name for a tank… and since I rarely don’t tank at least a little it has continued to work.  Other folks have created a perfectly lovely name for say a Warlock blog… only to find out later that playing a Warlock is not their primary calling in life and as a result they have to come up with something else.  Ultimately my advice I guess would be to come up with something that represents you the writer, and not necessarily the subject.  Clever names are awesome, but only so long as they actually are something that you feel comfortable sitting down and writing posts behind.  There are an awful lot of famous blogs out there… with completely boring or descriptive names.

I think most people envision brilliant branding of their website from the starting gate, but in truth you are probably better of just picking some minimal window dressing until you get a feel for where exactly you are going.  I maybe jumped into this whole concept with two feet hitting the ground in that I bought my domain name and had it completely set up and ready to go before I wrote a single post.  I guess that makes sense given that I write code for a living, but in truth you don’t need to do any of this quite yet.  Your best option is to simply lean on good ole WordPress.org or Blogger.com rather than to try and do the self hosting thing right out of the gate.  I lean heavily towards WordPress simply because you have a lot more options for if you decide to transition to self hosted at a later date.  Technically you can do the same thing with Blogger but the process is less seamless and from what I have read in “how to” articles way more hassle than the other option.  There is of course Tumblr as an option, but you are exposing yourself to a way more problematic community right out of the gate than I would suggest for any fledgling blogger.

You’ll Need Readers

Now for the hard part…  you’ve named yourself and set up a site…  now you need to hang out yours “open for business” sign and wait.  This is the part of the equation that can drive you completely insane when you realize that no one is actually reading what you are writing.  This is going to happen to everyone, but the positive of starting a blog during this month means that the other bloggers are going to at least help try and get you started.  Self promotion is one of those things that I am particularly bad at.  In theory you want to put your blog in front of as many eyeballs as you can, which means syndicating it to pretty much all of the available options.  I syndicate my posts each day to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Google Plus… and this is essentially like casting a net out into the water.  If you get a nibble more than likely folks will add your blog to their RSS feed and be done with it… and then you have a potential reader for life.  That is unless you do something so horrific as to cause them to go through the effort of actually removing a blog.  For me at least… once a blog makes it to my RSS feed I am pretty much going to read them forever.

The problem is… your stats will always seem insignificant.  You can drive yourself completely mad looking at them for too long when you watch as this post that you spent five minutes on got ten times the readers than that gem you spent several days on.  Amassing regular readers is a bit of a waiting game, but I will say that there are a few factors that seem to factor in.  Firstly you need to have some sort of a schedule.  Since taking my recent breaks my readership has gone to shit, but previously when I was doing the post every single day thing I had a fairly steady stream of readers each and every day.  Secondly you have to give them something interesting to read, and this can come from several different directions.  My personal theory is that if someone is going to read you for long one of two things are going to be happening.  Either you are posting such a wealth of information about a very specific subject as to turn yourself into the “resource” for that community, or they are sticking around because they care about you as a person.  I’ve tended to focus on the second part of that statement, and as a result have shared some super personal information with my readers.  It sometimes works, but ultimately you are going to have to figure out the points that work for you.  The problem with giving blogging advice is no two blogs are the same… nor do they even have the same goals.  We can throw information at you, but you will have to figure out which bits are relevant to you.

 

I wish you luck and look forward to reading your blog

Bel

 

 

Letter to New Bloggers

by

A Newbie Month

Letter to New Bloggers

This is one of those mornings where I apparently forgot to set my alarm clock and am damned thankful that apparently I only woke up thirty minutes late.  So everything feels rushed and it is not exactly the proper mood for a contemplative post.  Today marks a few things… firstly it is my mothers birthday and I have already remembered to send her a text so she would have a message waiting on her when she wakes up.  I will of course follow up later with a proper phone call…  but I wanted to get that early strike in there first.  Secondly this is the beginning of the rescheduled Newbie Blogger Initiative month.  This is something I have participated in since 2013, and feel a sense of obligation each year to do so again.  The problem is that after all these years I am questioning if I have any fresh wisdom to give out to the participants.  Blogging is one of those things that while we can commune as a group…  there comes a point where you are sitting in front of the tyranny of the blank page and only you can push through it.  We all have mornings when thinking let alone blogging is a difficulty, and for me this is one of them.  However as per my own statement… I am going to push through and make something happen.

So You Want to Blog

It seems like almost every year I start the proceedings off with something along the lines of that paragraph.  The truth is, only you can really look inside of yourself and see if there is a blog there waiting to spring forth into the world.  For me personally… I guess I was always a blogger and just never quite realized it.  I was extremely prone to posting “big damned walls of text” in on any subject I happened to be passionate about.  Early on the topic of choice were the White Wolf World of Darkness role-playing books or the Palladium system.  Later it became games as I even started writing reviews of Saturn and Playstation games for a small emulation and general gaming website.  I really came into my own when it came to MMOs and I haunted the forums of pretty much all of the games I played be it Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes or eventually World of Warcraft.  I had this burning drive to talk about the things I was interested in and to share my ideas, and while a lot of my topics were fostering the community…  a lot of them were just talking about my experiences.

On the forums for the server I used to play on… I became one of the white hats that regular rode in to chastise the evil doers, but at the same time freely shared game advice if I had any to give.  If you have ever found yourself doing these things…  chances are you really do have a blog inside of you waiting to get out.  Now the real challenge is trying to direct that unfocused information into a meaningful form.  Many bloggers will tell you that the secret to success is to pick a niche and stick with it… and become the be all end all site to go to for that subject.  That is probably some absolute truth, but it is also something I was never terribly good at.  This blog after all launched as a “Warrior Tanking Blog” just about as niche as you can possibly get… but the problem is I felt like a fraud doing that.  I was no real expert in being a warrior, nor was I an expert in tanking.  Both were things that largely came naturally to me, and it was baffling for me to try and explain what was largely pure instinct.  So I took a step back and decided to refocus on Raiding… until I realized that I wasn’t a particularly brilliant raider either.  We did what we did to win and at our own pace, which isn’t exactly a sterling example of the craft.  As a result I kept setting up branding and then knocking them down… until I finally wound up with this simply being “my blog” without any other pretense, because “bel saying things” was a focus that I could actually stick with.

You’ll Need a Name

Ultimately where I am going with this… is that you are going to need a name to call your blog.  Some people have created perfectly brilliant names… that they quickly outgrow when they go through a similar digression like my own blog did.  I am lucky that “Tales of the Aggronaut” was fairly generic and that I could keep adapting it pretty easily to whatever I happened to be doing.  Aggronaut was my attempt at a clever name for a tank… and since I rarely don’t tank at least a little it has continued to work.  Other folks have created a perfectly lovely name for say a Warlock blog… only to find out later that playing a Warlock is not their primary calling in life and as a result they have to come up with something else.  Ultimately my advice I guess would be to come up with something that represents you the writer, and not necessarily the subject.  Clever names are awesome, but only so long as they actually are something that you feel comfortable sitting down and writing posts behind.  There are an awful lot of famous blogs out there… with completely boring or descriptive names.

I think most people envision brilliant branding of their website from the starting gate, but in truth you are probably better of just picking some minimal window dressing until you get a feel for where exactly you are going.  I maybe jumped into this whole concept with two feet hitting the ground in that I bought my domain name and had it completely set up and ready to go before I wrote a single post.  I guess that makes sense given that I write code for a living, but in truth you don’t need to do any of this quite yet.  Your best option is to simply lean on good ole WordPress.org or Blogger.com rather than to try and do the self hosting thing right out of the gate.  I lean heavily towards WordPress simply because you have a lot more options for if you decide to transition to self hosted at a later date.  Technically you can do the same thing with Blogger but the process is less seamless and from what I have read in “how to” articles way more hassle than the other option.  There is of course Tumblr as an option, but you are exposing yourself to a way more problematic community right out of the gate than I would suggest for any fledgling blogger.

You’ll Need Readers

Now for the hard part…  you’ve named yourself and set up a site…  now you need to hang out yours “open for business” sign and wait.  This is the part of the equation that can drive you completely insane when you realize that no one is actually reading what you are writing.  This is going to happen to everyone, but the positive of starting a blog during this month means that the other bloggers are going to at least help try and get you started.  Self promotion is one of those things that I am particularly bad at.  In theory you want to put your blog in front of as many eyeballs as you can, which means syndicating it to pretty much all of the available options.  I syndicate my posts each day to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Google Plus… and this is essentially like casting a net out into the water.  If you get a nibble more than likely folks will add your blog to their RSS feed and be done with it… and then you have a potential reader for life.  That is unless you do something so horrific as to cause them to go through the effort of actually removing a blog.  For me at least… once a blog makes it to my RSS feed I am pretty much going to read them forever.

The problem is… your stats will always seem insignificant.  You can drive yourself completely mad looking at them for too long when you watch as this post that you spent five minutes on got ten times the readers than that gem you spent several days on.  Amassing regular readers is a bit of a waiting game, but I will say that there are a few factors that seem to factor in.  Firstly you need to have some sort of a schedule.  Since taking my recent breaks my readership has gone to shit, but previously when I was doing the post every single day thing I had a fairly steady stream of readers each and every day.  Secondly you have to give them something interesting to read, and this can come from several different directions.  My personal theory is that if someone is going to read you for long one of two things are going to be happening.  Either you are posting such a wealth of information about a very specific subject as to turn yourself into the “resource” for that community, or they are sticking around because they care about you as a person.  I’ve tended to focus on the second part of that statement, and as a result have shared some super personal information with my readers.  It sometimes works, but ultimately you are going to have to figure out the points that work for you.  The problem with giving blogging advice is no two blogs are the same… nor do they even have the same goals.  We can throw information at you, but you will have to figure out which bits are relevant to you.

 

I wish you luck and look forward to reading your blog

Bel