Blaugust – Page 36

A Chill Blaugust

July 26, 2016 by Belghast

Over the last few weeks folks have been pinging me, asking if Blaugust would be returning. I feel like I have put off this post as long as I could possible do so. Originally I was planning on calling Blaugust this year because I simply did not have it in me. However when I finally got around to posting that statement… I had folks come out of the woodwork to suggest that the contest was cool and all, but not terribly essential to the concept of Blaugust for them. They also started brainstorming ways to make it less stressful for me personally. Essentially last year was a perfect storm of events that made Blaugust extremely hard. Firstly we had a truly irrationally large number of people participating jumping from 52 the first year to 88 the second year. There was a period of time that I thought we would be breaking 100. The thing is… for whatever reason I decided to make this thing a contest, with a win condition. That means that I needed to take the tallying of numbers and such super seriously, because I would ultimately be handing out rewards at the end of the journey. The only problem with that was that due to the participation and the large number of folks “winning” each year the concept of having a true single winner seemed super silly. As a result the last two years I have relied on a random number generation to finally pass out the prizes, and that felt somewhat icky. So this year we are rolling back to a previous revision in our magical source control system… and taking a stab at what the root of the idea really was.

Blogging on a Schedule

If you were to ask me what caused me to launch this thing in the first place, I am not sure if I could actually pin it down to a single thought. However I wanted Blaugust to be about posting blog content on a schedule. I went from being one of the least prolific bloggers to one of the most prolific in a matter of weeks when I embarked upon my “grand experiment” of blogging each and every morning. In truth it was madness that I would ever suggest that someone do the same. Ultimately this year I broke my streak on purpose just to have it done and buried and behind me. However I did manage to make it a little over three years without skipping a single day, and it is a feat that I am rather proud of. However the rhythm I have settled into as a result of posting every single week day also feels pretty great. Additionally it is far more manageable because at least for my wife and I.. the weekends are the only time we really have to do much of anything together. I can bang out a post in 30 minutes when I am under the gun of having to get to work on time, but for whatever reason my blog posts on Saturday and Sunday often times took hours. I tried a bunch of hacks to get around this, like having a reoccurring movie/television column, or a summary column that recounted the best highlights of what I did that week. However none of it felt really fresh or meaningful, and instead just superseded any planned activities that we might have wanted to do that weekend.

The core message of Blaugust has always been that blogging on a schedule is a good thing. My thought was by challenging people to blog every single day for a month, then when they decided to roll that back to every other day, or only week days… it wouldn’t seem near that daunting. For some this absolutely worked and Blaugust has seemed to make a lot of blogs more active. The only problem is it has the opposite effect as well… the challenge “broke” some people and they would go for months without making a post after the challenge wrapped up. This was absolutely an unintended consequence, and one that really bothered me from the very first year. The last thing I want to do is in some way bully people out of the blogosphere by setting up some sort of artificial gate. Additionally the whole concept of having winners bothered me as well. If you sit down and create a blog, and commit yourself to posting on it and baring your soul to the rest of us… you are a big winner in my book. Blogging is one of those things that gets in your blood, but it also takes a lot out of the person doing it. So everyone out there posting on their own blogs be it MMO Gaming, Cooking or Stamp Collecting… you are all awesome to me. So in this reboot we are no longer going to think of this as a contest, but instead a festival of sorts. I want to embrace the positives that the event can bring, without adding to the pressure everyone is already under when trying to do their own thing.

Blaugust 2016

So what we end up with is a Festival of Blogging on a Schedule. What schedule you intend to stick with is entirely up to you, and honestly even if you do keep a schedule at all. 2016 has been this year when a lot of bad stuff has happened around the world, and I don’t want my artificial contest to be something that adds stress to anyone. If you want to push yourself to blog every day, awesome. I will be watching and will be tabulating those folks at the end, with probably a special sidebar image that denotes that. However I am not putting any real prizes on the line this year. This is the year that we are doing this thing for the sake of doing it. I always got the impression that no one was really in this for the gold at the end of the rainbow… so I doubt this will make any real difference. However I am trying to de-escalate the stress of the event, and I think by no longer making it a contest that might help. The hope is that you will take this month and make your own content creation more active than it has been in the past months. That is it.. that is the ultimate goal to get folks out there creating more awesome content.

The Rules

There really is only one serious rule, and that is the sign-up sheet. If you are going to start participating in Blaugust 2016 please take a few minutes to fill out this Google Form. It doesn’t ask an awful lot but what it does is important. It asks for…

Name of Blog
URL of Blog
Schedule if you Plan on Sticking to One
Twitter Handle if you use it
How you Heard About Blaugust

That’s it, nice and simple. I will tabulate the results and keep some sort of sidebar or event page with the collected information on it.

The other thing that I would ask is if you post to twitter please use the hashtag #Blaugust2016 just as a way of making things easier for folks to see as they are posted.

Resources

There is the Blaugust Nook over on Anook, and it is a great place to ask questions and have conversations with other bloggers that are doing this thing. Twitter as well is also a great resource, and I know personally that is where I end up holding most of my conversations with other bloggers. As far as Discord that seems to be the popular thing to be doing right now… I would prefer not to start a brand new server just for this event since I already have like twenty servers in my app. There are a couple of ones devoted to blogging so going to be pestering the folks who run those to see if they mind sharing. Additionally for anyone wanting to see what has happened in previous years there is always the Blaugust Category on my own blog, which I have been more or less fairly decent about tagging related posts.

Back to the Roots

Personally I will be going back to posting every day during the month of August. That said I might be staging some of the content on Saturday and Sunday so that it posts in the morning, rather than getting up and doing them and thereby impeding whatever activities we have planned. Giving up Saturday and Sunday was a strange thing for me when I did it, and on some levels I think it was a positive effect. That said there are lots of times that I have events that happen on the weekend that it feels artificial to wait until Monday to talk about. For example the passing of my cat Chloe this weekend… happened Friday night, and by the time Monday rolled around posting about it just felt like ripping a barely formed scab off the wound that was trying to heal. So for the first time in the history of Blaugust me posting every single day won’t just be my default interaction. It is going to take work to get me back in the habit of doing it, so I will essentially be struggling with you all to up my game and make more interesting content. One last word that I want to leave you with… is while everything about this keeps saying Blog, I don’t want to limit any creative outlet. If you are a vlogger or if you do twitch lets plays, or honestly any form of regular content creation, I don’t want to exclude you from this “festival”. Please sign up and let us know what you are creating and where you are creating it, and while blog means something specific… in my mind any sort of regular content creation be it blog, vlog, stream, or podcast feels like blogging to me. Additionally this is not just an MMO or Gaming thing… if you are out there blogging about your own personal stuff or another completely different industry… I want you to know that you are welcome as well. This thing started as a part of the MMO Gaming community, because most of the other bloggers I knew… were MMO Gamers. Last year Blaugust expanded quite a bit, and I hope it will as well this year into new and interesting areas.

Blaugust Results

September 2, 2015 by Belghast

A Phenomenal Blaugust

The time has come and as I said in my original post this year, I would tabulate the results and post them on September 2nd. This month really was an absolute deluge of content, and there is really no other way to say about it. I know I personally struggled to keep up with it all. I have to say however one of the best moments for me was reading the many “last posts” of the challengers. They all seemed to have a theme of “this is what blaugust taught me” or “I am proud of myself that I survived”. Reading each of those was so amazing. As I remarked yesterday I feel like the bulk of the community is not quite sure if they want to give me a hug… or flip me the bird. It is interesting being both Hero and Villain at the same time. After reading the posts… I can be perfectly fine with either distinction because the end result was pretty awesome.

This year we had far greater participation, and I am still completely floored by it. In 2014 we had 52 folks participating, and of those 28 managed to “win” the challenge of posting something every single day. One of my frustrations however is that because of the way I was running the contest, it kept someone from joining late, playing catch up, and being eligible for the final prizes. This year I changed the guidelines to something I am much more happy with, which is simply getting thirty one posts during the month of August. We had a grand total of 88 folks who signed up and participated in the challenge, posting at least one blog post. From there I made a separate distinction to give folks some credit who at least made it to the half way mark with fifteen posts and in that group we had 76. The most impressive thing however is that we had 56 people who managed to complete thirty one posts during the month of August. For added benefit I also kept track of who happened to participate last year as well, and we had 24 who were returning. Without further stalling… here are the lists!

The Challengers

The thought of posting something every single day for a month is a scary prospect, so simply signing your name on the dotted line and participating is pretty awesome in my book. This list is folks that joined the Blaugust initiative and posted at least one blog post during the month of August. Some of them however got really damned close to the halfway point. So lets take a moment to recognize them. You have all earned the right to use this badge in whatever fashion you like! It is available in a full resolution version and a sized down version ideal for sidebars.

Of this batch, there is a group that I want to give special recognition to. These are folks that participated for the second year, and for them I have special versions of the badge also available in full resolution and sized down versions.

The Survivors

This year I made a special distinction for all of the folks that managed to make it through at least fifteen blog posts during the month of August. We had some folks in the group that barely crossed the line, and others that damned near hit the final mark. There were several that managed to hit fifteen only to decide that this daily blogging thing really was not for them. In any case posting essentially “every other day” for a month is quite the feat as well, and I wanted to acknowledge this separately. I’ve dubbed this group the survivors, and they have earned the right to use this badge and title in whatever form they wish. Once again it is available in both full resolution and scaled down versions.

Once again I wanted to recognize the folks who managed to “survive” the challenge this year that also participated last year, so we have a special badge for them available in full and scaled resolutions.

The Conquerors

I hate the term “winner” for a challenge like this, because it doesn’t really encompass the purpose. Just the simple fact that you signed up and made an effort to be more active and create more content makes you a winner in my book. So when I was looking for a new term, I decided to go with Conqueror, because really every person on this next list did just that. They conquered fear, they conquered apathy, they conquered doubt, and they conquered Blaugust. I am so irrationally proud of every person on this list that I struggle to put it adequately into words. Once again they have a badge available in both full and scaled resolutions.

Once again we have a special group of Conquerors that returned from winning the previous year, to kick this one in the face. I find it pretty awesome that 13 of the 28 “winners” from 2014 returned. I feel like I also need to give special recognition to the Mystical Mesmer who managed to complete Blaugust on two completely different blogs this year. If that is not a microphone drop… I am not sure what is. Regardless this group also has their own special veteran badge in full and scaled resolutions.

The Prizes

So now that all of the acknowledgement is out of the way… lets talk prizes. Since not everyone that crosses the finish line can actually win the grand prize, we have to unfortunately rely on random chance. Last year I struggled with figuring out a good way to do this, and as a result this year I just wrote my own damned dice roller. This allowed me to type in the number of folks who managed to get thirty one posts during the month of August, hit the big Roll the Dice button and get an output stream with one result per line perfect for pasting into a spreadsheet. I sorted the thirty one club alphabetically and then pasted all of my results in a new column. If you are curious what the final numbers looked like, I am working off of this spreadsheet as a award prizes.

There was a slight monkey wrench thrown in my original plans as to how to give out awards. This was a good monkey wrench in the form of a bunch of prizes from Kings Isle entertainment. This actually gave me more “big prizes” to spread around which was really awesome as they gave me three prize packs from Wizard 101 and three from Pirate 101. Sometimes random chance is serendipitous. I had said from the very beginning that I would purchase a steam game for whoever managed to get the grand prize. It turns out… today is the birthday of this years winner. The dice were in the favor of Paeroka from Nerdy Bookahs. For winning the random number generator she got a Steam game of her choice… and she chose Valhalla Hills. Additionally since Kings Isle was so damned cool to chip in prizes, I also gave her one of the Wizard 101 and Pirate 101 packs.

That left me four more codes to hand out… so starting last night I messaged folks and had them give me their preference of Wizard 101 or Pirate 101. The next four in line were…

@knifesedgegames – Wizard 101 Code
@BaneFalcon – Pirate 101 Code
@Hidden_Wings – Wizard 101 Code
@Jasyla_ – Pirate 101 Code

The Prize Closet

Since we had so damned many people manage to complete the challenge, I am going to try and give out as many prizes as I can. I have a stack of various game codes largely left over from humble bundles gone by. I have a spreadsheet that I am starting to circulate down the list of folks who managed to “conquer” Blaugust. I may not have enough codes to get through everyone, but I am going to try! So expect in the next few days to get a private message from me with a link, asking you to tag one of them items with your name. This was a pretty crazy month, and I want to thank all of you for participating. Next year I am going to start planning significantly ahead of time and am hoping to get more game companies to chip in goodies for the prize vault. I know at this point you are saying “What about Anook?”. Lonrem was up late last night tabulating the results, and since that prize is based on community participation on Anook I will be letting them make their own announcement. I am really happy that they have been so supportive of us essentially taking over a chunk of their website during the month of August. Blaugust will return next year and hopefully be even bigger than before!

Blaugust No More

September 1, 2015 by Thalen

The day has come, the month has ended, Blaugust has run its course. This was my second year participating, and on the whole I think it went very well. Last year I often found myself desperately trying to come up with a blog post at the very end of the day; this year I only posted in the late evening once, and most days I had my post written the previous night and scheduled to go live in the morning for prime 'I should be working but I'm looking at blogs' viewing.

Of course, it could always be worse

Coming up with a couple of ongoing weekly features has been a huge help this time around. Knowing that my topics for Saturday and Monday are already set and being able to work on them ahead of time (not that I'm very good at doing that) makes an incredible amount of difference. Not only that, it means I've got a regular set of content that I need to add to and which may serve as interesting back-reading for any new readers I pick up.

Readership was definitely up over the month (though given my lack of posts in previous months that's not necessarily saying much). Having folks comment on posts here and there made an amazing difference too; it's always nice knowing your writing is being read. As much as I'm ultimately writing for myself, I wouldn't do it in a public manner if I didn't want to share.

Ultimately, where last year at this time I was feeling burned out on blogging, this year I'm feeling energized about the whole process. I've still got ideas coming, and I've got cool books and D&D adventures to write about for years. I might end up backing down to a lighter schedule, but for right now I'm sticking with every day. Here's to another month of blogging!

Paragon Levels with Friends

September 1, 2015 by Belghast

Blaugust Administrata

Blaugust is officially over… I mean it… put your pencils down and turn in your papers. Now begins the fun part of actually attempting to “grade”, and by that I mean tabulate the results. I started doing this yesterday afternoon with some of the early finishers, and if everyone that was a day away crossed that finish line… we have a pretty huge bunch of winners. Equally impressive as of yesterday we had 76 “Survivors” meaning that during the course of the month they managed to get in at least fifteen posts. Mostly I wanted to say a little bit this morning about just how proud I am of everyone who attempted any length of posts this month. The concept of daily posting is rather daunting and there are still days where I question my sanity as I plunk away at the keys each morning trying to make sense of the jumble of thoughts in my head. So while I will be terming people as “winning” the challenge you are all winners in my book even if you didn’t make it to fifteen posts.

My goal all along has been to get more people creating more content about the things they love doing. After a point folks stop caring so much about what you are writing, and focus in on the fact that it is YOU behind the screen that is writing it. The whole idea behind Blaugust is if you can prove to yourself that you can churn out thirty one posts in a single month… then posting a handful of posts every week on a fixed schedule is really not that terribly daunting. Whether or not they realize it, people crave consistency. I started this blog with a decent boost of readers, but over the years of my lack of posting… I pretty much pissed all of those regular readers away. When I became consistent, folks started tuning in every morning to read all of these seemingly useless thoughts I was dumping out of my head… and apparently enjoying it. Today is my day for calculations, but I wanted to close Blaugust with one thought. Don’t let Blaugust be this marathon that you run once a year and then stick back on the shelf until the next year. Let Blaugust be a spirit that you embrace every day, and an excuse to create regular posts throughout the year.

Boys Will Be Boys

First off I have to say that I have always hated this phrase… but sometimes it absolutely fits. Last night I talked to my mom on the phone, because it had been a few days since I had called my folks. They have had to deal with the fallout of a flood in one of the bathrooms, and this weekend they got into my childhood bedroom. My closet backed up to the bathroom so it was a assumed that pretty much everything in it would be ruined. The funny thing is… my Mom expected me to remember what I had in my closet over two decades ago. Luckily it seems that for the most part all of my comic books, and various sundry cards that I never bothered to “move out” were left untouched. Apparently some plywood seems to have wicked up the bulk of the water that made it through to the closet. As she was pulling stuff out of the closet she kept stopping and asking my dad what various things were. Then she got to an item that threw her for a loop.

I was a little skater kid, and there was a phase in my life where everything that mattered about anything… was skateboard related. She pulled out this baseball bat that was scrawled with all sorts of skater terminology and logos in a combination of sharpie and paint pen. She wanted to know why this bat was all scarred like it had been hitting concrete and “defaced” in such a way. My Dad just said that it looked like “little boys were playing”. So I had to explain to my mother what the bat was used for. We used to go to the tennis court with our skateboards, as much padding as we had, and baseball bats. My friend and I would ride towards each other, each of us on one side of the tennis net like we were “jousting”. At which point we would put as much padding on our left arms as we could and use the right arm to swing the baseball bat at the other person. The goal of course was to knock the other person off their skateboard and the padding was in a vague attempt to block the blows. It is a miracle we didn’t do serious harm to each other. This apparently did not phase my father, because it turns out his childhood friend and he would fire arrows at each other from recurve bows… so I guess in the grand scheme of things getting beaned with a baseball bat doesn’t seem that dangerous?

Paragon Levels with Friends

Since a good chunk of our raid was still doing the whole Pax Prime thing, we were not able to put in any attempts on Ravana Extreme last night. Instead I spent a good chunk of time fiddling with Bitdefender and ultimately uninstalling it. I guess I should have known better when my good friend Wulf struggled to keep it from blocking the Final Fantasy XIV game client, but I went ahead and gave it a shot. This time around it was the Glyph client for Trion Worlds that I could not get it to unblock. I finally uninstalled it and went back to AVG because at least I am used to it. That of course killed an hour, so by the time I finally logged into Diablo 3 it was fairly late in the evening. Grace was already hard at work doing rifts and such so I joined her until she left to go eat dinner. Then there was a block of time when the server was rebooted and patched, and I could not get reconnected to save my life. All the while I am watching The Strain on Hulu, which is a show I would absolutely suggest if you like Horror. The added benefit is you get to see Argus Filch playing a Van Helsing like badass… and yes I know the actors name is David Bradley but he will always be Filch to me.

The big take away of the evening is that we managed to get Mor to 70 on his Crusader, and I managed to get up to 47ish Paragon levels before the end of the night. I still cannot deal anywhere close to as much damage as Grace can at this point so I feel like I need to do some research into how best to gear and spec out a Barbarian. I mean I do respectable damage but I think my gear just isn’t quite at the same level as hers. She is still absolutely carrying both of us hard when it comes to doing group content. Though last night I did manage to stay alive most of the time, I think I took two deaths throughout the night, which is significantly better than previous outings. We spent most of the night on Torment IV, and I can personally solo Torment I pretty effectively… it is just that bosses seem to take forever. I am not sure how long this current addiction to Diablo 3 will last, but for the time being I am rolling with it.