A Man For All Seasons (1966)
Contemporary viewer’s may be perplexed by a film such as A Man For All Seasons. Why make a two our motion picture about a Tudor lawyer, statesman and scholar and their subsequent moral objection to the reigning monarchs marital status? Yet, during the sixties, it was entirely possible for a mainstream studio to produce a film based upon a stage play that dramatised such specific historical events. Furthermore, a film like this that relied upon strong performances and an intelligent script (and little more) could find a mainstream audience and be both a critical and commercial success. Nowadays, such productions still exist but they are now mainly the province of streaming services. Furthermore, the cinematic format has been replaced by that of a high budget TV show, which explores the topic at hand over an eight to ten hour running time.
Contemporary viewer’s may be perplexed by a film such as A Man For All Seasons. Why make a two our motion picture about a Tudor lawyer, statesman and scholar and their subsequent moral objection to the reigning monarchs marital status? Yet, during the sixties, it was entirely possible for a mainstream studio to produce a film based upon a stage play that dramatised such specific historical events. Furthermore, a film like this that relied upon strong performances and an intelligent script (and little more) could find a mainstream audience and be both a critical and commercial success. Nowadays, such productions still exist but they are now mainly the province of streaming services. Furthermore, the cinematic format has been replaced by that of a high budget TV show, which explores the topic at hand over an eight to ten hour running time.
Directed by Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, From Here to Eternity) and adapted by Robert Bolt from his own play, A Man For All Seasons explores Sir Thomas More’s relationship with King Henry VIII at the time of the monarch’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and remarriage to Anne Boleyn. A devout Roman Catholic, Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield) has a crisis of conscience regarding the legality of the divorce and the subsequent break with the Church of Rome. The King (Robert Shaw) holds More in high regard and does not want to compel him to support his position, preferring that his public approval is given freely. Sadly it is not, leading to More risking his liberty and safety on a matter of principle. The screenplay is articulate and intelligent, placing great weight upon the importance of spiritual peril. The fate of one’s immortal soul was far from a trivial concern in Tudor England. There was no separation of church and state at the time and religion was an integral part of every aspect of life.
A Man For All Seasons is filled with outstanding British actors of the time, such as Leo McKern, Dame Wendy Hiller, Nigel Davenport and Susannah York. A young John Hurt makes his mark as the career driven Richard Rich. But it is Paul Scofield who dominates the proceedings as a man of principle trying to steer a fateful course without betraying his values. His failure to accommodate the political imperatives of the time is both laudable and tragic. His performance is poignant and dignified. The film is very much an exploration of the concept of identity and personal integrity. Director Fred Zinnemann wisely eliminates some of the Brechtian elements of the play, focusing on a more linear narrative and traditional presentation. He also skilfully uses historical locations in Oxfordshire and Hampshire to double for Hampton Court Palace and Parliament.
The film does make several changes to historical events as a means of providing the story with a more conventional cinematic arc. The screenplay features a more detailed backstory with regard to Richard Rich (John Hurt), the solicitor-general and his prior association with More. However, the nature of Rich’s perjury during More’s trial is in accord with historians’ consensus on events. The film stresses the point that Rich has accommodated Thomas Cromwell, the King’s most senior minister, and has been subsequently made attorney-general of Wales. This prompts a pithy retort from More “Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world, but for Wales”? Robert Bolts liberally peppers the script with similarly acerbic, yet erudite exchanges. It is one of the major elements that gives such a straightforward plot its weight and gravitas.
A Man For All Seasons is a well honed, efficient historical drama and thoughtful exploration of the frequent incompatibility of personal moral rectitude with any sort of long established political institution. Be it the Church or the monarchy. At the start of the film Cardinal Wolsey (Orson Welles) regrets he did not serve God as well as he served his king. Sir Thomas More, on the other hand, states before his execution that he remains “His majesty's good servant...but God's first”. It is a most thought provoking juxtaposition. The film also stands as a masterclass in acting and remains a textbook example of the art of writing a good screenplay. A Man For All Seasons went on to win six Academy Awards at a time when such awards were still credible and relevant. It is also worth noting that it was the sixth highest grossing film in North America in 1966.
Contemporary viewer’s may be perplexed by a film such as A Man For All Seasons. Why make a two our motion picture about a Tudor lawyer, statesman and scholar and their subsequent moral objection to the reigning monarchs marital status? Yet, during the sixties, it was entirely possible for a mainstream studio to produce a film based upon a stage play that dramatised such specific historical events. Furthermore, a film like this that relied upon strong performances and an intelligent script (and little more) could find a mainstream audience and be both a critical and commercial success. Nowadays, such productions still exist but they are now mainly the province of streaming services. Furthermore, the cinematic format has been replaced by that of a high budget TV show, which explores the topic at hand over an eight to ten hour running time.
Set in Brazil in 1901, plantation owner Christopher Leiningen (Charlton Heston) makes arrangements to get married. He has spent his entire life building his estate and reclaiming land from the jungle. He is fiercely independent but he is also alone and isolated. Joanna Selby (Eleanor Parker) from New Orleans agrees to marry him but their first meeting does not go well. Leiningen is unhappy to discover that Joanna is a widow and hence has a past, so he tells her to return to America on the next available boat. However, local commissioner (William Conrad) informs Leiningen that swarming soldier ants, or Marabunta, are moving towards his plantation destroying everything in their path. Leiningen refuses to abandon his life’s work and is surprised when Joanna decides to stay with him. Can they convince their native workers to stay too and can they defend the estate from the Marabunta, described as “forty square miles of agonising death”.
Millionaire businessman Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) arranges for four men to steal $2,660,527.62 from a Boston bank. The men, who have never met before or seen Crown, successfully carry out the robbery. A fifth man then transports the stolen money and dumps it in a cemetery trash can. Crown retrieves the money, flies to Geneva and deposits it in a Swiss bank account. Eddy Malone (Paul Burke), the Boston police detective in charge of the case makes no progress until the bank’s insurance company assigns him one of their top investigators, Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway). Anderson thinks like a thief and works based upon her instincts. Looking through the evidence, she deduces that Crown is the culprit, potentially committing crimes just for amusement. Anderson subsequently meets Crown socially. Despite the situation and their respective positions, they are immediately attracted to each other and begin a relationship.
Writing a review of Apocalypse Now is a somewhat redundant exercise, unless you have never seen the any of the previous versions of the movie, or your analysis is offering a unique and wholly original perspective. It is one of the most scrutinised, dissected and studied films in the history of cinema. Furthermore, the stories associated with the films tumultuous production have become as equally legendary as the movie itself. There is as much apocrypha associated with Apocalypse Now as there are legitimate anecdotes. In many respects the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, which was shot during the films production, is equally as fascinating as the iconic movie. So with all this in mind, I will simply try to succinctly summarise my thoughts on this third version of Francis Ford Coppola’s magnum opus, which has been officially labelled “Final Cut” by the director.
When I first saw Throne of Blood as a teenager I was ill in bed with a fever. I found the brooding atmosphere and the use of fog, very hypnotic and was never quite sure if this ethereal quality was down to my state of health or the way the film had been crafted. Subsequent viewings have established that the dream like aspect of the film is indeed due to the creative talents of it's great director. Akira Kurosawa remains the best-known Japanese director to Western audiences, while other luminaries, such as Mikio Naruse, Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi, are known mainly to aficionados and scholars of cinema. Kurosawa’s work maintains a critical consensus, although he was at one point rejected in his native country for being too entrenched in obsolete traditions and themes. On a technical level his film making credentials remain unparalleled and in many ways, Throne of Blood is a text book example of his style and technique.
In a recent blog post I wrote about the difficulty that you can encounter sometimes when trying to watch movies that have been deemed “classic” by popular consensus. I listed 10 films of note that I intend to watch this year and to see if my views aligned with the various institutions and critics that praise them. The first on that list was the iconic sixties thriller Bullitt starring Steve McQueen. Having now watched the movie, I thought it would be prudent to collate my thoughts on it. Considering the immense amount of material that has already been written about it, I see no reason to present a review per se. Rather, here are my initial impressions for consideration. I’ve tried to highlight some specific aspects of the film that I think are of note or merit debate.
Let us take a moment to consider those movie lists you often come across on websites and in magazines. Why? Because there’s a lot of them about. You know the sort, one hundred movies that you must see before you go senile, according to some well-known critic or august institution like the BFI. Or if you prefer something more hip and eclectic then here’s another one collated by British filmmaker Edgar Wright. Furthermore, these lists are often somewhat homogeneous, containing a mixture of bonafide yet ubiquitous classics, a percentage of obscure arty-farty bollocks and a few wild cards that they put in for a laugh. These will be either so-called cult movies or examples from the “it’s so bad, it’s good” school of film making.
"2001: A Space Odyssey. Stanley Kubrick’s philosophically ambitious, technically innovative and visually stunning cinematic milestone". BFI November 2014.
You will often find this sort of language associated with Kubrick's work, especially 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is considered by many to be his finest production and one of the greatest science fiction feature films ever made. In fact 2001: A Space Odyssey has become one of those cinematic sacred cows that regularly features in most film buffs top ten movies of all time. It's a curious thing because a little research will show that critical opinion was split right down the middle on its release in spring 1968. It is only over the course of the last five decades that the movie has grown in artistic stature and garnered the acclaim it now enjoys.
Following the 2012 restored release of The Curse of Frankenstein, Hammer, Icon Film Distribution and Lionsgate jointly produced a Blu-ray restoration of another British classic. This time it was the 1958 version of Dracula directed by Terence Fisher. This is one of Hammer's finest films and not only gets a superb High Definition transfer but also sees the restoration of two lost scenes. Dracula literally re-invented the horror genre and the depiction of vampires in film. It also established the studio as a key player within the industry and made international stars of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. This new restoration finally does justice to the source material presenting it as it deserves to be seen.
El Dorado opens with a montage of paintings by celebrated Western artists Olaf Weighorst. These beautiful pictures in many ways reflect the nature of the movie, depicting a stylised representation of the Old West that despite its beauty, never really existed. Director Howard Hawks includes every possible genre trope and meme into El Dorado but far from being a handicap, it makes the movie a perfect distillation of Hollywood Western. The pairing of John Wayne and Robert Mitchum is sublime as the two effortlessly riff off each other. If you need an example of how the Western is the most flexible and accessible movie genre, then El Dorado is a text book example.
Ride Off Into the Sunset
“At some point, KTR and other MMO blogs mostly drifted from being MMO blogs. Some have remained pure, I am sure, but we became online gaming blogs, gaming blogs, online culture blogs, general blogs. And we gradually trailed off”. Zubon. Kill Ten Rats. And so another MMO blogger who has been part of the community “furniture” for years, decides that they’ve said everything they can upon the subject and that it’s time to move on. It’s a familiar story, one that I totally understand and can identify with. Passion waxes and wanes, scenes change, as do people. There comes a point where you don’t feel there’s anything left else to discuss or whether anyone is actually listening, except in Zubon’s case they definitely were. It’s always a shame to see a community stalwart go, but nothing remains the same forever.
“At some point, KTR and other MMO blogs mostly drifted from being MMO blogs. Some have remained pure, I am sure, but we became online gaming blogs, gaming blogs, online culture blogs, general blogs. And we gradually trailed off”. Zubon. Kill Ten Rats. And so another MMO blogger who has been part of the community “furniture” for years, decides that they’ve said everything they can upon the subject and that it’s time to move on. It’s a familiar story, one that I totally understand and can identify with. Passion waxes and wanes, scenes change, as do people. There comes a point where you don’t feel there’s anything left else to discuss or whether anyone is actually listening, except in Zubon’s case they definitely were. It’s always a shame to see a community stalwart go, but nothing remains the same forever.
As I said to Scormey recently, “there's a list of fellow bloggers, You Tubers and members of the MMO commentariat, that I regularly check to see that they're still in business”. All of whom have been contributing to the gaming community for many a year. I consider all of them to be of great value, even though many of them are focused upon games I may not play. A sense of shared fandom helps bind this lose cabal of content creators together and feeds into a wider community. Broadly it is a measured, thoughtful and friendly enclave, something that is not so common in gaming these days. Therefore it is reassuring to see it endure and know that it is still out there doing its thing. Naturally when a long-term member “retires” is does make me wonder as to the longevity of this community.
Yet events such as The Newbie Blogger Initiative and Blaugust Reborn still attract new content creators and despite the inevitable churn, fresh blood and new perspectives continue to join the community. This influx keeps the torch burning for MMOs and other genres of games. Although I can’t see a return to the halcyon days of MMO blogging of a decade plus ago, it is pleasant and dare I even say comforting to see sixty odd active blogs in my RSS Feed. Every day I still find lengthy, interesting, passion fuelled posts to read. There are also plenty of solid You Tube channels to enjoy as well as some entertaining and consistent streamers to follow. All of which are created and maintained through the good will of fans. This remains something for which I and others are very grateful.
It is obligatory to start these sorts of posts by reiterating the standard mantra that you should not be driven by your websites stats and that the data they contain can be unreliable. Although a sound philosophy in principle, it is actually more nuanced than that. Such data can be useful for growth if used wisely. I have never been coy about trying to increase my readership. For me it seems an integral aspect of blogging. Over the course of 2026, the traffic to Contains Moderate Peril has doubled. A lot of that is down to curious spikes in visits which seems to be AI scraping the entire site. Setting aside these anomalies, more people are reading posts and a lot are doing so via the site’s RSS feed. All of which is fine by me as growing the audience for this blog was a goal for this year, I am quite pleased by this development and the ongoing progress. I hope it continues.
There is a subtle difference between being rash and being proactive. Being rash means acting too fast without thinking about the results, while being proactive is a question of acting early with careful planning. Why have I mentioned this? Well prima facie information indicates that recent Blaugust participants are interested in an “official” online presence for the annual festival of blogging, other than that existing Discord server. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not everyone likes using Discord and I do worry that they may reduce its free functionality at some point in the future. With regard to there being a Blaugust platform of some kind, there is a consensus that it doesn’t need to be some sort of sprawling commercially hosted website running on Wix or such like. Those sorts of site require funding, a degree of admin and possibly private data management. It also a bit too “corporate” if you like. Hence the logical compromise is to have a static site. Let it suffice to say, that has been done.
Judging by the posts I’ve read, it would appear that Blaugust 2026: Festival of Blogging has been well received by those who participated in it. That is most satisfying to know, especially in light of the fact that this is the first year the event has been run without our founder who sadly past away in July. It has also become clear that Blaugust is reaching a far wider and diverse audience and most definitely is no longer the exclusive province of bloggers from one particular community. There has been healthy discussions on our Discord server about whether this year event needs to adapt to accommodate the modern blogosphere. Questions such as whether or not there needs to be a dedicated Blaugust website have been raised and explored. Should every site participating have an RSS feed? How, if required, should comments be handled. Inevitably, the subject of the use of AI in blogging still remains a controversial issue.
After a very productive month of writing, we come to the final Blaugust 2026 Group Project writing prompt. It is titled lessons learned and is usually a chance to reflect on the festival and whether or not it has been to one’s satisfaction. Have you achieved your goals? What have you gained from the experience? Those sorts of things. It also poses two further questions; “What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?” and “what’s the best advice you’ve ever given to someone else?” for your consideration. I’ll address the questions shortly. Firstly let’s mull over this years event and assess how it’s gone.
It was my blogging anniversary on the 16th August. I’ve been writing and sharing my post online for 19 years, via various different websites and blogs. This current iteration of Contains Moderate Peril has been around since August 2015. To date it has 2,171 posts including this one. Quantity does not necessarily equate to quality but there are some articles I am proud of and feel that they make their point effectively.
This week’s Blaugust 2026 Group Project writing prompt is an important topic. Namely, staying motivated. I prepared a fairly lengthy post with some advice and ideas to keep people focused and writing. Then I checked it against the post I wrote last year and the year before that, going back to blogging events from 2012. All of these posts broadly said the same thing, so I decided to scrap what I had composed for today and to go with a simpler approach. I shall answer the questions Krikket posed for this writing prompt. Fellow blogger Bhagpuss has also done so and as ever, his thoughts are interesting and well expressed. Here are my answers.
Once again, I have stumbled across an interesting debate that has provided me with an opportunity to write a blog post. Over on the Blaugust Discord Server, I read a comment from AgingGamer regarding RSS feeds and their significance with regard to blogging. This in turn referred me to a post by fyr (don’t you love all these nom de plumes) who wrote at depth about the ongoing community debate about the use of RSS/Atom feeds. The article explored the importance of such feeds with regard to reaching readers and providing accessibility to the disabled. All of which provided me with a great deal of food for thought. Mainly because I use a mainstream website service provider for my online endeavours, so RSS is by default built. I’ve never really considered not having such a facility at my disposal. But the rise in the IndieWeb scene challenges this assumption.
I have written two blog posts today that I have subsequently abandoned. The first was gaming related but when I was about halfway through writing it, I felt like I was covering old ground and just repeating myself. It was also regarding an issue that can’t really be fixed. Namely, how do you ensure that matchmaking in PVP games is done equitably. As there is no solution to this issue at present, or at least not one that all parties can agree on, I decided to ditch it. Similarly a post I was working on about what becomes of my blog if anything happens to me was curtailed. In light of recent events in our community it seemed inappropriate. However, as a result of binning two blog posts, I new idea occurred to me. Do my fellow bloggers self-edit and curtail what they write about? Is your blog totally unfiltered or do you apply a set of rules that determine what content is deemed acceptable?
It is time for the next Blaugust 2026 Group Project writing prompt. This one comes with two lines of enquiry. The first is an opportunity to “introduce yourself”. Over the years, I have written several introductory posts for previous Blaugust events. Rather than repeat myself I’ll just link to the last one, which was posted in August 2023. I haven’t radically charged since then apart from my hair going whiter. The next part of the prompt poses a far more intriguing question. “If you could have one magical power or super power, what would you choose and what would you use it for?”, which offers much for consideration. Having given this proposition much thought here is my response.
A decade ago I wrote a post about blogrolls and the practical and social issues surrounding them. At the time, the version of Squarespace I was using didn’t easily support such things or at least wasn’t able to do so in a manner I liked, so I didn’t have one. Ten years later Squarespace as a hosting platform has far greater functionality, hence I recently decided to add a blogroll. That was in March this year. However it just wasn’t really fit for purpose. So I decided to revise it a few days ago and rather than just have a traditional list of blogs in a side column, I ended up producing a more comprehensive blog directory, which list two hundred plus sites alpha-numerically. I’ve been tinkering with it on and off and I am now finally happy with it. The latest update reflects the international nature of the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging and the fact that we have many blogs written in their native language. Translating text is now an integral function of web browsers, so I see no reason why these blogs should be excluded.
Today’s post is part of the Blaugust 2026 Group project, which features a series of writing prompts set for specific dates throughout the month. The idea being that everyone who wishes to participate can write about the same subject, riff off each other’s posts and enjoy a shared experience. In many respect having a common writing prompt levels the playing field and provides a sense of common purpose among those who take part. Today’s group project prompt asks the question “tell us all about your very first blog”. An unambiguous and interesting question that will hopefully prove enjoyable to write about and informative to others.
I have been writing online for nearly two decades. I don’t claim to be good or accomplished but what I can say with certainty is that the more often you write, the easier it becomes. For those who are new to writing a blog and the Blaugust Festival of Blogging, possibly the biggest hurdle that you now have to get over, is writing your first post of the month. You spent the lead up to this event sorting out your blog templates, fine tuning the backend and possibly banking some ideas. Or you may have decided to just wing it and make it all up as you go along. Both are perfectly valid approaches. However, there is one thing left to do that cannot be put off, avoided or danced around. Writing. At some point you’ve got to do it. Or bail on the event. The proverbial “shit or get off the pot”.
If you take a cursory look at a calendar you will see that the month of July is fast coming to an end. That means that Blaugust 2026 Festival of Blogging starts in a few days time! If you’re participating, or thinking of doing so, the next few days present a golden opportunity to do some practical organising and basic preparation. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Feel free to just do things as they come, so to speak, if that’s your approach. However, for most of us, it helps if we have some kind of plan in place and make some arrangements in advance. I personally prefer this approach and like to have some ideas for blog posts in the bank. It is also useful to have “options” if something doesn’t go to plan. For those who are new to Blaugust, here are a few ideas regarding preparation that may be of use to you. As ever, your personal mileage may vary and ultimately you are best off adopting a strategy that suits your writing style and personal schedule.
Prior to last year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging, I upgraded Contains Moderate Peril to the latest version of Squarespace. There are still some aspects of the site that need fine tuning but overall, I am happy with the appearance of my blog and its respective functionality. With this year’s writing event fast approach, I decided to tackle over the last few days, some of those finer points that need tweaking. I have wanted a post counter on the site for a long time but unfortunately there is no native Squarespace widget for this basic function. I also felt the need to upgrade the blogroll, as the current one didn’t support RSS feeds from certain sites (e.g. Google Blogger) and was dependent upon a third party service, Elfsight, which wasn’t ideal. Both of these issues have now been addressed and I am pleased with the results. There is now a post counter on the Blog Archive page, which seems a logical place to have it and the Blogroll is now far more comprehensive.
Next month the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging begins. Roundabout this time each year, I try to write a promotional post to raise awareness of the event and encourage potential participants. However, as I’ve done this quite a few times before, each year it is becomes increasingly difficult to present the essential facts about Blaugust: Festival of Blogging in an interesting fashion. There’s nothing worse than writing a post and feeling that you’re just covering old ground. So, this year, I thought I’d try something different and present the most important information about this annual event, as if it were a conversation between myself and an interested passer by. Feel free to attribute novelty voices for each party in your own head, while you read this. If it helps, try imagining that this discussion is happening between two celebrities or such like. Both may be wearing exotic hats but I digress. On with the scenario.
I read a blog post by Void recently, about finding a new internet home. He wrote about how he and many others have had to pick up their “digital roots” and migrate multiple times over the years, from one platform to another. It is a position I can sympathise with as I have done likewise. Hence I like the idea of having a place online where I hangout by default. My own blog is an anchor for me but it is not quite the same thing as a platform or online portal where I can find all my friends and colleagues, share content and shoot the breeze. It’s a curious thing, because as I typed that last sentence it struck how such a sentiment may seem alien to others. There may well be people who like to have a finger in multiple pies and who are happy to frequent and flit between various social media apps, Discord servers and subreddits. I prefer to focus my efforts on a single instance. A place that suits my requirements, allows me to put down roots and become part of the furniture. Like a virtual Diogenes Club.
Everyday, once I’m up, I sit at my desk in my office, fire up my PC and log into Feedly. I have various RSS feeds grouped by category, which I slowly trawl through and read anything that catches my eye. I have one curated feed named “Blaugust” named after the yearly festival of blogging event. It has over 250 blogs listed, many of which are former participants. Most of these regularly post. Hence there’s a lot to get through and so I don’t read all of them. However there are a few that I always checkout. Mainly because they’re the personal musings of some of our writing community’s oldest and most prodigious members. The sorts of guys and gals who are part of the furniture. They’ve always been there and it feels like they always will. Posting their thoughts, sharing their enthusiasm and spreading the love, so to speak. One of these blogs, is Tales of the Aggronaut. written by Belghast.
On Friday 26th June, I had another random spike in internet traffic to Contains Moderate Peril. The statistical package that comes with my Squarespace account recorded over 13k visits in less than 24 hours, which is not typical (although I wish it was). However, all of these visits to my blog arrived via the default homepage and spent between 1 and 2 minutes there. Hence, it was obvious that this was not human traffic, as there was no evidence of any searches being made of content that is available on my site, nor of the “visitors” clicking on any of the links on the top menu and viewing other posts. This was undoubtedly AI traffic arriving at the designated homepage and simply parsing the site. I had a similar spate of this sort of web traffic last November. The only difference on that occasion is that the traffic all came from China. This time round it hailed from the US. I suspect that this is something that will happen more often as companies set their AI loose on the net for what is effectively training.
I recently watched a video on Patreon by someone who I actively support as a “content creator” and whose work I enjoy. I shall provide no more detail regarding their identity because they may not want their work referenced with regard to what I am going to say. During the course of their video they briefly referenced the work put into promoting a podcast they are currently producing and the relatively low audience that it has garnered so far. The comments were an aside and most certainly not said with any sense of self-pity. They were simply a statement of fact. Furthermore, I suspect they are far from unique and similar sentiments have been expressed in one way or another by anyone who has created something the published it online, only for it to be lost among the greater white noise” of the wider internet.
When I first started blogging way back in 2007, I maintained a blogroll of all my colleagues and peers’ websites. At the time this was a common practice and a way to support an expanding community. I considered this such an important aspect of the blogging scene at the time, I created a website to aggregate posts from video game blogs, called The Gaming Blog Nexus. It ran for two years and proved quite useful. However, it was tricky to administer and would frequently break as a lot of the back end widgets and plugins were created and maintained by “gifted amateurs”. I eventually shut it down due to the operating costs. When I moved my own website, Contains Moderate Peril, to Squarespace in 2015 I intended to start maintaining a blogroll once again. However, at that time there was no native support for such a thing on the platform. Hence for the last ten years, I have not had a blogroll on my website, which hasn’t sat well with me.
I was speaking to someone recently about hobbies (fortunately it wasn’t Simon Quinlank) and I mentioned that I have maintained a blog for over a 19 years. When I talked about the ongoing cost they were most surprised, as they had assumed that blogging was something that could be done for free. I guess we’ve become so accustomed to the provision of free online services such as email, that this a reasonable assumption. I pointed out that although it is indeed possible to blog for free using Blogger, it was not the optimal approach, especially if you want to maintain some degree of control over your writing. Naturally, the next question they asked was how much do I spend and I gave them a ballpark figure. All of which reminded me that I wrote a post on this very subject a few years ago. So I’ve decided to revisit the subject and see how much it currently costs to maintain Contains Moderate Peril.
Today I started the slow process of auditing every post that has been published on Contains Moderate Peril since 1st August 2016. The goal is to correct any obvious typos and replace all existing images with larger ones. The Squarespace software upgrade I applied to the website at the end of last year has finally allowed me to establish a standard format that I am happy with. Hence the ongoing audit is the perfect opportunity to apply these style rules to all posts. There are also some technical issues and matters regarding functionality that need to be addressed. I need to determine how to embed YouTube videos in such a way that they automatically scale to fit whatever device is viewing them. Another area which needs improving is the website search facility. This needs refinement so that enquiries can be more specific. Older posts also need to be more accessible, although I am still researching how best to achieve this.
It’s nearly two and half months since the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event ended. During that time I’ve maintained a fairly regular writing schedule and I post every two days or so. Furthermore, I finally dragged my blog template, kicking and screaming, into the modern era. I tweaked a few pages and updated the content of the “about” page. The next task is to start going through all previous posts and replacing older, low resolution images with larger, more appropriate ones. This process also presents an opportunity to ensure that all posts follow a uniform style. IE Are appropriately categorised, have links to related posts at the bottom and are SEO optimised. This will be a lengthy task so I think the best approach will be to tackle two or three posts a day. Hopefully this will raise the profile of older content, which generates the lion’s hare of traffic to this site.
I use a browser extension called Control Panel for YouTube, which allows me to determine who many videos are displayed on my YouTube homepage and to filter the content that is shown. At present it is configured to display rows of six. Something that I have noticed of late, is the amount of videos with hyperbolic titles and thumbnail images created by AI. Both of which are design choices made to increase engagement. Clickbait titles are contrived to meet current SEO optimisation criteria and as such feature more and more in search results. The fact that they frequently have no relation to the subject I am researching, seems to be neither here nor there. The same issues arise with regard to AI generated images, which again frequently have no bearing on the matter. The fact that more and more content creators do this, infers that it works and is now an essential part of the process you must follow to be seen and featured in search results.
In the last post in this series, I specified the need for a plan with regard to upgrading my blog. Well a plan has emerged, been refined and has now been formally adopted. Rather than migrate Contains Moderate Peril to a new platform and effectively have to rebuild all the content, I am going to upgrade my existing presence on Squarespace. This decision was made for two reasons. Time and money. Migrating to a new platform will take a lot of time and incur additional costs. Upgrading the existing website will take less time and has no cost implications. That is not to say that it will be easy. It has become abundantly clear that the upgrade process will break stuff and that all published posts will have to be manually repaired. Hence my choice boils down to the lesser of two evils.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has reached an end and it would appear that this event has been well received by those who have participated in it. I believe that there were 168 bloggers taking part this year, many of whom have not participated before. Some were new to blogging, where others simply wished to see if they could increase their writing output. As ever there was a wide variety of blog styles and subject matters and it has been most interesting to read new posts every day. I have attempted to leave comments and positive feedback where I can and I hope that some of these new blogs that I’ve discovered continue to write. Well done to everyone who took part. I hope it has been an enjoyable and informative process and that you have learned from it. I know that at least one blogger has determined that writing online is not for them, which is a valuable lesson.
There is currently a group writing prompt available as part of this year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging which has piqued my interest. It asks the question “what is the oldest draft post you have” and suggests that it is revived in some manner. I have dozens of draft posts in a folder in my Google Drive. Many are film reviews or film related. The oldest of which dates back to summer 2010. Rather than write a straight forward review of Blake Edwards 1968 comedy The Party, I rather foolishly thought at the time that I’d tackle the issue of whether the film is sufficiently racist to make it beyond the pale. Let it suffice to say that I quickly found myself bogged down in the complexities of the subject and thus never completed the blog post.
I’ve participated in every previous Blaugust: Festival of Blogging event. Prior to that I was involved in the Newbie Blogger Initiative or NBI as it was affectionately known. I have therefore written quite a lot of blogging advice and suggestions over the years. If anyone feels disposed to do so, you can access them all by clicking on the “blogging” option on the top menu of this blog. However, it is important to remember that a lot of the ideas I have advocated and written about over the years are purely subjective. Not all advice or guidance works for everyone. People have different ideas about blogging, different approaches to it and different aspirations. This year has highlighted some quite distinct differences among bloggers which has been most illuminating.
Today is my blogging anniversary. I have been writing online consistently for 18 years. My earliest blogs no longer exist, although they can be found via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. My first blog was a Lord of the Rings Online fansite called Misadventures in LOTRO. After a while this morphed into a wider gaming website; Misadventures in Gaming. However, I soon discovered that I wanted to write about more than just video games, so I decided to start from scratch and created Contains Moderate Peril in February 2010. This blog endured and has been my main online presence ever since. It has moved several times for various reasons. For a while I had a sponsor, as well as a reasonably sized audience and had dreams of making money from my writing and podcast. But it wasn’t to be and now I just write primarily for my own peace of mind and amusement.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel has been adapted for cinema and television numerous times. Perhaps the most well known is the 1950 Disney version, starring Robert Newton as Long John Silver. His eye rolling performance and exaggerated West Country accent is credited with popularising the stereotypical form of “pirate speech" that has become the pop culture default. Although an enjoyable film, it does gloss over the more sinister aspects of both the source text and history, perpetuating the myth that pirates are just loveable scoundrels. Many subsequent adaptations have fallen into the same trap to a greater or lesser degree. However, that is not the case with the 1990 version of Treasure island, which was made for the TNT cable network and released theatrically outside of the US. This darker and notably more violent adaptation closely follows the source text and is widely considered the most faithful to the book.