Preparing for Blaugust 2024
Because I have taken a nine month break from maintaining this blog, I thought it would be a good idea to give Contain Moderate Peril a makeover prior to Blaugust: Festival of Blogging commencing on 1st August. Initially I intended to outsource the work but the cost was prohibitive. So I made some changes to the existing blog template myself and had a new logo created via a designer from Fiverr. The changes are sufficient to quash my subconscious concerns and I am now in a position where I won’t obsess (too much) with the look and feel of the site. There is still some work to be done. I have to repost all previous instalments of “Walter Watches”” and ensure that the existing domain for that site points to its new home here. I also have to tweak the blog archive page, so that older content can be found easily. There are over a thousand posts published but it is immediately apparent.
Because I have taken a nine month break from maintaining this blog, I thought it would be a good idea to give Contain Moderate Peril a makeover prior to Blaugust: Festival of Blogging commencing on 1st August. Initially I intended to outsource the work but the cost was prohibitive. So I made some changes to the existing blog template myself and had a new logo created via a designer from Fiverr. The changes are sufficient to quash my subconscious concerns and I am now in a position where I won’t obsess (too much) with the look and feel of the site. There is still some work to be done. I have to repost all previous instalments of “Walter Watches”” and ensure that the existing domain for that site points to its new home here. I also have to tweak the blog archive page, so that older content can be found easily. There are over a thousand posts published but it is immediately apparent.
Although I often write “from the hip”, I also keep a lot of draft posts. Whenever I get an idea that I think may make a suitable blog post I make a note of it and then when I’m sitting at my desk, I create a new document via Google Drive. Some of the draft posts get developed and published quite quickly but others sit in development hell and never see the light of day. Today, I trawled through the drafts folder and expunged those proto-posts that I feel have missed the boat, are unsuitable or no longer interest me. I also added some new draft ideas that came from talking to other bloggers on the Blaugust Discord server. There’s also a lot of mileage in responding to someone else's blog post. It’s a great way of sharing ideas and highlighting other writers' blogs. It is also handy if you’re having one of those days where you’re running low on your own ideas.
Another preparation I made in getting ready for Blaugust was adding all the new participants of this year’s festival to Feedly. I currently have 177 blogs listed in this RSS aggregator but not all are maintained. Some have definitely gone to the wall, so at some point I need to prune them. However, that notwithstanding, it is pleasant and reassuring to see such a substantive quantity of blogs still active. I’m sure there will be more to add over the course of the forthcoming month, as Blaugust always attracts numerous late arrivals. I always try to trawl through Feedly each morning and see what’s new. During Blaugust I also endeavour to leave a comment on all participant blogs as a sign of solidarity and encouragement. I find that comments on my own posts are always a shot in the arm, as it means that at least a handful of people are reading my output. It’s nice to know that I’m not just shouting into the void.
Finally, in the lead up to Blaugust, the community Discord server has gotten busier. I appreciate that not everybody likes this medium but I find it most useful and agreeable. It is nice to meet new and returning bloggers, offer support and encouragement and just swap stories about our respective experiences when it comes to writing. Furthermore, we have a very diverse community who write about a multitude of different subjects. Hence group discussions can provide a wide variety of perspectives. I also find that the Discord server really does create a sense of community. For me that is what is at the heart of Blaugust. Encouraging writing by creating an online community. Hence I am looking forward to tomorrow’s start of this year’s festival of blogging. I hope all who are taking part enjoy the experience as well.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
I used WordPress as a website platform for 5 years. One of the things I used to like about it was the ability to track data and generate stats. However, I moved Contains Moderate Peril to Squarespace in 2015 for technical and financial reasons. I’ve been broadly happy with the results but there are a few niggles. Squarespace has a solid analytical package available which provides an adequate summary of website traffic. I can also determine what keywords have been used for searching the site and what posts are popular. However, basic information such as how many blog posts I’ve made over the last 9 years is conspicuously absent. I also have no obvious way of finding out what the average length of a blog post is or what the estimated reading time is.
When you initially start blogging, your aspirations tend to be very straightforward. Choose a title, find a niche and get into the habit of writing. Simple tasks that can still take a while to master. Once your blog is established and has endured for a while, you may not have any further long term goals other than to just keep going. However, if you feel that you want to achieve more then you have to tackle a new set of problems. There is a great deal of “advice” in the public domain about growing and monetising your blog. A lot of it is questionable but there are some approaches that do work. However, these require you to write to a specific process, chasing the ever changing whims of your potential readership. You have to compromise. And for many bloggers, that is the deal breaker.
Starting a Blog
I’m sure if I search through the various posts on blogging that I’ve written over the years, I’ll find one pretty much identical to this. But good advice bears repeating. Plus, as the years go by, there are more options available to new bloggers. So here’s some simple, straightforward and candid advice for those who are considering starting a blog. Some of it is universal and you’ll find similar tips on most sites about blogging. Others derive from my personal experiences of writing online over the last 17 years and being part of a community of bloggers. I do not claim to be an expert but I also do not see myself as a “noob”. My advice is exactly that. Advice. It’s purely optional and at the end of the day “you do you”.
I’m sure if I search through the various posts on blogging that I’ve written over the years, I’ll find one pretty much identical to this. But good advice bears repeating. Plus, as the years go by, there are more options available to new bloggers. So here’s some simple, straightforward and candid advice for those who are considering starting a blog. Some of it is universal and you’ll find similar tips on most sites about blogging. Others derive from my personal experiences of writing online over the last 17 years and being part of a community of bloggers. I do not claim to be an expert but I also do not see myself as a “noob”. My advice is exactly that. Advice. It’s purely optional and at the end of the day “you do you”.
First off, before you type a word or consider setting up a blog. Consider the following. A blog that is public can be read by others. It probably won’t get a lot of traffic to begin with but it is in the public domain. Also, nothing on the internet truly goes away. Deleted blogs persist. What I’m driving at is the very act of blogging requires you to put yourself out there. You are sharing of yourself and by dint of the fact that your blog is available to read, you are tacitly inviting people to interact with you, consider you and even judge you. If you are not comfortable with that, then don’t do it. I am not saying that the moment you publish your first post, you’ll receive a tsunami of abuse, co’s you won’t but you’re dealing with people on the internet, so there is scope for things to go south. So choose wisely as the Grail Knight said.
Decide in advance of blogging what you would like to write about, what your goals are and whether you are going to wing it or work to a schedule. These points are connected to a degree, so it helps to have a clear idea before you start. If you’re just writing for your own pleasure and to share your experiences, then a fancy name, specific niche and timetable are not required. If you have your heart set on being the definitive source online about Etruscan pottery, then you need to choose a title that is relevant and then write prodigiously about that subject to build up your audience. For many of us, we are writing mainly for enjoyment, so there aren’t too many big decisions to be made beforehand. But it doesn’t do any harm to consider your options before you begin.
Pick a means of blogging that suits your needs. I would suggest that you choose a free platform or one at least with a free tier of service to begin with. Don’t spend a penny on blogging until you know that it is for you. You can always upgrade and add fancy features at a later date. If you’re the sort of person who gets side tracked or obsessive over design issues, try a blogging service such as Bear or Blot. Both offer simple, plain and unadorned blogging so you can just write, publish and shake it all out. Too many bloggers (and I include myself in this category) will draft plans, fret over logos and templates, plan schedules and generally channel all their energy into the backend of their blog, only to find they have nothing left in the tank when it comes to writing.
Be honest with yourself about what you want from blogging. Many bloggers are not bothered about statistics and traffic. If you’re not then your blogging will be a lot happier. However, there is nothing wrong with wanting to grow an audience and obviously, if you have aspirations of monetisation then numbers and the size of your readership matter. It is a question of tempering your dreams and being realistic about expectations. Growth requires promotion and marketing, although regularly posting new material also helps with regard to Google ranking. SEO also has an impact, like it or not. For the people who are somewhere in between these two positions, it is nice sometimes just to know that your posts are being read by someone and positively received. But even that requires a degree of self promotion and the most obvious means is social media. Blogging communities such as the Blaugust Discord server are also very beneficial. Don’t forget to network.
Modern life is complex with multiple demands on our time. Work, family and real life take priority for obvious reasons. Therefore, you need to figure out when and where you can write. You also need to find a suitable writing environment, if possible. You know the kind. Free from distraction. Once you’ve sorted out a specific time and place to write, then you write. Sounds crass to even say that, doesn’t it? But it is the key to blogging, spookily enough. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, writer’s block as it is generally perceived, is not really a thing.
Yes, I said it. Writer’s block isn’t a case of “I can’t write at the moment”. It’s just a case of “I don’t want to write at the moment”. Now before everyone gets shitty with me about this point, I am not referring to the days when some folk find themselves without the spoons to write. That is different. That is a wider mental health issue and not specific to writing. On such spoonless days, not only will you not write, you won’t go shopping or do the laundry. I’m talking about the days when you sit down to write and your heart is just not in it. So you give yourself a free pass claiming writer’s block and go do something else. Come on, that’s bullshit. Do you think plumbers get plumbers block? No, they get on with the job whether they want to or not. Blogging requires a degree of self discipline. I’m not saying it has to be a chore but you do have to apply yourself sometimes. Or else you just won’t produce anything and blogs need content, do they not?
So to review all the above points, if you have decided to write, then figure out what you want to write about and then where. Once you’ve got these things sorted, then just get on with it. I don’t think it has to be any more complex than that and if it is, then I politely suggest that it is you and not blogging per se, that is making it so. Once you’ve got your head in the right place so you can write, then doing so becomes a lot easier. Some days it will feel hard and you may not be exactly happy with your results. Yet these days count and if you can power through them you’ll be a better writer for doing so. And then there’s the days when it’s just like turning on a tap and the words and creativity just spill out of you. Those days are the most satisfying. So, with all this in mind, go start a blog. Or if you have one already and it’s been put on the back burner, then go write something now. Happy blogging.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
I used WordPress as a website platform for 5 years. One of the things I used to like about it was the ability to track data and generate stats. However, I moved Contains Moderate Peril to Squarespace in 2015 for technical and financial reasons. I’ve been broadly happy with the results but there are a few niggles. Squarespace has a solid analytical package available which provides an adequate summary of website traffic. I can also determine what keywords have been used for searching the site and what posts are popular. However, basic information such as how many blog posts I’ve made over the last 9 years is conspicuously absent. I also have no obvious way of finding out what the average length of a blog post is or what the estimated reading time is.
When you initially start blogging, your aspirations tend to be very straightforward. Choose a title, find a niche and get into the habit of writing. Simple tasks that can still take a while to master. Once your blog is established and has endured for a while, you may not have any further long term goals other than to just keep going. However, if you feel that you want to achieve more then you have to tackle a new set of problems. There is a great deal of “advice” in the public domain about growing and monetising your blog. A lot of it is questionable but there are some approaches that do work. However, these require you to write to a specific process, chasing the ever changing whims of your potential readership. You have to compromise. And for many bloggers, that is the deal breaker.
Thinking Out Loud
Simply put, I got fed up with my ongoing diet last week, so I came off the wagon. There were a few glasses of wine too many and a couple of meals that were larger than the new prescribed portion size. As a result, my weight has remained the same as last week’s. On mature reflection, I am glad it didn’t gain weight as that would be very counterproductive. Weight loss and trying to change your diet are difficult tasks and somewhat joyless. Mainly because you are denying yourself pleasure. However, I don’t like what I see when I look in the mirror, so if I wish to regain my former status as a minor deity and sexual Tyrannosaurus (in my mind), then I need to get back on track.
This is yet another post where I write a series of random thoughts, gathered under the title “Thinking Out Loud”. The fourth, if we’re counting, which we’re not. I tend to do this on Mondays but that’s not legally binding.
The Diet (Again)
Simply put, I got fed up with my ongoing diet last week, so I came off the wagon. There were a few glasses of wine too many and a couple of meals that were larger than the new prescribed portion size. As a result, my weight has remained the same as last week’s. On mature reflection, I am glad it didn’t gain weight as that would be very counterproductive. Weight loss and trying to change your diet are difficult tasks and somewhat joyless. Mainly because you are denying yourself pleasure. However, I don’t like what I see when I look in the mirror, so if I wish to regain my former status as a minor deity and sexual Tyrannosaurus (in my mind), then I need to get back on track.
Digital Terrestrial Television
I seldom watch live television these days, although it is something I did all the time as a child. However, there was no other option at the time until the advent of the VCR. Nowadays I use on demand, streaming services most of the time. Especially those paid services without any advertising and on screen graphics. However, because I am a “belt and braces” sort of person, I recently bought a USB digital terrestrial TV tuner for my PC, in case the internet ever goes down. We still have a roof antenna (although it is in the loft) and there’s an outlet in the spare room that I use as an office. Hence, it was no effort to run a cable from the socket, to the USB device and then to my PC.
I don’t know how bad digital terrestrial TV is in your country but it is pretty poor here in the UK. I’m not talking about the prestige channels such as BBC or Channel 4. I mean the cheap, filler stations that fill the extremities of the TV guide. Most of these channels are in standard definition, with poor digital compression and colour grading. There are far too many adverts, so you sometimes only get 9 minutes of actual content before the next commercial break. As for the actual programs, they tend to be low grade reality shows such as “cooking with ghosts”, or cheap cosy crime dramas about a barista who solves murders by night. If these channels broadcast old classic shows, they’re often edited for content so they can be shown at any time of day. Such is the reality of so-called “free” content. If you’re not paying, this is what you get.
Cleaning the Wheelie Bins
Upon adulthood, regardless of whether you cohabitate or live alone, you quickly discover that there are chores that need to be done. Clothes don’t miraculously wash themselves. You have to go grocery shopping to some degree. If you don’t clean your home, it will become verminous. Hence, we usually get into a routine of dealing with these tasks. How effective this is comes down to you as a person. However, not all chores are immediately apparent or even expected. We have 4 wheelie bins provided by the local council, to handle our rubbish and recycling requirements. Due to the hot weather we’ve had of late, these have all needed cleaning because they contained more maggots than a Lucio Fulci movie. Needless to say this chore fell to me.
Armed with a garden hose, an old mop and a couple litres of disinfectant, I set about keeping this sinister plague at bay. It certainly wasn’t a glamorous job. Nor was it something I ever envisaged doing when younger. Along with unblocking toilets, cleaning up fox shit, removing all spiders from the house, clearing leaves from the guttering and expressing the cat’s anal glands when they’re blocked. No wonder kids don’t want to grow up these days. Due to the internet, they know that adulthood isn’t half as good as it’s cracked up to be.
The Ubiquity of AI
I built a new PC in January which meant a fresh install of Windows 10. My policy regarding this operating system is comparable to one I have regarding my own body. Namely, I don’t install anything that isn’t necessary (I’m not sure if that analogy quite works). Hence I tend to check the various updates that Microsoft regularly shunts out, to ensure that I’m only installing essential patches, rather than superfluous new features. Sadly, this is not a process you can 100% control. Which explains how I found Microsoft Copilot installed on my PC, after an alleged minor update,
Now I am not at present pathologically against AI. Artificial intelligence is a tool and like any tool, it is the manner in which it is used which foremost dictates how it is perceived. Currently, AI seems to be running rampant like a schoolyard craze among kids. The world and his wife is trying to crowbar such services into their business model. All too often the results are not good and are subsequently withdrawn. Take courier company DPD for example and its customer service chatbot. AI is also saturating other markets. Take the freelance marketplace Fiverr. A lot of the design work on offer is now AI generated and frankly shit. YouTube is awash with AI generated content which is generic, simplistic and utterly bland. As for AI voiceovers, they are excruciatingly stilted.
I make it my business now to opt out of any potential AI scraping of material that I produce. Today, I went into my Twitter/X settings to ensure that the Grok AI couldn’t parse my tweets for training purposes. I have done the same with my Squarespace website. Again, I want to keep a level head about AI but suspect that senior management in a lot of major businesses see it as a means of bypassing services that previously they’d have to pay for. It’s not so much AI per se that’s the problem but AI in the hands of unreconstructed capitalism.
Thinking Out Loud is a blog post series where I share random ideas and thoughts that have come to mind. Some of these could could lead to a full article in themselves but that’s not really the aim. Instead I see these thoughts as just starting points for broader discussions. Some of the ideas espoused can be quite serious, while others are light-hearted and trivial. Such is the nature of random thought. As ever there is no rhyme or reason to the various ideas that I’ve chosen or any significant point or concept linking them all. They are as they claim to be, random thoughts, born from thinking out loud. I do edit myself to ensure what I post here is suitable. It can get a but dark and grim inside my head, so I try to apply some degree of quality control to Thinking Out Loud but not too much. As ever, feel free to comment below if you have anything to add. The idea with this post is to start a conversation of at least provide something to think about.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its subsequent sequel have been very well received, both commercially and critically. Hence the recent announcement that developer, Warhorse Studios, are currently working on an open world RPG, set in Middle-earth has caused a great deal of excitement in the gaming community. At present, details are scarce and speculation is rife with regard as to what period in the history of Middle-earth will the game be set in. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t really mind when and where it is set as there are so many potential good choices. But I would like clarification as to whether the game is being made in in first person or third person perspective. By default, I prefer the latter when it comes to this RPG genre. Naturally the best outcome would be if the game supports both. However, it should be noted that the developer’s previous games were in first person. If that is the case with this project, I will revise my expectations.
I was listening to a podcast recently in which comedian Stewart Lee talked about the comedy, music and local arts scene in London during the eighties. He highlighted how you could make a living out of music journalism at the times, albeit not an especially good one. He also talked about bands and comedians that lived from “hand to mouth” in shared properties and squats. Essentially it was still possible to pursue a career in the arts due to its standing within British culture which meant there was still some local funding as well as the revenue generated by those working in it and adjacent to it. The UK economy was such that is could “accommodate” working in the arts. Sadly, the internet and commodification culture has effectively killed such career avenues. You now need a regular job to fund your artistic ventures, which puts pay to such dreams for many people. You also have use social media to promote your work, which comes with its own set of full-time problems. The world changes but not all changes are for the better.
Our household has a newspaper delivered once a week on a Saturday. It is specifically for Mrs P who still likes to sit down at the weekend and catch up with the recent events via print media rather than the 24/7 rolling coverage on TV. There was a time, back in the seventies and eighties, when this delivery service was the province of children trying to earn some money. Nowadays it tends to be adults that undertake this work. Our local newsagents were bought out by a bigger chain a few years back. They in turn were acquired by Morrisons supermarket. A month ago they sacked 1700 “paper boys” nationwide and contracted the newspaper delivery service out to a specialist company, Newsteam. Today at 04:00 a large vehicle pulled up on our drive and noisily rammed a newspaper through the letterbox. This is apparently “progress”.
To quote Sam Gamgee “It's the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish, as my old gaffer used to say”. I recently had a timely reminder that this aphorism is 100% true. I finally got round to updating my blog, something that I had been putting off because I knew it would result in breaking the site and incurring a great deal of work. Well I did it. The process was relatively straight forward and didn’t result in anywhere near the amount of formatting issues that I had feared. Within 72 hours I had figured out how to fix most of the problems that arose and after a week I had added new pages and revised those that required a makeover. I still have to correct image sizes in many previous posts but the site has finally been dragged into the current blog era. Furthermore, addressing this issue has lifted a weight of my mind and I feel far more disposed towards writing and posting regularly. I wish I had done this sooner.
I was quite surprised by an unusually high number of participants in this year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging. The current count is 165. I am pleased by this because I worry about the decline in written skills that appears to be happening in western society. Yet here we have 165 individuals all writing in their own unique way. It is quite reassuring. My RSS feed currently has over 200 blogs that are still regularly updated, many of which are prior Blaugust participants. I try my best to keep up to date with posts and to leave comments, if they’re supported. A bit of blogging solidarity can go a long way and it’s important to encourage all forms of writing and keep the community strong.
Art is a big subject, so I shall keep this brief. Art has a massive impact on shaping our personalities, whether we think it does or not. Consider for a moment, any online service that requires you to write a profile about yourself. Something that is designed to provide a summary of your personality, abilities and your likes and dislikes. IE Facebook, a dating app or even your online resume. Frequently, these profiles will require us to define ourselves by what we read, watch and listen to. Yes, other information is included in such profiles but directly or indirectly, we are asked about our artistic preferences. Possibly we do not consider such a line of questioning to be about art but essentially it is. So we dutifully state which art we cleave to and then look for reciprocal taste in others. Does this not prove that art is important?
When people think about large sums of money, especially in relation to their own salary and any future expectations of wealth, the phrase “a million pounds” (feel free to substitute that with your own currency of choice) will often be bandied about. Culturally it quickly conveys the concept of a large sum of money and as such, something that would transform your life. Although I am not in any way averse to the idea of winning “a million pounds” on the lottery or by some other means, I’m afraid it is no longer the gateway to wealth that it used to be. In fact a so-called cool million may not even last you a lifetime. UK property prices are grossly over inflated, so you could easily blow 50 to 75% of your money just buying a new house. Perhaps we now need to think in tens of millions instead of just a million with regard to life changing wealth.
At present the UK is enduring some relatively harsh winter conditions. Usually November to February is continuously filled with rain and drizzle. When it is not enduring either of those things it tends to be overcast and gloomy. However, for a change the nation is currently experiencing snow, ice and heavy frosts. Even as far as the South East of England (IE where I live) the weather is cold, reaching temperatures as low as -3° celsius. Oh and before we get into the usual “You call that cold? It’s -X degrees here” argument, more fool you for living somewhere freezing. You can move, you know. Getting back on point I hate this time of year because it is so dreary. There’s nothing immediately on the horizon to look forward to and the cold weather just makes the matter worse. The UK is never equipped for snow to begin with. The idea of a fortnight somewhere warmer suddenly becomes a lot more appealing.
I appreciate that talking about illness can often make people uncomfortable. It’s not exactly my favourite thing. However, I do not subscribe to the school of thought of avoiding such matters. We all get ill from time to time to varying degrees and we’re all going to die one day. You can’t just wish problems away. My significant other, Mrs P, has a history of heart disease and her overall health has declined this year. To cut a long story short, she is having surgery on 28th November to effectively repurpose a previously bypassed artery. Throughout this month we have been going to outpatient clinics as well as meetings with consultants. We have also been busy putting practical measures in place for her recovery. As you can imagine, it is a worrying time. Hence, I have not written much in recent weeks as her well being is my current focus.
If you want to buy a grapefruit spoon with an inlaid mother of pearl handle or 25Kg of exotic aquarium gravel, then a simple Google search (other search engines are available) will yield a multitude of results. However, the search engine does not fare so well with finding online communities. Many years ago I joined The LAMB (Large Association of Movie Blogs), which at the time claimed to be the world's largest movie blog directory/community. It was a useful website. From what I can see, this site is now partially dormant. New reviews are being posted but the directory service of other movie related websites seems unavailable. Hence I am looking for a comparable online community where I can share my film reviews and read other peoples. Trying to find one is proving quite difficult.
Simply put, I got fed up with my ongoing diet last week, so I came off the wagon. There were a few glasses of wine too many and a couple of meals that were larger than the new prescribed portion size. As a result, my weight has remained the same as last week’s. On mature reflection, I am glad it didn’t gain weight as that would be very counterproductive. Weight loss and trying to change your diet are difficult tasks and somewhat joyless. Mainly because you are denying yourself pleasure. However, I don’t like what I see when I look in the mirror, so if I wish to regain my former status as a minor deity and sexual Tyrannosaurus (in my mind), then I need to get back on track.
With Blaugust: Festival of Blogging fast approaching, I have decided to close several side projects I started last November (which rapidly ran out of momentum) and focus all my writing endeavours back on Contains Moderate Peril. I have taken a 9 month break which has served its purpose. I have decided to make some minor changes to the base template I am currently using for the blog, as it has remained essentially unchanged since summer 2015. I did toy with the idea of involving a third party developer to improve the site but employing such a company with specific Squarespace experience meant spending between £2000 and £3000, which is far more than my initial budget.
First of all let’s begin with an activity that I have a love hate relationship with. Namely, tinkering with your PC. I’ve been looking at the specs of my computer and it would appear that its performance Achilles heel is the graphic card. In a perfect world, I would just buy the latest top of the range model and be done with it. However, I am not sufficiently wealthy to do such things. Hence, I have to set a budget and then search for what is considered the best option within it. This is a tedious, contradictory and wearisome task. It involves trawling through reviews written by people who often do not understand the concept of a budget and figurative lines in the sand. They are infuriating, but that’s people for you.
Thinking Out Loud
With Blaugust: Festival of Blogging fast approaching, I have decided to close several side projects I started last November (which rapidly ran out of momentum) and focus all my writing endeavours back on Contains Moderate Peril. I have taken a 9 month break which has served its purpose. I have decided to make some minor changes to the base template I am currently using for the blog, as it has remained essentially unchanged since summer 2015. I did toy with the idea of involving a third party developer to improve the site but employing such a company with specific Squarespace experience meant spending between £2000 and £3000, which is far more than my initial budget.
This post is another collection of random thoughts, thrown together in no particular order. All of which is gathered under the functional title “Thinking Out Loud”, which is a recurring blog post that tends to be published on Mondays.
Tweaking Your Blog
With Blaugust: Festival of Blogging fast approaching, I have decided to close several side projects I started last November (which rapidly ran out of momentum) and focus all my writing endeavours back on Contains Moderate Peril. I have taken a 9 month break which has served its purpose. I have decided to make some minor changes to the base template I am currently using for the blog, as it has remained essentially unchanged since summer 2015. I did toy with the idea of involving a third party developer to improve the site but employing such a company with specific Squarespace experience meant spending between £2000 and £3000, which is far more than my initial budget.
I appreciate that such rates are the market standard at present but I simply don’t want to spend such sums of money on a hobby that in principle should not have excessive operating costs. If I was pursuing a business related blog, then it would be a different matter. My advice to new bloggers is to avail themselves of free services or 30 day trials of established products, before committing to any major costs. It is best to determine whether blogging is for you before spending a dime. If you decide that you wish to maintain an online presence and develop your own brand, then the costs have the potential to increase exponentially, the more you do. I wrote a post about the cost of keeping a blog back in 2019. Naturally the prices referenced have gone up but the basic ideas remain the same.
Total Hours Played
Setting aside the MMO genre which is predicated upon its continuous playability based upon the release of regular new content, I usually don’t keep track of the total amount of time I have invested into a video game. I will have a broad approximate notion but if I need specifics, I will go and check the numbers on Steam or whatever platform is pertinent. It can be quite surprising sometimes and often my assumptions are wrong. For example, it felt like I had spent a lot of time playing Starfield upon its release last Autumn. In total it was 136 hours, which may sound a lot but is far short of other RPGs, such as Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (186 hours) or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (286 hours). Perhaps that was due to the rather ponderous nature of Starfield, which despite its superficial modernity, ultimately was structured and played like a much older RPG.
I recently returned to Sniper Elite 5 which I have been playing on and off over the last two years plus. Having played through the main campaign, DLC, co-op and multiplayer modes, what brought me back was a renewed interest among the wider gaming community in the so-called “invasion” mode. This interesting variation of PVP, allows another player to enter your ongoing campaign and try to hunt you down while you are battling the various NPC in the game’s story missions. It is purely optional but certainly adds a fascinating and absorbing spin on the proceedings. As the invading Sniper Jäger you have the advantage of being on the same side as the enemy NPC and can tag them. If they subsequently encounter the enemy, their change in status on the mini-map alerts you. However, playing the campaign and having your game invaded can be immense fun as well. There is scope to clear areas of the map and set traps or an ambush for invaders. I find this especially satisfying. It certainly has given the game a new lease of life which is why I discovered last week that I had played 317 hours in total. Seldom does a modern game provide such value.
Alexa Doesn’t Swear
I’ve had some form of Amazon Echo smart speaker since 2016. I have always found these devices useful for timers, general questions such as weather, traffic and train times and for reminders. Its main use in our house is playing music. I probably don’t use a third of its total functionality but I still consider it an asset. However, despite 8 years of ownership, I only recently discovered one of Alexa’s curious foibles. She seems incapable of swearing. Upon reflection, I see the merit in this design choice. Especially if you have young children using the device. I certainly don’t see it as an infringement of free speech. I found out about Alexa’s puritanical streak when I requested specific songs to be played. Usually I request various playlists that I’ve curated but on this occasion I asked for a few songs by name. To my surprise and amusement, the profanities in their titles were “bleeped out” when Alexa confirmed the selection. The songs in question were “Too Drunk to Fuck” by Dead Kennedys and “Pussy” by Rammstein.
Diet Update
When I stood on the scales this morning, I appear to have lost another 2.2 lbs, which is steady progress. At present I weigh 196.4 lbs. I had to cut down a great deal last Wednesday to compensate for the fact that I was going for a meal at a French brasserie on Thursday and I felt obliged to try and ensure that my metaphorical food intake ledger was balanced accordingly. Mrs P and I have decided to not eschew wine completely so it has been incorporated into our weekend “indulgences”. Whether this has a detrimental effect on the overall program, I will find out next Monday.
Thinking Out Loud is a blog post series where I share random ideas and thoughts that have come to mind. Some of these could could lead to a full article in themselves but that’s not really the aim. Instead I see these thoughts as just starting points for broader discussions. Some of the ideas espoused can be quite serious, while others are light-hearted and trivial. Such is the nature of random thought. As ever there is no rhyme or reason to the various ideas that I’ve chosen or any significant point or concept linking them all. They are as they claim to be, random thoughts, born from thinking out loud. I do edit myself to ensure what I post here is suitable. It can get a but dark and grim inside my head, so I try to apply some degree of quality control to Thinking Out Loud but not too much. As ever, feel free to comment below if you have anything to add. The idea with this post is to start a conversation of at least provide something to think about.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its subsequent sequel have been very well received, both commercially and critically. Hence the recent announcement that developer, Warhorse Studios, are currently working on an open world RPG, set in Middle-earth has caused a great deal of excitement in the gaming community. At present, details are scarce and speculation is rife with regard as to what period in the history of Middle-earth will the game be set in. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t really mind when and where it is set as there are so many potential good choices. But I would like clarification as to whether the game is being made in in first person or third person perspective. By default, I prefer the latter when it comes to this RPG genre. Naturally the best outcome would be if the game supports both. However, it should be noted that the developer’s previous games were in first person. If that is the case with this project, I will revise my expectations.
I was listening to a podcast recently in which comedian Stewart Lee talked about the comedy, music and local arts scene in London during the eighties. He highlighted how you could make a living out of music journalism at the times, albeit not an especially good one. He also talked about bands and comedians that lived from “hand to mouth” in shared properties and squats. Essentially it was still possible to pursue a career in the arts due to its standing within British culture which meant there was still some local funding as well as the revenue generated by those working in it and adjacent to it. The UK economy was such that is could “accommodate” working in the arts. Sadly, the internet and commodification culture has effectively killed such career avenues. You now need a regular job to fund your artistic ventures, which puts pay to such dreams for many people. You also have use social media to promote your work, which comes with its own set of full-time problems. The world changes but not all changes are for the better.
Our household has a newspaper delivered once a week on a Saturday. It is specifically for Mrs P who still likes to sit down at the weekend and catch up with the recent events via print media rather than the 24/7 rolling coverage on TV. There was a time, back in the seventies and eighties, when this delivery service was the province of children trying to earn some money. Nowadays it tends to be adults that undertake this work. Our local newsagents were bought out by a bigger chain a few years back. They in turn were acquired by Morrisons supermarket. A month ago they sacked 1700 “paper boys” nationwide and contracted the newspaper delivery service out to a specialist company, Newsteam. Today at 04:00 a large vehicle pulled up on our drive and noisily rammed a newspaper through the letterbox. This is apparently “progress”.
To quote Sam Gamgee “It's the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish, as my old gaffer used to say”. I recently had a timely reminder that this aphorism is 100% true. I finally got round to updating my blog, something that I had been putting off because I knew it would result in breaking the site and incurring a great deal of work. Well I did it. The process was relatively straight forward and didn’t result in anywhere near the amount of formatting issues that I had feared. Within 72 hours I had figured out how to fix most of the problems that arose and after a week I had added new pages and revised those that required a makeover. I still have to correct image sizes in many previous posts but the site has finally been dragged into the current blog era. Furthermore, addressing this issue has lifted a weight of my mind and I feel far more disposed towards writing and posting regularly. I wish I had done this sooner.
I was quite surprised by an unusually high number of participants in this year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging. The current count is 165. I am pleased by this because I worry about the decline in written skills that appears to be happening in western society. Yet here we have 165 individuals all writing in their own unique way. It is quite reassuring. My RSS feed currently has over 200 blogs that are still regularly updated, many of which are prior Blaugust participants. I try my best to keep up to date with posts and to leave comments, if they’re supported. A bit of blogging solidarity can go a long way and it’s important to encourage all forms of writing and keep the community strong.
Art is a big subject, so I shall keep this brief. Art has a massive impact on shaping our personalities, whether we think it does or not. Consider for a moment, any online service that requires you to write a profile about yourself. Something that is designed to provide a summary of your personality, abilities and your likes and dislikes. IE Facebook, a dating app or even your online resume. Frequently, these profiles will require us to define ourselves by what we read, watch and listen to. Yes, other information is included in such profiles but directly or indirectly, we are asked about our artistic preferences. Possibly we do not consider such a line of questioning to be about art but essentially it is. So we dutifully state which art we cleave to and then look for reciprocal taste in others. Does this not prove that art is important?
When people think about large sums of money, especially in relation to their own salary and any future expectations of wealth, the phrase “a million pounds” (feel free to substitute that with your own currency of choice) will often be bandied about. Culturally it quickly conveys the concept of a large sum of money and as such, something that would transform your life. Although I am not in any way averse to the idea of winning “a million pounds” on the lottery or by some other means, I’m afraid it is no longer the gateway to wealth that it used to be. In fact a so-called cool million may not even last you a lifetime. UK property prices are grossly over inflated, so you could easily blow 50 to 75% of your money just buying a new house. Perhaps we now need to think in tens of millions instead of just a million with regard to life changing wealth.
At present the UK is enduring some relatively harsh winter conditions. Usually November to February is continuously filled with rain and drizzle. When it is not enduring either of those things it tends to be overcast and gloomy. However, for a change the nation is currently experiencing snow, ice and heavy frosts. Even as far as the South East of England (IE where I live) the weather is cold, reaching temperatures as low as -3° celsius. Oh and before we get into the usual “You call that cold? It’s -X degrees here” argument, more fool you for living somewhere freezing. You can move, you know. Getting back on point I hate this time of year because it is so dreary. There’s nothing immediately on the horizon to look forward to and the cold weather just makes the matter worse. The UK is never equipped for snow to begin with. The idea of a fortnight somewhere warmer suddenly becomes a lot more appealing.
I appreciate that talking about illness can often make people uncomfortable. It’s not exactly my favourite thing. However, I do not subscribe to the school of thought of avoiding such matters. We all get ill from time to time to varying degrees and we’re all going to die one day. You can’t just wish problems away. My significant other, Mrs P, has a history of heart disease and her overall health has declined this year. To cut a long story short, she is having surgery on 28th November to effectively repurpose a previously bypassed artery. Throughout this month we have been going to outpatient clinics as well as meetings with consultants. We have also been busy putting practical measures in place for her recovery. As you can imagine, it is a worrying time. Hence, I have not written much in recent weeks as her well being is my current focus.
If you want to buy a grapefruit spoon with an inlaid mother of pearl handle or 25Kg of exotic aquarium gravel, then a simple Google search (other search engines are available) will yield a multitude of results. However, the search engine does not fare so well with finding online communities. Many years ago I joined The LAMB (Large Association of Movie Blogs), which at the time claimed to be the world's largest movie blog directory/community. It was a useful website. From what I can see, this site is now partially dormant. New reviews are being posted but the directory service of other movie related websites seems unavailable. Hence I am looking for a comparable online community where I can share my film reviews and read other peoples. Trying to find one is proving quite difficult.
Simply put, I got fed up with my ongoing diet last week, so I came off the wagon. There were a few glasses of wine too many and a couple of meals that were larger than the new prescribed portion size. As a result, my weight has remained the same as last week’s. On mature reflection, I am glad it didn’t gain weight as that would be very counterproductive. Weight loss and trying to change your diet are difficult tasks and somewhat joyless. Mainly because you are denying yourself pleasure. However, I don’t like what I see when I look in the mirror, so if I wish to regain my former status as a minor deity and sexual Tyrannosaurus (in my mind), then I need to get back on track.
With Blaugust: Festival of Blogging fast approaching, I have decided to close several side projects I started last November (which rapidly ran out of momentum) and focus all my writing endeavours back on Contains Moderate Peril. I have taken a 9 month break which has served its purpose. I have decided to make some minor changes to the base template I am currently using for the blog, as it has remained essentially unchanged since summer 2015. I did toy with the idea of involving a third party developer to improve the site but employing such a company with specific Squarespace experience meant spending between £2000 and £3000, which is far more than my initial budget.
First of all let’s begin with an activity that I have a love hate relationship with. Namely, tinkering with your PC. I’ve been looking at the specs of my computer and it would appear that its performance Achilles heel is the graphic card. In a perfect world, I would just buy the latest top of the range model and be done with it. However, I am not sufficiently wealthy to do such things. Hence, I have to set a budget and then search for what is considered the best option within it. This is a tedious, contradictory and wearisome task. It involves trawling through reviews written by people who often do not understand the concept of a budget and figurative lines in the sand. They are infuriating, but that’s people for you.
Blaugust 2024
Every year, Blaugust: Festival of Blogging comes around and I happily participate. I also try to encourage others to do so by giving reasons why writing and being creative in general are worthwhile pastimes. At times it does feel that I’m repeating myself, so this time round I shall keep it very simple. Writing is fun, regardless of how you do it. The benefits of being part of a friendly and supportive community are so obvious, do I really need to list them? Blaugust is always one of the high points of my year and I’ve never regretted the time I’ve spent participating. The “rules” are simple. You do as little or as much as you see fit. You share your content and if you wish to, can interact with others over on the community Discord. There’s no pressure from anyone and if you approach the event with the right mindset, you don’t need to put any pressure on yourself. So follow the link above, read Belghast’s post and consider signing up? To quote Alexei Sayle, “you’ve nothing to lose but your wafers”. No, I have no idea what it means, either.
Every year, Blaugust: Festival of Blogging comes around and I happily participate. I also try to encourage others to do so by giving reasons why writing and being creative in general are worthwhile pastimes. At times it does feel that I’m repeating myself, so this time round I shall keep it very simple. Writing is fun, regardless of how you do it. The benefits of being part of a friendly and supportive community are so obvious, do I really need to list them? Blaugust is always one of the high points of my year and I’ve never regretted the time I’ve spent participating. The “rules” are simple. You do as little or as much as you see fit. You share your content and if you wish to, can interact with others over on the community Discord. There’s no pressure from anyone and if you approach the event with the right mindset, you don’t need to put any pressure on yourself. So follow the link above, read Belghast’s post and consider signing up? To quote Alexei Sayle, “you’ve nothing to lose but your wafers”. No, I have no idea what it means, either.
A perennial statement that is often trotted out with regard to Blaugust is “do people still read blogs”? To which the resounding answer is “yes”. A cursory Google search will show that blogs still enjoy a healthy readership and to suggest otherwise is at the least spurious and at worst disingenuous. Here are a few basic points about the relevance of blogging:
77% of internet users report regularly reading blog posts.
80% of bloggers say that blogging drives results.
50% of bloggers publish weekly or several times per month.
Bloggers who publish the most are most likely to report “strong results”.
Food, lifestyle, and travel niches have the highest percentage of blogs and more than 50,000 blog visits per month.
So, there’s definitely life in the old dog. If you’re writing just for pleasure, then the stats and SEO side of things aren’t that important. However, if you’re writing to build a site or a brand, then Blaugust offers scope to grow, if you put in the effort.
Something that has changed in recent years, that is worth noting, is the advent of Artificial Intelligence. It is now relatively easy to input a few ideas into a site such as ChatGPT or Chat Genie and generate a passable blog post. However, such content is usually easy to spot as it all too often reeks of homogeneity and lacks character. It’s missing all the foibles and quirks that human writers bring to their work. It’s one of the reasons why so much of the content on YouTube is bland and generic. Personally speaking, I would not like to see a world in which real writing becomes a small island in an ocean of AI generated content. It is important that people think and do things for themselves. However, that is another blog post in itself.
Finally, one of the most positive things that has come out of my 17 years of blogging, are the people that I have met along the way. Many of whom I’m still in contact with today. I have always enjoyed reading their blogs and learning about their lives, likings and activities. The thing about writing is that it offers a window into the author’s mindseye. Even if you write under a “nom de plume” and keep your personal life out of your prose, aspects of your personality still bleed through into your content. It is this human quality, be it abundantly clear or subtly woven into your words, that attracts many readers and keeps them returning. This is why I continue to take part in Blaugust. It is an opportunity to make new friends and experience new things. Such as different hobbies or pastimes, life in a country far from your own, or to gain insight into points of view contrary to your own.
And if none of that appeals to you, there’s always pictures of cats. See you around.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
I used WordPress as a website platform for 5 years. One of the things I used to like about it was the ability to track data and generate stats. However, I moved Contains Moderate Peril to Squarespace in 2015 for technical and financial reasons. I’ve been broadly happy with the results but there are a few niggles. Squarespace has a solid analytical package available which provides an adequate summary of website traffic. I can also determine what keywords have been used for searching the site and what posts are popular. However, basic information such as how many blog posts I’ve made over the last 9 years is conspicuously absent. I also have no obvious way of finding out what the average length of a blog post is or what the estimated reading time is.
When you initially start blogging, your aspirations tend to be very straightforward. Choose a title, find a niche and get into the habit of writing. Simple tasks that can still take a while to master. Once your blog is established and has endured for a while, you may not have any further long term goals other than to just keep going. However, if you feel that you want to achieve more then you have to tackle a new set of problems. There is a great deal of “advice” in the public domain about growing and monetising your blog. A lot of it is questionable but there are some approaches that do work. However, these require you to write to a specific process, chasing the ever changing whims of your potential readership. You have to compromise. And for many bloggers, that is the deal breaker.
Thinking Out Loud
First of all let’s begin with an activity that I have a love hate relationship with. Namely, tinkering with your PC. I’ve been looking at the specs of my computer and it would appear that its performance Achilles heel is the graphic card. In a perfect world, I would just buy the latest top of the range model and be done with it. However, I am not sufficiently wealthy to do such things. Hence, I have to set a budget and then search for what is considered the best option within it. This is a tedious, contradictory and wearisome task. It involves trawling through reviews written by people who often do not understand the concept of a budget and figurative lines in the sand. They are infuriating, but that’s people for you.
This post is a collection of random thoughts, expressed as a stream of consciousness. Put less pretentiously, a few words about the various things that are occurring in my life. Alternatively, they may also be ephemeral talking points from the never-ending news cycle, or even those obscure thoughts you experience while laying awake in your bed. Either way, they are not the sort of material that requires a full blog post. A paragraph or two is sufficient to express a thought or make a point. All of which is collectively gathered under the title “Thinking Out Loud”, which will no doubt become a recurring blog post.
Tinkering With Your PC
First of all let’s begin with an activity that I have a love hate relationship with. Namely, tinkering with your PC. I’ve been looking at the specs of my computer and it would appear that its performance Achilles heel is the graphic card. In a perfect world, I would just buy the latest top of the range model and be done with it. However, I am not sufficiently wealthy to do such things. Hence, I have to set a budget and then search for what is considered the best option within it. This is a tedious, contradictory and wearisome task. It involves trawling through reviews written by people who often do not understand the concept of a budget and figurative lines in the sand. They are infuriating, but that’s people for you.
To cut a long story short, I have ordered the following AMD graphics card. Powercolor AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT Fighter 8GB GDDR6. The reviews are acceptable, my current PC is based around an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X 8-Core Processor so there should be some synergy there, and I got offered a very good price. If this is not to the liking of the selfappointed “Graphics Card Police”, then they can fuck off into the sea. It’s the best I can do for £204 plus postage. Hopefully it will arrive on Tuesday and then I can have the usual fun and games trying to fit it. I can also “defluff” the interior of my PC case. The fun is endless.
Games Should be Fun
I stopped playing Call of Duty in June because it was becoming too much of a treadmill. Playing both Warzone and Multiplayer essentially boiled down to the following. Buy the 2 month Season Pass, grind out the weapons and aftermarket parts, adapt your existing weapons builds to the latest meta, endure the endless succession of unbalanced multiplayer games and swarms of cheaters. Rinse and repeat while being bombarded with endless new novelty skins and weapon blueprints. It all became a dull chore, lacking in fun. So I’ve moved on.
It seems that the notion that a game should at some fundamental level be fun, is no longer a primary consideration. In fact it seems pretty low on the list of requirements, at least with mainstream, triple A titles. Obviously there are still entertaining and enjoyable titles out there but I feel that you just have to look a lot harder to find them, these days. Too many games feel generic, soulless and obvious products rather than interactive mediums for entertainment and enjoyment.
I recently bought a few new games, because why would I want to play any that I had in my library for years? Insane isn’t it? I bought The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe version which is most amusing and incredibly intelligent in its satire of so many video game tropes and idiosyncrasies. It lends itself to binge gameplay until you’ve achieved several of the alternate endings. I also bought the submarine game Cold Waters mainly because I recently watched the 1958 classic movies, Run Silent, Run Deep with Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster. It’s not a full blown submarine simulator but still offers complex gameplay. I also purchased Dragon’s Dogma 2, as I had a hankering for an RPG. Sadly, I’m struggling to find the fun in this game as it is proving confusing both narratively and with its gameplay. I’m also struggling with the keyboard and mouse controls for the PC. I suspect this title plays better on consoles.
Diet (Who Ate All the Pies?)
My diet is far from healthy and has contributed to my gaining a lot of weight. I drink too often as well, which makes matters worse. I have managed to lose weight in the past but this year I have not been so successful mainly because my heart hasn’t been in it. But it is for the sake of my heart that I need to resolve this matter. So Mrs P and I are both embarking on a diet, based on three meals a day, reduced portion sizes and the elimination of a few specific items, including alcohol. I’m not looking forward to it as I derive a great deal of pleasure from eating and drinking. I shall try and gamify the process and work towards goals and rewards. I shall also post details each Monday as to whether I’ve been successful. As of today, my starting weight is 201 lbs. I am looking to shed 28 lbs (2 stone). It’s on, like Donkey Kong, as they say.
Thinking Out Loud is a blog post series where I share random ideas and thoughts that have come to mind. Some of these could could lead to a full article in themselves but that’s not really the aim. Instead I see these thoughts as just starting points for broader discussions. Some of the ideas espoused can be quite serious, while others are light-hearted and trivial. Such is the nature of random thought. As ever there is no rhyme or reason to the various ideas that I’ve chosen or any significant point or concept linking them all. They are as they claim to be, random thoughts, born from thinking out loud. I do edit myself to ensure what I post here is suitable. It can get a but dark and grim inside my head, so I try to apply some degree of quality control to Thinking Out Loud but not too much. As ever, feel free to comment below if you have anything to add. The idea with this post is to start a conversation of at least provide something to think about.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its subsequent sequel have been very well received, both commercially and critically. Hence the recent announcement that developer, Warhorse Studios, are currently working on an open world RPG, set in Middle-earth has caused a great deal of excitement in the gaming community. At present, details are scarce and speculation is rife with regard as to what period in the history of Middle-earth will the game be set in. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t really mind when and where it is set as there are so many potential good choices. But I would like clarification as to whether the game is being made in in first person or third person perspective. By default, I prefer the latter when it comes to this RPG genre. Naturally the best outcome would be if the game supports both. However, it should be noted that the developer’s previous games were in first person. If that is the case with this project, I will revise my expectations.
I was listening to a podcast recently in which comedian Stewart Lee talked about the comedy, music and local arts scene in London during the eighties. He highlighted how you could make a living out of music journalism at the times, albeit not an especially good one. He also talked about bands and comedians that lived from “hand to mouth” in shared properties and squats. Essentially it was still possible to pursue a career in the arts due to its standing within British culture which meant there was still some local funding as well as the revenue generated by those working in it and adjacent to it. The UK economy was such that is could “accommodate” working in the arts. Sadly, the internet and commodification culture has effectively killed such career avenues. You now need a regular job to fund your artistic ventures, which puts pay to such dreams for many people. You also have use social media to promote your work, which comes with its own set of full-time problems. The world changes but not all changes are for the better.
Our household has a newspaper delivered once a week on a Saturday. It is specifically for Mrs P who still likes to sit down at the weekend and catch up with the recent events via print media rather than the 24/7 rolling coverage on TV. There was a time, back in the seventies and eighties, when this delivery service was the province of children trying to earn some money. Nowadays it tends to be adults that undertake this work. Our local newsagents were bought out by a bigger chain a few years back. They in turn were acquired by Morrisons supermarket. A month ago they sacked 1700 “paper boys” nationwide and contracted the newspaper delivery service out to a specialist company, Newsteam. Today at 04:00 a large vehicle pulled up on our drive and noisily rammed a newspaper through the letterbox. This is apparently “progress”.
To quote Sam Gamgee “It's the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish, as my old gaffer used to say”. I recently had a timely reminder that this aphorism is 100% true. I finally got round to updating my blog, something that I had been putting off because I knew it would result in breaking the site and incurring a great deal of work. Well I did it. The process was relatively straight forward and didn’t result in anywhere near the amount of formatting issues that I had feared. Within 72 hours I had figured out how to fix most of the problems that arose and after a week I had added new pages and revised those that required a makeover. I still have to correct image sizes in many previous posts but the site has finally been dragged into the current blog era. Furthermore, addressing this issue has lifted a weight of my mind and I feel far more disposed towards writing and posting regularly. I wish I had done this sooner.
I was quite surprised by an unusually high number of participants in this year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging. The current count is 165. I am pleased by this because I worry about the decline in written skills that appears to be happening in western society. Yet here we have 165 individuals all writing in their own unique way. It is quite reassuring. My RSS feed currently has over 200 blogs that are still regularly updated, many of which are prior Blaugust participants. I try my best to keep up to date with posts and to leave comments, if they’re supported. A bit of blogging solidarity can go a long way and it’s important to encourage all forms of writing and keep the community strong.
Art is a big subject, so I shall keep this brief. Art has a massive impact on shaping our personalities, whether we think it does or not. Consider for a moment, any online service that requires you to write a profile about yourself. Something that is designed to provide a summary of your personality, abilities and your likes and dislikes. IE Facebook, a dating app or even your online resume. Frequently, these profiles will require us to define ourselves by what we read, watch and listen to. Yes, other information is included in such profiles but directly or indirectly, we are asked about our artistic preferences. Possibly we do not consider such a line of questioning to be about art but essentially it is. So we dutifully state which art we cleave to and then look for reciprocal taste in others. Does this not prove that art is important?
When people think about large sums of money, especially in relation to their own salary and any future expectations of wealth, the phrase “a million pounds” (feel free to substitute that with your own currency of choice) will often be bandied about. Culturally it quickly conveys the concept of a large sum of money and as such, something that would transform your life. Although I am not in any way averse to the idea of winning “a million pounds” on the lottery or by some other means, I’m afraid it is no longer the gateway to wealth that it used to be. In fact a so-called cool million may not even last you a lifetime. UK property prices are grossly over inflated, so you could easily blow 50 to 75% of your money just buying a new house. Perhaps we now need to think in tens of millions instead of just a million with regard to life changing wealth.
At present the UK is enduring some relatively harsh winter conditions. Usually November to February is continuously filled with rain and drizzle. When it is not enduring either of those things it tends to be overcast and gloomy. However, for a change the nation is currently experiencing snow, ice and heavy frosts. Even as far as the South East of England (IE where I live) the weather is cold, reaching temperatures as low as -3° celsius. Oh and before we get into the usual “You call that cold? It’s -X degrees here” argument, more fool you for living somewhere freezing. You can move, you know. Getting back on point I hate this time of year because it is so dreary. There’s nothing immediately on the horizon to look forward to and the cold weather just makes the matter worse. The UK is never equipped for snow to begin with. The idea of a fortnight somewhere warmer suddenly becomes a lot more appealing.
I appreciate that talking about illness can often make people uncomfortable. It’s not exactly my favourite thing. However, I do not subscribe to the school of thought of avoiding such matters. We all get ill from time to time to varying degrees and we’re all going to die one day. You can’t just wish problems away. My significant other, Mrs P, has a history of heart disease and her overall health has declined this year. To cut a long story short, she is having surgery on 28th November to effectively repurpose a previously bypassed artery. Throughout this month we have been going to outpatient clinics as well as meetings with consultants. We have also been busy putting practical measures in place for her recovery. As you can imagine, it is a worrying time. Hence, I have not written much in recent weeks as her well being is my current focus.
If you want to buy a grapefruit spoon with an inlaid mother of pearl handle or 25Kg of exotic aquarium gravel, then a simple Google search (other search engines are available) will yield a multitude of results. However, the search engine does not fare so well with finding online communities. Many years ago I joined The LAMB (Large Association of Movie Blogs), which at the time claimed to be the world's largest movie blog directory/community. It was a useful website. From what I can see, this site is now partially dormant. New reviews are being posted but the directory service of other movie related websites seems unavailable. Hence I am looking for a comparable online community where I can share my film reviews and read other peoples. Trying to find one is proving quite difficult.
Simply put, I got fed up with my ongoing diet last week, so I came off the wagon. There were a few glasses of wine too many and a couple of meals that were larger than the new prescribed portion size. As a result, my weight has remained the same as last week’s. On mature reflection, I am glad it didn’t gain weight as that would be very counterproductive. Weight loss and trying to change your diet are difficult tasks and somewhat joyless. Mainly because you are denying yourself pleasure. However, I don’t like what I see when I look in the mirror, so if I wish to regain my former status as a minor deity and sexual Tyrannosaurus (in my mind), then I need to get back on track.
With Blaugust: Festival of Blogging fast approaching, I have decided to close several side projects I started last November (which rapidly ran out of momentum) and focus all my writing endeavours back on Contains Moderate Peril. I have taken a 9 month break which has served its purpose. I have decided to make some minor changes to the base template I am currently using for the blog, as it has remained essentially unchanged since summer 2015. I did toy with the idea of involving a third party developer to improve the site but employing such a company with specific Squarespace experience meant spending between £2000 and £3000, which is far more than my initial budget.
First of all let’s begin with an activity that I have a love hate relationship with. Namely, tinkering with your PC. I’ve been looking at the specs of my computer and it would appear that its performance Achilles heel is the graphic card. In a perfect world, I would just buy the latest top of the range model and be done with it. However, I am not sufficiently wealthy to do such things. Hence, I have to set a budget and then search for what is considered the best option within it. This is a tedious, contradictory and wearisome task. It involves trawling through reviews written by people who often do not understand the concept of a budget and figurative lines in the sand. They are infuriating, but that’s people for you.
Blaugust 2023: Lessons Learned
This is the last week of Blaugust 2023: Festival of Blogging and it is customary at this point to reflect on the event and one’s own contribution to it. For me, the stand out aspect of this year is the number of people participating and the diversity of blogs. I find it most reassuring that so many people have chosen to express themselves online and share their thoughts and insights. It has also been most gratifying to see so many people join the Discord server. There have been a lot of interesting and enjoyable discussions over the last few weeks. I hope that the support and resources available have proven useful for new and returning bloggers and that the event has been beneficial for them. I always find that Blaugust is good for bolstering my enthusiasm for writing and getting me back in the proverbial saddle.
This is the last week of Blaugust 2023: Festival of Blogging and it is customary at this point to reflect on the event and one’s own contribution to it. For me, the stand out aspect of this year is the number of people participating and the diversity of blogs. I find it most reassuring that so many people have chosen to express themselves online and share their thoughts and insights. It has also been most gratifying to see so many people join the Discord server. There have been a lot of interesting and enjoyable discussions over the last few weeks. I hope that the support and resources available have proven useful for new and returning bloggers and that the event has been beneficial for them. I always find that Blaugust is good for bolstering my enthusiasm for writing and getting me back in the proverbial saddle.
September is now on the horizon and in many ways it offers the hardest challenge of all for new bloggers or those that have recently returned. That being to keep blogging and to find some sort of routine or schedule that is appropriate. Sadly, some bloggerss will become increasingly intermittent in their output and a few will go into a hiatus. Such is the nature of blogging. Not everyone has a work/life balance that can sustain it and it is also fair to say that some will discover that as a hobby, blogging simply isn’t for them. But that is part of what Blaugust is about. It is an opportunity to work out and explore one’s own relationship with writing. What approach works for you and what motivates you to write or produce the material that you do. It is about being realistic and honest with yourself.
I have found, once again, that Blaugust has provided the impetus to encourage me to write every day. I think this just comes down to being in the company of like minded individuals, who are all trying to do the same. The event also provides a tremendous sense of satisfaction in seeing a series of posts build up over the course of the month. And it is nice to engage with those who leave comments. What I would like to do in the months ahead is see if I can increase the readership, which has naturally declined during the period I have not been writing. I am hoping that regularly blogging about Starfield will prove an enjoyable experience and of potential interest to readers. In the meantime I need to revisit the Blaugust Achievement list and determine which ones I can claim. To everyone else who participated, well done. I hope you’ve had a successful Blaugust.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
Blaugust 2023: Staying Motivated
I have participated in Blaugust numerous times over the years and also in several other similar events. I have therefore written about the subject of “staying motivated” quite a few times already and as a result it is quite hard to come up with a new angle on the problem and not to sound like a scratched record. I also appreciate that my rather hardline and fundamentalist message of “stop complaining and just write, no excuses” may not necessarily resonate or inspire everyone. We all have to tackle this problem in our own unique way. So today, I’ve decided to adopt a more conciliatory stance and offer five straight forward and practical points that may help the aspiring blogger to keep on writing in the weeks ahead.
“Gonna fly now, flying high now” and other motivational stuff
I have participated in Blaugust numerous times over the years and also in several other similar events. I have therefore written about the subject of “staying motivated” quite a few times already and as a result it is quite hard to come up with a new angle on the problem and not to sound like a scratched record. I also appreciate that my rather hardline and fundamentalist message of “stop complaining and just write, no excuses” may not necessarily resonate or inspire everyone. We all have to tackle this problem in our own unique way. So today, I’ve decided to adopt a more conciliatory stance and offer five straight forward and practical points that may help the aspiring blogger to keep on writing in the weeks ahead.
Focus on your own blog and not what others are doing. It is natural to look to other blogs for ideas and inspiration. Ideas for both templates and posts are shared and this is how popular formats and styles become established. However, other people’s blogs can also be a distraction. Especially if you feel that they are gaining a degree of success and yours isn’t quite getting the same sort of traction. Just like obsessing over website traffic and stats, worrying too much about what others are doing is problematic. It can sow the seeds of discontent and undermine your output. Which is why it is important to stay focused upon your own writing. There comes a point where you must draw a line under tweaking your blog’s design and apply your energies to writing. A fancy looking blog without any regular content is redundant.
Brainstorm ideas. Keep notes somewhere practical. Be it in a physical notebook or electronically. Write down ideas, as and when they come to you. Better still, brainstorm potential writing prompts and talking points. Write them down, put them in some semblance of order and start banking ideas for the future. Write draft posts if that is your style and get the basics down first. Ideas become bullet points, bullet points become paragraphs and paragraphs can be built into a full blog post. If you have a good idea, don’t squander the opportunity. You may have an angle on a particular subject that others haven’t covered yet.
Hannibal Smith likes a plan
Plan posts. Brainstorming ideas and collating draft posts allows you to plan content in advance. Some bloggers like to write spontaneously or react to what is happening around them. But not everyone favours such an ad hoc and impromptu style. Hence planning posts in advance may well increase your chances of them completed and out the proverbial door. If fate provides you with both the time and inclination to write two posts in a day, then seize the opportunity. Some subjects may well need to be tackled in more than one post. Therefore planning an appropriate arc to accommodate a weighty subject may be the best approach. Committing to a series of posts may also provide a degree of stability that you need. It means not having to think of new material for a while which can take the pressure off.
Set achievable goals. Blogging becomes a lot easier if you are entirely honest with yourself. We all know what we can and cannot achieve with regard to writing and balancing the requirements of the rest of our life. Therefore, don’t commit publicly to writing material everyday and then fail to achieve it. You will disappoint yourself and your readers. If you can realistically post one post a week then embrace that reality and ensure that you do your best. Placing unnecessary pressure upon yourself is counterproductive, so don’t do it. Be candid about what you can produce, with the time and resources you have and then focus upon getting it done. Something is usually better than nothing when it comes to blogging.
Reward yourself. Finally, reward yourself after writing. If you have set yourself a target of three posts in a week and you achieve it, then claim whatever prize you have set for yourself. A carrot on the end of a stick is better at motivating than just a stick on its own. Gamification is often a good tool to increase productivity. So find a way to reward yourself that will actively encourage you to write. Obviously, if you fail to hit your target and still reward yourself, you’re an unconscionable hypocrite and calumniator, who will burn in perdition’s flames. But that’s blogging for you and the universally accepted code of writing. No blog post. No cakes. Or meth. Or whatever your personal indulgence is.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
16 Years of Blogging
Today is my blogging anniversary. I have been inflicting my thoughts upon the world for 16 years. I started writing online regularly in March 2007, although my early blogging projects were somewhat scattershot as I struggled to find an appropriate niche. August 16th standouts because it was the date I registered my first domain name, in a fit of enthusiasm. In the previous seven months, I created and abandoned three sites before I finally found a subject that I could focus upon and that would sustain my writing. Hence for practical reasons I consider August 16th my starting date as I spent money on my hobby, which I believe shows some kind of commitment. I won’t bore readers yet again with my origin story as I’ve covered that before. To keep things short and sweet, I’ve kept writing this long because I enjoy it. Maybe in a different life, I would have liked to have made it my career.
Today is my blogging anniversary. I have been inflicting my thoughts upon the world for 16 years. I started writing online regularly in March 2007, although my early blogging projects were somewhat scattershot as I struggled to find an appropriate niche. August 16th standouts because it was the date I registered my first domain name, in a fit of enthusiasm. In the previous seven months, I created and abandoned three sites before I finally found a subject that I could focus upon and that would sustain my writing. Hence for practical reasons I consider August 16th my starting date as I spent money on my hobby, which I believe shows some kind of commitment. I won’t bore readers yet again with my origin story as I’ve covered that before. To keep things short and sweet, I’ve kept writing this long because I enjoy it. Maybe in a different life, I would have liked to have made it my career.
I like long-form writing that utilises the English language well. It can be informative, galvanising and even revolutionary. Well chosen words give weight to ideas and concepts. They can inspire and call people to action. They can also empathise, amuse and educate. The right words can echo through time or make you spit out your coffee. Hence I like the acerbic wit of Charlie Brooker and the emotional depth of Al McIntosh. Then there is the wisdom and reverence of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I also enjoy Agatha Christie, Jacob Bronowski, M.R. James and Roger Hargreaves. All great writers in their respective fields. I could list names indefinitely. My point is that when you encounter good writing, it doesn’t just make its point. It elicits an emotional response and resonates with you in a meaningful way. It can be four panels of Calvin and Hobbes, Shakespeare’s St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V, or Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream.
As a blogger, although I cannot reach the standards of the writings I have referenced, I believe I can learn and improve overtime. It doesn’t matter what you’re writing about or what your style is. If you keep writing, thinking and trying to hone your skills, you will. Hopefully your blogging journey will be enjoyable, rewarding and even therapeutic. I know mine has over the years. I’ve met (online) many talented, interesting people and learned a lot simply by reading other people’s experience of daily life. It becomes apparent very quickly that we have more in common, than we do differences. I also believe that we are actively encouraged to be docile and to lose ourselves in memes and ephemeral online content. We willingly embrace an infantilised and lazy use of language. In doing so we restrict our own freedom of expression. Blogging flies in the face of this. It is about exercising your right to free speech, free thought and rejecting the status quo.
I hope that I’m still writing in another 16 years time, as it is such an integral part of my daily life. However, I suspect my liver and arteries have other plans. Plus the growing corporate stranglehold over the internet may well mean that blogging becomes more and more like pissing in the wind. I don’t think that any company would be crass enough to block content directly that isn’t under their auspices, but it isn’t too far fetched to envisage an algorithm that bypasses anything that isn’t “affiliated”. But enough of this existential navel gazing. We haven’t quite reached an Orwellian dystopia yet. Therefore, in the meantime remember that words are good. They are your friend and ally. They will serve you well if you approach them with an open mind. Don’t forget the old maxim, you must say what you mean, if you wish to mean what you say. Keep writing.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
Creator Appreciation Week: Cool Dudes Walking Club
It's Creator Appreciation Week (August 13th – August 19th) for those participating in Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2023. What does that mean in plain English? It means I am going to write a post specifically about someone or a group of people who create content that I enjoy. Now that is not a short list. I subscribe to dozens of YouTube channels and even more blogs via Feedly. However, it is not practical to try and write about all of these. So I have had to think long and hard about selecting one creator to highlight. It’s quite a difficult choice because I enjoy a multitude of content for different reasons. However, I have chosen one which regularly keeps me entertained, has a good community associated and also offers an element of interaction which is quite unique. It is this last factor which has tipped the balance.
It's Creator Appreciation Week (August 13th – August 19th) for those participating in Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2023. What does that mean in plain English? It means I am going to write a post specifically about someone or a group of people who create content that I enjoy. Now that is not a short list. I subscribe to dozens of YouTube channels and even more blogs via Feedly. However, it is not practical to try and write about all of these. So I have had to think long and hard about selecting one creator to highlight. It’s quite a difficult choice because I enjoy a multitude of content for different reasons. However, I have chosen one which regularly keeps me entertained, has a good community associated and also offers an element of interaction which is quite unique. It is this last factor which has tipped the balance.
One of my hobbies is walking for pleasure. The UK has a culture of walking and it is often a very practical means of getting about. Then there are the obvious physical and mental health benefits. The former are obvious, the latter not immediately so. Some people do not like being alone with their thoughts or find silence or at least the absence of speech, comforting. I do. Walking affords me a time to think and reflect upon anything I choose. It also allows me to switch off if I wish to. And then there are walks in the countryside. There’s the enjoyment of planning a route and challenging yourself with the distance you walk. Walking can be a fluid situation if a route through a field is untenable, or the weather turns against you. But it is always worth it for the potential views and the opportunity to pursue other interests when out, like photography, painting or wildlife spotting.
Which segues nicely into the Cool Dudes Walking Club. I would like to point out that “dude” is used in a non-gender specific way and that the club is open to all. About seven years ago I was perusing YouTube and found a channel belonging to comedian, actor and writer Marek Larwood. I was aware of his work and subscribed to his channel as it featured (among other things) a series of videos involving excursions to major tourist attractions in London. Let it suffice to say that Marek’s outlook on travel, tourists and generally navigating daily life resonated with me. As he has a keen interest in walking and started producing more related content, he eventually set up a separate YouTube channel. Thus the Cool Dudes Walking Club was born. I subsequently joined, subscribed to the new YouTube channel and became a monthly supporter.
There is a tendency these days for videos to follow a “process”. I don’t mind well made YouTube content but I don’t want the process to crowd out the passion. One of the key things about Marek Larwood’s walking videos is that they are made in an informal fashion but that doesn’t mean that they lack enthusiasm. Marek talks about his gear, gives hints and tips about walking and what he’s hoping to achieve. But it never feels like a hard sell. He also provides anecdotes and information relating to where he is walking and the sights and sounds along the way. Yet it is far from didactic or stilted. In fact the overall tone of most of his videos is the same as if you were walking with your mates. In between the clear love and excitement, there are miscellaneous grumblings about tourists or public footpaths that farmers have purposely blocked. And don’t get Marek started on pigeons. Therefore, the Cool Dudes Walking Club is not only entertaining but very relatable. That is important.
Another aspect of the Cool Dudes Walking Club that I like is the associated community. The comments on YouTube are always pleasant and informative. Often Marek will ask a question in the video such as “do you like “wild” camping? If so, what is wrong with you?” and the responses are honest and again relatable. I think the channel attracts walkers with a laid back mindset who enjoy walking in the moment, rather than those who see this outdoor pursuit as an ironman style challenge. And then there’s the photos. There are a range of Marek keyrings available as club merchandise and an open invitation to take pictures of your “mini Marek” while out walking. Pictures that are sent in feature at the end of videos and they are for me a highlight. People are very creative with their pictures and they often feature very interesting locations.
So these are a few of the reasons why I enjoy being a member of the Cool Dudes Walking Club. It is nice to be part of a community that enjoys a shared hobby, has a welcoming and genuine outlook and is fun to spend time with online. Plus it would be remiss of me not to say that I appreciate Marek’s sense of humour and broader perspective. He is also very good when it comes to extolling the virtues of his walks and their respective locations. I visited both Avebury and the Bembridge Windmill because of his videos. I also empathise with his aspiration to try and make the Cool Dudes Walking Club his primary job. I used to harbour similar hopes regarding writing and this site. Therefore it is nice to see the club membership grow and someone making progress through their own hard work.
It's Creator Appreciation Week (August 13th – August 19th) for those participating in Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2023. What does that mean in plain English? It means I am going to write a post specifically about someone or a group of people who create content that I enjoy. Now that is not a short list. I subscribe to dozens of YouTube channels and even more blogs via Feedly. However, it is not practical to try and write about all of these. So I have had to think long and hard about selecting one creator to highlight. It’s quite a difficult choice because I enjoy a multitude of content for different reasons. However, I have chosen one which regularly keeps me entertained, has a good community associated and also offers an element of interaction which is quite unique. It is this last factor which has tipped the balance.
Morph’s Epic Art Adventure in London is a step-free art trail and tourist attraction featuring the iconic animated character Morph. It is hosted by charitable organisation Whizz-Kidz, global event producers Wild in Art and Aardman. The trail features 56 super-sized sculptures of the much-loved children’s TV character, which are set among various iconic London landmarks including St Pauls, Tate Modern, Tower of London, Shakespeare’s Globe and Borough Market. It is a free public art trail and tourist attraction, designed by a variety of artists to excite and inspire people of all ages, whilst increasing public awareness about the need for young wheelchair users to be mobile, enabled and included in society. Morph’s Epic Art Adventure in London runs from June 19th until August 20th 2023.
With January already behind us, Mrs P and I decided it was high time we took our first day trip of 2022. So yesterday I spent some time looking online at details of various National Trust sites within an hour or so drive from our home. I also looked at similar places of historical note that are run by other bodies. Sadly, many are either partially or totally closed for the present. It would appear that from January to March many of these sorts of tourist attractions spend time repairing, refurbishing and preparing for forthcoming events. Grounds also have to be maintained. Hence, we were somewhat lacking in choice for suitable destinations. However, as the weather forecast was mild, today we opted to visit the village of Chiddingstone so we could walk in the grounds of the local castle and along the various footpaths in the area.
Regular readers will already know my position on New Year’s Resolutions. I think unrealistic, kneejerk commitments to hare-brained schemes that you know damn well won’t ever get done, are crass and tiresome. So let’s not waste each other’s time going down that route. I like sensible, realistic, attainable goals and that is exactly what I am setting myself for 2022. I want to increase my writing output this year because my drafts folder is filled with posts and ideas that haven’t quite been completed. Essentially this comes down to making the time to finish these articles and possibly embracing a somewhat briefer writing style. I’m also going to try and see if I can grow the existing audience for Contains Moderate Peril. I have some ideas as to how to do this and none of them really require any additional resources. It simply comes down to doing the required work and staying motivated. I believe that I meet both of those requirements.
The last few days have been very warm here in the UK. Sadly, this pleasant weather isn’t going to last and in two weeks time it will officially be Autumn. So we decided to make the most of the sunshine and take a trip out to East Sussex. Today’s destination was the village of Burwash, situated in the High Weald of Sussex. This rural community grew in size during the 13th century after King Henry III granted permission for a weekly market. It became a hot spot for smugglers during the 18th and 19th centuries, with contraband coming up from Hastings via the River Dudwell, a tributary of the River Rother. Burwash High Street has been designated a Conservation area by Rother District Council. Many of the period buildings along the High Street have been given listed building status by English Heritage. St Bartholomew’s Church is also of note. Although extensively restored in 1856, the tower dates back to the Norman period.
For the last week the UK has been enjoying some exceptionally warm weather with temperatures reaching 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) and above, here in the South East. For our latest day trip Mrs P and I decided to go somewhere local to reduce driving time and allow us to make an early start. Both of us wanted to achieve our daily step count (10,000 steps which is approximately 5 miles) but be done by mid afternoon before the heat made such activities uncomfortable. So we decided to go to Lesnes Abbey Woods which has a well tended park, gardens and the remains of a 12th century Abbey. It also connects to the Green Chain Walk. We drove there as it is only about twenty minutes away by car. However, we subsequently discovered that a local bus stops right outside the main entrance, so will bear this in mind for future visits.
Today’s weather was perfect for walking with light clouds, a gentle breeze and temperatures around 23 Celsius (73 Fahrenheit). So Mrs P and I decided that we’d like to take a leisurely stroll somewhere local. Fortunately, we live in south east London and not far from the Green Chain Walk. This is a network of managed trails and pathways through various woodlands and parks that span four Boroughs. We decided to walk to Avery Hill Park and then follow the Green Chain Walk to Eltham. From there we then walked through the high street to Well Hall and visited the Pleasaunce. Our journey covered a distance of about 4.5 miles or so. We took our time and frequently stopped to enjoy the surroundings. Overall we walked for about 2 hours. We then decided to return home by bus, as the weather had become somewhat overcast.
Due to the surprisingly good weather, Mrs P and I paid an impromptu visit to the village of Shorne in Kent yesterday. It’s a small community about 3 miles east of Gravesend. Where most of the new houses are located in a shallow valley, the old village is built upon higher ground and has a great view of the Thames Estuary, stretching from Gravesend to Southend-on-sea. Shorne Wood Country Park is also nearby. This area of woods was once part of the large Cobham Hall Estate. In 1987 it came into the ownership of Kent County Council and was redeveloped for public use. There are several places of interest in Shorne such as Mill Cottages, Mill House and the remains of Shorne Mill. There are also some ancient barrows dating from Neolithic period. However, we had come specifically to visit St Peter and St Paul Church and place flowers on a friend’s grave.
I’ve written previously about walking for pleasure and its respective health benefits. I’ve decided that I wish to do more than just walk locally and for mainly functional reasons. Walking to the shops is good exercise but somewhat lacking in places of interest and areas of natural beauty, unless your definition includes the local Indian Restaurant and betting shop. So in an attempt to expand the scope of my travels, I’ve downloaded a few bespoke walking apps to my phone that are relevant to the local area. The most notable is the BexleyWalks app. Bexley being the London Borough in which I live. Although I enjoyed these suggested walks, they have covered a lot of familiar territory. Yes, it has been interesting to follow the various routes and pause to read about the local area history. But many of the walks are based in an area I’ve lived in for four decades. I need to travel further afield to somewhere I don’t know so well.
Today I visited Emmetts Garden in Sevenoaks. The Edwardian estate located at Ide Hill and is now owned by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. The garden, which covers an area of about six acres, is situated on a 600-foot sandstone ridge, overlooking the Weald. It is one of the highest points in Kent, offering an expansive view of the North Downs. The garden was laid out in the late 19th century and was influenced by William Robinson. It contains many exotic rare trees and shrubs from across the world. You can explore the rose and rock gardens, take in the views as well as enjoy flowers and shrubs in spring. In autumn visitors can enjoy the vibrant colours brought about by the changing of the season. The main attraction at this time of year are the Bluebells.
Blaugust 2023: A Personal Introduction
The first thing that springs to mind with such a post is the song “Introduce Yourself” by Faith No More, from their 1987 album of the same name. Ah, the power of word association. I was twenty back in 1987. Young, optimistic, trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life. I finally joined the UK civil service the following year as it was a practical solution to an unresolved question. But I digress. My personal employment history is not the point of this post as I don’t think I am personally defined by my line of work. So what actually does define a person? Their actions? The company they keep? John Saxon’s character, Roper, in the film Enter the Dragon.said “a man's strength can be measured by his appetites. Indeed, a man's strength flows from his appetites”. But he was wearing flared trousers so I remain sceptical of such a philosophy. As for me, I like to write. Always have done.
Faith No More were a “popular beat combo” from the 80s and 90s
The first thing that springs to mind with such a post is the song “Introduce Yourself” by Faith No More, from their 1987 album of the same name. Ah, the power of word association. I was twenty back in 1987. Young, optimistic, trying to figure out what I wanted to do in life. I finally joined the UK civil service the following year as it was a practical solution to an unresolved question. But I digress. My personal employment history is not the point of this post as I don’t think I am personally defined by my line of work. So what actually does define a person? Their actions? The company they keep? John Saxon’s character, Roper, in the film Enter the Dragon.said “a man's strength can be measured by his appetites. Indeed, a man's strength flows from his appetites”. But he was wearing flared trousers so I remain sceptical of such a philosophy. As for me, I like to write. Always have done.
I have written several posts in the past extolling the virtues of blogging. It serves a different purpose to other forms of content creation, affording a very personal means of communicating and expressing yourself. It is also invaluable for collating your thoughts and processing the world around you. It has a very cathartic quality and certainly will provide a form of self therapy if that is what you’re seeking. I also think there is a political dimension to writing. Too often these days we are encouraged to immerse ourselves in the trivial or get angry about bogus problems and false narratives. Writing is a means to see beyond such spurious things. To escape the confines of the boundaries set by others. It also challenges the status quo by sharing your own thoughts and opinions with others. And if that all sounds a little too pretentious or highfalutin for you, it’s also good fun.
Carl Sagan was a clever fellow
That’s the pitch out of the way, let’s talk about other things I like doing. I am a man of a certain age (55) and I enjoy traditional comforts, such as good food and wine. I don’t obsess over food and its associated cultural baggage, as in the modern idiom. I just like a “spot of lunch” and welcome meals from both ends of the culinary spectrum. I like reading and learning stuff. By that I mean proper stuff, not crazy bullshit posted on YouTube by some whack job. I recently finished The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan which was most illuminating. I try to read at least one book a month and nowadays tend to favour non-fiction over fiction, although I’m partial to some William Hope Hodgson. I am a big fan of cinema and watch films from all countries and all periods of time. It is an artform I take seriously and I cannot survive on a diet of superhero movies. I also like to walk for pleasure and regularly blog about my various day trips and holidays. I’m also a very political animal but am not affiliated to any specific party or ideology.
I have retired early, after a traumatic six years caring for my sick parents. I have plenty to keep myself occupied and seldom find myself at a loose end. It is my ambition now to ride out the remaining years of my life with the minimum amount of hassle and bullshit. I keep my expectations low and as a result I enjoy the simple pleasures in life, such as an unexpected sandwich and a chance encounter with a friendly cat at a bus stop. I laugh a lot as it is free and makes me feel slightly better about all the terrible things I see, that I’m powerless to change. All of the worst people I’ve encountered in life have lacked a sense of humour. I try hard not to hate things and people as such feeling tend to have a detrimental effect on everything. However, I agree with what Doctor M’Benga said recently in an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. “There are some things in this world that don’t deserve forgiveness”. I also think that there’s only one correct way to put the toilet paper on the holder. The Spanish Inquisition burned people for less.
Doctor M’Benga is possibly the most interesting character in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
So that’s me. Well some of me at least. I don’t consider myself a complicated individual. But I like to think I have some depth to me. I hope you are enjoying Blaugust, especially if you’re one of the new people who signed up at the start of the month. I sincerely hope you find support, inspiration and camaraderie within the Blaugust community and that you also find your niche. There’s a lot of experience out there to draw upon and hopefully a lot of positive affirmation coming your way. If I can offer just one piece of advice to anyone who is grappling with blogging at the present, it is that if you keep doing something, learn from your mistakes and just persevere then you will get better at it. Unless you are the UK government but that’s another story.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
Welcome to Blaugust 2023
Blaugust Festival of Blogging is finally here. A month long celebration of blogging and bloggers that is open to all. The idea is to encourage those who are just starting out with writing online or those who are returning to the scene after a break. It is also about those who already write online content and who might be feeling a little burned out, renewing their enthusiasm. Blaugust is a community driven event that encourages people to express themselves in the way that is best for them. It doesn’t advocate a “one size fits all” approach and is very much about horses for courses. There is advice, support and activities available and participants are at liberty to do as much or as little as they wish. Blaugust has been running for a decade now and I’ve participated in all previous events as I find it an invaluable experience, each time.
This will make sense if you read the post
Blaugust Festival of Blogging is finally here. A month long celebration of blogging and bloggers that is open to all. The idea is to encourage those who are just starting out with writing online or those who are returning to the scene after a break. It is also about those who already write online content and who might be feeling a little burned out, renewing their enthusiasm. Blaugust is a community driven event that encourages people to express themselves in the way that is best for them. It doesn’t advocate a “one size fits all” approach and is very much about horses for courses. There is advice, support and activities available and participants are at liberty to do as much or as little as they wish. Blaugust has been running for a decade now and I’ve participated in all previous events as I find it an invaluable experience, each time.
So far over 30 people have signed up for this year’s event and are actively participating. The Blaugust Discord Server has been busy with lots of new faces and the conversation has got off to a flying start. As someone who has been writing online for 16 years, I find the excitement and enthusiasm of all the new participants very invigorating. Blaugust always provides a welcome shot in the arm and reinvigorates my writing mojo, so to speak. It’s also very uplifting to spend time with those who are taking their first steps online. I get the same pleasure from this as I do when I watch a classic movie that I’m very familiar with with someone who’s seeing it for the first time. Seeing new bloggers gain confidence, improve their style and increase their output is most gratifying. The written word is a powerful tool and it is important to make sure it is available to all.
The Magnificent Seven reference coming up
Now it is customary during the beginning of Blaugust to write a post or two offering advice based upon your own experience. I have done that many times over the years on a wealth of topics. Blog rolls, drafting posts, your writing voice, whether to allow comments, website traffic and statistics, motivation, writing schedules and much more. All of which are valid points to consider when blogging. However, today I am going to give just one very straightforward piece of advice. One that is somewhat obvious but is paradoxically the hardest to do. And that is, once you’ve set up your blog with a fancy theme, loads of plug-ins and a quirky domain name, sooner or later you have got to sit down and actually write something. “No shit”, I hear you say. But let’s be honest, wasting time and putting writing off is something we all do to a greater or lesser degree. Procrastination is the thief of time and an international pastime.
How often have you found yourself with lots of ideas buzzing around your brain that you think would make a “crackerjack” blog post. That’s a niche market pop culture reference for fans of The Magnificent Seven but I digress. So there you are filled with creativity and enthusiasm with time on your hands. So naturally you head to your desk, cracking your knuckles in anticipation of the literary masterpiece you are about to bestow upon humanity. And then you sit down to write the damn post and suddenly your keyboard might as well be kryptonite or a two day old fox turd. Immediately that bird on Mrs Coltart’s roof that you can see through the window, has just become the most fascinating thing in the entire universe. You realise that you may have a library book to take back, or you’ve run out of oregano, so you have to go to the store, or else you’ll be condemned to eat bland meals for all eternity.
Prepare for some wisdom comparable to Dear Drooper
Congratulations you’ve just done what 100% of all other bloggers have done. Fear not the solution is easy. You just have to fucking write, you long-eared galoot (other kinds of galoots are available). Yep, that’s the answer. Put your ass in a chair, write some lines, expand upon them and voila, you’ve written a blog post. It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare, it doesn’t have to change the course of history and it doesn’t even have to be of interest to anyone but you if you want. But to be a blogger you do have to write. It’s essential to the concept. Now let us not get into an argument about writer’s block. I do recognise that it is a thing. But it never has been and never will be about not being able to think about what to write. There are endless subjects to inspire you and explore. Writer’s block is about being motivated to write and not wanting to write. There will be times when your heart’s not in it. But you can’t allow something quite so capricious to undermine your writing intentions all the time.
Now if you don’t want to write, then fine, don’t. That’s your prerogative as Bobby Brown said originally before everyone else copied him. Just don’t whine about it later, that you haven’t written anything if you didn’t actually sit down and write something. This is the most practical and sage-like advice I can give to anyone who wants to blog or create any content online. You have to knuckle down and just get on with it, sooner or later. How many other tasks accommodate such a nebulous excuse? I didn’t take out that festering pile of recycling because I am swathed in melancholic pathos. Bullshit. Nope you have to apply yourself to write. Or else you’ll just be forever on the sidelines trying to convince others (and yourself) exactly how good at writing you could be, if it wasn’t for the metropolitan elites, global warming and other “reasons”. The Farage Defense as I call it but that’s a separate blog post.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
Blaugust 2023
It is a fact of life, like death and taxes, that our passion for our hobbies will wax and wane overtime. All too often, the realities of daily life just get in the way. The enthusiasm you have in the morning for a great idea, may vanish by the evening when we finally have time to do it. Furthermore, if you do something often enough, sooner or later you’ll either want to (or need to) take a break. Regardless of how much you may love that particular pastime. Hobbies take time, energy and discipline. Sadly, not only can these factors take a toll upon your ongoing participation but they can also potentially stop you from even starting. I suspect that I am preaching to the proverbial choir and that many of those reading this will have experienced both scenarios. You’ve either struggled to sustain a “passion project” and have burned out, or you’ve fallen at the very first hurdle and not progressed beyond your initial excitement to try something new.
It is a fact of life, like death and taxes, that our passion for our hobbies will wax and wane overtime. All too often, the realities of daily life just get in the way. The enthusiasm you have in the morning for a great idea, may vanish by the evening when we finally have time to do it. Furthermore, if you do something often enough, sooner or later you’ll either want to (or need to) take a break. Regardless of how much you may love that particular pastime. Hobbies take time, energy and discipline. Sadly, not only can these factors take a toll upon your ongoing participation but they can also potentially stop you from even starting. I suspect that I am preaching to the proverbial choir and that many of those reading this will have experienced both scenarios. You’ve either struggled to sustain a “passion project” and have burned out, or you’ve fallen at the very first hurdle and not progressed beyond your initial excitement to try something new.
I fall into the former category. I’ve been blogging for over two decades and I slowly ground to a halt last September. I tried to jump start my “writing mojo” in April this year but it was short lived. Rather than playing amateur psychologist, let it suffice to say that motivation is a factor. Fortunately, Blaugust 2023: Festival of Blogging is fast approaching (it starts in August). This yearly, community driven, online event is an invaluable wellspring of support, advice, camaraderie and enjoyment. Organised and overseen by Belghast from the Tales of the Aggronaut blog, Blaugust “is a month-long event that takes place in August each year that focuses on blogging and other serialised content. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly. The idea is that this festival of blogging can help reignite dwindling fires for the next year and give folks a sense of kinship as a result”.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, actually it was quite shit”.
Hence, I have signed up for Blaugust 2023: Festival of Blogging as I find that the event is excellent for motivating me and focusing my energy. I would urge anyone who has blogged previously and wishes to resume their writing to read Bel’s post and come and join us on Discord. The same goes for anyone who is new to blogging or any other type of online content creation. You’ll find help and advice for all kinds of activities be it streaming, podcasting, blogging or vlogging. Being part of a community where you know that friends and colleagues will view your content and give you positive, constructive feedback can be a major boost when you are learning the ropes. As for me, I just need a proverbial kick up the arse to get blogging again. I enjoy writing for a multitude of reasons but the most fundamental one is that it makes me happy. Time to get back in the saddle.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
Thoughts on Blogging Part 18
As a blogger we are often told by our peers not to obsess over website traffic and statistics in general. There is a degree of sense in this. We should be primarily focused on writing, maintaining an equitable schedule and staying motivated. Stats can have a negative effect on the latter. However, one cannot ignore the subject either. As a writer, at some point you do want people to actually read your material, or else what is the point? I have therefore always kept an eye on traffic and have attempted to grow my readership overtime. The results have been varied. In my experience, you do slowly build up an audience by being persistent with your writing. But you also have to promote your work, which is a job in itself. It’s also something that not everyone is comfortable with. “Therein lies the rub” as the expression goes. How do you attract readers without compromising your own standards?
As a blogger we are often told by our peers not to obsess over website traffic and statistics in general. There is a degree of sense in this. We should be primarily focused on writing, maintaining an equitable schedule and staying motivated. Stats can have a negative effect on the latter. However, one cannot ignore the subject either. As a writer, at some point you do want people to actually read your material, or else what is the point? I have therefore always kept an eye on traffic and have attempted to grow my readership overtime. The results have been varied. In my experience, you do slowly build up an audience by being persistent with your writing. But you also have to promote your work, which is a job in itself. It’s also something that not everyone is comfortable with. “Therein lies the rub” as the expression goes. How do you attract readers without compromising your own standards?
No doubt the following anecdote will not come as a surprise to others, but it caught me unaware. I have been on a writing hiatus since last September and only post content about two times a month on my blog. However, I recently decided to write a humorous piece about Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 DMZ, as I’ve been playing the game a lot lately. Due to the niche nature of the post, I chose to publish it on the DMZ subreddit, rather than my own blog. But in every other respect I treated it as I would a regular post. To cut a long story short, when you post on reddit you can find statistics at the footer showing how well it has performed. Only the author and the moderators can see this data. This particular post was viewed 32,500 times in approximately 36 hours. To put that into perspective that’s the equivalent of a quarter of my yearly traffic for my entire blog in just one and half days. A single post on Contains Moderate Peril never garners such traffic.
Now it is important to maintain a degree of perspective with regard to this. The DMZ subreddit has over 44,000 subscribers which is a substantial audience to begin with. Any post that touches on a popular talking point about the game will gain as much traction with the subreddits readership. But what this subreddit or any other potentially offers to writers, is an opportunity to raise their profile. A chance to build brand recognition. Yes I know that’s an appalling term that may make some of you shudder but that’s ultimately a big part of blogging. Often your readers not only visit your blog for your work but because they relate to you on some level. Hence a presence across multiple platforms, using a universal brand or handle, is a great way to build an online identity and increase awareness, directly or indirectly, of your writing.
Like many suggestions associated with blogging, this one means essentially more work. But that is the nature of the beast. Answering comments on your blog, so readers feel involved and want to come back is more work (something I always fail to do). Streaming, producing videos or a podcast as well as writing regularly is more work. Leaving comments on a popular website, forum or discord is more work. Posting material on a subreddit is exactly the same. However, if your motivation to write is wavering because you feel that you are spitting in the wind, then it can be very uplifting to get some traction elsewhere. It also serves as a timely reminder that if you want to succeed as a writer and build an audience, then you have to step outside of your comfort zone and “sell yourself”. And if you’re not writing at all, as I am at present, then you’ll get nowhere.
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.
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.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
When you initially start blogging, your aspirations tend to be very straightforward. Choose a title, find a niche and get into the habit of writing. Simple tasks that can still take a while to master. Once your blog is established and has endured for a while, you may not have any further long term goals other than to just keep going. However, if you feel that you want to achieve more then you have to tackle a new set of problems. There is a great deal of “advice” in the public domain about growing and monetising your blog. A lot of it is questionable but there are some approaches that do work. However, these require you to write to a specific process, chasing the ever changing whims of your potential readership. You have to compromise. And for many bloggers, that is the deal breaker.
I spent some time in July, making some changes to Contains Moderate Peril. I replaced the branding and made some alterations to the “about” page to ensure that it was up to date and relevant. Not that anyone reads it as I still regularly receive enquiries about guest posts. Something I no longer do. Today, I made some further changes as it is my long term goal to grow the audience for this site. Hence I want to try and make it easier for visitors to find the content they seek and offer them related material. To facilitate this, I have added some additional menu options to the blog homepage. These act as filters, presenting specifically themed content for readers. Hence there is a “movie” button that lists all film reviews and similarly one for “video games”. There are also links for two specific video games, The Lord of the Rings Online and Star trek Online, as website statistics show that these are popular subjects.
I’ve been writing online for 17 years. During that time a modest audience has read my posts and occasionally commented on them, which is the accepted dynamic of blogging. Some of my posts are ephemeral. Others, such as film reviews, have greater longevity. Naturally I want people to read my output and I’ve noticed that the film reviews seem to generate a fair amount of traffic. After consulting my website analytics package, it would appear that the majority of readers find my reviews by searching Google. Promoting my writing via social media does very little. Another issue is that readers tend to read the post they found via their search and then leave. Despite there being links at the bottom of the post to similar material. Currently, my blog does not have an effective means of searching older posts. The landing page has only 20 posts listed. There are approximately 2,500 archived.
As a blogger we are often told by our peers not to obsess over website traffic and statistics in general. There is a degree of sense in this. We should be primarily focused on writing, maintaining an equitable schedule and staying motivated. Stats can have a negative effect on the latter. However, one cannot ignore the subject either. As a writer, at some point you do want people to actually read your material, or else what is the point? I have therefore always kept an eye on traffic and have attempted to grow my readership overtime. The results have been varied. In my experience, you do slowly build up an audience by being persistent with your writing. But you also have to promote your work, which is a job in itself. It’s also something that not everyone is comfortable with. “Therein lies the rub” as the expression goes. How do you attract readers without compromising your own standards?
I was sitting in my office over the weekend, half-heartedly typing up a blog post about table manners and dining etiquette, when I paused and lapsed into a state of self examination and introspection.
“Isn’t Contains Moderate Peril supposed to be about gaming, movies and popular culture”? “Yes”, I replied to myself via my inner monologue.
“So what the hell am I doing writing about table manners, then?” my inner contrarian retorted.
“Well it is part of our culture, although I wouldn’t argue that it is a defining aspect of the zeitgeist at present” my conciliatory alter ego responded.
“Frankly, I’m getting bored with all of this per se” a third voice stated. It was at this point, I stopped arguing with various facets of my id and went to the pub.
March has been a challenging month for several reasons and as a result I’ve written very little. Furthermore, the recently revived podcast has also ground to a halt after just six episodes due to scheduling issues that are beyond myself and Brian’s control. At the end of February, Google made changes to their search algorithm which have had a major impact upon traffic to Contains Moderate Peril. Visits are down by over 20%. I’ll make no bones about the fact that this has really pissed me off. Several years of growth has been unceremoniously swept away at the drop of a hat. So all this, plus the rapidly changing situation regarding my Mother’s care, has found me ill disposed towards writing. To be clear, I’m not talking about writer’s block. I have plenty of ideas and a folder full of draft posts. I just haven’t wanted to write because I feel that I’m just spitting in the wind.
At the time of writing we are halfway through the Blaugust 2021 Festival of Blogging event. Whenever the subject of personal blogging is raised, there are those who immediately declare that “blogging is dead”. According to Google, out of 1.7 billion websites that currently exist worldwide, 500 million or so of those are blogs of some kind. These generate over 2 million blog posts daily. So I wouldn’t say that blogging per se is done and dusted. However it certainly has evolved considerably over the last 15 years. At the start of the current century blogging was a novel activity providing the means of keeping a personal journal online. Inevitably, popularity and ubiquity led to commercialisation and a necessity to monetise. There was a period of time when clicks, traffic and advertising could generate popularity as well as an income. But other forms of social media offering greater immediacy eventually usurped this potential. Now blogging is seen as more of a niche market activity or corporate tool.
By the time that August rolls around this year, I will have been actively blogging and generally sharing my writing online for 14 years. Prior to that, back in the eighties, I was involved in the production of several fanzines. That was indeed a labour of love and although I was happy to write the content, the work involved in physically creating the actual pages was tough. The printing costs were also an early lesson in how writing is not an immediate path to fame and fortune. All things considered, writing has been a major aspect of my life for as long as I can remember. I used to enjoy writing stories as a child and then as I got older I discovered the pleasure of a well constructed essay. I was fortunate to have three very good English teachers during my time at school, who were passionate about their job and very encouraging.
I mentioned not so long ago the possibility of a website revamp. I was concerned that the general layout of the blog was not optimal and that readers couldn’t easily find old material. In the past I even went as far as to write a guide to navigating through Contains Moderate Peril and using the categories to find old posts. Well I got a few emails and Twitter DMs about this and it would appear that folk like things just as they are. So I have reviewed my position and decided to leave things as they are at present. I did a little digging though my website stats, both from Squarespace and Google Analytics and it would appear the summary blocks at the bottom of each post are used and that the bounce rate for my site is not exactly as it first appears. Seems that readers do peruse other articles and the search facility is being used more often, especially for finding film reviews. So if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Due to the ongoing Global Pandemic, many people are now finding themselves working from home or having to stay in for health or childcare reasons. Hence there has been a marked increase in online leisure activities. Steam has been hit by a record number of concurrent users and Netflix and Amazon prime have both seen an increased demand upon their respective streaming services. If you’re not commuting then you are freeing up a substantial amount of hours each week. This potential abundance of “free time” along with a practical need to channel your energy into something to prevent yourself from going “stir crazy”, presents some interesting opportunities. Many people who have previously expressed an interest in writing and content creation now have the leeway to do so. Naturally, as a writing enthusiast and a long time blogger, I am happy to encourage such activities.
The New Year is often a time for revised plans, renewed ambitions and a desire to get back on the proverbial horse when it comes to content creation. More often than not, many of these lofty ambitions wither on the vine or fall victim to our propensity for indolence. Which is why I think it is prudent to ensure that any goals that you set for yourself are realistic and attainable. If for example, you have just started blogging, then it is wiser to focus on developing and maintaining a writing schedule, rather than trying to get a million page views in your first month. Impossible goals lead to disappointment which can then crush your optimism. Measured, targeted achievements, obtained over a credible time period may not seem so satisfying but they get the job done. Which is why I have given a great deal of thought to my own blogging goals for 2020. I am not going to alter or replace the blog template, nor am I going to embark upon too many side projects such a streaming or creating video content. Although I’d like to do such things I cannot sustain them or cope with the volume of work they will create. This year I am just going to try to create as much written content as possible and focus on expanding brand awareness.
The end of Blaugust Festival of Blogging 2019 presents the perfect opportunity to write another entry in my “Thoughts on Blogging” series. According to the Blaugust schedule this is the “lessoned learned week”, although I’m not too keen on that specific phrase. It sounds too much like the sort of bogus, sombre platitudes that politicians trot out in the wake of some national tragedy. But such is the nature of semantics and such is the curious fashion in which my mind works. So rather than worry of the wording, I’ll just simply reflect upon the past month and consider what it means for my writing, both present and future. Because I do believe that over the last month, I have had a minor epiphany with regard to my relationship with blogging.
The last three months have been problematic from a writing perspective and my productivity and motivation have both suffered. I struggle to find appropriate time to sit down and apply myself to writing and when I do, I seldom have the correct mindset to stay focused for long. Yet due to the back catalogue of content available on Contains Moderate Peril, there is still regular traffic coming to the site. Ironically, despite my low productivity, I have started receiving an increase in blog related marketing and have received numerous emails regarding “collaboration”, “featured posts” and “SEO optimisation”. All of which I have no interest in. However, the point remains, I’m not writing as much as I used to and I miss it. The same can be said for podcasting but that’s a tougher problem to fix. It is more labour intensive than writing, so the logical thing to do is to focus on the former and not the latter to fix.
I wasn’t expecting to write another entry in the Thoughts on Blogging series so soon, but something came up that grabbed my attention and got me thinking. A simple question that’s often asked about blogging and one that has many layers to it, as well as numerous answers. A new blogger who recently joined the Blaugust discord server asked for help “getting traffic to their blog”. An enquiry that gave me (and possibly others) pause for thought. Because we all to a degree want to attract traffic to our blogs. But I also think bloggers are too coy about this this subject. We’ll say things like “I write for myself” or “it’s not about the numbers” and although I agree with these points, building an audience is important. Let’s be honest, it can be somewhat disheartening after writing a lengthy post about a subject close to you heart, for it to fall flat and not attract any traffic. As discussed before, often it is the casual blog posts written in a hurry, that can be the most popular and the articles you’re most proud of can go unnoticed. So let us be honest. I think most bloggers want to grow an audience and enjoy the sense of accomplishment that it provides.
I decided to take a short break from blogging last week. I have a lot on at present and the only time I’ve had available to write has been in the late evening. I prefer to write in the morning as I’m more focused and motivated. Plus I haven’t really had a lot of positive things to say of late about the two primary subjects of this website. Broadly speaking there’s not a lot of going on in the video games industry that enthuses me. Similarly, the current crop of film releases have hardly distinguished themselves. At present when I do get writing ideas, they tend to be obscure niche market subjects or commentary on social issues. For example, I’m thinking of writing a post about my continuing enjoyment of the Japanese TV show Takeshi’s Castle. I’m also forming my thoughts for an article about how society’s relationship with wildlife may be “broken”. Stuff that is interesting to me but may not be ideal material for readers of Contains Moderate Peril.
As January comes to an end, I am pleased that I have so far managed to maintain a daily writing schedule. I hope that I can continue in this vein throughout February. As ever the actual process of sitting and writing has proven a somewhat mixed bag so far this year. Some days the word simply spill out of me and a blog post potentially writes itself. On others, composing just three coherent paragraphs is like pulling teeth and much time is spent procrastinating and getting side tracked. But a mixture of self-discipline and a degree of pride have helped oil the creative wheels and kept the content flowing. Whether any of it is any good is for others to decided. However, it was nice to find one of my posts quoted in an article over at Massively Overpowered. It means that at least someone is reading my work and pondering upon the points therein. Writing is after all a means of communication and sharing ideas so it is rewarding to know that you’re not just yelling into the wind all the time.
This week, a rather high profile sub-reddit associated with the Star Trek Online community, changed its status to “private” as a means of protesting against the state of the game and the way developers Cryptic are handling things. That matter was surprisingly resolved within 24 hours after an olive branch was extended from the STO community manager on reddit. However, it is not the protest itself nor the state of the game that I wish to focus upon, but the importance of /r/stobuilds as a shared community resource. A lot of STO players enjoy optimising their builds and tweaking their loadout and this site it the place to go to share such information. There is also a group of hardcore players that dig deep into the games data and comprehensively crunch number and generate useful information. Hence if a resource such as this was taken offline for longer period of time, it would have a tangible impact upon players and the wider community.
Spending time in the company of others who have similar interests and passions can be an invaluable shot in the arm and a great source of motivation. For example, I recently joined a Facebook group associated with The Evolution of Horror Podcast. It’s an absolute pleasure to be able to pick over the bones of a movie such as The Wicker Man and explore its finer points. You don’t have to adjust your level of conversation for fear of boring people, or dial back your enthusiasm due to concerns of being labelled a nerd or fanboy. Finding these online havens where you feel comfortable are invaluable, regardless of whether your passion is sport, knitting, Lepidoptery or Phrenology. Remember this point. I shall be returning to it shortly.
I read a post over at Tobold’s Blog recently that got me thinking about blogging, popularity, and the ebb and flow of our passions. The reason being is that Tobold, like many other long-term bloggers, has seen a decline in his audience over recent years. He certainly wasn’t carping about it, just simply observing the correlation between reducing your written output, the decline in popularity of his original subject matter and the number of visitors coming to his site. He also made a keen observation that blogging is not necessarily “where it’s at” with regard to cultivating an audience. If you are producing content specifically to grow and maintain a following, then You Tube and Twitch are better platforms for that. Especially if your content is part of the wider gaming scene. For better or for worse, I now associate gaming commentary with visual mediums rather than blogging. Yes, there is still long from criticism being produced but it’s aimed at a niche gaming audience. One that I would guess is older.
I usually write a post early on in the New Year in which I list the various goals I’m focusing on over the next twelve months. To date I have not done this because I am still trying to work out what I can and cannot accommodate within my current schedule. As a carer I’m kept very busy, but my weekly routine does offers windows of opportunity for writing. However, free time is a finite commodity, so I have to really cut my proverbial coat according to my cloth this year. Therefore, I’ve decided to pursue the following projects. I will continue to regularly post on Contains Moderate Peril as I enjoy having my own platform and certainly feel that I still have a lot to write about. Also, the audience is steadily growing, and I think it would be counter productive to fly in the face of such a development. I was also given the opportunity to write for MMOGames recently and have decided to accept this invitation. Writing to deadlines and deferring to editors, is an invaluable learning experience. Plus, it presents my writing to a wider audience which is great for brand awareness and other awful marketing terms.
There wasn’t a Newbie Blogger Initiative this year and I was saddened by that. I’ll make no bones about the fact that I liked this yearly event and the way for a few months after it, you’d see a lot of interesting new blogs spring up, filled with optimism and passion. But, what’s done is done, and life goes on. It’s up to others to pick up that particular torch and run with it, if they wish to see the event to return. I also miss a lot of my colleagues and peers’ blogs and the comradery that stemmed from the associated community. Again, this is a natural and inevitable attrition process, caused by that thing known as “life”. So, to combat my current melancholic malaise, I thought I’d collate a few of my thoughts about writing online and set them down in a semi-regular post, the same way as I do about podcasting.
A Year in Blogging
So far I have written 135 blog posts in 2022. Not much compared to previous years, but frankly I’ve become a little despondent with writing in recent months (I shall expand more upon that in a moment). Hence, since October I have been enjoying a break from regular blogging. I have written sparingly and pursued other leisure activities. Given that my post output has gone down, it would be logical to assume that there has been a commensurate drop in web traffic to Contains Moderate Peril, but this is not the case. Overall, my monthly statistics have remained the same, proving once again that most of my readership find my written content via Google searches, rather than reading new material on a daily basis. This has given me much food for thought and added to my ongoing reflection upon my writing activities.
So far I have written 135 blog posts in 2022. Not much compared to previous years, but frankly I’ve become a little despondent with writing in recent months (I shall expand more upon that in a moment). Hence, since October I have been enjoying a break from regular blogging. I have written sparingly and pursued other leisure activities. Given that my post output has gone down, it would be logical to assume that there has been a commensurate drop in web traffic to Contains Moderate Peril, but this is not the case. Overall, my monthly statistics have remained the same, proving once again that most of my readership find my written content via Google searches, rather than reading new material on a daily basis. This has given me much food for thought and added to my ongoing reflection upon my writing activities.
Bloggers write for different reasons and their motivations are equally diverse. I write primarily for myself but I see no shame in wanting others to read it too. Afterall, the medium is a form of communication and that process is a much more enjoyable experience if it is multilateral. It’s the same with podcasting. It all seems a waste of time if you script, record and edit a show and no one listens to it. So it may be unfashionable to say so but one of the reasons I have become fed up with blogging after 15 years is because I do feel at times that I’m just spitting in the wind. Am I talking about internet fame and fortune? No. As a wise man once said “Fame, it’s an empty purse. Count it, go broke. Eat it, go hungry. Seek it, go mad”. What I am referring to is building a healthy audience and contributing to a community. I used to feel that was the case about a decade ago. It just doesn’t quite feel that way anymore.
However, it is not all doom and gloom. I happily wrote continuously for a month during this year’s Blaugust event. Which sheds some insight into my personal psychology. I will happily fail to meet my own targets and goals, but when I make a commitment to a third party I cannot break it. It’s funny how I’m socially conditioned this way but that is another blog post entirely. Back to the matter in hand, I am currently considering a staged return to writing. This time of year makes it a lot easier because I can write a lot of pieces that are all variations of “a year in (insert subject matter here)”. I am also ruminating upon a new project. Something I can channel my energies into. Perhaps it is time to step outside of my normal comfort zone of writing and podcasting and do something different. We shall see. The New Year is fast approaching.
I don’t really celebrate New Year’s Eve anymore. By that I mean, I don’t go to the pub or any other social gatherings. Nor do we have guests ourselves. Mrs P often doesn’t stay up to midnight. Mainly because she tends to go to bed relatively early, by default. One year changing to another seems a somewhat arbitrary excuse for a celebration to me. However, I realise that New Year is a big deal for some. I used to work with someone who said, very philosophically, that Christmas was for the children and New Year was for the adults. He was of Scottish antecedents and so New Year’s Eve was of more cultural significance to him. Also if you’ve had a difficult, problematic or traumatic 2025, then I fully understand that you may well be happy to see the back of 2025 and look to 2026 to be a significantly better year. Or at least, not to be as shit.
I have not watched as much TV as I usually do, this year. Mainly because I have become a little weary of the ways contemporary TV is produced, especially with regards to streaming shows. Due to the costs, shows such as Star Trek: Strange New Worlds only have 10 episodes per season. Simply put, the season begins to hit its stride and then is abruptly over. This problem (if you see it as such) is then further compounded by there being a significant wait between seasons. In the case of STSNW it was two years between season two and season three. Not all shows fall foul of this. Apple TV produces two seasons of the excellent espionage drama Slow Horses at a time, ensuring a prompt release schedule. However, even this has issues. Due to the complexity of the plots of many contemporary TV shows, something that is a marketing point, some viewers cannot remember the plot after a twelve month hiatus. Network TV shows seldom have these issues with each season being 20 plus episodes long and story arcs that are seldom as complex.
It is customary in a post such as this to list the various games that I’ve played over the last twelve months and share my thoughts on them. Wider analysis of the video game industry is also de rigeur. Unfortunately, I don’t really feel disposed to do either of those two things. My thoughts on the games I’ve played have already been published and can easily be accessed via the links at the bottom of this post. As for the video game industry, it suffers the same flaws as music, TV and cinema. There is creativity and innovation out there but it is often drowned out by mainstream products which are demonstrably inferior due to their inherent mediocrity. As for the business side of things, we once again clearly see the failings of the corporate management class. Sadly, they do not face the consequences of the mistakes that they make.
I began 2025 with a fairly strong writing streak, publishing posts about games, technology and even air fryers. Sadly, this burst of enthusiasm gradually tailed off between April and June. I can’t even recollect if there was any particular “real world” reason for this or whether it was just a case of I wasn’t especially motivated. Fortunately, I started writing again in July in preparation for Blaugust: Festival of Blogging and subsequently wrote throughout the entirety of August. Revamping my blog in September and moving it to the latest version of Squarespace proved a positive move and since then I have kept up a writing schedule of posting to Contains Moderate Peril every second day. At present I have a lot of draft posts pending and I am not struggling to come up with ideas and write in general. I intend to nurture this positive approach and see if I can build upon it in 2026.
Looking back at my various posts regarding “technology” this year, a recurring theme has been my ongoing attempts to replace certain mainstream products with alternatives that do the job in-hand better, don’t require constant updates, aren’t bloated by superfluous functionality and are more cost effective or even ethical. Needless to say, this has proven quite hard. Hence I was unable to find a suitable replacement email client for Microsoft Outlook and end my subscription to Microsoft 365 Personal. The main problem is that most alternative software won’t support my email archive due to differences in the mailbox format. One possible work around is to install an older and therefore, non-subscription version of Outlook but this raises support and compatibility issues. It would be a lot easier to divest myself of a lot of mainstream software if I was starting from scratch.
I created a Bluesky account a little over a year ago. I was initially somewhat sceptical of adopting a third social media messaging platform, because I had become quite comfortable using Mastodon as a replacement for Twitter/X. However, certain individuals that I wished to continue to follow were migrating to Bluesky, so I followed suit. It has always been my long term goal to pick one of these two newer services and make it my sole point of presence in social media terms. So far that hasn’t happened. Hence a year on I find myself juggling three such platforms. Twitter/X, Mastodon and Bluesky. I post links to my blog posts on all of these services. To be honest none of them generate any tangible traffic but this is how you promoted your website or blog 15 years ago and old habits die hard.
In my teenage years, there was a social obligation to go out on New Year’s Eve. This often meant congregating in some dismal pub, queuing at the bar for 30 minutes to get a drink, then trying to find a corner where you could stand and struggle to have a conversation with your friends, above the noise of the crowd. The evening was dull, noisy and often ended in a fight. Then, around 1:00 AM we were summarily turfed out into the street and had to make our way home. Buses always run at this time of year to serve a public need but the “drunk express” was never a pleasant means of transportation. Quite frankly the whole experience was shit but the hubris of youth meant we deluded ourselves that we were having a good time. If someone suggested something similar today, I would laugh in their face. I am happy to spend New Year’s Eve indoors and away from it all.
It is customary for me to write an end of year summary of my gaming activities but I suspect that on this occasion it will be somewhat short. For me, 2024 has really hammered home the notion of the ephemeral nature of video games as well as their commercial ubiquity. The moment a game fails to satisfy for whatever reason, rather than complain or worry about it, I just move on to something else. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of games out there. I have a substantial back catalogue of games that Epic and Amazon prime regularly giveaway. I have bought numerous discounted bundles in the past, in the pious hope that I’ll play one of the games included, at some point in the future. Games may well be enjoyable and engaging but many are also disposable. That’s not to say they’re bad. While playing them you are indeed “entertained”. However, when you’re “done”, it’s amazing how you quickly find another and forget what you were previously playing.
The last time I wrote A Year in Movies post was back in 2020. That was naturally an unusual year and it certainly had a radical impact upon the film industry and the way new movies are distributed. In many ways the pandemic accelerated the inevitable move towards cross platform, same day releases. 4 years on and it is quite usual for films to have a short cinema release before becoming available on streaming media. They often appear on physical media at the same time. Effectively you can go to the cinema, or simply watch at home on the platform of your choice if you prefer. Rent, buy or subscribe, the film studios still get their pound of flesh and everyone is happy. Sometimes if a film has failed to gain sufficient traction at the cinema, its release will be cut short and it will go to streaming even quicker. Direct to video from the eighties and nineties has been superseded with direct to streaming.
It is fair to say that we live in an age where we do not lack quality TV. There are numerous shows that have garnered critical acclaim or a strong word of mouth following that are deemed “must see” viewing. No doubt you, like myself, have a long “to do” list of programs that you need to “get round to watching” on top of those shows which are staples of your viewing regime. If you didn’t have enough programmes already to catch up with, we all have friends and family telling us about a “great show” that’s on a platform we don’t subscribe to, that we really need to see. It is quite extraordinary and a far cry from my youth when the UK simply had three terrestrial channels until satellite TV became popular in the late eighties. To paraphrase the former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan “we’ve never had it so good”.
This post is not intended to be a comprehensive review of music per se in 2024. It is simply a few thoughts on what I’ve been listening to over the course of the year and my ever changing relationship with the Terpsichorean muse. As a man in his fifties who has always enjoyed multiple genres of music and it is a comforting presence in day-to-day life. Up to a year ago, I relied upon my own music collection on my PC as the source of music to which I listened. Yet, this meant that I was somewhat locked into my own existing tastes and there was limited scope for me to find new material. This changed last December when I started subscribing to Spotify and since then it has become my primary source of music. It caters to my tastes, which at times are quite niche and it gently introduces me to new material without being too invasive. This has proven most beneficial.
This is my third attempt at writing this post. The first was a little too philosophical, tackling the nature of adult life and how it is a far cry from the childish notions I had about being a “grown up” when I was seven. The second was just a list of the various shit that has gone down in my life over the last twelve months and it felt far too much like whinging. Hopefully this one is more succinct and even handed. 2022 was not a good year, personally speaking. My family and I experienced a lot of health issues and my mother died after a rapid decline. Hence there has been a lot of stress and anxiety which has left me feeling tired and somewhat jaded. Due to the subsequent changes in my personal circumstances, I now find myself at somewhat of a “loose end”. I feel the need to channel my energies into something but I’m not sure exactly what at present.
So far I have written 135 blog posts in 2022. Not much compared to previous years, but frankly I’ve become a little despondent with writing in recent months (I shall expand more upon that in a moment). Hence, since October I have been enjoying a break from regular blogging. I have written sparingly and pursued other leisure activities. Given that my post output has gone down, it would be logical to assume that there has been a commensurate drop in web traffic to Contains Moderate Peril, but this is not the case. Overall, my monthly statistics have remained the same, proving once again that most of my readership find my written content via Google searches, rather than reading new material on a daily basis. This has given me much food for thought and added to my ongoing reflection upon my writing activities.
When I wrote Goodbye 2020 a year ago, I endeavoured to be philosophical and sanguine in my approach. It was a challenging year for all of us and for me it was further compounded by a bereavement. However, I strove to keep matters in perspective and tried to look at things in a broader context. I cannot be as even handed this time. 2021 has been a very difficult year for myself and my family and I will be glad to see the back of it. Nationally speaking, things haven’t been much better. I feel that we’ve squandered the initial progress that the COVID-19 vaccines offered. Obviously, I cannot do anything about the problems that the UK faces in 2022. However, I certainly intend to address some of the issues that I and my immediate family are facing. I am going to tackle some specific problems that need to be laid to rest and set myself some tangible goals to achieve. 2022 isn’t going to be something that just happens and I passively sit back and watch.
Getting older does have a few benefits. One of them, if you are fortunate enough to embrace the concept, is a degree of self awareness and the ability to be honest with yourself. Over the years I have tried to adjust my technological habits but ultimately I am a creature of habit. My use of technology and consumption of content has been determined by the decades I grew up in. Therefore, I am a PC user and prefer to sit in my office where I write, play games and peruse the internet. I have my desk set up in a way that suits my needs and I can go about my business in comfort. When away from my office, I rely heavily on my phone as an alternative platform. In some instances phone based apps offer a superior experience to the desktop or browser based PC alternatives. Banking being one example. For better or for worse this is how I do things and I am comfortable with these choices.
Usually in a post such as this, my primary focus would be writing about the games that I’ve played over the last twelve month and what it was about them that I specifically enjoyed. However, this year I feel that I must address the wider issues that have dominated the news regarding the video games industry. Simply put, several very high profile and successful triple A video game companies have been beset by scandals over the last twelve months. And these have been of such a nature that they have finally laid to rest the myth that some still cling to, that working “in video games” is somehow different from working in more traditional industries because it’s “cool”. It turns out that it has all the same failings as TV, music and film. The people at the top are abusive and broken and maltreat those at the coalface who do all the real work for precious little reward.
I can’t speak for others but my relationship with social media has certainly changed over the last two years. Whenever new internet technologies emerge, there is a brief period when it feels like some sort of new frontier. Often such innovations become a means of empowering the marginalised and the voiceless. For a while new platforms can even be a force for good. But eventually commercial interests creep in along with rules and regulations. Hence, it all inevitably takes a turn for the worst. The frontier is finally tamed and ends up being just another corporate space. Social media is certainly not a forum for discussing social issues or politics, instead being a medium for tribalism and rancour. Because of these factors and others, I have moderated my use of social media and it has proven extremely beneficial to my state of mind.
A very wise Vulcan once said “change is the essential process of all existence”. 2020 has demonstrated that unequivocally. How our privileged, pampered lives have altered over the last twelve months. We’ve had to stay at home, curtail our social interactions and reflect upon the meaning of existence. I appreciate that things are relative, so it’s not helpful to compare the concerns that discombobulate people today with the realities that folk had to endure during World War II for example. I won’t trivialise the sense of isolation and desperation some folk have felt over the lockdown. From my own perspective, my life as a carer is regimented and focused, so 2020 hasn’t really “cramped my style” to use an old fashioned phrase. However, several things happened over the course of the year that have had an impact upon myself and my family.
Let it suffice to say that due to current “circumstances”, Mrs P and I have watched a lot more TV this year. However, rather than just reiterate what we’ve viewed, which is already covered in my recurring blog post The Idiot Box, I thought I’d take the time to reflect upon some wider issues. TV has become a major source not only of entertainment but psychological support during this year’s social restrictions. The closure of cinemas for the majority of the past twelve months has meant that TV has had little or no competition. Furthermore, many of the films that may well have drawn audiences away, have come to the smaller screens a lot quicker. Never has so much TV been voraciously consumed. There’s also been a degree of nostalgia as viewers have watched popular shows at broadly similar times, reviving that sense of a shared experience that was so common in the seventies and eighties. However, the pandemic has also caused a slow down in TV production. Will the shortage of new content that many have predicted finally manifest itself next year?
In 2019, I went to the cinema just once to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. I didn’t write a summary of the films I’d seen throughout that year, as I felt that mainstream releases had become far too formulaic and dull. 2020 has done little to change my perspective. The global pandemic has meant that Cinemas have spent most of the time closed and therefore many of this year’s major film releases have ended up on video on demand services. A few titles remain indefinitely postponed, such as the latest Bond movie No Time to Die, while Sony Pictures wait to see if “normality” resumes. But a film that is sitting on the shelf is not a film making money. Hence, Warner Bros. have announced that all their major releases for 2021 will be across multiple platforms simultaneously, thus ensuring a broader flow of revenue. This has not pleased director’s such as Christopher Nolan who argue passionately regarding the merits of cinema. But I doubt Mr. Nolan has ever had to endure an out of focus screening in the wrong aspect ratio at Cineworld, Rochester, where audiences talk and mess with their phones continuously.
Retrospective posts such as this can be a sprawling mess. There is also potential to cover the same old ground that I’ve covered in my monthly summaries “A Month in Gaming”. So I’ll try to be as succinct as I can. Firstly I won’t dwell too much on the iniquities of the video game industry as I’ve covered that elsewhere. Let it suffice to say that the notion of the “rock star developer” and the ethical publisher have proven false. Buying a triple A mainstream game is as morally compromised as buying a pair of jeans made by child labour. But let’s not get caught up in ethics. That’s another post. The pandemic meant that I, like many others, had far more leisure time this year and hence I spent that time gaming. It’s been a good year for video games publishers and the revenue has rolled in. Have I had fun while playing more games? Yes. The games have proven engaging and they also provide a lot to write about, so it’s a win, win scenario from my perspective.
In my lifetime technology has always been promoted as something that improves our lives, especially at a domestic level. The VCR in the eighties is a prime example of this. It liberated us from having to watch TV at a specific time and place. Then there the personal computer, which brought into our own homes tools, that until that point, had been exclusive to the office. And for all the ill that it brings, the internet has certainly made the world demonstrably smaller. It’s revolutionised shopping and has improved the administration of services. So overall, I still feel that technology is a force for good. However there have been changes. In recent years technology on a domestic level has ceased to be quite as transformative and become more of a disposable commodity. Tech is now a fashion accessory, with a distinct lifecycle and upgrade treadmill. It is fast becoming just another form of superfluous crap to fill your home with.
Despite the tumultuous events of the last twelve months and the accompanying emotional fallout that has followed in their wake, I’ve managed to keep writing throughout 2020. My output has been somewhat inconsistent this year and I’ve noticed some changes in what I write about. This is inevitable as one’s tastes and focus changes naturally change over time. I’m finding it tougher to write enthusiastically about the video games industry per se, as it has hardly covered itself in glory this year. However, I still enjoy writing film reviews although I haven’t set foot inside a cinema for over a year. I suspect that this will remain the case for much of 2021. My writing has broadened in its scope and I find myself writing social commentary about various aspects of life, rather than just posting articles about my hobbies. Sharing my thoughts on the pandemic itself and “caring for the elderly” has proven very cathartic. But as I’ve stated many times before, writing is one of the ways in which I make sense of the world around me.
Last year I tried to write a measured and balanced post about the passing of the year. Sadly this time round my attitude toward the departing 12-month period is somewhat binary. Yes there were a couple of highlights to 2019 but most of it was an uphill struggle and therefore not worth celebrating. It can frankly sod off and won’t be missed. The two high points were my son’s wedding in August and my renewed enthusiasm for blogging that came about due to the Blaugust writing event. But overall 2019 was a repetitive and somewhat depressing grind having to continuously deal with multiple family illnesses, numerous hospital visits and then at the end of the year a bereavement. Yes, these are things that happened to us all eventually and there is no escaping them but I appear to be trapped in this facet of the “circle of life”. Furthermore, until certain situations resolve themselves, I cannot make or implement any long-term plans. 2019 has been in many ways about just treading water.
Life is often cyclical, if you don’t believe me go watch The Lion King. I started 2018 playing The Lord of the Rings Online and by writing a post about how gamers collectively seem to repeat the same mistakes. And as the year and indeed the decade ends, I find myself once again playing the Yule Festival in LOTRO and reflecting upon how some games that garnered criticism over their egregious business models, have ended up as huge hits. It would appear that gamers are their own worst enemy. I shall leave the psychological analysis of paradox to others. From my perspective, irrespective of the iniquities of the video game industry and certain quarters of the gaming community, it has been a good year, gaming wise. I have enjoyed my time playing MMOs such as Star Trek Online, The Elder Scrolls Online and the aforementioned LOTRO. These and other titles have entertained me, provided me with an opportunity to unwind as well as affording me some much-needed social interaction. I particularly enjoy Wednesday evenings when I log into my Discord server and then chat and play collaboratively with longstanding gaming friends.
One of the benefits that comes with age (for some people at least), if the gift of realistic expectations. Having reached 51 years, I no longer harbour thoughts that each year will be a rollercoaster ride of excitement, mirth and personal gain. Nor do I count on the stars aligning so that I make my fortune and retire peacefully to the Cayman Islands, to live the life of a tax exile. If New Year’s Eve rolls round and no one has died, I’m not looking at being tried for murder and there’s still gin in the drinks cabinet, then I usually deem the previous twelve months an acceptable year. However, despite even these fairly lose and undemanding criteria I feel compelled to say that 2018 was bollocks and that I won’t be sad to see the back of it.
I did not manage to maintain my writing schedule this year and have not posted everyday as I would’ve liked. I have produced over two hundred and seventy posts but still feel I could have done more. Blaugust was a welcome burst of enthusiasm that I managed to sustain for September and October, but I lost momentum in the run up to Christmas. At least I know what the root cause is which puts me a step nearer to resolving it. Having written several posts in the past about “writers block” and the other perennial excuse of not having anything to write about, I seem to have squarely fallen into both those traps. At present I find that motivating myself is the key problem. If I haven’t started writing something by midday, then it more than often gets left for the day. If I intend to escape this malaise, then I shall have to establish a far stricter writing schedule for 2019 and endeavour to do my writing first thing in the morning, when I am most focused.
Throughout my adult life I have always gone to the cinema as a leisure activity. 2018 has been of note in this regard as it’s the year I’ve been to the cinema the least. I have visited my local multiplex just three times over the last twelve months. It’s not that good quality movies are not made anymore. Far from it. It’s just that they don’t always get released theatrically. Furthermore, the cost to entertainment ratio has simply become too much of a gamble. Standard tickets are priced between £12 to £15 locally and I resent such an outlay for a film that may only be adequate or worse. Perhaps my outlook on pricing is unreasonable but I am not going to pay such money for mediocre entertainment. I don’t expect every movie I see to be a cinematic milestone or genre classic but nor do I expect it to be an exercise in indifference. If I had paid such ticket prices to see The Predator or Death Wish at my local Cineworld, then I would have been singularly annoyed. Mercifully I saw them both at home and therefore at a much lower cost.
"I Feel I Need a Holiday"
According to Spock “change is the essential process of all existence”. I have certainly faced my share this year. The death of my mother in August after decades of declining health didn’t come as a shock, but was no less upsetting. In the immediate aftermath, I had to deal with the practicalities of arranging a funeral, engaging a solicitor to settle my mother’s estate and then determine whether I should return to full time employment or retire. After much deliberation, I chose the latter. Now that the most pressing needs have been addressed, I find myself coming to terms with my own grief, while considering my future. I am very tired, both physically and mentally. I am still waiting for the cardiologist that I saw recently to make their pronouncement on my health. However, I do feel somewhat refreshed after my recent 3 day break on the Isle of Wight. I am also thinking about moving, as well as returning to education and pursuing a qualification. I will be 55 in December and feel that I am at a major crossroads in my life.
According to Spock “change is the essential process of all existence”. I have certainly faced my share this year. The death of my mother in August after decades of declining health didn’t come as a shock, but was no less upsetting. In the immediate aftermath, I had to deal with the practicalities of arranging a funeral, engaging a solicitor to settle my mother’s estate and then determine whether I should return to full time employment or retire. After much deliberation, I chose the latter. Now that the most pressing needs have been addressed, I find myself coming to terms with my own grief, while considering my future. I am very tired, both physically and mentally. I am still waiting for the cardiologist that I saw recently to make their pronouncement on my health. However, I do feel somewhat refreshed after my recent 3 day break on the Isle of Wight. I am also thinking about moving, as well as returning to education and pursuing a qualification. I will be 55 in December and feel that I am at a major crossroads in my life.
However, I am not especially enthusiastic about writing at present. At least not about the normal things I blog about. I still take pleasure in video games and films, but I now view them from a different perspective and their importance has changed. Furthermore, after 15 years of blogging and a dozen spent podcasting, I feel somewhat spent creatively. It takes quite a lot of focus, energy and brio to consistently produce content on any platform and then there’s the actual work that has to be done. At present I don’t have the stamina required nor the time. The latter is a finite commodity in everyone’s life and I am currently using my allowance to do other things. And so to quote Bilbo Baggins, “I feel I need a holiday” and am taking one. This is the first post I’ve written for a fortnight and it is mainly due to the fact that I feel obliged to let the few hundred daily readers that I haven’t totally abandoned Contains Moderate Peril.
Abandon Blog?
I’ve learned from past mistakes and changes in my relationship with writing, so I am not going to close the website or do anything rash. I did that once before in 2015 when I was suffering from burnout and I ended up bitterly regretting the decision when I had a change of heart. Having to start from scratch again, a few months later, was hard work. So in the meantime, I will continue to pay the operating costs and effectively just leave Contains Moderate Peril to lie fallow, so to speak. I may well publish the occasional post, when the fancy takes me but I certainly won’t be maintaining any sort of regular schedule. As and when I do write something, they may well be very niche market posts, mainly about the things that are bugging me at present. Beyond that, all bets are off. It very much is a question of wait and see. Perhaps this is just a hiatus. Perhaps it’s time to call it a day.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
Time For a Change?
The Blaugust 2022 blogging event is entering its final week and the writing theme for this climatic period is “lessons learned”. According to the event schedule “this week is a reminder that the goal of Blaugust is to refresh the content creators out there for the coming year, and not to burn them out in the process. Some folks are going to cross the finish line and immediately go dormant and others will want to process their thoughts about the proceedings. This space is reserved as a bit of a cooldown lap so that you can share your own experiences”. For me Blaugust has not only reinvigorated my enthusiasm for blogging it has also improved my writing schedule. Furthermore it has given me an opportunity to consider some potential changes to Contains Moderate Peril. Changes that I now need to decide whether to implement or not.
Someone is not good at Scrabble
The Blaugust 2022 blogging event is entering its final week and the writing theme for this climatic period is “lessons learned”. According to the event schedule “this week is a reminder that the goal of Blaugust is to refresh the content creators out there for the coming year, and not to burn them out in the process. Some folks are going to cross the finish line and immediately go dormant and others will want to process their thoughts about the proceedings. This space is reserved as a bit of a cooldown lap so that you can share your own experiences”. For me Blaugust has not only reinvigorated my enthusiasm for blogging it has also improved my writing schedule. Furthermore it has given me an opportunity to consider some potential changes to Contains Moderate Peril. Changes that I now need to decide whether to implement or not.
Within a few years of starting blogging, I found writing about one subject extremely limiting. So I opted for a so-called “variety” blog to allow me to pursue a broader range of subjects. This has served me well for many years but I am now finding as I get older that I am not quite so enthusiastic about certain subjects. My interest in gaming is not as strong as it used to be and I find it difficult to wax lyrical about many aspects of the industry. I prefer writing social commentary, discussing the major social and political talking points of the day. I also still have a passion for films and can happily write film reviews or longform articles about aspects of filmmaking, till the cows come home. It is this change of focus that has got me thinking whether I should run two separate blogs? Or alternatively put all my energy into one online project and focus solely upon that.
Change can be very tempting at times. As can planning for change. As someone who considers themselves organised I love to draw up a plan and prepare everything required for it. Implementing it is another matter altogether (insert Airplane gag here). Preparation can be fun. Actually “doing” is not so enjoyable. So setting up another separate blog sounds initially like a good idea. I get to choose a new blog template and tinker with the look and feel of the site. I can also hire someone from Fiverr to design new logos and branding. But upon mature reflection, the realities of maintaining two different websites also means twice as much work and possibly producing half as much output. It also means incurring further expense which is something I am cautious about in the current economic climate.
As ever in life the most pragmatic solution is to compromise. Rather than relocate specific blog posts to an alternative site, perhaps simply segregating them on the existing blog is a better alternative. I shall investigate to see if it is possible to have a submenu under the blog button on the top toolbar of Contains Moderate Peril, so those who want to read only movie related content can do so. Vice versa with games and any other relevant category. I’m sure the template can be structured in such a fashion to make this possible. Maybe then, someone who is visiting the site to read a film review may investigate further if only shown material of a similar nature? And somewhere in the back of my mind there’s another voice reminding me of a very old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. These changes I’m pondering have not been requested by any readers. Perhaps I should just leave well alone and move on.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
Motivation and Being Realistic About What You Can Achieve
I’ve written posts in the past that take quite a “scorched earth” approach to the subject of motivation and maintaining a regular writing schedule. You can come at this subject from numerous angles, offering advice couched in psychology, gentle encouragement or cold hard logic. However, I find that blogging comes down to one thing and one thing only. If you want to do it, you’ll find a way. And believe me, I don’t say this out of some misguided sense of superiority or smugness. I have skipped numerous days of blogging because I chose not to. I wasn’t too busy or strapped for ideas. I just couldn’t be bothered or wanted to spend my time on something else. That’s not to say that the encouragement of others and events such a Blaugust don’t have any impact upon people’s writing output. I believe they do. But the biggest factor determining when you do and do not write is you.
Does this include arson, genocide and making another Air Bud movie?
I’ve written posts in the past that take quite a “scorched earth” approach to the subject of motivation and maintaining a regular writing schedule. You can come at this subject from numerous angles, offering advice couched in psychology, gentle encouragement or cold hard logic. However, I find that blogging comes down to one thing and one thing only. If you want to do it, you’ll find a way. And believe me, I don’t say this out of some misguided sense of superiority or smugness. I have skipped numerous days of blogging because I chose not to. I wasn’t too busy or strapped for ideas. I just couldn’t be bothered or wanted to spend my time on something else. That’s not to say that the encouragement of others and events such a Blaugust don’t have any impact upon people’s writing output. I believe they do. But the biggest factor determining when you do and do not write is you.
However, there are some things we can do to make writing on the days when we’re not that motivated a lot easier. I find that there are certain types of blog posts that are easier to write than others and that sitting down and producing one of these doesn’t present as much of a struggle as more complicated think pieces. Film reviews are one example. I have a longstanding and abiding passion for films and the wider industry and feel I have some knowledge of the subject. As writers we’re always told “write about what you know” and there is wisdom in these words. Hence, a film review is something I feel comfortable writing. It also helps that such posts usually have a standard structure to them, affording them a very procedural quality when it comes to sitting down and writing. If you’re at all interested, here’s a link to how I write reviews.
I said Magnum Opus not magnificent Octopus
Something that regularly comes up in blogging circles is that it is often the spur of the moment posts that can sometimes get the most traction. Conversely, the post that one labours over, conducting research and continuously revising, is usually the one that goes unnoticed. All of which reinforces the argument that it is best to write with no expectations about the wider outcome. Hence, if you’re running low on enthusiasm, don’t make matters worse by seeking to write your magnum opus, instead just focus on writing something that you find enjoyable. IE Whatever is your equivalent of writing a film review. This is why stream of consciousness and personal blogs have an advantage, insofar as even if you’ve had an uneventful day, it can at least be catalogued and explored as to why it was so.
An event such as Blaugust treats blogging as a hobby and not a job. It’s an important distinction. If you choose the option to make it a more formal undertaking, then adopting a more business-like mindset will inevitably make you more productive. However, the trade off is replacing casual spontaneity with structure and discipline and that can sometimes kill the joy. Ultimately with a hobby and pastime such as blogging, you find the level that suits you. If you are honest with yourself, you can usually determine that quite early on. You know exactly how much leisure time you have and what you can reasonably expect with regard to written output. Blaugust may well boost that to a degree but I think it does a better job of just focusing bloggers and keeping them engaged. Trying to sustain something that you know you cannot necessarily do is counterproductive. Which is why there’s sense in the phrase “you do you”.
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.
For the last few months I have being using Google Gemini. I subscribed so I could access a wider spectrum of services and evaluate it effectively. I also wanted to dispel some of the hysteria that accompanies any conversation about Large Language Models and Artificial Intelligence. The results were initially interesting and Google Gemini proved useful when researching material for blog posts. It is good at providing summaries about well documented subjects. I wrote a post about food banks recently and it distilled a lot of data into a manageable amount, which was ideal for my article. Google Gemini has also produced some visual basic scripting and simple batch files that have allowed me to automate processes on my PC. Such as changing the default monitor, or screen resolution at the click of an icon. However, I found this AI struggled with in-depth software troubleshooting and that its ability to create images varies greatly depending on the subject.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
You Are Your Own Brand
I’m sure I’ve written directly or indirectly about this subject in the past but some things bear repeating, so here goes. You are your own brand when it comes to blogging, streaming or podcasting (other forms of content creation are available). It doesn’t matter if you write exclusively about some niche market subject or produce videos solely about a single aspect of fandom, your personality will inevitably bleed through into the content you post and your audience will sooner or later pick up upon it. Humans are social creatures and we are naturally curious about each other. I certainly am. I follow numerous blogs and a substantial part of their appeal is their individual and unique styles and personalities. I will happily read blog posts or watch videos about subjects I’m not especially interested in because I like the content creator and the way they express themselves.
A joke about brands
I’m sure I’ve written directly or indirectly about this subject in the past but some things bear repeating, so here goes. You are your own brand when it comes to blogging, streaming or podcasting (other forms of content creation are available). It doesn’t matter if you write exclusively about some niche market subject or produce videos solely about a single aspect of fandom, your personality will inevitably bleed through into the content you post and your audience will sooner or later pick up upon it. Humans are social creatures and we are naturally curious about each other. I certainly am. I follow numerous blogs and a substantial part of their appeal is their individual and unique styles and personalities. I will happily read blog posts or watch videos about subjects I’m not especially interested in because I like the content creator and the way they express themselves.
Globalisation and the internet tend to make us think that we’re all broadly living the same life and to a degree that is true. We all go to school or hold down a job, have family and friends and eat, drink and sleep. What I love about blogs is the way a simple post can inadvertently highlight regional, social and cultural differences. This can be innocuous as a brand or product that there is no direct equivalent where I live in the UK, to the complexities of local government, social etiquette and the tumultuous waters of national politics. These are the things that make you blog engaging and give it a distinct personality. It can lead to comments, conversation and friendships. You have to be an especially anodyne writer to remove all traces of nuance from your prose. Why would you want to do that anyway?
A branding iron
On a less light-hearted note, often a blog can be an invaluable source of insight into the daily struggles that many face. It comes as no surprise to me that numerous bloggers have personal issues, difficult circumstances and family problems that they’re dealing with on a daily basis. Often a blog provides a platform for some self-therapy and catharsis. A means to clarify one’s thoughts, decompress and try and rationalise what is going on in life. Furthermore, sometimes a supportive comment left can make the difference between someone having a bad day or getting through it. I believe that it is important to be aware of each other’s life and that it’s not all one, happy and level playing field. What is normal and everyday for me is not the default for everyone else.
So despite what you may think, your blog is a window into you as a writer, even if you reveal very little about what you do, where you live and your own personal life. You end up with an online persona that may be a true reflection of you, or a stylised caricature. You can if you see fit, curate and control this to a degree. So do not underestimate the significance of this. You are your own brand and it can serve you well. A question that has been raised during many previous Blaugust Festival is “I want to write about something different but I’m not sure if readers will like it”. This usually stems from someone writing about a single subject or a specific aspect of fandom and then finding that they want to spread their wings and try something else. The good news is that you can. Not all but the majority of your readership will read posts that are different from your regular content. Again this comes down to the fact that they’re invested in you and your style of writing.
A popular brand
Naturally, there is an element of caution associated with the notion that you are your own brand, as much as all the positive aspects. Some bloggers find themselves producing other online content as well and end up maintaining a sense of brand continuity. For example, there was a time when Contain Moderate Peril produced daily posts throughout the year, along with a weekly podcast. In such circumstances, always think about how you express and conduct yourself online. Especially if you are trying to generate revenue from your material. Be mindful of associations and affiliations because mud can stick. But these are just common sense considerations. Overall, there are more upsides to being your own brand than downsides. I certainly enjoy the more personal rapport I’ve built up with those who read my musings, over the last decade or so. Hopefully the fact that you’re not just perceived as a faceless blogger will help encourage you with your writing.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
Draft Posts
If you write in any sort of capacity, you will no doubt have a virtual folder somewhere that is filled with draft posts. Posts containing ideas that either ran out of steam or never quite coalesced to your satisfaction. Such posts may be just a few words long or a fully developed article. A list of bullet points, a lone paragraph devoid of context or an unedited stream of consciousness. Yet whatever the posts format it remains incomplete or unpublished. Sometimes the reason for abandonment is clear. The premise was wrong, the moment has passed and things have moved on. Perhaps the subject has been sufficiently elsewhere. Hence these posts languish in blogging purgatory. Undeveloped but conspicuously not deleted. Who knows, maybe you’ll return to one or two of them some day. Sadly, the reality is quite different. Once a post is consigned to the draft folder, it seldom escapes. Just like people from poverty.
If you write in any sort of capacity, you will no doubt have a virtual folder somewhere that is filled with draft posts. Posts containing ideas that either ran out of steam or never quite coalesced to your satisfaction. Such posts may be just a few words long or a fully developed article. A list of bullet points, a lone paragraph devoid of context or an unedited stream of consciousness. Yet whatever the posts format it remains incomplete or unpublished. Sometimes the reason for abandonment is clear. The premise was wrong, the moment has passed and things have moved on. Perhaps the subject has been sufficiently elsewhere. Hence these posts languish in blogging purgatory. Undeveloped but conspicuously not deleted. Who knows, maybe you’ll return to one or two of them some day. Sadly, the reality is quite different. Once a post is consigned to the draft folder, it seldom escapes. Just like people from poverty.
Such is the unspoken law of draft posts. And like so many informal and nebulous “rules” it’s bullshit. Sure I have some posts in my drafts folder that match what I have just described but that is not the majority of them. The bulk are film reviews, think pieces about gaming and its associated culture, as well as one off articles that took my fancy at the time and may well do so again. Your draft post folder is not the same as the recycle bin on your PCs desktop. A draft post is not exclusively a failed post (although it can be). Often it is just work in progress that has been temporarily delayed because something more pressing came up. Some blog posts are time sensitive and need to be written and published while a talking point is still relevant. Gaming culture is very fast moving, hence you may give such posts priority. A review or a stand alone longform article has no such restrictions and can be set aside to be returned to at a later date.
The reason so many bloggers effectively write off any post that has lingered in the draft folder too long is because we’re conditioned to do so by blogging culture. It’s all part of the ephemeral, disposable mindset and culture that runs through the internet like shit marbling in a rancid block of cheese. However, rather than seeing a draft post folder as the Phantom Zone for blog posts, why not consider it an ideas repository. A creativity bank in which potential material is stored, which can be accessed on those occasional days when you’re shit out of ideas. I currently have 138 draft posts waiting to be used. Not all will necessarily be published but many will eventually see the light of day. The film reviews have no expiry date. Some of the more specific pieces may be repurposed into content for other posts. Nothing goes to waste.
The modern computer tools we use for writing make the process very easy. You can type or speak directly into your phone or tablet or sit for 10 minutes while you have a sandwich and quickly type your ideas into Google Docs. It’s a far cry from writing longhand on paper, or typing away on a manual typewriter. However, because we can revise, edit and start again so easily we have possibly lost sight of the fact that everything written down has potential use. Technology provides convenience and convenience is often synonymous with disposability. But that is not the case. As a writer the fundamental starting point is to get your ideas out of your head and onto the virtual page. Once you’ve done that, waste nothing. What doesn’t work today, may work tomorrow. Therefore, don’t squander ideas, first draft or your miscellaneous notes. Change the relationship you have with your draft posts folder. It is your ally.
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.
This year’s Blaugust: Festival of Blogging has already raised a very interesting debate. An old one that habitually comes up when discussing blogs. Namely, whether a blog should or should not have “comments” enabled. However this time round there is a different slant on things. Rather than the usual binary choice of having comments enabled or disabled on your site, this time round there is a third option available. Leaving comments via email or a third party service such as Mastodon. Both of these additional options keep comments conspicuously at arms length from your website. Furthermore, the email option makes the comments private, instead of in the public domain. All of which puts a subtly different spin on conventional notions of blog comments and makes this ongoing discussion all the more interesting.
There is currently an interesting discussion on the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging Discord Server about writing every day. It can be quite a polarising subject but the one thing that everyone agrees on is the fact that it is hard to do. A daily schedule requires multiple factors to come together to be sustainable. It is also fair to say that if you go about it unprepared, it will be a very hard learning curve. Ultimately it may not work out and then there is the risk of a bad experience negatively impacting upon your wider writing plans. Hence it is not something I would recommend to new bloggers or those who aren’t keen on a baptism of fire. Some writers like to test their metal and jumping feet first, into daily blogging may be the sort of challenge they seek. For everyone else I would urge them to plan a strategy and consider the following point if you wish to try it.
Last year, prior to Blaugust 2024, I looked at the viability of upgrading or replacing my current blog template. The mobile version of Contains Moderate Peril holds up quite well but the site looks somewhat tired on a desktop PC. I spoke to several design companies that dealt with Squarespace based websites and they all said the same thing. The existing template is a decade old and cannot support a lot of the current functionality available. Hence it needs to be replaced. However, such a change could potentially break the existing formatting of nearly 2,000 posts. This would create a great deal of work. Hence, I decided at the time to postpone such a decision and I simply tinkered with the branding of my website and left the matter be. A year later and the issue has resurfaced. The same problems exist and the hosting costs for Squarespace have increased. I now pay £16 a month.
Oh look, another blogging advice post. What a surprise. I suppose the internet is awash with such information. Furthermore, a lot of that advice comes from a commercial perspective and the assumption that the writer intends to monetise their blog right from the start. The notion of writing for pleasure or fandom sometimes seems to get drowned out in all the online white noise. Anyhow, I’m going to offer up for your consideration, 10 tips of things not to do when you start a blog. I’m sure I’ve mentioned some before or even written a similar post that is now buried somewhere in Contains Moderate Peril. But good advice bears repeating and it is the first day of Blaugust: Festival of Blogging 2025 I think it prudent to make such a post. Please note these are not technical points such as using SEO or alt text etc. This is more about your approach to blogging as well as some practical logistical considerations.
What is the key to writing? It is a question that most new bloggers ponder. It’s also something that older, established bloggers consider on a regular basis. The subject has been dissected, analysed and written about at great length over the years and there is plenty of advice available online. You’ll find millions of websites telling you to consider picking the right niche or subjects, how to find your voice and writing style, as well as establishing a regular publishing schedule. Not all the advice out there is good and not all of it is bad. There certainly isn’t any “one size fits all” solution. There are multiple factors to consider when you start writing and you have to find answers that suit you. All forms of writing are a personal form of self expression and unique to their author. Therefore, one’s approach to writing should be similarly personal and unique.
August is fast approaching, so you know what that means? Yes, the annual Blaugust: Festival of Blogging is nearly upon us. This long established (twelve years now), community driven event is designed to extol the virtues of blogging and encourage everyone and anyone to give it a try. In an age where video and audio based content are often favoured for their immediacy and reach, we advocate strongly for the joys and benefits that come through traditional writing. Blaugust strives to motivate those who have thought about writing online in some shape or form, but have never got around to doing so, as well as rallying those who have tried it already but fallen by the wayside. We try to provide practical support, writing prompts and advice to all who participate. There is an optional Discord community where participants can hangout, exchange ideas and share their writing. The emphasis is on powering through “writer’s block” and most importantly, having fun.
Back in March 2019 I wrote a blog post about the operating costs of running this website. I went into detail with regard to hosting and domain costs, as well as the other software and hardware used to write posts and at that point produce a podcast. Let it suffice to say that five years on, those costs have all increased. If we’re just looking at maintaining a blog simply in terms of hosting and the domain registration, it costs about £20 a month to run Contains Moderate Peril. Theoretically, if I want to reduce those costs I could dispense with a specific domain name and use a free blogging service. However, I feel that such a compromise comes with its own set of problems, such as advertising and a lack of control (to a degree) over your content. I therefore choose to pay to mitigate these concerns. If I then wish to do more, such as produce a podcast, create videos for YouTube or live stream, then those costs increase.
I found out today that Contains Moderate Peril is missing a “touch icon”. This was most interesting as I had no idea what such a thing was, at the time. It would appear that it is a bespoke icon for a website or app saved to the home screen of an iOS device. As 27% of traffic to this site comes via iOS devices, this is something that needs consideration and I will take steps to provide one. You may ask “how did you discover this school boy error”? Well I used one of the many website checkers that are available online. Sites that parse your blog or website and analyse it, providing a summary of its alleged strengths and weaknesses. Depending on which website checker you use, some will often find problems that they can conveniently solve for a small fee but setting scepticism aside, some of the basic data can be quite useful.
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.