My word, what a year!

Pinoy Hideout, Lions Hill, November 2014 (Flickr) – blog post

So 2014 draws to a close. I’ve already given a detailed review of the year as I saw it and reported on it through these pages; but before the year closes, I wanted to offer something a little more personal.

This year has been incredible for me. In terms of raw figures (for whatever they’re worth), I’ve published 950+ posts, passed through 3,000 published in total, seen the blog pass through one million page views and, at least according to WordPress, these pages (intentionally or otherwise) have been viewed from 194 countries (hello, Iran and North Korea. Oh wait, you’re not listening 🙂 ).

The Pines at Jacobs Pond End of Time, February 2014 (Flickr) – blog post

But more particularly, the year has offered me the opportunity to visit over 100 regions and blog on them (some more than once), and to experience 136 art exhibitions, installations and performances that I’ve actually manage to document (57 sponsored by the LEA and 79 non-LEA events) – my apologies to those I missed / didn’t manage to get written-up.

Where art is concerned, I’ve been particularly privileged to be asked to join the UWA jury for Transcending Borders  – thank you, Jayjay and FreeWee, and to have also witnessed Paradise Lost: he Story of Adam and Eve’s Original Sin, which I still believe to be an outstanding masterpiece of performance art in a virtual world, and the jewel in the crown of my enjoyment of a fabulous year for art in SL. I’ve also met many more talented people in SL.

As regular readers know, I’ve attempted to stay up-to-speed on technical developments, but have also found time to move house, expand my sailing and flying activities, and continue tracking Curiosity’s progress on Mars, as well as look at other “spacey” things.

I’ve also tried to improve my photographic technique and also started to get my head around image editing with GIMP (PhotoShop still has me hiding under the desk). I’ve even managed to get into “proper” machinima, something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and have received a lot of support and advice in my efforts – thank you to everyone concerned.

I really don’t want to go on at great length here; suffice it to say, the year has had its moments at times, but for the most part has been a huge amount of fun, discovery and learning. It has also been immensely rewarding simply because I see so many people returning to these pages again and again, reading, offering “likes” and feedback, providing suggestions and pointing out things of interest or providing hints and support.

So what I really want to say is, thank you to all of you for all your support through the year; and thank you for all the Tweets, re-tweets, Plurks, re-plurks, location suggestions via social media or via e-mail, comments via e-mail and in-world IMs. It may sound trite, but the reality is, without your support and feedback, this blog would simply be a collection of dry electronic pages, and I’d be without any stars to steer by.

Thank you, everyone, and I’ll see you in 2015!