Normally I do a round up of how things have gone on this blog at the end of each year, but considering the growth I’ve seen this year, I felt compelled to take a moment out of the day now to say “thank you”.  While I originally started this blog more for myself than anything else, I have been amazed to discover that people actually seem to enjoy reading my ramblings.  Why they do I have no clue, but I must admit I find it gratifying.

Measuring January 1st, 2008 – June 30th, 2008 against January 1st, 2009 – June 30th, 2009 finds that my unique visitors have grown by 1,075.47%, and total page views has grown by 897.83%. Even more stunning is if I compare all of 2008 against the first six months of 2009, unique visitors has already grown by 175.31% and total page views are up 149.51%.  I am stunned by this growth, and I am at a total loss as to what has caused this to happen.  I haven’t changed the stories I cover very much, and it’s still just me sitting here plugging away day in, day out, but obviously something has changed somewhere in the mix, and, well, I’m surely not going to argue with it.

Mind you my numbers are still very much in line with a personal blog, as in I am not getting anywhere near the number of visitors some of the blogs I work for get, but for a blog of my type, the numbers have become very respectable.

So, again, thank you for coming here and reading my extremely random commentaries on the world around us.  I know not every post is going to be for every reader’s taste, but I hope you are willing to wade through the ones that may not seem like a natural fit for you.

Post from: SeanPAune.com

Thank You To My Readers

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You may notice a few changes around SeanPAune.com, but not to fret, they aren’t major changes.  Starting today, this blog is part of The Cynical Bastards blog network.

Before I get to what this means to you, the reader, a little background on what The CBS is.  Steven Hodson and Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins met some time back, and bonded over their cynicism towards most of the Web 2.0 and social media scene.  While they weren’t critical of every new service to come down the pipeline, they were far more willing to question new services than the majority of bloggers who “oh” and “aww” over every shiny new service.

Later on, when both were working at Mashable, they met me and my own special brand of cynicism.  Due to my work on hundreds of lists for the site, I saw even more services than most people, and most of them I thought were utter garbage.  Mark became the linchpin between the three of us shaking our heads and questioning the status quo of the social media landscape.

However, we also discovered our general negative outlook on things wasn’t restricted to just the Web, but also to the world around us.  That led Mark and I to have a late night discussion over instant message where one of us made the joke about “we’re just cynical bastards”… I bought the domain name TheCynicalBastards shortly thereafter.

As all three of us left Mashable at different times, we decided we wanted to do something that would allow the three of us to continue to work together, and we finally decided a blog network was the perfect avenue for us.  We grabbed my domain name, Mark spent a weekend putting together an aggregator site for us (with much hair pulling), and, there you have it.

Now, what does being part of the network mean to the content of our sites?  Nothing.  Not one thing will change.  None of us have any say in what the other writes, and we may even disagree on certain subjects, but that will be half the fun of it.  In short, our sites and content will not change one iota from what made people come to read us in the first place.  Heck, I’m not even sure all of us are putting the badge on our sites, but I will be in the sidebar.

This is merely a way for the three of us to stay connected with one another, share resources, help promote one another and so on.  Depending on how things go, we may add other bloggers down the road, but for now it will just be the three of us.  If we do ever decide to bring more people on board it will be via invitation, so, please, don’t contact us asking to join… because we will mock you.

In addition to the aggregating site, we will also be launching a new podcast, CobWebs (Cranky Old Bastards take on the interWEBs).  We will be recording the first episode tonight on TalkShoe at 9 PM EST/8 PM CST, watch our Twitter streams at @StevenHodson, @Rizzn and @SeanPAune for a link to where you can come listen in.  We plan on making this a weekly show, and if you can’t make it to the live record, we’ll be posting it afterwards for download.

I’ll leave you with the quotes from our press release as to what makes each of us cynical.

“Read a couple hundred blog feeds about tech and social media each day, and that will be enough to turn Saint Teresa cynical.” – Steven Hodson

“There’s obviously a lot of hot air that gets passed around the press and the blogosphere in the tech business. We believe in being honest and critical without being constantly negative. We walk that line, and we call it being cynical.” – Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins

“Why are we cynical? Because each of us has been around the block a couple of times and that leads us to believe that if you’re breathing, we pretty much instantly distrust your intentions. That’s why we’re cynical.” – Sean P. Aune

Post from: SeanPAune.com

The Cynical Bastards Blog Network Is A Go

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Regular readers will be happy to know that Susan Boyle is done on this blog.

In what has to be labeled as one of my more insane moves, I came to a decision yesterday that if I was going to continue to write about Susan Boyle from Britain’s Got Talent that I was running a risk of annoying my regular readers.  Sure it’s an interesting story, but counting this week’s episode of Scattercast, I had talked about her six times in the past seven days.  That’s a bit much for anyone, and I know it.

So, yesterday afternoon, after writing up the Larry King interview post, I decided it was time to do something about this, and I bought SusanBoyleFandom.com.  I quickly cobbled together a WordPress install, used an off-the-shelf WordPress theme (something I really hate doning nowadays, but it worked in this case), rewrote all the previous entries I had done on Ms. Boyle so as not to incur the wrath of the Google search gods, and launched it.

While this certainly wasn’t in my current plans for my life, I’m still interested in her story, but at the same time didn’t want to drive visitors to SeanPAune.com insane with it, so this seemed the most logical solution… sorta.  As I mentioned on Scattercast this week, I’m working on ideas for three more blogs right now (no, this new site isn’t one of those three), plus I’m working at SitePoint.com and Mobile.BLORGE.com, prepping to start work at FreeAccess.com.au and Total-Image.com.au, finally started writing my long delayed novel, working a day job, working on some secret plans with Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, and blogging here as well as StarterTech.com… sure!  Let me throw another blog on the pile!

I don’t plan on updating SusanBoyleFandom.com every day like I do my other sites, jsut when there is some new news about her, and we’ll see how long I keep it up, but for now this is the plan to keep my current readers happy while satisfying those interested in Susan Boyle.

Wish me luck… and the ability to keep my sanity!

Post from: SeanPAune.com

Susan Boyle News Moved To SusanBoyleFandom.com

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UPDATE, 4:30 PM CST: I seem to have killed off the majority of the  symbols around the site, still working on some other issues that may take a day or two.  Such a good time I’m having.

Post from: SeanPAune.com

I Am Aware Of The  Problem On The Site

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From the post Dancing With The Stars Band came this comment.

JB

Uh. Where do I start except you obviously have no idea who plays in that band. You can always change the channel. Why waste your time complaining about something your [sic] not good enough to be in?

And then I received this comment on JJ Abrams Unveils The New Enterprise From Star Trek.

Arkanoid

I’ll never understand people’s need to pick apart a series and make it so serious. Honestly, I don’t consider myself a rabid fan, but I have at least seen most of the original ST episodes, and most of the movies through the current gen. stuff. Stop making such an issue out of the dang minutiae and have fun. Sheesh. What does it really matter if the Enterprise is a little too swoopy, or organic, or not retro enough? That’s subjective. Watch movie, have fun, judge movie after seeing. If you could do a better job with this project they’d have hired you to do it anyway. (emphasis mine – Sean)

The post you are reading right now is the 1,694th post since I started this blog. If you follow the logic presented by these two commenters that if you complain about something, you must be jealous in some way, than I must be the most jealous person alive.

I must be jealous of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) as I have written about them 18 times.  I have written 21 times about Scientology, I must be really jealous of their “church”.

I have always labeled myself an “observer” more than a “writer”: I take in the world around me, and I comment on it.  Considering I have done this 1,694 times now, yes, sometimes it is difficult coming up with things to comment on, so I go to the never-ending well that is television and movies.  There is always something there to annoy me.

To answer these particular two instances that were sighted in these comments:

1. I am not angry with the Dancing With The Stars band because I’m not good enough to join them, I simply hate them because I am tired of hearing them screw up something as simple as a 4-4 beat.
2. There is no way I would have wanted the job of rebooting the Star Trek franchise because, well, I think it’s a dumb idea to mess with something people love.

I feel confident in saying these types of comments come from people who just surf through from various sources (and they never leave a real email address for follow up discussion), and if they read even more than one other post on this site, they would see the style of blogger I am… I complain… a LOT!  I own it, I don’t even try to deny it, but I am fascinated by this recent trend of people saying that my complaining about something comes from my being jealous.  Is this something that has happened across the entire Internet that I have somehow missed?

Or, do you think it is possible that I complained about Salad Bar Etiquette due to my jealousy of their mastery of the vegetable plate building arts?

Post from: SeanPAune.com

Apparently I Am Filled With Jealousy

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The reason I bring this up is that as soon as I sort out some graphic layout problems, hopefully within the next few days, I will be adding my absolutely favorite clothing store to the ads on the right.  The company is called Big Dog Sportswear, and I think I can safely say that 95% of the clothing I own is from there.  The picture shown here is just what I have on from them as I type this.  (a polo shirt and a fleece jacket)

I’ve been wearing their clothes for the better part of 10 years now, and I can’t say enough good things about them.  They’re comfortable, wash beautifully, hold up over time, they are just some of the best clothes I’ve ever owned hands down.  I have several polo shirts that lasted multiple trips to Japan, washed there, worn again, and then came back with me for even more everyday wear.  Considering I have always gone to Japan in August when it runs about 95F and 95% humidity, this is saying more than you think.

They carry just about everything you can look for from shorts, house pants, athletic shorts, graphic tee shirts, polo shirts, button down shirts, coats, pants and on and on.  The only draw back to them is that, yes, every item does feature the dog logo in some way.  Some items are more subtle than others, but in general, he’s always somewhere on the clothes.  The added bonus is that not only are the items reasonably priced, but they almost always have some sort of giveaway or sale going on their site: free duffle bags, 75% off this or that, lots of Buy One, Get One free offers and so on.

So, yes, I am shilling one of my advertisers, but if you ever were to walk in to my bedroom closet, you would see why.  I am truly that happy with their product and their brand.  Please go over and take a look at www.bigdogs.com , I think you’ll be glad you did.

Post from: SeanPAune.com

Big Dogs

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