Sunday 6 December 2015

Almost Eight

 Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)


Wednesday 16th of January 2008, almost eight years ago I embarked on a journey that would bring the adventures of Kane Rizzel to the masses. I had taken the leap under the influence of long time friend, fellow pirate, blogger and all round good guy, Flashfresh and with the help of my then editor Soup Spoon I was able to put my sometimes jumbled thoughts and crazy experiences into this blog. Soup was there to make sure my dyslexia didn't make me look like an idiot.

What have I learnt in eight years? Well, writing isn't easy and inspiration is fleeting. Without the inspiration to write it is sometimes best not to write anything, I felt a lot of pressure sometimes to try and post as much as I could and the drafts section of my blog can attest to that, but I resisted the temptation to post some of the unworthy.

Some adventures never really lived up to the expectations I had for them in print, the moment never translated well into words. I wanted this blog to be entertaining and not just some after action report of going through the motions.

As the years have gone by and my time in game has dminished so has my posting, 2008 of course was my most active year with a whopping 107 posts, it was all so new and exciting. my next most prolific year was 2012 with 73 posts, but I avearaged between 50 and 60 posts until 2014 when I embarked on my real life adventure with Sea Shepherd.

It's weird looking back at some of the stuff I wrote, and somewhat embarrasing but I can not lie, I have enjoyed writing this blog for as long as I have. I've had many redesigns over the years and the custom banners were always my favourites, the current was designed by Joe Struck.

Flashfresh is no longer active, I miss the dude, a lot of the old school bloggers are gone, replaced by the streamers. The Blog Pack is dead, Crazy Kinux's work in compiling a list of active blogs was always a good stop to find interesting happenings in EVE. Most of the blogs in my sidebar are no longer active, gone are the days when there were constantly new blogs to read.

Blogging like Solo Piracy isn't dead, it's just a little bit more difficult.

I'm still with Sea Shepherd, currently docked at an island off the coast of Marseille, chavving wifi and logging into EVE. So much has changed and will take getting used to. I don't have a good enough connection to actually PvP, but will be about rediscovering the game as and when I can.

In April of 2016 Kane will turn Ten, and I hope to be around to do something special.

See you in space.


3 comments:

Mynxee said...

Always nice to see another post from you! Many of us are still around, just doing different things and in some cases like myself, writing about them in a different blog. Do you write about your Sea Shepherd adventures anywhere else?

Druur Monakh said...

It's good to see you again, Kane.

And I think I can understand your past posting activity: I haven't written anything on my blog for months now, because I simply ran out of story to tell (this might change). Writing is indeed hard, if the intent is to produce quality posts.

The 'Blog Pack' as such is pretty much dead (I would argue that it has outlived its purpose), but its spirit lives on: evebloggers.com is a good collection of Eve blogs, and there is rarely a day where I don't wake up to see dozens of new Eve blog posts in my reader.

And as Mynxee suggests: It'd be nice to read about your adventures aboard the Sea Shepherd.

Kane Rizzel said...

Thanks Mynxee and Druur :)

I don't write about any of the Sea Shepherd stuff as it's a very personal thing and I don't think our Media team will approve, but it's safe to say this is the most rewarding and fullfilling thing I have ever done in my life and I enjoy it every day.