Rekindling an old love. Or how I've been sucked back into blogging!

Header by Juan Pablo Roldan - "Arca" via ArtStation

2019. A new year. A fresh beginning.

Having recently resubscribed to Eve Online, I find myself wanting to get back to my old habits of blogging and being more active with the community of gamers and Eve bloggers with whom I've shared so much in the past.

And so, I've decided to get back to a much more active blogging schedule. Before I do that though, I need to clean-up the blog, removing some old tags I used at the start of my blogging days back in 2005-2006. In addition to that, there's still a ton of old links that use .com instead of my new domain CrazyKinux.ca.

That's still ongoing and will likely take me a few more weeks to finish up. In the meantime I still want to post regularly with updates on my new adventures in New Eden, share some of the cool artwork that I come across (as in the above), share short movies and trailers of what I'm looking forward to in the near future. All in all, just getting back to my pre-july-2011 days.

I'll try to push out one most post later today with ideas for my weekly blogging schedule.

Stay tuned!

CrazyKinux's Musings celebrates 5 years of blogging!

Half a decade. Five long years of blogging. Most of it about EVE Online.

Following a recent post by Black Claw (aka Alexia Morgan) about the longest running EVE Online blog, I realized that I had been blogging about MMORPGs in general, and EVE in particular for over 5 years now!

Back then, we were very few EVE Bloggers, and I rarely got any comments or feedback on my posts or questions. I was a difficult time for us, but our continued efforts have paid off. I mean look at where we stand today, with the incredible amount of EVE blogs, and the tremendous activity and buzz that permeates the EVE Online Community. It's something to be proud of and to continue to help nurture!

Here's to another 5 years... and more!!

The Few, the Proud, the EVE Blog Pack Members!

They say, be careful what you wish for; you may get it! Oh how true this is with the EVE Blog Pack.

When I started the pack in mid-June of this year, I wanted to get a group of great bloggers together, get them to post regularly, and to comment on each others sites! Just a month later the Pack had past the mid-20s in membership, and the request were still coming in - are still coming in!

The EVE blogging community's response to the EVE Blog Pack has been beyond my wildest dreams. That Blog Pack post has over 60 comments on it as of today, mostly requests to be added and some of my responses to those bloggers. That's just amazing! Thank you all!

The Privilege of Membership, comes with Responsibilities
As the popularity of the Pack grew, more and more bloggers wanted in. But as my initial goal was to foster both quality and quantity, I couldn't simply accept everyone. There are tons of great EVE blogs out there, all of whom deserve to get noticed. Which is why I've got the EVE Player Blogroll (check the side bar also) where I list every player's blog as quickly as I get requests. But for the Pack, I wanted to create this sense of belonging to an elite group of bloggers.

So I've decided to limit the members to 30 blogs for now - with a few conditions though.

Being part of the Pack comes with its responsibilities and obligations. The first and foremost is to blog regularly. Ideally a few times a week, at the very least once. And that is a no easy feat, believe me. Real Life often gets in the way - as it should since remember people, this is just a game - and missing a week is not uncommon. But going beyond the 3 week mark puts a Pack member in a situation of potentially being removed from the Pack.

This has happened to a few members already. Case in point, today I've removed two blogs for lack of activity. To fill in the empty chairs, the two newest members of the EVE Blog Pack will be Roc's Ramblings and Dawn of EVE. Welcome to the both of you!



Taking it One Step further
Now, along with the regular blogging and commenting, I want to ask a bit more of the Pack Members. This is what will make the Blog Pack different from my Players Blogroll.

Here's a list of ToDos that all members should strive to accomplish as part of their duties.

• Blog regularly about EVE Online, a few times a week preferably.
• Comment on Pack members blogs.
• Make a post about the EVE Blog Pack (if you haven't done so yet). Make sure to link to it!
  
• Add each member's blog to your Delicious, BlinkList, Reddit, StumbleUpon and/or Technorati accounts.
• Digg posts that you find useful or interesting.
• When writing a post, try to link to each other posts, bringing the community even closer together.
• Have a blogroll listing all the Blog Pack members.
  

Doing all, or some, of these action items will add value to our individual blogs, and will bring the Pack to a whole new level.

Remember, we're each individually responsible for the success of the Blog Pack. It's up to us to decide what we do with it!

Now get to work people!! ...please... =)

CrazyKinux's Musing Design Poll

For those of you who visit the blog and don't just read them through RSS readers, you'll have noticed that I gone from a 3-column back to a 2-column design. I did this because as I sat down yesterday morning for my usual week-end clean-up, I kind of noticed that with the 3 columns it was getting visually very crowed.

Now what I like about the 3 column was the fact that the blog page wasn't too long, since I had widgets on both sides, cutting in half the length of the page. The down side was that it was too busy - for my taste anyways.

This is where you come in. I need your opinion. I've set-up a poll on the top right column and would like to know where you stand on this matter. If you want to let me know, please fill in the poll and add your comments to his post. I'll make sure to take into account every opinion.

CK out.

Testing the 'Blogger in Draft' poll feature

I'm testing the new feature for polls that in offer for 'Blogger in Draft'. Running a poll on EVE Voice.

Yes, I've have noticed that it doesn't seem to work in Firefox, which means that most of you won't be able to participate until the Blogger devs fix the issue. I still want to leave it on so that it can be tested by them, and eventually improved. Hope you'll bare with me until then!

So what do you think?

A new look for the new year! I was getting tired of the old look and wanted an easier way of making changes. Doing everything through HTML was getting to tedious. SO with the new Blogger, I decided to update the whole site.

I like the results, do you? Let me know.

P.S.: I also added the Snap Preview Anywhere widget that lets you preview the sites by hovering over the link. I think it's useful, especially to quickly see if a link is broken. Let me know if you find it too much in the way.

Thanx for the feedback!

CrazyKinux's Musing, a redesign

Those familiar with my blog may notice that I've made some drastic changes to the template I use. Gone is the generic blue header picture, replaced by a screenshot I took a few month back.

I also made some changes to the overall width to be able to post bigger thumbnails (well considering the size of these "thumbnail", you can't really call them that anymore), and to go for a more minimalist approach.

What do you think? Like it? Hate? No difference? I would appreciate your comments, positive or negative.

Compare this post (opens in a new page) to this one (also opens in a new page) to appreciate the difference of the screenshot size.

Enough bragging about my blog, instead, enjoy the majestic screenshot!