365! Actually 504 but who's counting?

So here I am, achieving my accidental goal. I've blogged an average of once a day for all of 2019, and the year isn't quite done yet. The trip to New Zealand early in the year helped, what with producing so many good photos I was often blogging twice a day, just to not fall so far behind. And sharing photos of a lovely place that many people have not visited, of course.

What's the 504, you ask? The once a day pace average actually started mid August. Over the 4443 day lifetime of the blog there have been 3271 blogs published. That's 1 every 1.358 days, or 1955 minutes and 30 seconds or so. Just so Julie gets her numbers fix.

As I mentioned, I don't think I'm going to continue blogging at this torrid pace. Probably more than weekly, but certainly less often than daily. Somewhere between 52 and 365 blogs in 2020. Hmmm. So if you've been coming here every day with your morning coffee, or your evening tipple, don't be disappointed. Well, I know you will be, but please keep coming back, I love my readers. Or you could subscribe and get it by email. Or watch for me on Facebook, I'm planning to still notify people when I blog. Or make like some of my readers, they wait till they have a bit of time, and read a bunch of blogs in a row, and comment! Thank you so much for the comments! I love getting comments.

I've been wondering what to put in this blog post. The year is wrapping up, but not yet over. I'm writing this the afternoon of Boxing Day, so there are several days left to get out and do things. Maybe capture an image of the month, or even image of the year! It happened last year, on the 28th I was down to Fish Creek and captured the honourable mention of all 2018.

Some bloggers do year end top 10 lists, best book, best movie, best game, whatever. I don't really do those, since I know I didn't see 10 new release movies in 2019. I think Arrival was the last movie I saw in the theatre. Maybe The Secret Life of Pets. Both were 2016 releases. That's what happens when dreck like movies made from comic books fill the theatre. Not that try hard to find new release movies to go to; the theatre is such a dreadful and expensive experience. Movies from the library are free, and our media room is ever so much more comfortable, to say nothing of drinking wine during. I'm not even sure what the most recently released movie that I've seen, is.

Books I've started on again, mostly non-fiction, and mostly photography related. I'd have to keep track better than I do, to be able to do a top 10 list. But that reminds me. The whole publishing industry sucks slough water with rocks big time. The authors that create the works you love, are mostly shy retiring creatures, loving nothing better than to make up worlds in their head, to capture a stunning turn of phrase for you, as they work on a mug of tea or coffee. Now they are being forced into do much of their own publicity, and if there is an activity further from writing than publicity, I can't imagine what it might be. I visited one of my buddies that was doing a book signing in Chapters, and can't really imagine a more soul crushing experience. So if you are browsing and see a book you might like, for the love of literacy just buy it. The author only gets a fraction of the book price, even if it is a self publishing gig, but that fraction might be what puts them over line to be able to write another book. If it turns out you don't like it, sell it to a used book store, or put it in one of those little library boxes you see around, or donate it to your local community centre or assisted living centre.

(Long bridge from blogging frequency.) I will be doing image of the month, and image of the year, but they won't show up till January. I might blog when I get a stunning photo I want to show off, or rant when the mood strikes me, or publish a novel snippet just because. Or maybe because I get off my butt and produce a photo book and want to tell the world. Who knows?

So what to say. That's usually not a problem for me, and this blog is already getting long, but then again, it's a year end blog. A milestone. Or a yearstone, if there is such a thing. Stupid damnyouautocorrect, changed that to headstone. Grrr.

The year was fun. I did a short term work gig that was mostly ok, aside from freezing my ass off in their office and dealing with recalcitrant SAP data that lacked adequate index fields. I had several fun photo gigs, some even paying me an honorarium, which is the sincerest form of flattery.

There was lots of travel. New Zealand, Yukon, Cypress Hills and area. From just about as far south as you can go without going to Antarctica, to just north of the Arctic Circle. Fun! No wonder I've more than 50,000 photos from this year. And why choosing image of the year will be so hard. My only regret was not getting out to the east coast for the fall colours.

I went back and looked at my files. I have tagged 4601 photos as blogged. I'm not sure when I started this. If I believe the photo dates, it was late 2017, but I thought I started early this year. Of course, lots of my blogs I'll go back and pick earlier photos for some reason that seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm trying to wrap my head around inflicting 4600 photos on my faithful readers.

The books are still getting out of hand. Every now and then I bestir myself to add them to the list and move them to the basement. Normally this means zapping the bar code with a reader, and the database looks up the book info for me. Except it didn't. It needed updating. And with a bit of help from their help line, we discovered that one must replace the contents of the master folder, not update. Once that was figured out, it all went well. Except we are running out of book shelf space in the basement. This might be the great project of 2020, going through the books to determine if we are likely to read them again in our lives, and what to do with them if not. Anybody want a mid 80's vintage Encyclopedia Britannica?

That gets me started musing about projects for 2020. I already mentioned a photo book. That seems like a nice way to display photos, and might make a nice gift for certain people. I've talked about the difficulties of choosing photos to get printed and hung on the walls, namely running out of wall space in no time at all. We have thought about getting a big TV display installed in our living room over the stairs, and setting it up to display the edited photos in rotation. I once saw a TV display done up to look exactly like a framed painting, but the cost was outrageous. I'm pretty sure you could buy a TV and pay someone to build a custom frame and it would be much cheaper.

I might blog again this year. I might not. I don't know. If I don't, just remember my seasonal chant.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, HoHoHo, Bah Humbug.

This is what we got after our Christmas Day bus ride, and returned home. Some days they are so impressed with us.

Don't forget the Ask Me Anything. Really anything. It can't possibly be worse that what I might dream up and attribute to you.

Deadwood of the Day