It 's been one year

It has been one year since I started the Lubber’s Line “Hundreds of Fathoms” blog and I guess it’s a tradition to create a post recapping the year, bragging where appropriate and evaluating the blog’s evolution.

To shipmates, friends and comment contributors.
First I would like to thank all those who stopped by for an occasional read and/or to contribute comments. Your input and conversation has been much appreciated even if I didn’t respond to all your comments. Everyone has something to contribute and I’ve enjoyed this adventure in blogging thus far.

To my fellow submarine bloggers in my blogroll, “you guys are killing my content!!” just kidding. I do spend more time reading your content than writing mine but that’s only because I enjoy your posts just as much as writing something of my own.

Hat tip to the ones that got me initially interested in doing a blog, Bubblehead at The Stupid Shall be Punished and Bothenook at A Geezer’s Corner. I’m back to six hours or less of sleep in a twenty four period because of you two. Now all I need is someone to wake me up with a 10,000 candle flashlight and tell me I’m late for watch, geeees…. Wait, my six year old son kind of does that already, so I guess I'm all set.

Links
I’ve read that most blogs are abandoned after two to three months so after a year I’m doing ok. Thanks to those who have linked this blog and kept me going; Alex Nooze –The Nooze Wire, Chap -Chapomatic, MM1(SS) -Four Knots to Nowhere, Gus -Gus Van Horn, Vigilis -Molten Eagle, Photios -Photios, PigBoatSailor -The Discomfort of Thought, WillyShake -Unconsidered Trifles and anyone else I've missed.

Additionally other Bloggers that linked here:
The Mudville Gazette – on Milblogging with open sourced info
Outside the Beltway – on Chinese spying
CDR Salamander – on the XO door going missing
EagleSpeak – on the USS San Francisco and Nav charts

I also contribute to these primarily News Sites and get links back as well:
TheSubReport – thanks to Eric
UltraQuiteNoMore – thanks to Joel

Favorite Posts
Life can be too serious so I’ve tried to add a bit of humor to my posting now and then, therefore two of my favorite posts are “Does Santa Wear Dolphins?” and “Coryphaenidae qualified kleptomania”.

On a more serious tone what I feel are some of my better posts were “China IFF?”, “Between Two Worlds Surface/Submerged”, “Milblogging With Open Source Information”, “An Un-Conventionally Armed SSBN”, “Alvin (DSV-2) to Start Last Refit”, “Trident I (C4) Missile System Retired”, “Submarines True Systems of Transformation” and a progression of posts attempting to analyze the USS San Francisco grounding on Jan 08 2005.

Lessons learned
As far as I can tell I haven’t made any major “Oh Sh*t!!! I shouldn’t have done that” kind of postings but then again I haven’t tried to be controversial and stuck to mostly facts with only a little commentary.

I have broken a number of blog rules regarding getting and keeping readers. I post infrequently (not daily) and at different times. Responding to comments can sometimes take me a day if at all. I chose a topic with a limited audience. I provide little commentary to get readers juiced, sticking to flat news. Finally I haven’t participated in any of those “open posts” or carnival of …. type of cross-postings and I haven’t done any serious commenting over at the Big Boys to get noticed. All this means is that the site averages about 40 hits a day or about 14,750 to date. I would like to generate more traffic but hey it’s not a business just a hobby.


Evolution of the blog
As far as content I think it’s been fairly consistent on the topics of military, submarines and the sea; but as I said a lot of what I post has limited appeal. Therefore I think I’m going to include more stuff outside of what I have posted in the past, much like my fellow submarine bloggers do.

That’s the goal for year two, refine what I currently post and increase the range of topics I cover, we’ll see how I do. - LL