First Year Anniversary for The Null Set

It was a year ago today that The Null Set got started 🙂 .

It’s been a work-in-progress as I’ve learned (and still learning) the ropes of blogging but it’s really been a source of joy for me in this past year.

I really have to thank everyone that has visited, read my posts, left comments, and looked at the wallpapers that I’ve made in this past year. I really got a much better response then I could ever hope for. I hesitate to thank people individually because I know I’ll forget to thank a bunch of people and writing this at 2 in the morning doesn’t help but let’s try anyways.

The first person that needs thanked is Kitsune. From very early on Kitsune has been a regular commenter and someone who always has something interesting to say. His anime/Japanese interest/other blog is one of the best that I read and I try to visit at least once a day.

Next, I want to thank Kaioshin Sama from Anime History because of the comments he left. Maybe it’s seems odd to thank someone for largely negative critiques of how I grade but they did make me think and I believe that I’ve improved greatly from them.

And to the other people that have left multiple comments like suguru, AstroNerdBoy, Author, jpmeyer, IcyStorm, MisterEd, ghostlightning, Kairu Ishimaru, coburn, blissmo, Keith Shepard, setsukyie, issa-sa and my two sisters Jennifer and Sarah thanks.

Next, I want to thank everyone that has added this blog to their blog roll like Kitsune’s Thoughts, Simplicity, AnimeLife, Anime Yokoso (and I know there’s more but my brain isn’t working) because they did so without me asking or agreeing to do a link exchange and that makes me happy.

And to all the blogs, forums, and websites that have linked to posts here. It’s a thrill to think something I’ve written is worth repeating somewhere else.

And I missed someone, I’m sorry.

I mentioned back at New Years that I hit 100,000 views and at the time I said I’d talk about it more during my anniversary post, so here we are.

• As of this post, I have had 200 total posts, 114,150 views, 333 comments, and 2,400 spam comments.
• My top day was 1,025 views on January 17, 2009 and my top week was January 12-18 with 5,421 views.

My top ten posts are:

1. Soul Eater Wallpaper, 12,228 views
2. Haruhi vs Gurren Lagann, 7,826 views
3. Soul Eater Wallpaper 2, 6,950 views
4. Gurren Lagann Wallpaper, 4,882 views
5. 2007 Anime Awards (1-5), 3,462 views
6. Winter 2008 – 2009 Anime Preview and Watchlist, 3,055 views
7. Spring Anime Reviews – Soul Eater, 3,054 views
8. 2008 Spring Anime Preview, 2,852 views
9. Trigun and Oh! My Goddess TV Season 1, 2797 views
10. Last part of 2007 Anime Awards, 2,797 views

I’m simply stunned that I had over 100,000 views in under a year. It makes me wonder what will happen in this second year. If I can write another 200 posts, is hoping for 200,000 views this year absurd or realistic? I do hope for a bigger comment-to-post ratio since I always like to see what people are thinking.

Reflections and resolutions

I had been kicking around the idea of starting an anime blog since the spring of 2006 when I was caught up in Haruhi fever, though strictly speaking I’m into Yuki-ism. What stopped me was I wanted to have a plan on what I wanted to do before I began and I had to convince myself that other people would actually read what I wrote. Through a large part of 2007, I was going to name my anime blog Otaku Spider because I liked the sound of it and I could design a nice motif using spiders but I decided that I wasn’t really an otaku nor did I aspire to be one so that name got chucked.

Finally, at the beginning of January 2008 I decided on blogging about SF and anime with the idea of drawing parallels between the two and getting the two groups of fans to try the other. From this, I thought of the name The Null Set because I was cynically thinking that if I took a set of the future readers of this blog that liked both SF and anime, I’d end up with nobody – hence the name. I didn’t use my real name because I’m paranoid like that and I couldn’t just use my first name because it could confuse people since Jeff is used by the much more well known Jeff Lawson. And I don’t have an online avatar name that I’m really attached so I figured I’d use the name The Null Set and I would just be the author of the blog.

Now that I’ve been blogging for a year though, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need a separate name that applies to me especially if I ever decide to add more writers to The Null Set (I’d wait until I’m satisfied with my writing before that step though). Therefore, I’m going to start using the online name I’m most comfortable with, my animesuki forum name – steelbound – here. The name comes from being born in a dieing steel city and realizing that this vanishing history is still a part of who I am. Maybe

In the early months of writing, I realized that my initial goal of being a place to combine the two fandoms wasn’t really attainable for me so I began trying to figure out what the ultimate point of this blog should be. I eventually worked something out that I liked and this is it: I want my blog to be a place where people go to figure out if a show is worth watching and also to find shows to watch that they wouldn’t have tried otherwise. This affects when I discuss a show because I try to be as spoil-free as possible for the people who haven’t seen it. My weekly anime watched post comes from this purpose as well. People can see everything I’m watching and hopefully when I’m praising a show – they’re more inclined to try it – and when I see something I don’t like – they’re aware of that when deciding what to watch. And this is also why a lot my anime posts have been either first impressions or series reviews and why I don’t do much episodic blogging – I don’t want people to read about a show, I want them to watch it.

I feel that I’ve only been partially successful and any suggestions to improve this blog to better meet it’s goal would be appreciated. In the coming year, I’ll strive to improve my writing and photoshop skills to make better posts and wallpapers.