Tuesday, January 1, 2013

We're on hiatus.

Exfanding Your Horizons is pleased to announce its very first extended hiatus!

...I guess sounding excited about it doesn't change the fact that we're going to stop posting here for a while.

As previously discussed, things have changed a great deal for us over the last several months. What was once a two-man blogging team gradually became a one-man blogging team; what was once our blog has gradually become my blog. Initially, I was holding down the fort for a few weeks until my blogging buddy Alex returned in October or November.

Happy New Year, incidentally.

Though it's a tough decision for us, Alex and I have agreed that it's time to bring this boat ashore, at least for a month or two or five. We've kept up with this blog since 2008, posting every day of the week (except possibly Sunday, our self-imposed day off) for the majority of that time. Nobody maintains that level of dedication for some random side project.

Exfanding has been our home for the last four years. We haven't always looked or sounded like the most professional blog on the planet, but I doubt your home has always looked presentable enough for company from around the world at all hours of the day. We've been honing our writing craft. We've thrown up some truly pitiful filler posts just to keep us in the habit of writing every day. I've been teaching myself enough HTML to tweak and tinker with the blog's layout from time to time (calling in my wife on occasion).

It's the coolest thing in the world that other people want to read what we've written, but that's not why we write. Exfanding is for us, first and foremost, and it always has been—sharing what we do with the global community just makes it better.

That's why it's time to say farewell, if only for a time. Exfanding isn't the same when it's me writing for us.

I've still got a couple of in-progress posts that'll take a while to finish, and I know there's at least one more guest post on the way. At the very least, we'll be returning for a few days whenever those are all ready—but when we return, I mean we will return. I'm volunteering Alex to write the next post you'll read here. In the meantime, we've got a lot in the archives, and our Month in Review posts might help highlight things that even longtime readers might have missed.

As of the end of this post, Exfanding is officially on indefinite hiatus. However, that doesn't mean that we, the writers, are just going to poof out of existence. I've got a personal website now that serves as a hub to all my other Internet activities, and I'm continuing to blog (and blather about Mega Man) over there:

http://nathanielhoover.weebly.com

Look for updates from Alex on his Comic Art Fans page, as well as on the website for his book, Sarah Faire and the House at the End of the World:

http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryDetail.asp?GCat=30149

http://sarahfaire.com/

We'll still be checking in on Exfanding to respond to new comments, maybe clean up the archives a little bit, and perform whatever technical and administrative tasks we see fit, so it's not really goodbye.

But...um...until next time...goodbye.

Monday, December 31, 2012

Month in Review: December 2012

After four years of co-blogging, and four months of blogging solo, the unspoken question was finally addressed: How long do you plan to continue blogging for Exfanding Your Horizons without your partner? Even without a definitive answer yet, it's clear that the last month especially has seen a trend away from "our blog, minus the one author for a while" and toward "Nathaniel's blog"--and that's not what this blog was ever meant to be.

That's not to say these posts aren't any good; rather, they're very distinctly me. (Which is not to say that they are any good, either.) At any rate, here's what I've got to show for December...and of particular note is the penultimate post on the list, because this might be the last Month in Review you see here for a long time.


- A reaction to the trailer for Star Trek Into the Darkness and tongue-in-cheek predictions about what the film will hold

- A reaction to the trailer for Street Fighter X Mega Man and thoughts on the state of the Mega Man franchise

- A connected list of the various things that've been keeping me physically and mentally busy lately, from Scribblenauts to "couple-building activities," whatever those are

- An announcement of my new Twitch TV channel, which I will probably never use

- An advertisement for the livestreaming 25th anniversary Mega Man marathon my friend and I undertook, and a retrospective on the big event (including a link to the video footage in case you missed it)

- A guest post chronicling the adventures of Biff and Baff through Dragon Warrior I & II for the Game Boy Color

- A massive comparative review of several varieties of eggnog and nog-like beverages

- Reflections on four months of blogging solo

- A recap of my contributions to obscure gaming website GameCola.net in December

Sunday, December 30, 2012

GameCola Recap: December 2012

After several prolific months in a row with obscure gaming website GameCola.net, things finally slowed to a crawl. I still managed to get my name attached to three articles, though my contribution to one was technically written back in November, and the other two articles were a spur-of-the-moment "Huh, guess I'd better write something for this."

Oh, and hey, looks like one last review got published, just under the wire.

Columns:

- The Archive Dive: We're On Holiday Break Edition

- Q&AmeCola: Worst Game in a Series


Comic:

- Sprite Flicker: I Give You a Special Present


Review:

- Mega Man II (GB)

Friday, December 28, 2012

Thinking.

Hi there.

Things have gotten quiet around the blog lately, but that's to be expected. Lots of things going on in my personal life, and plenty of other projects I've been working on, all on top of the regular hustle and bustle of the holiday season.

Also, it's quiet because it's just me.

If you've been reading this blog for less than four months, you might not realize that, for four years, this was a tag-team effort. It was virtually unheard-of for me to post more than two, maybe three days in a row before my partner Alex picked up with a rant about the state of the publishing industry, or an enthusiastic review of the latest comics, or a thoughtful reflection on his time playing baseball. Or a call for me to go back in time and kill Grizzly Adams. You could never tell.

When work got busy, we started working out some ways to ease the burden of sticking to a regular posting schedule--like his weekly Waiting for Wednesday column, I initiated a weekly Sunday Spotlight column to guarantee that, at the very least, he'd never need to crank anything out for Sunday. From there, we relaxed our posting schedule so that we didn't have to post every day. Then, without any real fanfare, Alex simply disappeared.

The official story is that, on top of his day job, he'd plunged himself into the world of self-publishing. Once his book was published, he'd be able to return to the blog. Well, the book is published now: it's called Sarah Faire and the House at the End of The World, and you should read it. As soon as it's possible for people who don't know Alex personally to read it. At the moment, the book's website is very pretty, and very devoid of content, including how one would go about ordering the book.

"I know; I know," I can hear him saying now. But I digress.

We both thought Exfanding would be back to a two-man blogging crew by now. Once I got used to the idea of solo blogging--which took a while, mind you--it became easier to keep this blog afloat. I stopped stalling until Alex returned, and began treating Exfanding as my blog, while still keeping with the style and traditions that we established for our posts. Things worked out fine...until December.

Gifts for Geeks. A specifically Christmas-themed Christmas post. That HTML snow widget we always have. All overlooked. All forgotten. And our chances of collaborating on some New Year's resolutions, or compiling a joint list of our favorite posts from this year (or last year, for crying out loud), are looking slimmer and slimmer as 2013 approaches. Just when I was hitting my stride, December descended to remind me that, no matter what I post on my own, this blog isn't this blog without both of us leaning on each other to uphold tradition.

What I'm about to say, I've been thinking about for four months. This shouldn't be a surprise, either, if you've been reading between the lines every time I've written a post like this one. I keep dancing around the inevitable conclusion because I'm not ready to let go.

But I think it might be time to let go.

I'm selling you to the zoo.

Wait; no. That's not it. I mean, I think it might be time to formally, and very conclusively, go on hiatus.

A real hiatus. Not the kind where I say we're going on hiatus, and then I come back in a few days and keep writing. The kind where there are no new posts. Ever. Again. Until both of us have a post or two scheduled.

I'm not making that decision on my own, though. If we do go on hiatus--or if we ride off into the sunset and you never hear from us again--it'll be a decision that we both make. There's been no horrible argument or sudden boredom that's to blame for placing this possibility on the table; Alex is simply busy, and I'm debating whether to keep making new episodes of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show when we haven't seen Bullwinkle since the summer.

To be fair, if Alex is Bullwinkle, that means I'm voiced by a girl.

Regardless of whether we take a vacation, carry on as we've been doing, surprise you with Alex's sudden and triumphant return, or close up shop altogether, this post is not the end of Exfanding Your Horizons. I'm merely putting an option on the table. If you've got any thoughts, loyal Exfanders, the floor is yours.