What happens when you ignore a blog for a month?
Well, many things.
To begin with you have to write a post apologizing. And even if you do that, you still loose credibility and readership. Unfortunately, my credibility as a blogger is probably at an all-time low. On the bright side of things, judging by comments and analytics, I never had a huge reader base, which means that the three or four of you will probably forgive me.
You also tend to need to explain WHY you neglected the blog for a month. Well, my reason is a very complicated month in which a lot of things have happend. To begin with, I registered my PhD. dissertation thesis. I have also pre-defended it internally and registered it for the actual defence. The huge effort required for that meant that I accumulated a lot of work that I am still pushing forward. Additionally, I travelled to the GDTW 2007 conference/workshop, which happened to be highly disruptive workwise but extremely gratifying and interesting. Honestly though, there have been other major events that have completely shattered my concentration and changed my life, although they don’t belong in a research blog.
Another consequence is comment-spam. 1500 spams in the moderation queue. That is an unsustainable amount and I have thus decided to disable pingbacks for good. I had the good eye to spot two legitimate comments among the huge spam, but I might have accidentally deleted something I shouldn’t. In that case, I’m sorry. I also have taken some other anti-spam measures for the future.
Things seem to be getting a bit more relaxed lately, and so I feel confident I will able to bring back the weekly(-ish) posting pace. Wish me luck. I am preparing posts about my thesis, about the GDTW2007 conference and the second part of my reflection on educational videogames and e-learning.
By the way, should I fail to keep this promise next week and in case anyone is interested, I will be defending my thesis and (hopefully) become a doctor on Friday, Novemeber 30th, at the UCM School of Computer Science at noon.
