One year on

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I started this blog on April 22, 2008, or almost a year ago. Has it been a success? Hard to tell, really. How do you judge the success of a blog? by the number of readers? In that case I should probably write about religion, politics and sex, preferably in combination. That suggests it might be more to the point to ask how you judge success of a blog devoted to speculative biology from the viewpoint of one person's particular take on the subject? You can't; suffice it to say that so far I like the number of visitors, which is growing, and like writing entries.

There were 39 entries in one year, not counting this one. Not exactly once a week, but not bad, I think. On May 19 last year I made a list of things I needed to learn in order to produce a good book on Furaha. Here they are again, with some comments:

* Photoshop: I use it regularly now, and am getting better, but still haven't really used it to paint.
* Blender: Nothing yet...
* Indesign: Yes! I am getting the hang of it.
* More species: Yes, but nothing detailed
* Cladograms: No, and at present they do not strike me as very useful.
* Textures: Yes! The astronomy page is proof of that.

And of course there are some things I did not foresee one year ago:
* Interesting contacts with several people, not just in the comments, but behind the scenes as well.
* Working on the blog takes away time from working on Furaha; hmmm...

To finish off and to celebrate, I will throw in a few images. The image at the top of this post was made as an experiment for a forum heavy on map making. Just for fun.
And some more:

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This is an Uther, a sophont from Epona. There's something in the wind about Epona...


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Surely you did not think I had forgotten the Interplanetary Zoo by Edd Cartier? The store of brilliant images hasn't dried up yet.