Once the holidays came around, things kind of took a dip, and I guess that’s understandable. People travel, people celebrate, people spend time not in front of their computers. I mean, not me — I’m still in front of the computer — but people do those things. Or so I’m told.

The numbers were down again in December, but try though I might, I have a hard time feeling like 193,650 isn’t exhilarating. I remember when this site got like 10 hits a day and I thought that was cool, so maybe I’m working on a different scale. It’s not the biggest of the blogs out there, but screw it, I’m still having a good time, and I find the more I keep going with it, the more I’m refining the process of what I want this site to be. So far it’s a good bit of adventure.

And seriously, in 2011, The Obelisk had 2,867,775 page views. 2.8 million! I don’t care if it’s one dude sitting and clicking refresh that many times, I’m fucking blown away by that. It’s satisfying to know people are out there and I hope that as we move into 2012, you continue (or start) to get some use out of what goes on in this space.

In December 2011, visits came from 126 countries. The top five were America, the UK, Canada, Germany and Australia. In the US, it was business as usual among the top five states: California and New York in the lead with Massachusetts, Texas and New Jersey behind. And Wyoming — perpetually last among the states — wasn’t. Wyoming sent a whopping 16 visits, which is twice as many as South Dakota. Change is afoot.

Visitors came from Oman, Yemen, Madagascar, Nepal, Cyprus, and a bunch of other beautiful countries I’ll probably never be lucky enough to see in real life, and as of right now on the forum, there are 881 registered users, with 57,421 posts in 3,887 topics. Last month’s podcast, the second part of the year in review, was downloaded 191 times, and also featured on Grip of Delusion Radio (website here). Awesome.

Some business to attend to before I actually get into the swing of this year, so let’s do it:

HeavyPink: Two more sold after the last post, so there are 74 copies of the HeavyPink 7″ left, and just this morning, I typed in the link from the download card and it absolutely, 100 percent worked. So there. Thanks to everyone who’s made a purchase so far. If you haven’t yet, the Maple Forum store is here.

The Maple Forum: Speaking of, the latest on the label is that Riff Cannon, who’ve changed their name to Summoner, are going to shop their record around some more with the new name. This was my suggestion to the band, wanting them to be able to get the most out of their new moniker and hopefully get their music out to as many people as possible, and they agreed. The Maple Forum may yet do the release, but in any case, it won’t be for a while. Right now, it’s looking like Clamfight next. They’re in the mixing process for the record, and whenever it’s done (I’m in no rush), we’ll press up a bunch and get them out. After that, the Cortez CD is still a possibility, and then I think I’m going to dial back on stuff. This one-to-the-next thing is cool, but I don’t like feeling like I’m always trying to sell something, so I’d rather do a release every now and again when something comes along I really want to get behind, and I think that’s the model I’m going to follow. I’m not a label guy, anyway. I’m a schmuck with a keyboard.

Features: Barring catastrophe, I should have a couple 2012 preview posts up. That might take the place of an interview this week, depending on time, but as soon as I get my hands on a Y-adapter for my mic (it’s complicated), I’ll be Skyping with Grifter, and hopefully that will open up more international phoners as well, so stick around for that. Next week, I’ll have my Q&A with Mike Dean from C.O.C., and I’m also hoping to get on the phone this month with Clay Neely from Black Pyramid and I’d like to hook up and emailer with Sula Bassana, so stay tuned for those, which will hopefully come together in good time. I’m also slated to swing by a Kings Destroy practice on the 17th to check out their new material, and that’ll be fun, whatever comes of it post-wise.

Outside Writers: I’ve been kicking around the idea of bringing in other contributors to this site for a while, and I think I’m going to get the ball rolling on it. I think I’ve found a decent compromise point that I can live with, and while I’m not taking on a whole staff, you might hear from some people who aren’t me in the next month or two. It’s all pretty nebulous at this point, but I figured advance warning was only fair.

audiObelisk: I said when I did the first podcast that I reserved the right to speak on them in the future. Well, this month, I’m going to do that. It won’t be every month from here on out or anything, but for January at least. I think it’ll be a fun change. Should be up next week sometime. As regards audio, I’ll also have a track premiere tomorrow from Black Pyramid and hopefully King Valley in the next week or two.

Reviews: As soon as I finish this post, my plan is to get started on my review of the Clutch/C.O.C./Earthride New Year’s Eve show in Philly from this past Saturday. I’ll have photos with that as well. Also on the calendar for this month are recent top-20-toppers Graveyard playing in NYC and Monster Magnet the next night in Brooklyn. Backwoods Payback are playing ABC No Rio this weekend with several terrible metalcore/post-hardcore bands I didn’t think were still together, and I might swing by that as well. For discs, on the list are C.O.C., Cherry Choke, Pyramido, The Devil’s Blood, Fire Faithful, Trucker Diablo, Iron Man, Against Nature, among others.

I think that’s it. Actually, I know it’s not, but it’s all I can think of. Thank you for all your support in 2011, whether it was just checking out the site, lurking on the forum, leaving a comment, sending a CD for review, downloading a podcast, any of it. I know it’s hard to tell from words on a computer monitor, but I’m an actual person running this site — at least biologically speaking if not in terms of sociability — and the encouragement means a lot.

So thanks — as always.

JJ Koczan
Hoddypeak Perisologist Taskmaster

Tags: self-aggrandizing, The Numbers

This entry was posted on Monday, January 2nd, 2012 at 1:53 pm and is filed under The Numbers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.