My friends, it’s a whole new day. We’ve switched hosting companies, and two years in, I feel like The Obelisk is a brand new website. You’ll notice the banner atop the page says “No Longer Under the Command of General Error,” and if you’ve tried to get to the forum in the last couple days, you know what that means. We were simply getting too big for Yahoo to handle, and the site kept crashing as a result.

With the new host, not only do the blog and the forum stay operational, but they’re both also much, much faster. Posts go up quicker, you don’t have to wait as long for things to load, and most importantly, the forum doesn’t take a shit every time more than 15 people are on it. I couldn’t be more stoked. I’ve been nerding out to my new webmail interface all afternoon.

Now, the numbers. Being off Yahoo‘s hosting means we’re also off their count for page views. Google is now the official count, and they put it at 293,161 for January, which is pretty damn good. I expected some settling down after December’s chaos, the demise of StonerRock.com, repopulating album reviews, etc., and what’s also killer is that more than 30 percent of those page views were from new visitors. Hopefully if you were one of those people, you saw something here that made you want to come back.

According to the map, The Obelisk got visits from all 50 states again (California once more beating out New York) and 119 other countries, including Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan. I don’t want to take full credit for the rise of democratic rebellion in those nations and elsewhere in that part of the world, but I’m sure the hearty debate taking place every day in General Discussion played no small part.

Seriously though, these are beautiful places that I probably won’t ever see with my own eyes, and I thank you all for checking in to see what’s happening here. My mind is continually blown.

Even after losing some posts in the server switch, at the time of this writing, the forums have 502 registered members, 1,023 topics and 14,173 total posts and counting. Unreal.

Let’s do some business:

audiObelisk: Before the week is out, I hope to be streaming a track from The Georgian Skull‘s new album, as well as the entirety of the second Hour of 13 record, which is up for reissue on Earache this month. This month’s podcast is killer as well. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, you should.

The Maple Forum: Well, the third Maple Forum release is kind of on hold while the band entertains offers from… uh… better labels. Maybe affirms my good taste, but it doesn’t do much for giving me stuff to announce. I’ve got 35 copies of the Kings Destroy disc left and I have the feeling a few more are about to go. If you haven’t gotten yours yet, use the Paypal button in the sidebar or click here.

I still have a couple things on the docket for later this year, so stay tuned for announcements to come.

New Stuff: I have a couple ideas for new sections of the blog. If I’m feeling brave, I might try and implement one or more of them in the next month. Like the dude who’s taken six years to put out his next album, I don’t want to force anything and want to see how it all happens naturally.

Interviews: Wino goes up tomorrow or Thursday, depending on time and, honestly, the weather and whether or not I have class tomorrow. Also in the can at this point are Weedeater, Earth and Wo Fat, and I’ve got chats lining up with Suplecs and Shroud Eater among others not yet confirmed or spill-beansable. Good stuff coming though.

Reviews: Crowbar, Tia Carrera, God Ox, Desert Storm, The Devil Rides Out, Grayceon — there are a lot to come. I still have that Agalloch too that’s been sitting around for ever. They’re not hurting for hype, but hopefully I’ll get there.

Where to Start: I like that these always get a good response. If all goes according to plan, I should have another up by the end of this week. Next week at the latest.

It’s been kind of a crazy winter so far with snowstorms, downtime for the forums, my semester starting and all kinds of crap going on, but I hope February settles down a little. Shows this month with Wino/Scott Kelly and the aforementioned Agalloch and Weedeater should keep things interesting either way. I also bought a new camera, so maybe my pictures won’t suck so much anymore.

Or, more likely, they’ll still suck, but with more megapixels.

The Obelisk is two years old today.

Thank you as always.

JJ Koczan
Hoebag Pearshaped Taskmaster

Tags: self-aggrandizing, The Numbers

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 5:21 pm and is filed under The Numbers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.