I’m going to be “on hiatus” perhaps a couple of weeks or more to catch up on my business, which needs some significant attention right now. Blogging, as most of you know, is a loss. Between my wife’s illness last fall, getting the surfacestations paper out this spring, and other time-sucking issues, I have a lot of catch-up to do. Blogging, while at times exciting and rewarding, doesn’t pay the bills. Ever since Amazon killed affiliate programs in California due to tax insanity, now blogging pays even less. Ad clicks and a few kind souls who drop into the tip jar are about it, yet I find myself spending 6 hours a day (or more) on some days. A good example was last Saturday, when I spent about 5 hours chasing Turtles down a rabbit hole in Australia.
This coming November, I will have been at this job for five years straight, with only a couple of short breaks. What started out as a interesting diversion for my local newspaper has turned into a global monster that needs daily feeding. So, time for a diet.
I’ll have one, maybe two, small posts on weekdays, maybe more on weekends, the rest can be filled in by regular contributors and those that use the “submit story” feature in the header. It may turn out that “less is more”.
About submitting stories, many of the “submit story” offerings these days are simply reposts of articles on newspaper or magazine websites, which I’ll generally reject due to copyright issues and other reasons. The best way to submit a story like that is to paraphrase and excerpt it.
See Tips and Notes for those that don’t want to submit a small story.
WUWT has a life of its own now, and I don’t need to be as attentive as I have been. Climate Audit goes days without posts, and Steve still manages to maintain a pretty good traffic rank because people are always looking for the next post. I know people will step in to fill the void here.
Once I get caught up, I’ll spend more time here again. In the meantime, carry on.
Thanks for your consideration.
Anthony
You deserve all the R&R you can get. I am amazed you can spend less than 5-6 hours a day on this blog, for the quality that is produced. As many here are working folks, I suggest to you and others Anthony, to find out what a real vacation is. I took a week or two a year, thinking I was getting relaxed. In my forties, I retired from an engineering career, married and moved across the state. Waiting for the house at the new location, we decided to take a month in Mexico. I found each week to be more relaxed, and I could only identify the loss of tension by its absence, thinking each layer was the last. At three weeks, I started to think I was bored, but realized that I had actually finally really relaxed for the first time in decades. Do it for yourself and family! I didn’t say, but we had no cell phone, internet, TV, newspapers, etc.
Yes it has been quite a growth the last few years.
I remember at one time that Global Warming Skeptics blog and forum I now own.Was getting more traffic than here.I helped you by posting some of your early entries.We knew of each other then.
Now it is a big flow of traffic here and you getting caught up in it.To the point that it is a time consuming effort to keep up with it.
Take care of yourself.
Thank you Anthony, contributors, moderators and posters. This is a great blog and hacking around at older posts and the reference pages it is really more than a blog – WUWT is a tremendous body of work. Anthony – well done.
WUWT has momentum and it has truth on it’s side – you can well afford to take some time off or lighten up your posting. And thanks again.
Anthony,
Tom Naughton moved from California to Tennessee.
http://www.fathead-movie.com/
Thanks Anthony. You know, you can make the ginchiest boat out of a piece of fence board and a rubber band. You cut the front in a point, like a boat, and you cut a little rectangle out of the rear. Then you cut the little rectangle piece just a little smaller, and you remount it in it’s hole with the rubber band wrapped around the little prongs that are left. You wind up that piece of wood on your rubberband holder and set that boat in your kiddie pool (or bath tub) and wow, it really works. We spent hours trying to decide if it ran better when we wound it backwards or forwards. And yeah, you can put your plastic figurines on there, yeeehaw!
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy….sound of pounding feet – DAD! Gotta love it.
I’ve wondered for quite some time just how you’ve been able to pull this off so far, blogs can totally consume a person.
Have a vrus or somethng here that has eaten my letter “eye” and my “copy” and “paste”. Please understand the “mssng” as “eye” type. Almost 83 mll vsts, Anthony, s some record for 5 years of effort. am late wth my quarterly “subscrpton” so send t now wth grattude to see you on your (hatus) way. Even wthout Calforna attemptng to destroy small busnesses n any way t can, you probably would need these tmes of respte from “the monster”, the amazng truth-tellng monster. The reason t must be a tme-gobbler s because there are so many l(eye)es out there. We must all — all 83 mll of us ( know there are many repeat vsts, myself ncluded) — fght aganst the dsaster that s beng mposed upon us. Tyranncal control by the (global) eltes, wth help from those countres wth “assets” who are settng the UN agenda and focusng on the fnancal fall of “anglo” countres — leaders of the free world, makes sense to me.
Contnue your amazng success n all your busnesses and return as you feel comfortable. One thought: would be nterested n one or two of your regular scentst-posters to take a subject and be responsble for a focused dscusson where one aspect s looked at n depth by a number of “experts” whether professonals or self-taughts. Thanks agan 83 mll tmes.
Anthony.
Thanks to you I first read the counter point to the constant barrage of global warming doom and gloom story’s presented in newspapers and nightly on the main stream media. Your website was introduced to me by a skeptical CAGW friend, Since then have filled my cup with knowledge and frankly most of my spare time delving into climate issues, separating the wheat from the chafe, it has and will cont…to be a higher learning experience, for all these reasons and more I thank you, your contributors and all the other hard working blogger’s who simply want honest unbiased research in to the climate story.
Good luck and continued success in your busy life, although you might have to move out of Loony tune land eventually (California) .
Very best wishes.
Dave.
I’m glad you’re not going completely. I’m also glad, in a way, that there will be less blogging. You have become addictive and a bit less is more will let me down gently although I can still get a fix every so often. One of Christopher Booker’s articles first put me on to you and having helped fight off a wind turbine farm locally before finding you and wondering if we were the only people in the world fighting this madness, it has been a great comfort to find so many like-minded people. The battle against the Climate Change Act in the UK is not over and with the current crop of politicians one wonders if it ever will be, but at least you have helped an enormous amount in providing data and information to try to counter the so-called concensus. With other people coming in to help out on WUWT, I am sure we will still see useful information being handed on. You are a good man; thank you.
Thank you Anthony for all your effort over the years. You surely deserve a break and let’s face it, you have to eat which means pay attention to business. I trust you can return in the future to manage this blog. So many of the articles just go over my head but I get the drift and I think AGW is the great scam of the century. It has to be stopped and I am sorry to say, but you are the guy leading the charge. I look forward to your return and meanwhile, I trust you and your family will have some R & R. Thank you.
Anthony, your service to the scientific community has been nothing less than heroic! Please take care of business, I’m in the same fix myself. Like “Skynet” in the “Terminator” movies, WUWT has become self-aware, and we’ll soldier on.
I recommend WUWT commentators to hit the Tip Jar once in a while, it feels good to contribute.
Nothing short of a Nobel Prize is good enough to acknowledge what you have done for this world.
(maybe a multi-million$ reward would be good enough too !!)
Insofar as busting the Catastrophic Global Climate Change/Disruption mythology of the day, your job is nearly done, and quite well done indeed.
I expect that radicals will find some other avenue, hopefully outside the halls of science, upon which to pursue their misguided pranks.
I would encourage people to help out by submitting stories or articles. This is no time to let up, the global warming industry is continuing to press their case. I understand Anthony’s need to take a break, but I disagree with Dave Worley-the job is not nearly done at all. Al Gore will be starting a new propaganda effort this fall and at some point in the future if Democrats get more control of the government you’re going to see carbon taxes and cap and trade ideas brought back to the fore. We need to help keep this site going so that it shows up in searches, how else will those in the general public on the fence get a skeptical point of view?
Wow. How time flies when one is having fun!
Partition, allocate your time as you see fit; life and attention to loved ones/pets (yes, pets; as my sister reminds me we have removed them from their natural habitats and are their ‘world’ now … full disclosure: pet black-cap/green-cheek conure keeper here, sis has several greys and a military McCaw) should come first …
.
Happy trails, Anthony, but you’ve threatened to take a break before and we all know how that worked out ;o)
You’ve got WUWT to the point where you can back off, and my hat’s off to you for getting it there. You’ve got great guest posters and a top-notch moderation team. (And you can always step in and open a can of whupass if you notice things going south.)
God bless you and yours.
First things first. You have already made the web a better place by your efforts. Totally off topic, but do they make Paypal collect sales taxes for sales into CA?
Best wishes for a synergistic refocusing of your effort and talent. They are much appreciated.
If I’m not mistaken there’s been research into how many ads you can have in the comment section without the regular commenters pop their eyes exploding their heads out of blinking madness.
I’m just saying you can at least up your earning potential, living the good life when you’re off line. Apparently it makes a big difference on stress levels. :p
Enjoy your well earned break !!!
You have a great staff of moderators and great contributors that will certainly keep this fantastic site going strong !!!
Enjoy and good luck !!
Keep the business humming. Until someone finds out a good way to make money on blogs, you will be stuck with the standard methods of ads and such.
On another note, if you did up the ads, I wouldn’t be upset…or possibly also offered more merchandise. I know Josh has some excellent things, but if you offered a wider variety including lots of almost strictly WUWT cheap advertising, it might help get the word out so to speak.
I know I would have no problems wearing a new cool graphic that shamelessly promotes WUWT. – Feel free to work with Josh, I know I am by no means against his work, I have I think 4 t-shirt and a couple coffee mugs myself.
Although I will admit some of them probably got burnt, I did send t-shirt to some warmist relatives last Christmas and I am sure they ended up being burnt…but it was worth it for the imagination I had of thier facial expressions on receiving such a gift (-:
Donation sent, Anthony. I should have done it sooner – sorry. You might want to move the donatin button nearer to the top – I really didn’t know you had one until you mentioned donations and I went looking for it.
You deserve a rest – PLEASE take care of yourself. We need you.
Thank you very much! WUWT is on top.
Catch up Anthony, see you soon. 😉
Anthony
All my thanks and gratitude for all that you have done for us all over the years. Not only has this site has been an invaluable source of information and a forum for discussion, but you personally, by your openness and equanimity and by just being the genuinely decent man that you are, have provided a prime exemplar of how a site like this should be run. Would that just a few of your critics had absorbed that example. I find your estimate of 6 hours/day to be hopelessly optimistic and probably closer to a best case than an average. My visits here have always been rather randomly distributed throughout the hours of the day and mostly at odd hours, and given the large percent of the visits which featured a recent post or comment response from you, I’ve often been tempted to enquire what is was you were taking that allowed you to maintain such a seemingly man-killing schedule.
You certainly deserve any break you chose to take. If you have commented on the status of your wife’s recovery lately I’ve managed to miss it, but I would add my hope that her prognosis has continued to improve and that you and she are still in my prayers. The work you have accomplished in building this site to its current status has been incredibly important and I feel privileged to have been able to spend time with you here. But in the end this to shall pass, hopefully by the need for this site being greatly reduced by the demise of climate alarmism, but, if not, your your familial obligations deserve to be your priority. Advice I offered in comments more than 2 years ago and still just as valid. If you should decide to never author another syllable here your contributions would still merit more gratitude than I or any of us could ever hope to adequately put in words. Good Luck and Godspeed.