Another one bites the dust  

I was sorry to see this week that Billmon's (one of the brightest lights in the earliest days of the blogosphere, for those of you haven't heard of him) fan site "Moon of Alabama" is shutting its doors - Five years of Moon of Alabama - Time to close it down. While I've rarely checked in there in recent years I'm still sad to see another pioneer giving up.

On a related note, I'm sure most long time readers have noticed the marked decrease in post volume here (and the near complete absence of original material) over the past 6 months - my apologies for that, but I've been both very busy at work and working through a divorce, so my time to do much online reading has been pretty limited (let alone writing something worthwhile of my own). I'm hoping I'll get everything back under control in a couple of months, but in the meantime please bear with me...

From the MoA About page:

Some time ago, the commenting at Billmon's Whiskey Bar became a bit excessive. Billmon therefore closed the comments at his place on June 29, 2004. The community of commentators was left behind to search for a new place.

Moon Of Alabama was opened as an independent, open forum for members of the Whiskey Bar community.

Bernhard started and still runs the site. ...

Now Bernhard stops the site. The decision to do so was taken six weeks ago and has nothing to do with recent developments in the world or any comment on this blog.

The main reason is financially. If there were a big, generous sponsor I could keep on doing this. Believe it or not, even while this is a small place, keeping it clean and posting on a wide range of issues makes it a full time job. Until recently I could sustain running it because I had reserves and a real job that allowed a lot of flexibility and a nice pay. Both are gone.

I now need to, again, 'get a life'. There are other issues too. Running such a blog is rather isolating. Being so much on the news and developing a bullshit detector as good blogging requires, creates too much distance from real, small issue social life around oneself. Psychologically it is quite a drag down. Read every line of The Daily Palestinian post from bottom to top and you will understand what I am thinking about.

In the total five years MoA got some 4,305,000 pageviews from about 2.1 million visits. Some 133,000 comments were posted and some 4,260 posts were published. Those numbers may sound big, but even with advertisement and small donations it would not be economically viable to run with this format and reach.

As this page view graph shows there were ups and downs but still a nice long-term up trend. A few more years on ... but who knows?

Thanks to all who came here, read and commented. A special thanks to those who have been around since the very first days. Dan of Steele, Juannie, r'giap, annie ond others come to mind.

In a few days, I will close the comments to this and other threads. I'll arrange something for b real to keep his Africa Comments alive and free of spam. I'll stop reading news.

I may, (may!) produce a CD with the archives of this blog plus the full Billmon archives. Check back in two or three weeks on how, maybe, you can get it.

To all of you, thanks!

And goodbye.

MOA is making available a CD of all their content (and a full archive of Billmon's site, which has been pretty much purged from the internet as far as I can tell) for those who want it - A Billmon And MoA Archive CD is Now Available. It looks like the barflies are now moving on to "Le Speakeasy".

Each CD includes the nearly complete archive of Billmon's Whiskey Bar website from his first post on April 10 2003 until The Bar closed on December 28 2006. It is only 'nearly' complete as 22 pictures from early Billmon posts, despite best efforts, are still missing. Over 780 pictures are included though. This is, I believe, the most complete Billmon archive available anywhere.

Also on the CD is the complete archive of Moon of Alabama from its launch on June 30 2004 up to July 2 2009. All posts, media and comments are included.

A search index is provided on the CD that covers both archives. For Windows users a free software to use the search index is included too. Mac and Unix users will have to download their (free) version from the net (link provided on the CD). The search engine allows google and yahoo like searches through both archives.

The two archives are interlinked. Links from the Moon of Alabama archive which originally pointed to the billmon.org website now point to the Whiskey Bar archive on the CD and vice versa. One can search and surf through and in between both archives without an active internet connection.

While I have been careful in preparing and verifying the archives and each CD I can not give any guarantees. In total there are 9,100 files on each CD which together take up some 527 megabyte. I have not reviewed each of these files on each CD I will send out. Still - if your copy does not work at all you will of course get a new one.

How to get one?

Send an email to MoonofA_at_aol_dot_com and include your postal address. I will send back an email with information on how you may contribute you fair share to the costs involved. Please allow me a day or two for responding to requests.

If you are not able to pay anything for a CD please let me know. Moon of Alabama barflies who can not pay will get a CD for free. More generally - everyone decides for themselves what s/he wants to contribute for a CD.