Happy New Year

Today is my fourth blip birthday it also coincides with blipfuture's blip day. 
 
I originally set out to take one photo a day for one year using blipfoto as a convenient placeholder.  Four years later I'm still blipping and thereby lies the rub, blipfoto is addictive.  I've been taking photos all my life but never before felt a compulsion to make sure I take one every day. some people I know have broken from this addiction and only publish a photo occasionally or, in the case of people I follow, about 50% have broken the addiction completely, some before they actually reached that point. I'm not saying any of this is a bad thing, it's not harmful as is smoking, drugs and excessive alcohol, in fact I find it a good thing, it makes me more observant and, hopefully, more creative with my photography and processing, as well as being quite nice to be able to look back over historic pictures and journals.
 
We've been asked to talk about the virtues of blipfoto and why it's important to keep the site running. I have pledged money to blipfuture and wish it every success in the future, but at the end of the day it is a social networking web site of which there are many, large and small.  People have made friends, virtual and real, but this friendship doesn't have to finish if blip goes under. People are worried about losing their journals, but there is a perfectly good backup program, backblip, that can download all journals, photos and meta data and can be saved in Word or PDF format. 

Although I have pledged, I still haven't decided whether to continue into next year, though I have said I'd go to the Stratford blipmeet in late January. I hope blipfuture will reach their target, or at least be well on the way by 11th January. Will it be successful? that’s anyone's guess. The link to the crowd funding site is here 

So I wish everyone a very Happy New Year and for those who wish to – KEEP ON BLIPPING!