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600 Diggs and site news

My article on Asylum has reached 600 Diggs, and I`m really pleased. The Digg page got a lot of comments, largely it seems about how bad the HDR is. Looking back on those shots, I can see better what people are talking about now. Part of it is a change of monitor- the old one didn`t show the colors so vividly, so they didn`t look so over-saturated. The new one (just using my macbook screen) shows it better.

The Asylum article has sent about 10,000 people to this site so far. That`s pretty amazing. It blows the roof off my monthly page views, taking it from around 50,000 a month to something like 70 or 80,000. About half of those people only stayed for 1 page and less than 10 seconds, but the other half stayed longer so no worries.

In other site news- I`ve changed the look of the site some, and been experimenting with ad-types. I`d like to make a little money from this page, but am realistic about that. It`s a niche thing to cover, and there`s no obvious product to sell. So I`m adding a Paypal donate button (just watched the movie Julie/Julia last night) and we`ll see if that does anything. If you`d like to make a donation, it will be much appreciated.

Ah, final news, am `resurrecting` my old Strange Japan content. At the moment only the Snacks/Drinks page is up, but the others will be returned soon.

I`d love to hear your thoughts on any of the above.

Asylum Haikyo Article

The US men`s magazine Asylum is currently running an article introducing haikyo to their readers, written by me. It’s a top 10 of all the best `ghost towns` in Japan, and is the first of what could be several articles on Japan`s ruins on that site.

Asylum is a popular online magazine catering to culture-savvy young men. They generally run articles about weird stuff and hot laydeez. Apparently they surpass Playboy.com, Maxim.com and many others, with 31 million page-views by around 2 million readers per month. Wow.

This article has been in the pipeline for about 4 months, waiting for its air date. I`m excited its finally live, and want to welcome anyone coming from there to check out this site.

It`s easy enough to navigate- all the ruins can be found in the ruins galleries. If you`re interested in my fiction, it`s in the library. If you like what you find, why not subscribe by RSS or email for updates in the future? Thanks.

Hello to William Gibson

William Gibson stopped by this website about 9 hours ago and retweeted my Sex Industry in Ruins article. That is awesome. On Twitter he goes by GreatDismal.

GreatDismal RT : Love shacks: Japanese love hotels in ruins http://bit.ly/8pK10A

I`ve read a number of Gibson`s books and always been impressed. Of course I`ve read Neuromancer, also Pattern Recognition and The Difference Engine. Excellent stuff. I suppose he is very interested in all things Japanese, which perhaps help explain what brought him to my site.

Dave Hill’s ‘Girl on an Adventure’

Dave Hill is one of the leading lights in HDR composite photography, layering multiple images together to recreate whatever he can imagine, to stunning and impresive effect. The ‘Dave Hill Effect’ is well-known in photography circles, a certain kind of washed-out, high contrast, stark imagery. Check out a few shots here, and go to his site to see the bulk of it.

Girl on an Adventure

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The High-Heeled Guide to Enlightenment

My sister has written a book, and now it has been released.

Hoorah!

The title is ‘The High-Heeled Guide to Enlightenment’, and it’s a wide-ranging guide to spirituality for modern women. I haven’t read it yet (am waiting on my signed copy to arrive) but I know she put at least a year of active spiritual experimentation (reiki, sweat lodges, tarot, meditation, etc..) into a blender along with her life experience as both a modern woman and daughter of a wiccan high priest, and came up with something unique and truly fascinating. I can’t wait to read it, and am enormously proud of her accomplishment. To be awesome readers of this site- go buy a copy right now, and a few extra copies as gifts.

To make things easy- here’s a link to buy from this page:

If that doesn’t work, go here.

Reviews from spiritual experts who have read it after the jump:

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Programming Note

First off- Welcome to all new readers of this site!

Secondly- Thanks to all old and continuing readers. Things have changed a fair bit round here, with a new design and a new emphasis on an old direction, with still a change or two yet to come, and I thank you for sticking with me.

Today’s Programming Note concerns what you can expect on this site in the future. The main announcement is that Out of Ruins (outofruins.org) will now be featuring short stories (and possibly poems) from authors besides myself (MJG). I’ve long wanted to set up my own weird fiction e-zine, and now I have. Boom. I’ll still be posting my own stories up here, but will be  careful to delineate which are mine and which are from that week’s featured author. I’ve already had several submissions, and am in the process of accepting a few. They’re weird, and dark, and that’s awesome.

So, future programming, the schedule looks like this:

Mondays- New fiction from featured author.

Tuesdays- New ruins re-post featuring creative commons text and photos sourced from around the net, on cool ruins locations.

Wednesdays- Short fiction from MJG, if I have any.

Thursdays- New original ruins photos and text, from MJG.

I hope in the future to feature dark weird art on this site, as well as interviews with authors/photographers/explorers, and reviews.

All the best,

MJG.

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