Adventures in Website Marketing: michaeljohngrist.com 5.0

Mike GristMarketing, Site Updates

A few days ago the 5.0 version of this site went live. I’ve been hard at work redesigning and coding for the past few weeks, learning how to do all the things I wanted to do through simple CSS and html. It can be an incredibly frustrating experience at times- but when finally the pixels click into place, the target image floats properly left, it can feel like a momentous achievement.

Big changes include:

– everything is now within borders and wrappers
– the front page is laid out as a magazine
– it’s a calmer and more serious color scheme
– the header graphics from the Out of Ruins theme are back in the header
– haikyo pages get 900px width, to really showcase the ruins

If you spot anything working improperly, please let me know. I don’t know if I’ll be able to fix it, but it’s better to know 🙂

Iterations

Each version of this site has been different, iterating as my interests and ideas of what it should be have evolved. Here’s a potted history of those evolutions:

version 1.0 – big red dot

This version got me started in blogging, around 2007, before I was heavily into haikyo and before I started posting my writings. I was inspired by my friend Canadian Mike to make a Japan-entertainment blog, with reviews of wacky products, bits of odd Japangrish, interesting people and structures. Back then getting 100 hits a day was an awesome achievement. Comments were a delight.

The site was branded big red dot, after the dot in the Japanese flag. Mike was kind enough to make me a logo incorporating it- which must have been galling for him because shortly after that I switched over to a self-titled blog and left his logo behind.

Thanks anyway Mike!

version 2.0 – self-titled

At this point (2008/2009) I decided I wanted to leverage my site to promote my writings, with the ultimate goal that I would sell my published books to a pre-built readership base. In publishing they call it your platform, and emphasize how important it is to do the leg-work of getting readers yourself. So, I started posting more stories. I continued with the Japan content but it took more of a back-seat, with haikyo coming in somewhere along the way.

Again Canadian Mike was responsible for my header image- clipped from his painting of Killin Jack attacking the last of the Bunnymen. It set me on a path of seeking out a spooky-ruiny-fantasy looking city-scape shot.

Here’s the full painting Mike did- I clipped the skyline and tinged it blue.

version 3.0 Out of Ruins

With version 3, which was fairly short-lived, I wanted to jettison the Japan content (which I felt was kind of frivolous and silly at the time) and replace it with a fiction magazine which would accept submissions from other writers and pay them if I published them. I registered my site with ralan.org, the main listing of online fiction magazines, and even published a handful of stories, paying a handful of writers $10 a pop.

At the same time I experimented with ads on the site, with roll-over graphics, and with a black theme. The tipping point came when it seemed that the site was so heavy it crashed for many people, and the number of writers sending me stories to publish fell off completely.

At times it was dark on white, with the full name as above- out of ruins these hands built a tower 15 fathoms high, which was inspired by long song titles by the band A Silver Mt. Zion.

I also started adding ruins content from around the web- with photos and articles and sourced through Google or whatnot. I mostly stopped that though because I felt bad to have ads while at the same time using other people’s photos. Also it was just recycling content produced by other people, which felt a bit like surfing their hard work.

Here was the first appearance of the city roll-overs.

version 4.0 self-titled again

I left the outofruins design and moved back to a self-titled blog for several reasons: people told me the site was too heavy with images and ads and crashed a lot, I wanted to bring my name back to the fore as a tool for self-promotion, and I wanted to be free to put ‘frivolous’ Japan content back into the site.

I liked the brightness of this one. Why did I change it to the next one? I don’t know really. I guess I just got bored. Maybe the orange started to seem too cheery for a site about ruins and dark fiction…

This most recent was darker, though of course it had that yellow in it. I loved the Fictioner / Haikyoist cartoons SY made for me, so I built the site around their color scheme. I experimented with various widths, in an effort to keep a sidebar, but have wide post sizes as room for large haikyo photos.

In the end I decided it was too chaotic, still too bright for what the site was supposed to be about, and also not at all clear from a mere glance what it was all about.

version 5.0

This latest, you can see it all around. It incorporates the self-titling with the cityscape of Out of Ruins, with the magazine style that keeps haikyo or dark-fiction themed posts near the top so passers-by get an accurate idea of what the site is about. Down below though you can still find the fun Japan content and of course my writing news, reviews, and updates.

The header image may yet change, if I can find an artist who can give me something better / more evocative. It seems difficult though to get across the ideas of ruins and fantasy at the same time in one image. We’ll see though.

I like it for the clean design and layout, and also because I figured out how to have posts of varying widths. Now the haikyo posts have no sidebar, so the image can be very wide, while the regular posts remain narrower to the left.

I hope you’ll agree with me that the current style is the best 🙂

Pepsi Mont Blanc

Mike GristFood / Drink, Japan

Pepsi Mont Blanc is the latest in a series of crazy-flavored products in the Japanese soft drink market. Past favorites include-

Pepsi Blue Hawaii
Pepsi Yoghurt
Pepsi Ice Cucumber
Pepsi Baobab
Pepsi Beefsteak (shiso)
Pepsi Beans (azuki)

And that’s not even mentioning the Coke products.

Mont Blanc is an Italian dessert of whipped cream and chestnuts on a meringue cake or tart. I picked up the drink without really knowing what the dessert was- I guess I never ate many chestnuts growing up in the UK. In Japan though they’re very popular, as ice cream flavors, on cakes, and now even in drinks.

It comes free with this little One Piece character- Brook. I’m no manga fan so can’t say why he’s on the bottle now- perhaps promoting a movie or something.

Brook. Very dapper.

I’m not a huge ‘maron’ (chestnut) consumer, so can’t make such a brilliant comparison of this drink to the actual product- but I give it my best shot in the following video. I know it’s not in focus, oops, but the second take I did- which was in focus- was marred by the fact that I was annoyed for not getting it right the first time, and so I came across as quite severe.

So, let’s just enjoy blurry Mike.

If you liked that, check out my wacky snacks page for more of the same.

Haikyo 2011 Calendar

Mike GristFeatured Story, Haikyo

My haikyo 2011 calendars have arrived! I ordered 5 for the whopping cost of about $60 (with a bulk order discount), and a shipping cost of $30 to Japan. I’m really pleased with their quality- they’re on good stiff card, the print is sharp, the design is clean, and they’re plenty big enough to scrawl all your necessary info onto.

For those inclined to buy- here’s a link to the lulu page. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

And if that’s not enough to convince you- check out my video walk-through of one sample calendar, giving you a great idea of its quality, plus a little background info on each location.

Here’s that link again.

Why not buy two, three, or even four copies, as gifts?

Thanks.

Check out more haikyo posts here-

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Broken English #2 Eat my house

Mike GristBroken English

As an English teacher I`m constantly hearing strange manipulations of the language.

Most of them don`t make any sense, but on occasion they could, with a little creative interpretation.

Try to guess what the intended version of this sentence was.

Every day I eat my house for lunch.


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2011 Haikyo Calendar

Mike GristHaikyo, World Ruins

I made a haikyo calendar! It’s live and available for purchase on lulu right now, 13 great haikyo images (12 months and the cover) in an 11 x 8.5 size, for only $14.99.

It would make a great Christmas present, oh yes. What better gift than a lovely calendar of ruins? What better gift for yourself? BUY BUY BUY! Buy it in droves and encourage me to go ahead and (finally) publish a handsome book of all these ruins locations.

Here’s a sample month, followed by a live preview via lulu.

You can buy direct from this link here.

Read on for the live preview and ways to help this calendar SUCCEED in the world :).

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story craft #13 Going Hot

Mike GristStory Craft

Going hot is a term Orson Scott Card uses (in his book Characters and Viewpoint) to describe entering a character’s stream of consciousness. We go into their head and work through their motivations and drives alongside them.

It’s something I’m dealing with a lot now in the (third?) redraft of my fantasy book Dawn Rising, learning how to add it in as an intrinsic part of the story. In the first few drafts I hardly did it all, so the book (may have) read like sections of a Dungeon Master’s hand-book, cold and with little sympathetic investment.

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Broken English #1 Huge Employees

Mike GristJapangrish

As an English teacher I`m constantly hearing strange manipulations of the language. Most of them don`t make any sense, but on occasion they could, with a little creative interpretation.

Try to guess what the correct version of this sentence should be.

The Company fired huge employees.

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The Tombs of Atuan

Mike GristBook / Movie Reviews

I went into this book not knowing what to expect after A Wizard of Earthsea, which was quite a mixed bag. So much of it was narrative summary, and things only kicked off properly at the very end, as Ged went after the Gebbeth demon. Where would the Tombs of Atuan pick up, after all that was done?

Well, it picks up somewhere completely different- with a girl called Tenar, who is a kind of Vestal Virgin to the same dark powers that Ged faced down in the first book. She spends her days roaming Atuan’s undertombs, politicking for power with the other priestesses, living in constant fear and awe of the gods whose graveyard she lives upon. Then one day she sees a light in the darkness of the tombs, cast by a man with a wizard’s staff. On instinct she seals the entrances and traps him inside. Of course, it’s Ged, and he’s now at her mercy.

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Sports World Retrospective

Mike GristFeatured Story, Haikyo, Izu, Theme Parks

Sports World was a large sports and water park in Shizuoka, Japan. It was opened in 1988, closed in 1996 after the company went bankrupt, lived on as a ‘haikyo’ or ruin for 14 years more years, then was demolished early in 2010.

It was my favorite haikyo in Japan, so it’s sad to hear that. It was one of my earliest explores, and also one of the most exciting- as I stayed in the abandoned hotel overnight. Hearing the news put me in the mood to make a retrospective post, in memorial. While sifting through the 3 trips I made there over the past 2 years, I came across lots of photos I never posted. Here are some of them.

The tubes shot from on top of the white water chute. You can see the red roofs of the hotel buildings at left.

I visited Sports World three times while it was still standing-

The first was in summer 2008– almost my first solo haikyo and first overnight haikyo stay. It was thrilling, strange, and of course beautiful.

My second trip was a fly-by visit with Canadian Mike tacked on to an autumn 2008 camping holiday in Izu. We arrived by car 30 minutes before sun-down, and it was very strange to walk so casually around a place I’d been so in awe of the first time.

The final time was in autumn 2009, when I returned with Mike and another explorer Paul, and I focused on HDR photos and looking for areas I hadn’t seen before.

It was my favorite haikyo because it was so big, so empty, and in such a beautiful location. On the last trip I just stood on top of the white chute ride and looked over the whole of it, breathing deep and feeling a weird kind of pride. Of course the place wasn’t mine to be proud of, but that’s the beauty of ruins. You can feel like it’s yours while you’re there, and since it’s a ruin there’s no-one to tell you otherwise.

Sports World circa 1990. At left are car parks, tennis courts, hotel and mini-golf course, center is the big wave pool, and right is the rapids and blue tubes.

Circa 2005 or whenever Google took this shot, rotated about 90 degrees.

That same shot topographically.

The main areas (as I see them) are circled in color. Area 1 is the entrance, BBQ hall, and wrecked cars. Area 2 is the hotel, gym, restaurant. Area 3 is the blue tubes, rapids, and white chute.

1. Entrance, BBQ hall, wrecked cars.

My first time in back in 2008 the main turnstile was thoroughly barb-wired off. I had to hunker down to slide underneath. My second visit, the wires were cut. My third, they were mostly all torn down.

White cloisters that would once have provided shade to queueing punters.

The view as of 2008.

On my first trip I only saw one side of the BBQ garden, the one that faced the main gate. I didn`t see the other side because there was a crew of people doing some kind of photo shoot, and I didn`t want to scare/disturb them by passing too close. On the second I went round, and saw the much more interesting graffiti-ed side.

The overgrown interior I saw the first time.

What I didn`t see the first time.

Overgrown interior view from the reverse. Fallen tables seem to be in about the same locations.

Round the side of the Game Center, beside the BBQ hall, were the wrecked cars. Two that were simply parked, and one that had been flipped. How was this car flipped? Did a group of people manually flip it? There hardly was room for anyone to get up enough speed to be able to roll it with a fast turn. Very odd.

The first time here I posed on each of the cars roofs. I think I`ll share that moment here.

No Mike posing 2009.

Mike posing 2008.

I stood on this one too. I`ll spare you all my posing shots though.

2. Hotel, gym, restaurant

My first time I spent the night in one of the hotel rooms. It was virtually untouched, nothing had been moved, though the balcony window had been slightly smashed in to gain access. I didn`t settle down til after 12, but lying there in the dark with nothing to do but listen to the weird screeching sounds coming from outside was maddening. The front door still locked, as did the balcony (though the glass beside the lock was smashed), but still I heaped up the chairs and furniture in front of them. I slept and had bizarre dreams of old high school friends breaking in to help me escape.

From the restaurant balcony, looking over the hotel blocks. In all that jungle is a big swimming pool.

From within the jungle, looking up to the hotel as though it’s a Mayan stepped pyramid.

Looking back towards the restaurant from the balcony of the room I stayed in. You can see the pool to the left.

What it looked like in its heyday.

Sun setting shot (sun off to the left slightly) over the restaurant balcony, from yet another room`s balcony.

3. Blue tubes, rapids, and white chute.

My first time to the park I found none of this, though I was there all night and most of the next day. The only way there was along a totally overgrown path that I took to just be more jungle, and not a path at all. My second visit I headed directly to it, and on my third blasted it with HDR.

The HDR tubes in B&W.

From amidst the tubes, looking over the white rapid run.

From alongside the rapids, looking up to the white chute and tubes.

And that`s largely it. All the other photos I took you can see on the three other posts I made on Sports World, linked below.

All that is except a few shots I took of some concept drawings of a potential future for Sports World, one that never came about. But who knows, perhaps in some alternate universe the plans went ahead, Sports World was saved, and these towers stand.

Sports World with grand towers.

Sports World with swan boats in the rapids.

Various concepts, presumably dug out as last ditch efforts to halt Sports World`s plunge into bankruptcy.

Sports World, RIP.

See the other posts on Sports World here:

1- Overnight solo stay

2- Fly-by visit to the Water Park

3- Return in HDR

See a curation of world ruins in the ruins gallery.

See my collection of Japanese ruins (haikyo) in the galleries:

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story craft #12 Kill All Wimps

Mike GristStory Craft

I`m over the first hurdle with Dawn, into the second half of the first book*, and find myself dealing with a spate of wimps. My characters are so shocked by what happened in the first half that they stand around gawping, lost in self-pity, filled with indecision. They don`t know what to do and don`t know how to do it. They become wimps. And wimps need killing.

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