It’s been nearly a year since I accidentally deleted my blog and had to start all over again.
Here’s everything that’s happened at Fevered Mutterings (v4.0) since that glorious day of rampant stupidity for which I am rightly proud. A year’s worth: most of it original, some stolen from my archives; some of it carefully considered, some written wildly from the hip; and some of it incomprehensible, even to me.
If you decide to read on…well, best of luck.
The World Out There: Practice (or “Where I’ve travelled”)

- A Poignancy Of Owls
- 2 Staircases, One Stairwell (my most popular post)
- An Afternoon At Josie’s
- The Appeal Of Fallen Buildings
- Brisk

- Nafplio: Where Home Tracked Me Down
- You’re Always In The Middle Of York
- Edinburgh, Back And Forth
- Breathe (Orkney)
- Foundations
- The Colours of 59 Degrees North
- Orkney: What Do You Do?
- Orkney: The Mystery of Lighthouse Corner
- Nithering (In Hornsea)
- I Have Special You Like, Yes?
- Could You Spare A Couple Of Squid, Mate?

The World Out There: Theory (or “How I’ve Travelled”)

- Smapping Wildly
- Workin’ On The Chain: 16 Reasons We Need Bikes
- British National Rail: 5 Ways To Make It Work For You

- 6 Ways To Crank The World Back Into Shape
- British Campsites: How To Be Good (And How To Be Evil)
- What Is A Staycation?
- Go Home Again: 4 Ways to Love Where You Are
- Soft and Prickly: Our Fickle Love of the Countryside
- The Human Scale of Cold: How We Freeze (And How We Thaw) - my second most popular post
- How To See Airports And Other Bad Places
- Breaking The Ice: Hook – ‘Line’ coming this weekend next up
A Writer’s / Blogger’s Life
- Q10: Fitting A Door In My Brain
- Twitter: I Really Don’t Know
- Dude, I Killed My Blog
- There’s a Voice, Keeps On Calling Me (although I’m back there again, on and off)
- TV Is What Films Will Be When They Grow Up
- Reader’s Digest: Read and Digest
- What Lonely Planet?

- Waiting to be Replaced
- Why Games Need Stories
- 383 Reasons I Haven’t Been Around
- What Are Blog Comments For?
- Shh! (A Writer’s Guide to Destroying the World)
- Caprica and SGU: Which Will Be Galactica?
Creative Nonsense (or “What Were You Thinking?”)

- Independence, Corporate Style (Part 1)
- The worst scifi TV pitch in the world
- The worst scifi TV series in the world: Day One
- Cunning Linguistics
- I’m a born English Teacher. Fact.
- Tea-Bags and Glad Reps

- Train Travel in the New World Order
- The Longest Song In The World
- NightCrawler Goes Walkies
- Twitter Kills The World In One Hour
- Sgt. Moorre – Do The Right Thing
- It’s All In The Delivery
That’ll do for starters.
Images: StuffEyeSee, Jason Tavares, audioeric, jcolman, Steve Webel, artolog and Mike Sowden.

Only a year? I thought it was longer than that. Time flies when you’re having fun.
Twitter kills the world in one hour! Ah, that was an excellent one. As was I’m a Born English Teacher. Memories … *wipes tear*
In a piece of shameless plugging, I’m now set up in my new self-hosted home. It’s a bit untidy at the moment, in the way that new homes are wont to be, but I like it. Although I’ve just realised it looks very similar to yours. Damn you and your excellent taste in themes, Sir Chim. Can’t work out how to change the curtains (for which read, ‘headers’) at the moment, but I’ll get there. Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey.
Can’t believe it was a year either. (And in fact it wasn’t – not yet. May is when I performed the dirty deed).
“I’m A Born English Teacher” is one I plan to put aside to transcribe onto my TEFL application someday.
I like your new home.
And yup – that’s the same theme I’m using. Great minds, and all that. And if you want to pick my brains about plugins and the like, let me know…but looks like you’ve got it squared up nicely so far (better than I had when I first started).
That’s actually way more posts than they seemed as we searched in vain for new Mikeisms.
I destroyed my blog once, but was able to rebuild it from Yahoo and Google mirrors.
And there were still a few posts I left off that list because they were random wirblings obviously not destined for the civilization-defining immortality of my other writing. < --- self-aware genius <--- asshole
So yes, it usually felt like I was blogging once a month and that my webspace was getting covered in cobwebs (from search engine "spiders"? Haha. Sorry, little techie geek-joke there. Um, yes, I'l...I'll finish up and leave this comment ASAP, ok). But in fact on average, I was blogging once a week. Not so terrible.
When did you kill your blog?
i’m a little surprised you haven’t deleted it again yet. i’m sure you will though. never let me down yet!
I thank you for your faith in me.
Well, kinda.
you know me pal. credit where credit’s due………
Oh, wow! What a timely post for me to read. I’m so sorry you deleted your blog. I spent 2.5 hours today chatting on-line with my hosting company in order to back up my first and only website. 2.5 hours. And then they tell me, at the end, that they back it up every Sunday anyway. 2.5 hours. Well, it’s better than deleting it.
Here’s to a great fresh start for you! And thanks for the follow on Twitter.
Nothing quite like the sinking feeling of hundreds of hours of writing 404-Erroring in front of you.
Even so, 2 and a half hours is a bit painful. My sympathies. And they neglecting to mention their automated backup routine until the end of the conversation? Bill ‘em for it.
That’ll learn them.
Yet another reason I’ll never look back to my pre-Wordpress days is the way that backups are handled. There are lots of very cool plugins that do it all for you (I’ve just e-mailed you with a few suggestions). And usually hosting companies have their own auto-backups, as you discovered.
A year ago, how much of this did I know? Answer: none of it. D’oh.
Ok so if “The Human Scale of Cold: How We Freeze (And How We Thaw)” is your second most popular post, which one is THE most popular post?
I must say I find them all a great read. Keep keeping us entertained Mike
My most popular post is right near the top.
Ironically, it’s the one with the least of my writing in it.
Hopefully that’s not Fate trying to tell me something.
Well, if it is, I’m bloody well ignoring it.
Thanks for your kind words, Pauline. Plenty more posts to come!
I hope that doesn’t come across as some kind of threat. Ahem.
[...] regarding that last point? He accidentally deleted his blog last [...]
Deleted your blog? Yikes! I actually plan on tearing mine down (iWeb – looks beautiful, not very functional or good for SEO) and building up a new one with WordPress, so I might need to ask you how you managed to delete a blog.
Oh, it’s easy. Let’s call it the Mikeachim Self-Assassination Method.
1. Decide you want to tidy up your blog behind the scenes.
2. Go into your webspace and move a few files around.
3. Discover that your blog doesn’t load anymore.
4. Panic for a while. Drink some whisky. Panic some more, except bumping into things while you’re doing it.
5. Decide that actually, yes, it’s just what you need for a Fresh Start. (This is called Denial, I believe).
6. Go in and wipe your blog installation.
7. About 20 minutes later, have a friend send you an e-mail explaining why your blog actually isn’t missing, it’s just a slight file table issue, easily corrected. You know, if you haven’t just done anything criminally stupid like actually wipe your blog.
8. Drink the rest of the whisky you started drinking earlier. Shout at the wall, asking it questions about your life. Play a mindless computer game where you blow things up. Put Rage Against The Machine on your music system, and turn it up enough to make the wall vibrate. Rock back and forth, screaming.
9. After a while, feel calmer and generally more sanguine about life.
10. Suffer an enormous hangover.
If you follow these 10 easy steps, I guarantee your blog will be ruined, and it will take you with it.
Copyright M. Sowden 2009, and he isn’t proud of it.
This literally had me cracking up when I got the comment in my inbox. Need to stock up on whisky…
Seriously, you should patent this method.
[...] regarding that last point? He accidentally deleted his blog last [...]
[...] regarding that last point? He accidentally deleted his blog last [...]