General: Happy New Year 2019

I wish all my friends and readers a Happy New Year. I hope that 2019 will bring you everything that you wish for. I also hope that you'll continue to read my blog. The number of readers in 2018 was much lower than in 2017, but I suspect that my 2017 figures were artificially bloated by inefficient web spiders crawling through my blog. This year's figures of 6,000 to 8,000 page hits per month are more realistic than the 30,000 per month that I had in 2017.

What are your New Year's Resolutions? I never used to make any, not even when I was a child. I never saw the point in making promises I couldn't keep. Things changed last year. I was chatting with Cath West, one of my best friends, and she persuaded me to read and review the Silver Age Marvel comics. I was so thankful for her encouragement that I made a resolution to review all of the Marvel super-hero comics from 1961 to 1969. By mid January I realised that this was unrealistic, so I adjusted my plan to the Marvel Years 1961 to 1972 within two years. Even so, I didn't keep up and only reached April 1966 by the end of 2018. I'll try to speed up my Marvel reviews. My New Year's Resolution for 2019 is now to review Marvel from 1966 to 1972 by the end of the year. Let's see how I do.

Do you remember the Video of the Day feature that I did in September and October? I've already presented all the best YouTube children's channels, but I haven't stopped the feature yet. I just haven't had enough time over the last two months. I'll get back to it soon. No, that isn't a resolution. It's just an intention. I already have a small list of videos that I want to write about. All of them are "good videos" that I can appreciate when I watch them with my grandson. I shan't review the "bad videos" that he watches, not even to give you examples of how bad YouTube videos can be.

Over the last few months I've added a "Success Rate" to my film reviews. This is meant to be an objective measure of a film's box office success, or at least as objective as I can be. Some people judge a film's success by its box office gross, but that's a deceptive figure. Let's say Film A earns $100 million at the box office and Film B earns $200 million. It sounds like Film B is more successful, but then we find out that Film A's budget was $50 million and Film B's budget was $400 million. That means that Film A made a profit, while Film B made a loss. My "Success Rate" is the relationship of the box office earnings to the budget. If possible I would factor in the income from DVD and Blu-ray sales, but those figures are kept secret.

There's one thing I'd like to change this year, but I need your help to do it. I'd like my readers to become more of a community. What I'd like is for my regular readers to send me your name, a photo and a short description of yourself. If enough of you do this I can publish this information on a regular basis. What do you think?