Year 2 and the Blog is still going.   The frenzy and initial enthusiasm has waned a tad - year 1 cranked out way more articles BUT, year 2 appeared to have better readership -

The dramatic dropoff in total # of articles from Y1 to Y2 is suprising.   I think Y1's count is exaggerated by the way CityDesk counts entries -  it includes a lot of "fixed cost" items into the Year1 tally (for ex., my templates, stylesheets, the archive pages, etc).

Looking at the traffic graph, I'm not sure what the May 2004 spike correlated with but you can see the list of articles from that month here  (most likely, it's the Abu Ghraib-related posts.)

Also, since Y1, I've joined a couple group blogs which siphoned off some of my finite blog energy --  IronBlog and Sepia Mutiny.  

Nevertheless, I do think the underlying trend of "I've simply blogged less" holds.   What can I say, I'm a busier guy than before.  Perhaps more likely, I've blown through the really big issues, aired myself out and am rather adverse to retreading the same ground again.  How many times can I rail against cultural relativism?  I'm man enough to know that, aside from some very aggregate statistics, I'm not man enough to intelligently comment on the real on-the-ground situation in Iraq or Afghanistan - something that made up the bulk of headlines over the past year.

Still, blogging is an enjoyable hobby and I thank all those random folks who stumbled upon the blog this past year and hope I have more 'free cookies' for you as we enter Y3.