2015 In Review

Dang, 2015 was a crazy year for me. On the down side it really hampered my posting schedule. I posted less than I did in the short year of 2013 when I started this blog. Still I plan on keeping things going. Despite the limited new posts in 2015 some were pretty good. Here is a list of the year's top posts.

Top five posts from 2015:
#1: Map of he United States of America circa 1910 - One of my better attempts at creating a nice looking map.
#2: Friday Flag - Liberia
#3: Friday Flag - Triple Monarchy
#4: Money Monday #5 - 100 Mark Note - one of the better alternate currencies I've designed.
#5: Book Review - The Multiversity Guidebook - I really need to do more book and movie reviews.

What's Up for 2016
The big thing for this year will be the GURPS RPG campaign I plan to run in the summer. It will take place entirely in an alternate history. The game will allow me to develop a number of new and interesting nations and explore in detail an interesting new world.

Over the Christmas/New Year period I begin focusing on learning the rules of Crusader Kings 2. I've finally got a dynasty going and might post some details and screenshots as it develops.

There is a large stack of alternate history books I've read that need reviews. I've also got a stack of unread ones that need reading. I'll try to share my thoughts and insights on these books as the year progresses.

I'm Back!

For those keeping score at home it's been about six months since my last post. There were a couple of times this summer I planned on posting, but it has been an incredibly busy year for me. Some good stuff happened, some bad, most just stuff. I've been active in numerous groups, I've increased my reading goals, I've been writing short stories, I'm working on a new role-playing campaign, I've been trying to take free online courses at Coursera, and I even placed in a beard competition. Now that my batteries are recharged I want to get back to blogging.

WHAT'S NEXT?
I've finished designing about a dozen new flags with more on the way. For now I'll be posting one every-other week starting tomorrow afternoon. That should keep at least some regular posting going for a little while.

Book Reviews! - I've read a large number of alternate history books, including a few this summer. It's about time I post more that the handful of book reviews that I've managed so far. I still have to write these reviews, but as soon as I do I'll schedule a regular series of them. I'm not the greatest book reviewer; I've spent too much time in recent years reading stories from old pulp magazines, but I know an interesting story when I read one. Hopefully the reviews will be helpful.

New Worlds! - I carry around a journal whenever I can. It is filling up with sketches, timelines, ideas, maps, and other things related to alternate history. It is now time for me to flesh these ideas out and get them out there. I was noticing that many of them involved alternate wars and other violent conflict. I'm trying to finish at least a few up that don't involve wars. War may be the most dramatic way a timeline could change - there are certainly plenty of opportunities, but it is not the only way.

OTHER NEWS
Once I start posting again I'll be sure to have some extra articles written for posting in November. I'm afraid that binge watching The Man in the High Castle over on Amazon will eat into my time.

If you are a fan of alternate history be sure to check out the Patreon campaign for the Alternate History Weekly Update. Unlike me Matt has been posting regular high-quality articles and deserves some extra support.

2014 in Review

Another year has ended. Hopefully this new year will turn out great for everyone. 2014 had more posts than I had in 2013 - but I again hit the late summer and autumn slump in posting. My resolution this year is to avoid that slump in 2015.

I had a number of good posts this year. Also a number I never got around to building on... the late year slump is to blame for some of that. I've looked at the posts for 2014 and found the ones that got the most hits.

The top ten posts from 2014 ranked by number of page hits are:
1) Friday Flag - Sino-Soviet Alliance
2) Top Flag Championship 2014 ROUND TWO
3) Top Flag Championship March 2014 ROUND ONE
4) Friday Flag - Kingdom of Burgundy
5) Book Review - Napoleon in America
6) Roman Conquest of Arabia Felix
7) The Baltic Event
8) Book Review - The Divide
9) My first official EUIV campaing - Navajo
10) Friday Flag - Saint Lawrence

The Top Flag Championship received a lot of views, but it also received limited responses which led to its eventually cancellation. Might try again in 2015 now that readership is up.... or might wait until 2016.

Three Friday Flag posts hit the top ten. Here are those flags:

Book reviews seem to be a popular item. I'll have to catch up on writing reviews for all of the alternate history books I've been reading.

I'm glad to see the Roman Conquest of Arabia Felix made the list. It is the divergence point of Roman timeline I put some effort in. I'll have to be sure to continue expanding it this year.

What were your favorite posts from 2014? What would you like to see in 2015? Please leave a comment.

June 2014 Activity

Thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of the blog's stats for the last month.

TOP NINE POSTS FOR 2014
1) Book Review - Afrika Reich
2) Roman Conquest of Arabia Felix
3) Assassination in Sarajevo
4) Top Flag Championship 2014 Round Two
5) Friday Flag - Union of Arab Republics
6) Friday Flag - Sino-Soviet Alliance
7) Kingdom of Alaska
8) All History is Alternate History
9) Friday Flag - UN Battle Flag

TOP NINE ORIGIN COUNTRIES OF VISITORS
1) United States
2) Ukraine
3) Germany
4) France
5) United Kingdom
6) Canada
7) Denmark
8) Turkey
9) Russia

LOOKING FORWARD
I'm planning to do some more book reviews this summer. I'm making notes as I re-read portions of alternate history fiction I've read over the years.

I have a few more timelines to develop. It's taking a little longer than normal because I'm doing some extra research to make them a little more believable.

My new cartography software has a bit of a learning curve. Hopefully I'll be able to make some nice maps later this year.

Also, I want to further develop existing timeines I've created here. Are there any that you find particularly interesting? If so leave a comment and I'll consider pushing them up the list of things to do.

Sneak Peak

This is an alternate history blog. However many things can affect history, including changes to the geology of the Earth. So far I have a few posts that delve a little into that area:
1) Great Lakes of Africa
2) Alternate Great Lakes of North America
3) Early eruption of a supervolcano

I've recently been playing around with continental drift and came up with a major change compared to those listed above. By not having the future continents of Australia and Antarctica break apart about 100 million years ago I've got a much larger land mass. I've moved it a bit further north than Australia is so the climate would be a bit nicer. I know it would have a larger affect on the surrounding area, but I've left much of the rest of the Earth alone.

I'm currently working on versions of the map for geography, weather patterns, and cultural migrations. It certainly would have had earlier and more regular contact with Asia due to its closer proximity than Australia. It would have larger areas of more temperate land and more easily utilized natural resources than Australia. It would be capable of supporting a much higher population, and with the additional contact with ancient India or China the exchange of ideas along with access to materials would allow for a more technologically advanced civilization.

The problem I'll be having is I'm constructing whole new civilizations from scratch for this alternate world. I'm wondering when something stops being an actual alternate history. In either case I plan on developing possibly a half-dozen posts developing the history of this continent and the world around it by late summer.

Do you have any thoughts or ideas on the development of this imaginary super-continent? If so please feel free to comment.

Top Flag Championship Cancelled

Well, looks like I got a little ahead of myself with the Top Flag Championship for this year. I should really grow my readership a bit first before starting something like that.

Luckily with the recent increase of readership, and the upward trend that should continue this year, I should have a much more successful championship next year.

I've done several different things to increase traffic. I'm assuming the great boost I've gotten in the last week or so has come from the Alternate History Weekly Update. That is the best blog in the Alternate History genre I know of. It covers a lot of territory and gives some great information. Be sure to check it out frequently!

If you like flags I've also discovered The Voice of Vexillology, Flags & Heraldry blog. I haven't had a chance to really dig into that blog yet, but it has a huge archive of posts and is still an active blog.

In a few weeks I'll be increasing my own postings here. I have a few alternate timelines to expand and a few new ones to introduce. Withe the 100 year anniversary of the start of World War I coming up this year a few of them will be sure to involve that terrible conflict.

Thanks for visiting, and be sure to look around at some of the things I've accumulated here over the last year!

Happy Birthday to Othertimesblog!

On March 11, 2013 this blog started. It had been one year - and it has also been a lot of fun. Time to take a quick look back and see where we've been:

My Three Favorite Posts
1) Greater Canada
2) The first post in my eventual series on an Alternate American Civil War!
3) Another post I had big plans on expanding on involving A Misfiring Gun at Gettysburg

Top Five Posts (not counting Friday Flag posts) based on page views
Many of these are the same as the ones in my end of 2013 post.
1) Greater Canada
2) Kingdom of Alaska: Really not a good post. Based off my first game of Victoria II where I just wanted to learn the rules and watch what the computer controlled countries did
3) Book Review - GURPS Alternate Earths: An awesome resource for running an alternate universe campaign in GURPS
4) Confederation of European States: The first timeline I created for this blog
5) Alternate Geology: A brief look at how the geography of the Earth could vary in alternate timelines


My own favorite image of the year
Looking through my current image gallery for this blog I see a lot of flags. I'll do more with them starting next week with my Top Flag Championship series. Out of the remainder of the images my personal favorite is this map I made for my alternate American Civil War:

It reminds me that I have to revisit this timeline and flesh out its history.

Do you have any favorite posts from the last year? Which ones?

What sort of alternate histories interest you the most? I have a number coming up over the next few months that will have divergence points in the early 20th century, but I don't want to limit myself too much.

February 2014 has had the highest number of page views of the last 12 months. Thanks for visiting. I hope the next twelve months will put this blog's first year to shame. I do plan to have more than 45 posts over the next year.

As I mentioned above next week will be round one of my Top Flag Championship. Eight pairs of flags will be facing off to see who is the favorite. Voting will be done in the comments section and each week will be a new round until one flag becomes the Top Flag!

2013 in Review

I've been happy with this blog overall. The last few months have been a little chaotic for me so posting has been nearly non-existent but I hope to change that in 2014.

I have a number of posts that are my favorites for 2013 but I've decided to list the ten that had the most page views for the year:

1) Friday Flag - UN Battle Flag {Number one in page views for 2013}
2) Friday Flag - Neuschwabenalnd
3) Friday Flag - Russian Federation
4) Kingdom of Alaska
5) Greater Canada
6) Travaillis Republique Democratique
7) Book Review - GURPS Alternate Earths
8) Confederation of European States
9) Friday Flag - Res Publica Romana IV
10) Alternate Geology


Out of those top ten my favorites are Greater Canada and the Confederation of European States.

In the coming year I plan to expand a couple of my existing alternate timelines as well as creating numerous new ones. I'll also be getting creative and making new flags for upcoming Fridays.

Also in consideration is a series with summaries of the sessions of my long-running GURPS Alternate Earths campaign. All sorts of interesting new worlds were explored - however a number of them were either near future or had magic and/or psionics and other Alien Space Bats content. It could be an interesting series to do in any case.

What were your favorite posts in this blog from 2013? What would you like to see in 2014? Feel free to comment.

What I'm up to right now!

In the last week or so I've been up to a number of things related to Alternate History.

1) I've been working on a submission for the Double-Blind What If Writing Contest over at Alternate History Weekly Update. I decided on most of the details for the alts, now I'm just working out how I'll be formatting the entry. A double-blind what if is basically writing an alternate history from the point of view of an alternate timeline. I've had some experience doing that in the past since my old GURPS Infinite Worlds campaign started out based in an alternate history.

2) Over at Althistory Wiki I've created an account and have adopted one of the orphan timelines. My user page can be found HERE. Three of four of the abandoned timelines looked interesting to me. I was going to pick one but changed to the 'Croatian Empire' timeline when I thought about it on the drive home from work today. I've claimed the timeline and did some clean-up. Now I have to do some work to expand it and see what I can do with it. Should be fun. The wiki seems pretty cool.

3) I'm continuing to read more alternate history books. I'll have a review for Apacheria posted soon. I'm also listening to an audio book What if the Babe Had Kept His Red Sox?; it's been interesting so far... I'm just not much of a sports fan to begin with so some of the real-world events they describe before the alt-history events are just as strange to me.

4) Over on Amazon Prime I've been streaming episodes of Fringe. Had never even heard of the show a few months ago and now I'm watching as two alternate Earths struggle against each other. Entertaining; the series does seem to drag at times but at others it gets very creative.

So, that's what I've been up to. There will be some new posts soon. I just wish this was the alternate where I won last Saturday's Power Ball drawing, then I'd have no trouble finding the time to really do some cool stuff.