your hosts

When It Rains, It Pours!

Eppu

Not even a week after Erik spotted an incoming link from a fanfic published at Archive of Our Own, we started seeing increased traffic to another post on our blog, and we couldn’t figure out why. (Good grief—when it rains, it pours!)

Turns out a link to my post on the Netflix Murderbot adaptation was shared on the Murderbot subreddit.

Thanks for the link! It’s nice to be appreciated, especially since our blogging tends to follow whims which, I’m sure, appear very opaque to outsiders. 🙂 The reddit discussion had some interesting points, so it was definitely worthwhile to poke my head in.

(What baffles me, though, is how some redditors seem to have mistaken this blog for a news site. Perhaps I’m merely getting too old to think there are enough cues in the metadata and site sections to easily discount that idea…? I am, however, experienced enough to know most people won’t read our About page where it is spelled out that this here is a hobby blog, goshdarnit! *grumble grumble*)

Here there be opinions!

Someone Liked Our Rohan Recipes

Erik2 Comments

Well, how about that!

We just discovered that our recipes for the Riders of Rohan were referenced in a piece of Middle Earth fanfiction over on Archive of Our Own. The story is called “she had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours” by shOokspeared, and it’s a lovely little slice-of-life tale following Éowyn on a visit to the Shire in the days of peace after the War of the Ring. In a letter home to her husband Faramir, Éowyn mentions enjoying the familiar tastes of braised beef and saffron and cream pancakes for lunch with her Hobbit friends one day.

We’re astonished and delighted to see that our work is still interesting and useful to others!

Announcements from your hosts.

Happy Midsummer

Erik

Midsummer will be upon us at the end of this week (or midwinter, depending on your hemisphere). In Finland, this is one of the most important holidays of the year, and we’ll be taking time out to relax and enjoy the long, light days. Whatever your midsummer plans may be, we wish you all a very happy one, whether you’re out reconnecting with nature, staying home to read a good book, or just going about your business as usual.

Image by Erik Jensen

Announcements from your hosts.

Top Five Posts of 2023

Erik

2023 is behind us now, so we’ve had look back at what posts got the most attention this year. Among the things we posted during 2023, here’s the ones that got the most views:

  1. A Competence Porn Viewing List. Eppu’s list of some of her favorite movies and shows to watch that are about awesome characters being awesome together.
  2. Completely New Night Elf Balance Druid Transmog. Eppu’s butterfly-winged transmog for her druid.
  3. Visual Inspiration: Bohemian Waxwing in White. A bit of striking nature photography shared by Eppu.
  4. Are You Aware of National Velociraptor Awareness Day? A silly little comic by Erik for a silly little holiday.
  5. A Compelling Mashup of Columbo and Star Trek: TOS. Some fun cross-fandom stuff found by Eppu.

The lion’s share of views on our site in this past year, though, went to posts from a few years back. Here are the posts that got the most views overall in 2023:

  1. Testing Witches with Water. A whole bunch of you are still really interested in how (or how not to) determine if someone is a witch; this post from 2019 still gets a lot of attention.
  2. Race in Antiquity: Skin Color. A post from 2018 about the complex intersection of skin color and racial diversity in the ancient Mediterranean.
  3. Race in Antiquity: Who Were the Romans? Another 2018 historical post about identity and its convolutions in the Roman world.
  4. Tali for Satrunalia. A post from 2018 about how to play the ancient Roman game of tali.
  5. A Random Find: Ancient and Early Medieval Persian or Iranic Women’s Clothing. An interesting find we posted in 2018 showing some reconstructions of women’s clothing from the cultures of ancient Iran.

Thanks for visiting in 2023. We’ll do our best to keep sharing things worth reading and looking at in 2024!

Messing with numbers is messy.

Two Copies of the Same Library Book

Eppu2 Comments

Erik and I usually go to the library at the same time, but do our own things, sometimes with funny results: the other day we picked up the same book.

2023 09 Two Copies of the Same LIB Book

(Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher)

While there’s overlap in our interests, they’re not identical—I tend to prefer scifi, Erik fantasy, for example—and while we’ve read and liked many of the same novels, it’s never been quite this coordinated before. We didn’t even discover it until a few days later when one of us got through their current book and pulled out the next on Mt. To Be Read.

Reader, I LOLed! 😀

Some things are just too silly not to share!

FYI: No More Automated Tweets

Eppu

A book-keeping / back-end type of notification: There won’t be any more automated tweets for new posts.

We decided to disconnect the Co-Geeking Twitter account from WordPress. (To be specific, WordPress had to remove the automatic-posts-to-Twitter functionality due to Twitter changing their API on short notice.)

SATW Computer Technician Snippet

You can keep checking manually, or subscribe to be notified of new posts.

Image: Computer Technician, detail of a Scandinavia and the World comic by Humon

Announcements from your hosts.

Are You Aware of National Velociraptor Awareness Day?

Erik

Were you aware that tomorrow—April 18—is National Velociraptor Awareness Day? I wasn’t, but now I am. So, consider today National “National Velociraptor Awareness Day” Awareness Day.

In case you were worried that we would not be taking this important holiday with the seriousness it deserves, let us put those fears to rest.

And that’s all we have to say on the subject.

Cartoon by Erik Jensen

Some things are just too silly not to share!

Top Five Posts for 2022

Erik

2022 was… well, it was certainly a year. It didn’t have the apocalyptic awfulness of 2020 or the confused energy of 2021. 2022 had some good parts and some terrible parts, but for a lot of us the year just kind of happened.

It was a calmer year for the two of us, being finally settled in our new home. We haven’t done a top five post in the last few years, but now that 2022 is coming to a close, we thought we’d have a look at what you guys have been looking at here.

Here are our posts from 2022 that got the most views this year:

  1. World of Warcraft Dragonflight Talent Calculator. Eppu posted a link to Wowhead’s talent calculator in the run-up to Dragonflight along with some of her own thoughts, and it looks like a lot of you found that helpful.
  2. Blood Elf Protection Paladin Transmog. Erik’s flashy paladin transmog got some views.
  3. Gold and Silver in Fantasy Coinage. Erik wrote about why gold and silver make historical sense for coinage in a fantasy setting.
  4. Fine Art as a Three-in-One Quilt. Eppu shared an amazing piece of textile art that has to be seen to be believed.
  5. Ukraine Is at War, and I’m Not Okay. Eppu’s heartfelt post about how one of the year’s worst stories touches her as a Finn.

The most viewed posts overall this year also include some older posts. Here’s the all-time Co-Geeking posts that got the most views this past year:

  1. Testing Witches with Water. A lot of you are still really interested in how (or how not to) determine if someone is a witch; this post from 2019 still gets a lot of views.
  2. Race in Antiquity: Skin Color. A post from 2018 about an important topic: looking for evidence of racial diversity in the ancient Mediterranean.
  3. Race in Antiquity: Who Were the Romans? Another 2018 historical post about coming to terms with the complexities of identity in the Roman world.
  4. World of Warcraft Dragonflight Talent Calculator. This 2022 post got a lot of traction this year!
  5. A Striking Greek Gods Photoshoot. A post from 2020 celebrating some beautiful design and photography.

That’s our last word for 2022. Thanks, everyone, for being with us this year. We’ll see you in the next one!

Messing with numbers is messy.

Winter’s Greetings!

Eppu

It’s been a tough two years, and even now no-one can say with certainty that we’ve seen the end of the pandemic. I do hope it’s close, though.

Erik and I have settled into our new home. However, as we are still wrangling some fairly laborious paperwork, we’re scaling back our writing here at Co-Geeking after the new year. (We’ll see how many braincells are going to lose their will to live after dealing with international taxes, urgh…)

WoW Legion Frost Mage Winter Greetings

In the meanwhile: Merry Everything! We hope your end-of-the-year celebrations bring you joy, whichever shape it may take. See you again in 2022!

Announcements from your hosts.