A Shroud of Thoughts' 3rd Anniversary

As hard as it is to believe, A Shroud of Thoughts turns three years old today. It was on this date in 2004 that I set the blog up and wrote my first entry. Since then I have gone through deaths, the breakup of a marriage (not mine, but someone close to me), lost love, and a change in jobs. Somehow I have still managed three posts a week on average. Granted, some of them were very short posts.

A Shroud of Thoughts has also gone through some changes. For those of you who wonder what it looked like in the beginning, I used the Wayback Machine to retrieve the blog's original template and take a screenshot of it. Here it is.



There have been a few templates between the original and the current template (picture the original, but with three columns), but unfortunately it looks like the Wayback Machine never captured them. Since adopting this template, A Shroud of Thoughts hasn't changed much. I must admit that the unveiling of the New Blogger in the past year caused me some concern, as I was worried that my template might stop working. Fortunately, that wasn't the case.

I suppose many of you also wonder where the title of the blog comes from. It comes from Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage canto iii stanza 113, which is quoted below:

I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bow'd
To its idolatries a patient knee,
Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.

For those of you wondering about my nom de guerre, it is the Middle English form of Mercury (it can be seen in Chaucer's works, and it survived into Early Modern English to be seen in Shakespeare as well).

As in past years, I have compiled a "Greatest Hits" list of what I consider to be the best posts from the past year. Here it is:

The Most Successful Studio Never to Exist (June 11, 2006)

Superhero Movies of the Nineties (June 26, 2006)

Fad TV (July 21, 2006)

Action Movies of the Eighties and Nineties (July 24, 2006)

I Want My MTV? Well, Not Anymore... (August 1, 2006)

Midnight Movies (August 6, 2006)

Nowhere Man (August 11, 2006)

Nero Wolfe...Merely a Genius (August 19, 2006)

Two Shows from 1964 (August 26, 2006)

The Ever Changing Movie Season (September 3, 2006)

40 Years of Star Trek (September 8, 2006)

The Monkees Turn 40 (September 12, 2006)

Dick Tracy Turns 75 (October 4, 2006)

Dark Shadows (October 28, 2006)

Warren Horror Comic Magazines (October 30, 2006)

5 November (guess when?)

The Long Journey of Casino Royale to the Big Screen (November 19, 2006)

The Beatles Cartoon (December 9, 2006)

The Sixties (December 28,2006)

The 1992-1993 CBS Monday Night Schedule (December 20, 2006)

The Laugh Track (January 5, 2007)

Bonanza (January 21, 2007)

The Future Was Then (February 19, 2007)

James Bond Theme Songs (March 24, 2007)

Reruns (March 31, 2007)

Warner Brothers Cartoons AB (After Bugs) (April, 6, 2007)

Shicinin no samurai (Seven Samurai) (April 15, 2007)

The Week of April 29, 2007, includes Concept Albums Parts One, Two, and Three

The 70th Anniversary of the Hindenberg Disaster (May 6, 2007)

Strange Cover Songs (May 11, 2007)

The Simpsons Turn 400 (May 19, 2007)

The 40th Anniversary of Star Wars (May 25, 2007)

The Anime Wave on American Television in the Sixties Part One (May 27, 2007)

The Anime Wave on American Television in the Sixties Part Two (May 28, 2007)

It Was 40 Years Ago Today... (June 1, 2007)

Over all I think it has been a very good year. Anyhow, here's hoping to three more years!