A New Years Surprise For Me!

Some exciting news today as I logged on to find that the blog has just surpassed 20,000 hits! *yay* When I first created the blog I had no idea there would be as many visitors as there has been but my daily hits have been gradually rising. Thank you so much to everyone who visits the blog, especially those who come here on a daily basis - it means a lot to me to see that the site is appreciated ^_^

I started the site back on July 15th, with my first post being a review of Berryz Koubou's Yuke Yuke Monkey Dance. Since then I think I've written 222 posts - I always try to post at least once a day so people have something new to see when they visit lol. I've tried to remain as dedicated as I can to bringing updated news and fun stories, that I hope everyone has enjoyed! ^^
When I first started tracking Stardust's hits (August) I was scarcely getting 10 hits a day. I have to give big thanks to the folks at International Wota, especially CK who is ALWAYS writing up the blog, for bringing those 10 hits per day to the hundreds I'm getting at the moment. Over the past two months especially, the blog has really grown in popularity.

As a commerative New Years/20K ... thingo, I've decided to list the posts which actually mattered amongst the 222 I've written so far lol:

Vocal Training with Junjun & Linlin
28th July 2008

This post was kinda special as before this date I was very focused on doing a NEWS driven blog. Most of the previous posts were news items or reviews, which I still do a lot of, but this was the first little post where I just brought something I thought was interesting and cool - footage of Junjun and Linlin in a vocal lesson. It got a lot of attention, being posted on IW a few days later, and the site had over 200 hits when this post got written up!

Canaria Club Live Document DVD

29th July 2008

I was very proud of this post: 1. because it took me AGES to do (I'm talking literally HOURS lol) and 2. because I love Canaria Club. This review of their Live Document DVD didn't get the attention I was hoping for. I'm pretty sure IW eventually wrote it up, but I think it mainly got gradual hits as I kept linking to it in subsequent posts *lol*

Kanna x Hasshi Scandal?
29th July 2008

Yes, I'm aware the first 3 posts are all within 2 days lol, but it was just a busy couple of days. I swear! This post, about Arihara Kanna's little scandal, got LOTS of hits but mainly from a different audience - the Johnny's fans. It was posted up at a few Johnny's forums and was googled a lot, resulting in it being one of the most popular posts on the blog.

Anticipating SanHora's 6th Story: Moira & Moira: The 6th Story
August 29th & September 16th 2008

These two posts regarding Sound Horizon's 6th Story album Moira still gets a heap of hits to this day. Because they aren't really about music most H!P fans are interested in, the hits are mainly from googlers who just happen to find the blog when searching about the album. I'm really proud of these posts, a lot of effort went into them, and I'm happy they've gotten the attention they have.

New Star *finally* coming to a close...
September 1st 2008

Ok so here starts the facination with the Taiwan auditions, NEW STAR, and the hundreds of hits I got everytime I posted anything remotely related to them lol. I dunno if I was just the only blog following the auditions but that's just what happened :P This first post talked about the remaining 15 contestants and picking out my favs - of which only ShenShen made the group :p

Introducing SI☆NA ...
September 7th 2008

This little post was about the H!P Kansai group SI*NA - I believe they had just recently been named as a group and these cute little vids popped up and I just had to share! Of course they still haven't debuted and my enthusiasm for them is starting to fade away, but just watching these vids again makes me excited for their debut, which should be any year now... (-_-;)

New Star Elimination Update
New Star 9/13: Recap & New Star 9/14: Another Recap
September 9th 2008
September 14th & 15th 2008

AHHH~ this was the horrible post where I accidently spoiled NEW STAR for everyone lol. It utterly confused me (the site had posted a news article about the eliminations before the episode had aired) and then I wasn't sure what was going on. Eventually it all sorted itself out when I got my hands on the episodes and reviewed them for everyone but it did leave me a bit rosy cheeked.

Ping Leaks Chinese H!P song....

September 20th 2008

This post was about Ice Creamusume's PeiPei (at the time known as Ceng de Ping) leaking the Morning Musume track Ame no Furanai Hoshi de Aisenai Daro via her blog. The song was already pretty popular (concert rip or whatever) so of course the post was popular too. I pretty much wrote off PeiPei's chances at getting picked as a result lol but I was obviously quite wrong. To be fair, at that point she had already been chosen ^^; ehhh - later that day...

NEW STAR Winners Chosen & Who are the NEW STARs?
September 20th & October 3rd 2008

Later that day we all found out the New Stars and everyone was shocked and disappointed that the little girl (who will forever be known as Risafan) did not make it ;_; I'm still recovering from that one. One of the most popular posts on the blog stemmed from the NEW STARs as I set out to determine Who are the NEW STARs? - I knew so many people hadn't followed the auditions and had no idea of who these girls were so I managed to get my hands on the last episode and made some vids of each performer and posted them up. Now please keep in mind I know nothing about video editing lol - it took me a while, but I got there in the end. It was worth it though, I'm proud of this post!

Aibon: Rockin' Out!

October 12th 2008

This post goes to show how even posts that take hardly any effort can become much more popular than more intensive posts. This 5 min post where I just posted some pics of Kago Ai got hundreds of hits lol. Crazy eh? It is Aibon though and she is rockin! ;) (re-reading this I realise I used the word post in this... post far too often lol)

Kill Me, Kiss Me: HANGRY & ANGRY ... grr

October 13th 2008

I wrote up this post about hANGRY&ANGRY literally at like 3 in the morning lol. I remember I was so pumped at seeing it and was so excited I had to write it up right then and there. I remember it very vividly, my friend told me that the pic was obviously photoshopped and laughed at me for thinking H!P would ever do anything like this -_-; lol. Anyway every man and his dog did a post about H&A so I can't remember if it was very popular, but I enjoyed writing it.

The End of an Era: Elder Club Graduates
October 19th 2008

This was a sad day for me :( Urgh, Elder Club - they'll be missed. I'm still in mourning and they haven't gone yet - I'll prob be mourning for a few more months afterwards. Once again, every man and his dog, I think this post got lost among the masses - but those are my sad feelings on the news.

Halloween no Musume!
October 31st 2008

Ah! One of the posts I'm most proud of! So much work went into these little horrifying Musume's but every minute was pure joy. This is the type of thing I just do when I have nothing else to do so it wasn't a huge waste of time lol. I got lots of nice feedback on this post and many hits, a few sites linked to it which was cool. I'm dreading what I'll have to do for next Halloween *eek*!! I'm *hoping* I won't have the time to do something similar (I needs a life lol) ... but we'll see.

NEW STARs Jet Off
November 11th 2008

The formula for success: NEW STAR related x post = popular ^_^ lol. I actually translated this article from Mandarin via a really crappy online translator. Urgh, the things I do for the blog and all you lot :p

Tough as Nails, Fierce as C-ute
November 12th 2008

Nobody really cared about this post lol (that's always how it is, when I actually try to make a post people will like - nobody does :p) That being said, I still really like this post and I'm putting it here in an attempt for somebody, somewhere to care lol. *please... pleeeease!*

Int'l Wota Here I Come!
November 19th 2008

Wow, it doesn't seem so long ago that Pengie emailed me about joing IW lol. Since then I've done all of 3 writeups on the site -_-; I'm such a bad contributor! My New Years resolution is to be more active on the site! Best bit about IW is meeting all the cool (yes you're all cool!) ppl on wotachat, hours of fun ^^!

Welcome, Ice Cream Musume!
November 21st 2008

Wooo~!! We finally got a name and cool group pics! My love for the NEW STARs never dwindled and my love for Ice Cream just made me love the group even more! peachusagi commented on this post: You always have the best news! - AWWWW see, everyone loves Ice Creamusume!

Yum! Ice Cream! ^_^
November 23rd 2008

This post got NO attention at all!! @_@ <- tis my angry face lol. Do you know how long I sat down trying to think of Ice Cream flavours that would go with each member? lol! I got the idea from CK who kept blabbing about how each girl should represent a flavour. Now we actually know that the girls do have flavours - I have to say mine are much better >.<

Ayaya's in the Kitchen... with Chickens?
December 9th 2008

Ahahaha! LOL this post was great *is not conceited* - I'm talking about the actual song ;) I think this one got lots of hits and everyone seemed to love the Kitchen & Chicken track! I've still got my fingers crossed for a release in the near future. I don't need another slow ballad ... I WANT CHICKEN!!!

The 12 Days of Christmas
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
December 14th to 25th 2008

Most of December was busy for me, with Xmas and all, so to keep the Blog up to date and as a nice holiday surprise I decided to do my 12 Days of Christmas countdown. December has been my most popular month so far - I'm not sure if it's because of the 12 Days but people kept coming back and it was nice to be able to share those 12 songs with everyone.

Ice Creamusume's Love Revolution 21!
December 22nd 2008

Let's talk about crazy Ice Creamusume for a second ... this post of mine was the all time most popular post on my blog - pretty much by far lol. When I posted it I NEVER imagined the reaction it would get. I pretty much heard the track would be on radio that evening, went to the radio show's website and found it was online and then decided to record it while I was listening. I then posted it before I went to bed and when I woke up I had hundreds upon hundreds of hits. The radio rip has been downloaded over 800 times from the blog, as well as countless others from other forums and youtube. My 1GB bandwidth even exceeded on the site where I post my audio files lol. A very popular post and a nice Xmas gift to myself!

So there we have the most significant posts in my short blogging history and after all that time writing this post up, those 20K hits have now surpassed 30K *lol* ok not quite ;) Once again, thanks so much to all the people who visit the blog. I hope you'll keep coming to check it out after the New Year. Maybe for your NY's resolutions you can all comment a bit more, eh? ;) lol.

Have a great New Year!
xMarsx