Tag Archives: writing

Site Note: Broken Links

Killing Time

Hey, gang.  Just a quick note asking you to help me help you.  I use a lot of video in my posts.  Anyone who is familiar with YouTube knows that video links over time tend to vanish.  I have written over 3,700 posts for KT since we started back in January 2013, so I have absolutely no clue if some YouTube clip I embedded within the last five years or not is broken unless I happen to run across it (as I did today in an old post on Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory) or someone tells me.  If you comment on a post, I get notified, and I do read them all.  You’d be doing me a favor by telling me if you run across a broken link, expired YouTube clip, or something that just looks weird.  I can usually fix the issue in 30 seconds, and I’d rather have everything look up to par.  You won’t be hurting my feelings if you tell me something’s gone sideways.

Killing Time Turns 5 Years Old!!!

anniversary-2x

Five years ago today, Killing Time opened its doors to all manner of geeks, nerds, geekity nerds, and random passersby.  My reasons for starting this blog, and maintaining it for half a decade of pretty steady nonsense are more than outlined in the “About KT” tab if you’re curious, but the blog I started in early 2013 was a very different one than 2018’s version.  For one thing, it was missing all of you.  All 9,837 of you wacky, wacky people whose comments and feedback make writing this thing so much fun.  This is, by the by, the 3,578th article for Killing Time, and not counting the Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms, we’ve had 525,395 hits on the homepage alone.


I didn’t expect any of that.  I didn’t think I’d be writing this blog five years later.  I didn’t think anyone would want to read it, to be honest.  I wrote it first as an escape, then as a tribute, now-more than anything-as a discipline to write every day.  And it has become an inextricable part of my day.  The days now have columns attached to them, there’s a rhythm to the whole thing, and if I have to miss a day because reality rudely intrudes into my fervent concentration on ignoring it….I feel odd.  Like I have to sneeze and can’t…or forgot to, which is an even odder sensation.  What I’m saying is that Killing Time has been a surprising thing, a good thing, and all of you have made it what it is.  So thank you for five years.  I certainly can’t promise five more, but I didn’t think we’d be here in 2013.  Thank you, time killers.

-The Management


Site Note: My Favorite Scene Going Bi-Weekly!!!

Christopher Walken on SNL

While I have no more cowbell for you (pause for sighs and boos), I do have more awesome movie scenes.  “My Favorite Scene” is the oldest column in the nearly five-year history of Killing Time.  I’ve written over 240 of them, but I haven’t even scratched the surface of the movies I want to take a look at.  For Tuesday’s column, I try to pick a movie that has some relevance to a star or a film coming out that weekend.  This keeps the films pretty much in the 5-10 year past ballpark.  That’s fine, but I never get to go back further and that’s what the Saturday installments will largely do: examine great scenes from films a little further back.  I’ve already plotted out 2018’s entries, and I’m really excited about the line-up of films we’ll hopefully get some discussion started on.  Some of these I’ve examined in my every-other-month IMDB TOP 250 columns, but those films can’t get enough revisiting.  The first Saturday entry, The Shawshank Redemption,is already up!

Killing Time Passes 500,000 Hits: The Most Popular Pieces in the Site’s History

Killing Time

On January 24, 2013, I started a blog on media to pass the time (you can click on About Killing Time if you want the entire dynamic origin story).  This morning, during the wee hours, that site passed half-a-million hits.  500,000 hits, baby!  That’s just on KT, not the social media pages, but if you had told me when I was starting out that we’d ever get to 1/2 a million hits, I’d have upped your thorazine.  I saw the number creeping toward the milestone a month ago, as I’ve noticed we’re also nearing 10k followers (you geeky legion, you).  I had no idea it was that high, and I just want to sincerely thank every one of you who makes this a fun site to write, manage, micromanage, rearrange and then re-micromanage, and for the comments, support, and sense of community that has-especially this year-made this such an awesome place to be.

No doubt the morning shows are all over this, but I thought I’d share just a few of the reader reactions to the news.  SO kind (thank you for the mic drop, Mr. President).  After the break check out the most read articles in the site’s history.


      Continue reading Killing Time Passes 500,000 Hits: The Most Popular Pieces in the Site’s History

Site Note: Review Archives Are Alphabetized!!! HOORAY, DAVE! UPDATED

AZ-logo

It all began with a rather innocent, passive aggressive comment from devoted KT reader and sage Mr. Bobinsky, “It would be nice if these were in some kind of order….”  Mr. B was referring to the archives, specifically the Movie Review Archives, the digital vault in which my wisdom regarding individual films is kept.  Regular features and columns as well as media that we regular feature (trailers, achievement lists, etc.) are kept in archive pages that you can see in a banner across the top of the home page.

Killing Time is now 4.75 years old and the insides of those archives are beginning to become unwieldy to navigate.  So, if you visit the Movie Review Archive (Their 10 Best and IMDB 250 are already in order) you will now find reviews listed from A to Z along with the year of their release.  You’ll note that the reviews from Killing Time (which stretch from late 2012 to present) are also joined by a group from a Live Journal blog I ran for a year in 2009-2010.  So it’s a little bit of a grab bag, and looking a the number of films I used to review versus what I do these days, I’m going to try to do at least one or two a week.


I also want to alphabetize the Trailers, My Favorite Scenes, Lists, Achievement Lists, and other features, but it is MIND numbing, and despite what rumors you may have heard, my army of enchanted gnomes is currently still in labor arbitration with me over working conditions.  So should you go in an archive and it looks like a vat of letters exploded, I’m probably cobbling together new shelves for my digital creations.  Just part of the site getting older and bigger (don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but we may hit 500,000 hits on the home page alone by the end of 2017!).  Thanks, Mr. B.  It was a good idea that will no doubt keep me cutting and pasting for months (but will look purty in the end.

UPDATE: Gamers, the Achievement List page is now alphabetized!!!
UPDATE 2: The My Favorite Scene page is now alphabetized!!!

Gnomes on Strike
A current live-shot of the outside of KT headquarters where labor unrest amongst my gnomish workforce continues to slow production of nonsense.