Happy Birthday, The Medium is Not Enough. Yes, three years ago (sort of, subject to blog migration, blog splitting, blog reunions, etc), this blog emerged into the light of the Internet with its first two posts: previews of the still-popular Prison Break, the not-unpopular Supernatural and the still-unseen Global Frequency; and tedious cruft about The Omega Factor (which I'm still just about to write a review of, amazingly enough).

Yes, I'm going to use the same opening paragraph for the birthday entry every year. I really am that lazy. Besides, it's something of a tradition now.

What we've learned this year
In our third year, it turned out the following discoveries were still as true as they were the year before

1. Y'all are still kind of interested in David Tennant and Doctor Who, but less by Torchwood
2. Time may march on but before, during and after every episode of The F-Word, everyone will be dying to know who wrote the theme tune
3. People really like having a bullet-pointed list of media news items each morning
4. I can never get people's names right. 

But we've also learned some new things.

• We've learned from my web stats package that the only thing people like more than pictures of Stewie Griffin, Alexandra Bastedo, David Tennant, and Sean Maguire are pictures from Sex and the City and of Satan.
• We've learned that theatre review sites can't SEO their web pages for toffee since I'm number two on Google for searches for "Fat Pig reviews". Seriously, if I'm number two, they need to work their webmasters harder.
• We've learned that maybe we should have called the blog something shorter and given it a better URL when we started – and that it's way too late for "The Tea Mine" to ever catch on as an alternative title.
• We've learned that if your hosting company is rubbish, you need to move to one that's slightly less rubbish
• We've learned that Catherine Tate elicits mixed reactions from people.
• And we've learned that even though it's just me writing this, I still refer to myself as 'we' and that Simon Callow stole a load of my sentence-starting words back in the 80s. Not at all worried by that, are we?

Changes
Over the last year, there have also been a few changes. We've

• given the site a complete and initially incompetently implemented facelift
• started reviewing books, theatre, technology and other media
• slowly, but temporarily ushered the slightly balding Carusometer in the direction of the care home, since it needs its beauty sleep
• run a few competitions where people have won actual things they can hold in their hands
• come up with one correct conspiracy theory [spoiler!] and a multitude of incorrect ones – as it should be
• created a few new blog gods and opened a shrine
• joined the international conspiracy to promote all things Welsh
• launched the "whimsy" section with the ever so slightly silly Sitting Tennant and the slightly less silly but increasingly obsessive-looking – except if you read the previous bullet point – Today's Joanna Page
• discreetly launched Lost Gems and Movies You Should Own to cover up the fact that there's not a lot on tele right now

I'd like to say a great big thank you again to Anna, Lisa, Marie, Matt, Rosby, Scott, Stu_N, Stu, other Scott, Stuart, Iko, Poly, espedair, kaballa, Electric Dragon, Linda, cindylover1969, Fraser, Kev, Craig, Lesley, Jonathan, Cackle Jr, Murray, Mark, Toby and Phoenix for continuing to hang around and contribute with always entertaining comments.

I'd also like to thank Persephone, Jane, TemplarJ, Vin and Andrea for joining in with the fun this year and the RSS lurkers for massaging my viewing stats – come on out and play, guys: you know you want to.

Apologies to very infrequent commenters and anyone I left out but my brain hurts – you know what I'm like with names. But you've all been absolutely wonderful to be here, join in and interact with my baffling ramblings.

Fingers crossed, the fun's just going to keep on rolling on for another year. Hope you continue to enjoy your stay! And if you have any suggestions for what else you might like to see on the blog, please let me know below.

Have a nice weekend,

Rob