Naval Gazing is my exploration/explanation of naval warfare, from about 1860 to the present. Battleships are my greatest interest, but I've also branched out to cover other topics, even in the broader defense field. I've been a military geek my whole life, and while I was living in Los Angeles, I was a tour guide on the battleship Iowa. Naval Gazing started when someone asked in a Slate Star Codex open thread about hobbies, and I replied with my interest in battleships. Lots of people seemed interested, so I kept talking about battleships in the open threads for the next 8 months or so, and branched out into other aspects of naval warfare. Finally, I got tired of dealing with the limitations of trying to run a blog in wordpress comments, and set up Naval Gazing as an independent blog.
If you're new here, the place to start is A Brief History of the Battleship, followed by Top Posts and maybe things tagged Intro. If you're interested in specific topics, the Topical Index is the place to go.
I post twice times a week, at 7AM Central on Sundays and Wednesdays. On Fridays, we alternate between an Open Thread (talk about anything you like, so long as it's not culture war) and the group Rule the Waves 2 game. I may occasionally take time off, but if I do I'll be sure to let everyone know.
Thanks to Said Achmiz for hosting me.
I can be reached at battleshipbean at gmail.
Comments
Can you possibly set up an open thread of sorts every once in a while to house all sorts of misc questions and discussions that don't fit into a particular topic?
It's an idea I've toyed with, but never got around to doing. I'll put one up sometime next week. (This week, we're talking about Jutland.)
It's kind of awkward, but can you possibly add a WYSIWYG editor to the comment section? I'm the kind who perpetually forgets which type of parenthesis goes in front of which when I need to insert a link to say nothing about the more complex formatting.
That’s not within my control. I can ask Said Achmiz, but I suspect that it would be a lot of trouble. That said, I generally make a habit of bailing out that kind of mistake, so don't worry too much about it. The comment volume isn't so large as to make that a chore.
@Inky:
Improving the comment editor is on my to-do list, which is, unfortunately somewhat long and slow-moving.
For now, though, if you click on the “Markdown” link just under the comment box, it’ll take you to a Markdown reference, so you can look up what markup to use.