Update August 2023: The original caption for this image has been overtaken by events; so much so that I'm going to scrap it.

It announced the creation of my account on SmugMug, which didn't work out. As per a comment that a PBaser made at the time of posting the image, "I found it a lonely place". She was right. As I said in the updated description for my shot of 8 February, which contains a summary of PBase then and now, "SmugMug is like a secret society. It doesn't have a "Recently Uploaded" list so the only way anyone ever finds, much less sees, your photos is if you ingratiate your way into a clique of mutual commenters and followers". Also to give it its due, if you drop PBase your galleries will generally hang around indefinitely unless you consciously blow up your account, which plenty of once-regulars appear to have done. SmugMug on the other hand will spam the living bejabbers out of you, warning on a daily basis that if you don't cough up your renewal money, they'll nuke your galleries... and they DO it, too.

But that doesn't alter the reality of PBase life. As with the shot of 8 February, I had updated the caption on this one to talk about how much different and better PBase was in 2012. I repeat, however: " Honestly, I can't re-read that without laughing. Not a gentle, amused laugh but a bitter, ironic laugh. For while the admins did indeed make a FEW enhancements in the early 2010s, by 2023 describing the management as vigorous and responsive rather than rude, arrogant and lazy is just not something that I can bring myself to do."

The original caption here had a re-wording of the 60s song "Leavin' on a Jet Plane", which begins with "My bags are packed". From then on it was a parody in the style of doggerel. So why am I still on PBase? (At the time of writing, at least; by the time you read this the site may not even exist any longer.) Again I refer to my post of 8 February: "And I am here now to remove all watermark references to PBase to prepare my galleries for upload elsewhere. The only reason that I'm still on PBase (at the time of writing at least) is that doing so is no small amount of work, and I won't get it done before my current membership expires. So they'll get another 23 bucks out of me... but after that, we'll see."

Unfortunately for the rest of 2010 and I think into part of 2011, the watermarks show the already defunct SmugMug path. Boy, was that a mistake.