Blogging

One of the reasons for the reduced blogging frequency, Kenneth, is that I spend every waking hour devoting time to the thorny problem of monetizing this humble blog. Previously, I experimented with Adsense but sadly the revenue stream was insufficient to enable me to retire. I am now pleased to announce the results of my research and contemplations. Do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Be patient. Wait. Don’t get frustrated. Just wait. Sooner or later, you will receive an email promising you riches and wealth beyond your wildest dreams. ...

Rich Manalang is taking a back seat and suspending some but not all of his online activities which is an interesting exercise I will follow as it unfolds. Or, rather I won’t, because he won’t be blogging about it. I suppose I could always email him at work. I suspect Google Buzz was the final nail in his Web coffin. It certainly was for me. The privacy issues, the multiple, loud and prolonged orgasms from the Technorati, the same old avatars gradually showing up in my ‘Friends’ list quickly followed by the immediate same sense of ‘Emperors New Clothes’ and the inevitable post coital cigarette: ‘How was it for you, darling ?’ ...

Some of the varied and bizarre keyword searches leading visitors to this site merely confirm this blog is the ramblings of a confused madman. Here is a selection from the start of the year ‘dyslexic blog’ - curiously spelled correctly. ‘crucifixion blog’ - listen United are in debt and suffering a dip in form but don’t do anything hasty now. ‘why linux will never’ - come on, you simply can’t leave me dangling like that. ‘breasts chessington’ - hoping your mates didn’t publish that photo of you, on the log flume, flashing your assets. ‘brightside software enterprises friendorfoe’ - stealth marketing finally starts to pay off. ‘famous captive animals’ - Skippy (the bush kangaroo) and Lassie. ‘handsworth exoctic escort’ - there’s absolutely nothing exotic about Handsworth, trust me. ‘hoax messages on friends reunited’ - the ghost of the cruel, heartless Janet Oldsgate strikes again. ‘how can i get back my lost virginity’ - please send an international money order for £250 to PO Box 729. ’life has dealt me with a cruel card’ - don’t tell me, hang on. Was it the ‘8 of Diamonds’ ? ‘my car keeps cutting out and the bonnet is steaming’ - stop blogging immediately and call The AA. ‘pubsubhubbub is a lot easier than it sounds’ - easy for you to say. ’the balls of allah explosive underpants’ - priceless. What a superlative name for a blog/album/house/dog ! ‘what do you think is the most important decision in our life’ - Will these underpants last another day ? ‘fucking overlapping partitions when im installing linux’ - language, Timothy. Nice assumption that the swear word would be included in relevant posts

That was the year that was. Statistics for 2009 with the comparative numbers for 2008 in brackets. Summary 29,901 visits (43,732) 39,545 page views (63,095) 1.32 pages per visit (1.44) Average time on site - 48 seconds (54 secs) 91.2% new visits (90.6%) Search Engines Google - 22,627 (32,830) Yahoo - 381 (704) Bing - 168 (N/A) AOL - 128 (229) Ask - 115 (195) Referrers identi.ca - 575 (229) avc.com - 222 (348) Disqus post linked by Fred Wilson google.com - 216 (primarily Reader) oracle-base.com - 169 (225) disqus.com - 101 Platform Windows - 81.4% (85.7%) Macintosh - 11.9% (10.3%) Linux - 5.1% (3.26%) iPhone - 0.6% (0.2%) iPod - 0.2% Symbian, Android, PS3 - < 1% Browsers IE - 42.5% (56.5%) Firefox - 41.4% (33.6%) Safari - 7.2% (6.2%) Chrome - 5.4% (N/A) Opera - 1.6% (1.3%) Content Blog - 3,990 Review of Virgin Media V+ box - 4,666 (June 2007) Virgin Media V+ upgrade - 1,871 (March 2007) High Definition TV on Virgin Media V+ - 1,378 (December 2007) intelligent automatic follow/block script for Twitter - 1,303 (April 2008) pictures of a Virgin Media V+ box - 1,273 (June 2007) 25 reasons you should use Disqus - 1,270 (April 2008) how I ditched iTunes and started living with Foobar 2000 - 810 (October 2009) Beware of Dixons Tax Free shopping - 791 (October 2005) Posterous leveraging Tumblr themes - 729 (September 2009) Posts 79 (94)

This conversation didn’t actually take place but it could have. Last week, friends and I were discussing µblogging in the pub. Well not µblogging exactly but two ladies had recently discovered Facebook and were talking about the pros and cons of this wonderful social network. One lady said: ‘Oh and another thing - I really don’t like the ‘Jenny is…’ status update. I just don’t get it.' The other lady replied ‘Yeah - that bit is stupid. I am hardly going to write down ‘Marilyn is…just off to Asda for the weekend shop'. ...

I have experimented at various times with both Tumblr and Posterous which are hosted blog services. I tend to view them as useful services for a scrapbook style blog, a linkblog, a lifestream or even a fully fledged blog. If I was starting a blog today, I would probably use one or the other. Posterous, in particular, has been getting a lot of coverage recently and I like the ease of use, the ‘Post by Email’ facility and continue to follow developments with interest. ...

‘Anyone suffering from the desire to communicate what they are doing or thinking every minute of the day in fewer than 140 characters is best described as a twat.’ Janet Street Porter calling me a ’twat’. Possibly my proudest moment. I prefer to define µblogging as ‘an infinite byte stream of inane drivel’ but I also enjoyed Stephen Fry’s post on the same subject: ‘40% of Twitter is “pointless babble”, which means of course that a full 60% of Twitter discourse is NOT pointless babble, which is disappointing.’ ...

Early Jurassic - Mum takes you to playgroup, kicking and screaming and your friends are forced upon you. Free milk at 11 am. Cretaceous - Primary school. You go round to Robert’s for tea and Robert comes round to your house for tea. Painfully shy in female company. Middle Monolithic - Secondary school - you hang out with the kids who play football and avoid those who threaten you with knives at the bus stop. ...

17 August 2005 - Started life on Blogger. 12 October 2005 - Moved to self-hosted Blogger 13 November 2005 - Moved to hosted WordPress.com. 30 September 2006 - Purchased domain name and moved to self-hosted WordPress.org 01 July 2007 - Adsense appears. 29 August 2007 - One of many crises of confidence where I nearly shut down the blog and deleted all content. 19 January 2008 - Adsense disappears. 15 February 2008 - Moved from WordPress to Habari. ...

This humble blog is four years old today so tonight I will be taking ‘Blog in isolation’ and some of its closest friends to LazerQuest (Mega Death Match Party Edition with Pizza and gallons of Coca Cola to ensure the kids are well and truly revved up). Everyone loves meaningful statistics so here is a pretty chart of posts by month (for all you management types): Curiously, since I returned from my holiday, I seem to have rediscovered a little of my zest for blogging. Also, I have a feeling that things are gradually turning full circle. My initial decision to dip my toe in the water was prompted by reading and enjoying the writing of other people and I sense that element is slowly returning. More recently, reading blogs had turned into mindlessly hitting ‘J’ in Google Reader as fast as humanly possible simply in order to say ‘Done’. ...