Saturday 1 January 2011

Blogging and statistics


In 2010 I published 396 blog posts which attracted just over 28 thousand page loads, an average of 77 per day. This is almost double the hit rate of 2009, with 321 posts and nearly 15 thousand page loads, averaging 41 per day. In 2008, my first full year of blogging, there were four thousand page loads, or 12 per day, with 195 posts to choose from.

I record this not to boast, but in humility that you, dear reader, think my efforts are possibly slightly more interesting than a blank screen.

I find it a good discipline to attempt a post a day, even if what I write is mostly inconsequential. The blog allows me to record our boating exploits and other holidays, and to write about home life and, well, anything I want, really. Most of the time I try to keep to a waterways theme.

Today's date can be written 010111, which is binary for 23. A more logical way to write the date would be 110101 (53), where the third and fourth digits indicate the month, and the last two the day. Putting dates written like this in numerical order would preserve chronological order, which doesn't happen with our usual day/month/year way of designating them. Nor, of course, with the USA way of writing month/day/year. I think internal computer clocks date/time stamp things in this most-significant-number-first way.

[I remember being fascinated with binary numbers when I was eight or so. What I can't remember now is what I did with them!]

The photo is of Sainsbury's Distribution Centre by the Lee Navigation. Many people will be more interested in the Rye House Kart Racing opposite - as, indeed, I was on the way upstream - and might miss Sainsbury's. Not that they'd be able to buy their bread and paper there.

Why, incidentally, do dog walkers feel they have to wear hi-vis jackets these days? (Perhaps if the dog had been wearing one too I might have included it in the picture!)

6 comments:

Vallypee said...

Haha, numbers, Halfie...not my area at all, but thanks for all your posts! I haven't been able to keep up with them all, but I do enjoy them. I'll be off the net for a while, but will drop in from time to time. Have a great 2011!

Neil Corbett said...

What we did see a boater buying at Rye House as we passed, was a set of used go kart tyres, presumably for use as fenders!

Keep up the good work on the blog and I'm sure numbers will be even higher next year.

Andy Tidy said...

Halfie, my tomorrows blog has a similar theme but I promise I wrote it last week!
I count unique hits rather than pages but either approach provides a measure of progress.
Andy

Halfie said...

VallyP, thank you.

Neil, yes, I remember you writing about the tyres.

Andy, isn't it annoying when you had an idea, and someone else beats you to it in print although you thought about it first? I use page loads because the numbers are bigger (and I still get confused by the terms "unique visitors", "first time visitors" and "returning visitors" as used by StatCounter.com).

Andy Tidy said...

Halfie
I teaches me to do same day posts rather than sometimes prepare them ahead for diarised publication!

Halfie said...

If I were more organised I'd prepare them in advance like you do (and like Granny Buttons used to). I suppose I could have used my leave over Christmas to write some posts for future publication, but other things somehow got in the way...