Sunday Filler

A blogger friend, JL Pagano at All Smoke and Mirrors, used to post the search words that brought people to his site, and the search words were often interesting, sometimes puzzling, and occasionally bizarre.

Since I don’t have anything of substance to post today (yet), I am going to steal/borrow Mr. P’s idea and show you some of the search words that bring people to Observations, and perhaps comment on them.

• barbra streisand nude – I could write a column on why I don’t like Barbra, but suffice it to say that nude pics of her will not appear on Observations.
• articles on the viewpoints of martha stewart's conviction – I did at least comment on Martha’s travesty.
• "rude fans ", professional sports – Most of my comments on professional sports criticize the babies who make millions playing games, not their fans.
• breakdown of uninsured in America – This badly distorted issue has been addressed here.
• how family members behave when their beloved is dead or self inflicted injury? – A total puzzle. I have no idea why this would bring someone to Observations.
• discovery channel cia disclosed no one landed on moon – Another mystery.
• croton oil – Help! What is “croton oil?”
• mission viejo lots of muslims – Muslims sometimes are a topic, especially the fanatical, violent variety.
• funny remarks of bum Phillips – I know Bum Phillips is a coach; I didn’t know he is funny; I don’t really care.
• common sense rip poem – No clue.
• did ralph nader ever say we should put marine's off the coast of florida – Given Ralph’s odd proclivities, it is possible, but it’s not been a subject here.

There you have it, folks.

Changes

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Those lines from the Bob Dylan song are on my mind right now, as I look out over the Observations universe, small and unimportant as it is, and contemplate the changes that have occurred over the three years of its existence, and those that are occurring right now.

I commented a while back that many of the old visitors had moved on to other interests. That happens; we all have our priorities and fascinations, and they tend to change as we go through life. I regret losing contact with those folks, because though our correspondence we became friends to varying degrees. But new ones have come along to take their places, and relationships have grown with them, too.

Unfortunately, several of the more recent gang have experienced, or are experiencing, things in their lives that take them away, either for good, or perhaps for just a while, or maybe they just visit less often.

Most of my blogger friends are friends at a distance, meaning that I don’t know them personally, and have never laid eyes on them, which I expect is the case with most blog relationships. Exceptions to that general rule are Kenna Amos, a writer/reporter who lives nearby and just got too busy to keep his site going, and visits here occasionally, but seldom comments. Then there’s The Windjammer, who used to write a column in my newspaper, and was a friend whom I saw pretty often and corresponded with almost daily through email. He contributed columns to Observations for a while. The Windjammer related to me that he had some health problems, but didn’t tell me the truth. I got word from his son that he had succumbed to cancer earlier this year. That was a shock, and a great loss, as I said in a post right after his death.

I have had direct contact with two other blog friends, first Brad Barfield, who called my home one day in an attempt to play a joke on me. I don’t know Brad other than through this phone call and our interaction on the Net, but the phone call was a nifty experience. He spoke with my wife, Diane, first, saying something she didn’t understand, and then ending the call. She commented about that to me, and handed me the phone. Unbeknownst to Brad, the caller ID listed his name, so when he called back, I answered, “Hey, Brad. How are you?”, or something like that. Incredulously, he said, “How did you know who it was?” He thought he was calling from a “blind” number; he was wrong. Anyway, we had a good, though not lengthy, talk.

Earlier this year a visitor calling himself “Winfred Mann” came upon the scene, and became a frequent commenter. At one point I mentioned that the family was vacationing in South Florida, and “Winfred” (Rick) emailed me asking where we were. I told him and ask if he was nearby, to which he responded that he was only a few minutes away, and asked if I would like to get together with him for coffee, which we did. We met, drank some coffee, and talked for an hour or so, and then went back to what we were doing. We continued communicating on each other’s sites, until earlier this month when Rick sort of just “went missing” (a truly ridiculous phrase). He hasn’t posted on his site, commented on mine, or answered emails seeking to find out what is going on. I am worried about Rick.

There’s JL Pagano, from Ireland, who once was a frequent visitor, who still has his site going, but doesn’t comment very often here, and there’s Texas Fred, who has a very active site, and will drop by once in a while or send an email, but apparently isn’t a regular visitor.

And then there’s Buffalo. He and I have disagreed on just about everything for nearly three years, both on the Web and in emails. I have developed a great respect and liking for Buff, despite his mistaken political philosophies. I got an email from Buff, telling me that he was going to stop publishing on “Buffalo’s Path,” but might start a new blog later on. That is a true disappointment, and I hope he continues to visit and keeps trying to set me straight.

So, I’ve lost a few valued blog friends recently, and that is an unpleasant aspect of the blogging experience. But, on the bright side, I still have Brad, Nuri, and Lord Nazh, Steve and Jules, as regulars, and (every so often) Fred, and I hope they don’t go away, for, as the song says, the times they are a-changin’.

Blogs, Bloggers, Blogging

September 28, 2004 was the first post on Observations, at least on the Blogger version of Observations. It wasn’t quite my first post on a blog of my own, but the earliest effort was abandoned pretty quickly, and I’m certain there was a good reason for doing that, I just don’t remember what it was.

Being not too far from the third anniversary of my widely unread scribblings, I have begun thinking back over those years, going back and reviewing the early posts and how the site has evolved. I note that I posted three columns/articles on Day 1 and one on Day 2. I note further that no one commented on any of those. On October there were two comments on a short piece titled, “Terrorists Getting Desperate?” that were removed by me, indicating that they were SPAM comments. The first actual comment came the next day on a post titled, “The Debate – First Reactions,” as the election neared. The post was signed “Anonymous,” but I know the poster, and later on he began to use the pen name “The Windjammer.”

The next real comment came from someone who identified himself as “h~” that took issue with my position on Iraq war protests. After that I had comments from Conservative White Chick, Huston (with whom I established a decent, though short-lived blog relationship), Buffalo, Mr. Paw, Kenna Amos and JL Pagano before amassing a fairly long list of people that came and went, and a few that still visit, like Nuri, Brad, Steve, Lord Nazh, jules, Winfred Mann, the Kashmiri Nomad, Texas Fred, and a few others that drop by less often such as Kat, Leo.

I really look forward to comments and place a high value on the ones I receive, using that as a guage of how the blog is doing, although I know that some readers won’t leave a comment.

Of all of those commenters, as loyal as some were and are, the comment on October 16 by Buffalo is quite significant, for it was the start of a blogging relationship that endures to this day. Buff and I have little in common and agree on even less, but we have maintained a cordial and mutually respectful blogging friendship through the years.

Blogs are interesting things. Mine has evolved through various incarnations in appearance, with changes in type style and color, and some HTML modifications, the addition of photographs and an occasional video, and the putting up and removing of content items, like the photograph in the header taken from a mountain top overlooking my hometown. At one point I posted a thought for the week, which is a feature from my own weekly newspaper from a few years ago, and I also used to put up a weekly Bible verse, a feature of both my great grandfather’s daily newspaper, and my weekly.

I had Google AdSense ads on the site, hoping to maybe make a little money. I learned that it takes a lot more time and effort to produce a site that attracts enough readers to make money than I had available, however.

I replaced the Blogger comment feature with Haloscan’s, because it has more features and fewer problems, I added Technorati tags, and joined a few traffic-building activities along the way. I still keep playing with the code, adding links and such when the spirit moves me to do so, and I guess I always will.

Periodically I’ll post a list of places where readers call home. It’s truly amazing all the different countries that readers of Observations live in, like Australia, Britain, Ireland, Thailand, Canada, Spain, Germany, Brazil, Portugal, Japan, Malaysia, Columbia, France, and, of course, the U.S., to name several.

Most of the folks that I met on Observations have moved on to other activities, having found blogging a temporary diversion. That’s too bad; if they’d hung around, I’d have a pretty healthy list of devoted readers (and commenters), but that’s the way it goes, I guess.

Like most of us, I have periods where the words just won’t come, or nothing moves me enough to write about it, and sometimes I get busy with life and abandon the site for a few days. But I plan to keep plugging away, hoping that a few people will like something they read here, or maybe learn something, or, best of all, be persuaded by something I have written.

Thanks to all of you who take the time to visit and participate in the discussion, and I hope you will continue to grace Observations with your presence.

Technorati Tags: America, Blogs, Journalism, Pleasure

This Blog is Rated PG

After receiving an email from Texas Fred pointing me to a site that rates blogs like movies and TV shows are rated, I visited the site and typed in the URL for Observations. This is the result:

This blog is rated PG – Parental Guidance Suggested.

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

dangerous (2x)

death (1x)

If only the raters were as strict with movies and TV shows.

In case anyone is interested in seeing how your blog is rated, go here.

Whence Come Readers?

I never cease to be amazed, or at least surprised, at the places where visitors to Observations live, work, or surf the Net from.

I haven’t posted a list in a while, so here is one, with the duplications (I hope) removed:

Arroyo Grande, California

Winnipeg, Manitoba

France Toulouse, Midi-Pyrenees

Pompano Beach, Florida

Madrid Spain

Bellingham, Washington

Cunningham, Kansas

Syracuse, New York

Solihull United Kingdom

Emeryville, California

Antioch, Tennessee

Mount Sinai, New York

Pompano Beach, Florida

East Elmhurst, New York

Mobile, Alabama

Cleveland, Ohio

Blue Point, New York

Rabat, Rabat-Sale Coventry

Syracuse, New York

Buffalo, New York

Anjomachi, Aich

Terrey Hills, New South Wales

Charleston, West Virginia

Seattle, Washington

Nampa, Idaho

Arlington, Virginia

Norfolk, Virginia

Houston, Texas

Wilmington, North Carolina

Cashel, Tipperary

Kenilworth, Warwickshire

East Elmhurst, New York

Plano, Texas

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Richmond, Virginia

Ranchi, Jharkhand

Mission Viejo, California

Cedar Falls, Iowa

Coudersport, Pennsylvania

Mobile, Alabama

Cauls, Cataluna

Kerrville, Texas

Adelaide, South Australia

Kangaroo Flat, South Australia

Kenilworth, Warwickshire

Aurora, Ontario

Tucson, Arizona

Blogger's Surprise

I had an interesting thing happen yesterday. At least it was interesting to me. I was surfing some new blogs and came across one--don't remember which one--that was expressing a measure of surprise and pride at its jump in the Technorati blog ratings level. The blog author was very pleased that her or his blog had made it into the top 100,000 blogs that Technorati rates. The piece pointed out that given the millions of blogs in existence that being in the top 100,000 is pretty noteworthy.

That reminded me that a blog I regularly visit, that of Kashmiri Nomad, had also referenced the Technorati rating. I have used Technorati tags off and on during my blogging "career," and I have seen the rating when I visit the Technorati site to ascertain whether it has responed to my update ping, but I hadn't ever given it much thought because my rating wasn't what I thought of as especially good. And since I lack the talent and am unable to devote the kind of time to Observations that is required to make it one of the widest read blogs, I really didn't pay much attention.

Researching the Technorati site revealed the fact that the service tracks more that 71 million blogs!!! Wow! I figured it only tracked a few million, those that were registered or that used the tag system. So, purely out of curiosity I took a look at my Technorati rating. Yesterday, it was 17,134! What a surprise!

Now, don't get me wrong: I realize that having the 17,134th highest rated blog isn't at all special, but I certainly was amazed that my humble and relatively sparsely read effort was even that high. I don't know how often Technorati re-rates blogs, but I have noticed that the rating fluctuates during the day. At one point, Observations was at 17,092, and today it's at 17,139.

So, check out Technorati to see where you are. You might be surprised, too.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Technorati, Blogs