14 February 2010 (Sunday) - Hello World!!!

Over the last year or so I have met so many people who, despite never having met me before, feel they know me quite well because they have seen their friends reading my blog, and they have started reading it themselves.

I have quite a few friends who I meet far too infrequently who, when we meet, comment on what I’ve been up to. How on earth do they know what I’ve been doing?

I write it here, and they read it. As do several friends and relatives across the world who keep up to date with what I get up to via my ramblings.

This blog has developed quite a life of its own, and during the last week, in a moment of curiosity I’ve tried out some tracking software. Whilst the blog’s hit counter gave me an idea of where in the world my loyal readers live, the scale of the map isn’t all it might be. So, bearing in mind that this software was free, I thought I’d plug it in and see if I could get a better resolution on my loyal readership. I expect (like so much else on the Internet) I shall lose interest in this toy fairly soon, but this morning whilst eating my breakfast I didn’t try to kiss people in YoVille. Instead I booted up the new software and clicked the stats button. I thought it made interesting reading and today, loyal readers, I’ll give a little insight into who else reads this nonsense with you.

Excluding RSS feeds, the blog is visited about a thousand times each month. Which is just over thirty times every day.

Over the last week eighty percent of people visiting used Windows as their operating system, fifteen percent were on Macs, some used their iPhone and there are two people who used Linux. (I think I know who one of you are!)

Did you know that of the last hundred people to visit my blog (up to 9am this morning), only sixty of my loyal readers were from people in the UK. Twenty four were from Canada, and eight were from the USA. And there have been odd hits from Belgium, Qatar, India and Malaysia.

Of these last hundred people who’ve read the blog, I know that someone in Milwaukee has regularly tuned in using a Firefox 3.5 browser running on Windows Vista. As has someone in Stony Plain in Alberta. Three of my most recent visitors are in Brighton, all using different browsers (Safari, IE7 and Firefox). There are even some people who wander all over the UK, keeping up to date on their iPhones. I can guess at who the people in Maidstone, Crowborough, Horsham and Kings Lynn are. But I am stumped as to the identity of my loyal readers in Liverpool, Rochdale and Flintshire. Do let me know who you are – you three have got guessing.

And so: on with my life... Last Sunday I mentioned that I’d started the annual painting the fence ritual. I had intended to carry on with it during the week, but the snow put paid to that idea. It was probably too cold for fence painting today, but I carried on with it anyway. I’ve got all the trellises painted green now, and about half of the tops of the fence panels are done too. I painted for an hour, but it was a bit chilly, so I’ll carry on another time. I’ve a few tops of panels to finish, and then I think that will do for this year. The fences were first painted in 2007, and I’ve done them again every year since then. They’ll do till next year.

I then returned to Tesco. Three weeks ago I bought a memory card to go with a digital photo frame for my Dad’s birthday. The card didn’t work. Nor did it’s replacement, or that one’s replacement. So today I went to get a refund. I’ve moaned about the staff in Tesco recently. Today they fully met my expectations – the staff were (as usual) utterly disinterested.

Whilst we were out we also went to WyeVale in Ham Street. Which killed an hour or so. And home where I fell asleep in front of NeverWinter, YoVille and various DVDs.

Sundays are such dull days…