Spam, page views, Twitter, etc.

I have received a little flurry of comments today which were classified by akismet as spam and none of which was in any way relevant to the subject of the post to it was directed. So I have deleted all of them. Two of them, however, contained intelligible messages and so, just in case they weren’t actually spam, I propose to reply here.
To the person who complimented me on the choice of title for this blog, thank you. To the person who wanted to know how to connect to this blog using RSS – which seemed to be the same author as the previous comment but coming from a different domain – I am sorry but I cannot help as I have no idea. I don’t understand RSS or how to use it.
By the way, despite my misgivings of a few weeks ago I have not abandoned entirely my use of Alphainventions and Condron for promoting this blog. There is no doubt that they encourage page views, if nothing else, and if that produces a few more visitors who stop to comment, so much the better.
I have since found another way to promote the blog – Twitter. You must have heard of it by now. It is the “microblogging” service which allows posts (or in Twitterspeak, “updates” or  “tweets”) of up to 140 characters. If that seems a bit limiting, actually it is quite a fun challenge and you soon get used to it. The idea is to find other “twits”, “tweeters” oe “tweeple” (think about it!) with similar interests and to “follow” them. Others in turn will choose to “follow” you. Thus you become part of a network of people who hold conversations by exchanging tweets. The people and organisations that I am following have included various links in their tweets that, quite frequently, have directed me to interesting newspaper and magazine articles and to broadcasts and video clips that I would have missed. It has been very worthwhile although it takes a little time to get used to it at first and I have a lot to learn yet.. You can send tweets to everyone on Twitter or direct them towards specific fellow tweeters, or send direct to other tweeters but privately.  The service is free on your PC or laptop but you can also use it on your mobile phone. I don’t know about this aspect but suspect that it could become expensive, depending on what sort of contract you have with your provider,  as tweets are treated, in effect, as text messages.
How do I promote the blog on Twitter? Simply by writing a tweet or two, including the domain name of this blog, each time I write a new post, especially if the post is on a topic that is a current news item such as The Gurkha Justice Campaign or the petition in support of the whistleblowing nurse.
I hasten to add that Twitter is not a substiture for a WordPress  blog. Twitter is a totally different animal. Come to that, nothing else is a substitute for a WordPress blog either, judging by the comments that follow each time WordPress introduce a new feature.

Twitter, the busker and the “lost generation”

 I have been signed up to Twitter for almost two months and it has been both entertaining and informative. This evening I spent some time sorting out a small pile of sheet music and it reminded me to look on Twitter for others with similar musical interests. This led me to various online stories and I couldn’t resist including links to two of them here. The first is about musical education in UK schools and it reminded me how lucky I had been. The second is about that brilliant violinist, Joshua Bell and I won’t say any more in case I spoil the story.

Alphainventions – a conclusion shortly

It is late in the evening of March 18th and I have received no reply to my email to Alphainventions dated March 14th and no reply (from Alphainventions) to my comment on their site on March 16th. It doesn’t look as if a reply will be forthcoming so I have removed the Alpha link from my blogroll. This is because, first, I cannot recommend a site whose webmaster doesn’t appear to have the basic good manners (let alone the PR savvy) to reply to a perfectly reasonable question and, secondly, the absence of a reply, in conjunction with posts and comments by several other bloggers on blogs and forums that I have read, reinforces my suspicion that Alpha’s webmaster would rather not discuss the nature of my blog’s recent statistics because he doesn’t want me (or anyone else) to know the whole truth.
On another topic, thanks to Peter Salmon’s site I have discovered SiteMeter and have decided to give it a try. It compiles statistics relating to site visitors, page views etc. and looks as if it could be useful. I am hoping that WordPress and SiteMeter stats might complement each other and enable a more realistic interpretation of what is happening than either of them alone. I have also added Feedjit to this blog because it is interesting to see, in real time, where visitors are coming from and when.
I may well continue to test Alphainventions for a while to see whether, in conjunction with the new additions to my blog, I can arrive at any clearer conclusions about the seemingly inflated statistics – if they won’t tell me what their game is then I will have to find out for myself.

Alphainventions -v- Clustrmap

I started this blog in 2007 but did little with it until March 2008. Clustrmap was added in April 2008 and was counting visits to the site from April 14th. By the time Clustrmap started counting I had accumulated no more than 200 views in my WordPress stats. Therefore, I expected Clustrmap’s “visits” and WordPress stats “views” to increase at the same rate from April 14th, 2008 but they didn’t. A few days ago, before all ths excitement about Alphainventions started, Clustrmap had counted around 5,000 visits, while my WordPress stats said 8,000. It seems that they have been  counting different things – so what’s the difference?
I now await another automatic update from Clustrmap to see what it has made of the weekend views/visitors, which have amounted to approximately 12,000 according to WordPress.
As I write this it is 10.15pm on Sunday and, so far today, there have been 3,732 views according to WordPress, of which 3,500 came before 10am. According to my WordPress stats only 2,811 views were referred by Alphainventions. This is a handsome figure by any standards, especially on a Sunday when things are quiet in the blogospere (at least in my experience). But it means that I have had 921 views which are not accounted for in  my stats – yes, they are included in the daily total etc. but I have no idea where they came from!
It gets “curiouser and curiouser” and I wonder whether any of these statistics from any of these sources mean anything at all.

More (and more) Alphainventions

Should I be excited, delighted, elated or just plain fed up? I don’t know.
Yesterday, almost exactly 24 hours ago, I published the post about Money for Old Cars and went to the Alphainventions site straight afterwards to do the business there, as described in my previous  post. Normally, by doing that, I could expect to get perhaps 40-60 additional views at this blog over the following 24 hours. Yesterday was different. Within about an hour I had 200 views, which reminded me that I had not yet written a post about Alphainventions though I had been using their service (when I remembered) for some time.
So I wrote and published the post there and then, again visiting the Alphainventions site afterwards to follow the usual procedure. During the next hour, up to midnight, a further 200 views were added to my total. Naturally I was pleased about all those views and hoped that some of the “visitors” would become regulars. Beyond that, I thought no more about it and went to bed.
Imagine my surprise when the numbers of views were increasing still, and into the thousands, when I looked this morning. Now, however, I was not so happy.
I have been blogging more or less regularly, but not especially frequently, for about a year. In that time my total views had arrived at 8,000, there were 110 posts, and 375 approved comments.  That was 24 hours ago. I now have 3 more posts (including this one), 2 additional comments (one from a new visitor) and, wait for it…    … 15,303 views.
What I would like to know is, why did well over 7,000 views produce only one comment? It doesn’t make sense. What are these “views”? Are they real people just like my regular visitors? Or did that amazing increase in views include some WWW wizardry of a sort that I don’t begin to understand (like “pings” and “RSS feeds” and the like) but which is not real visitors to the site at all?
I have emailed Alphainventions requesting an explanation. I hope to receive a reply soon and until then I will reserve judgement.

Alphainventions.com

I have no idea how or why alphainventions.com do what they do but I know how it affects my blog and it has therefore earned a mention here.
So far as I can work out the idea is that, as soon as you have published a new post, you should click across to Alphainventions and fill in a couple of boxes. As a result of this your blog will join a short list of others that will be displayed, one after another, in their front page until displaced by still more bloggers doing the same thing. The net result is that you will get a noticeable increase in visitor numbers to your blog.
On arriving at the Alphainventions website it is necessary to wait for about a minute while the “My Blog” box near the top of the page prepares for you. When it display http:// you should fill in the rest of your blog’s address. Then select a category in the next box to the right (a drop-down menu) – choosing one that is relevant to your new post, then click on the button (next right) “Notify readers about my blog” and on a couple of pop-up menus that follow. That is all I have done so far. On the days on which I have followed this procedure, I estimate that my visitors have increased by anything from 20-60 over what I would have expected without help from Alphainventions. I hope that some of them will become regular visitors – that’s what blogging is all about after all.
I have yet to look further into Alphainventions. Perhaps it is possible to pay for longer periods of “exposure” and it may well be a viable proposition for those running business websites. So far I am happy to benefit from the free service and to spread the word about Alphainventions in return. This is not a recommendation but if, like me, you like what it can do for your site, why not give it a go?

Which widgets do you think are essential?

I was confused. It’s not unusual. When I wrote a few days ago about making use of more pages in this blog, I was mistaken about what is and is not possible in a WordPress blog. My idea was to start separate pages for cycling, painting, and other topics and to put relevant posts on those pages. This is not only impossible but also unnecessary. Listing posts under different topics is what “categories” is for and I have plenty of categories already, as listed in the righthand column of this screen. If anyone wants to see only the cycling posts, and ignore everything else, all they have to do is click on the cycling category.
Another detail that was bothering me was that I was building a very long list of links in the righthand column. I do not want too many links because few visitors are going to visit all of them and, though all the other blogs concerned are, or have been, very interesting, I do not have enough time to visit them all with the regularity that they deserve.  So again I have pruned a few links and replaced about half of them with new ones.  I have also revised the link categories, deleting (among others) “other interesting blogs” but adding some blogs from there to the “A list” which is much higher up the page where they should be seen more easily.
It is, as they say these days, a “Work In Progress”. Do I need to list the most recent posts? Does Clustrmap serve any useful purpose now that it is getting a bit crowded? Do I want my Flickr photos here?
I should run a poll, except that I haven’t worked out how to do it! Instead I’ll ask for your comments. Which widgets do you consider essential in a blog, and in what order, starting from the top of the column?

Blog Spring Clean

I think it is time for a little reorganisation within this blog. I am going to experiment for a while, putting broad topics on different pages, perhaps with separate pages of pictures and a dedicated page for links. The blogroll needs sorting, with a very few links to be deleted. Might change the theme so that the home page appears less cluttered, especially if it is possible to put all the links, etc. on a separate page. We’ll see. In the meantime if anyone cares to offer advice (especially on the wisdom, or otherwise, of banishing the blogroll links to a separate page) it will be very welcome.

A fresh start? We’ll see.

To post or not to post? That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler to woffle on interminably about nothing of any consequence or whether to wait until there is a story to tell, however brief, and preferably with pictures.

During the past couple of months I haven’t been anywhere and, worse still, I haven’t done anything that I imagine would be particularly interesting to readers of this blog. So I did not post for a few weeks though I continued to tour all my links at least every few days.

Autumn 08 was pretty miserable so far as I was concerned. It was a rather grey period in more senses that one as the days became shorter and colder. I have rarely caught colds in the past but made up for this in mid-September when I caught a cold which lasted longer than usual and then, with a few days off between each, was succeeded by all it’s cousins right through until early December. I might have kept cycling through the coughs, sneezes and runny noses and even despite the persistent tiredness but I have yet to figure out how to keep the legs going when the lungs just don’t want to know. So cycling was off the agenda and with it the exercise that was keeping the weight under some sort of control and, of course, the opportunity to see new parts of the neighbourhood, take pictures, and bore everybody silly by posting about it.

The vandal attacks on my car (about which I posted here and here) occurred during this period and did nothing for my sense of humour but I am hoping that they were isolated incidents rather than the beginning of a trend.

I gave up trying to paint when good daylight became a bit scarce some weeks before Christmas. I simply cannot cope with colour mixing in anything other than good daylight so it was better to stop completely and wait for conditions to improve, than to struggle on and become discouraged. I did manage a recognisable (but unfinished) self-portrait before I stopped painting. Mind you, it made me look rather angry (maybe I was!) and if my actual colours were anything like those in the portrait I don’t think the wonders of modern medicine could do much for me. That is not how I want to paint portraits.

Other interests have occupied the spaces vacated by cycling and painting and they might get a mention in this blog before long. For example, in the family history I have reviewed and re-organised most of the information gathered so far to help identify those lines of enquiry that need more work. Regular visitors may recall that I bought myself a guitar a few months ago and it has since kept me busy for many hours trying to see the logic (if any) in the standard guitar tuning and also trying to memorise a few scales and easily executed chords (“executed” being quite often a remarkably apt decsription judging by the sound) and even a few simple tunes.

And I have started reading books again or, to be more exact, buying and reading books that I have not seen before. My theme at the moment is animals, how they see and respond to the world and to us and what makes them tick. I have just finished reading “Animals in Translation” by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson. Temple Grandin is a respected authority on animal bahaviour in the USA. She also suffers from autism, which has given her particular insights into animal behaviour because, like autistic people, animals see the world through pictures and in much greater detail than we so-called “normal” folks. To my way of thinking this is one of those exceptional, landmark books in the same league as “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson. It should be read by anyone with an interest in animals (it was available from Amazon when I looked recently). 

The book that I am reading at present  is “Learning Their Language” by Marta Williams. It is about intuitive communication with animals and nature and I am keeping an open mind on this one while finding it fascinating.

It is fun being retired and able to do pretty much as I please, while wondering how I ever found the time to go to work. However, all this self-indulgent hobby activity is all very well but I feel the need to do something (with part of my time anyway) that will have a useful end product. As yet I do not know what that wil be but I am working on it.

More progress at last

At last we seem to be making noticeable progress in getting rid of some of the surplus “stuff” that we brought with us from our much larger previous house eleven months ago. If this sounds a bit trivial, believe me it is not. There is a world of difference between feeling that one is getting on top of a problem, and the reverse – and it has been the reverse for far longer than I have liked or intended. As so often happens, the old familiar strategy has worked – breaking the problem down into manageable lumps, then applying much patience (I’m not known for patience!) and application, tackling one lump at a time until the light appears at the end of the tunnel.
Actually, little has changed in the house itself since we finished upgrading our kitchen but there is now some space to spare in our garage which will soon be useful when I have things to make, repair or paint – all those jobs for which indoor space is preferred but not in the actual house.
Now that the season for cutting down trees has arrived, ten small trees have been removed, clearing space for the Head Gardener to get excited about as she now has scope for more plants. Nine of them were Leylandii, neither use not ornament and certainly put of place in a small garden. With other tree trimming work I reckon that the whole job would have taken me at least two days but I would have been unable to remove the foliage from the premises. Gardening contractors did the job in about three hours including clearing up very thoroughly. They weren’t cheap but they were worth every penny for the hassle they saved me.
Unfortunately cycling has taken a back seat for three weeks now but I really have been busy with other things that have competed for the daylight hours. I have a short cycle trip in mind for some time in the next few days, weather permitting!
Now my dear wife has started blogging, taken to it like a duck to water if you ask me. By way of encouragement I gave her a shiny new laptop (slightly better than mine actually – how did I manage that!) to replace a somewhat asthmatic old PC that was never very good. Despite starting to use computers all those years ago when Sir Alan Sugar launched the Amstrad PCW my wife remains convinced that each machine contains a malicious little man who is determined to catch her out and undermine her careful work at every opportunity. Even so, she is doing very well with the laptop but have you noticed something? Despite my 35 years of spoiling her rotten, how does she refer to me when writing her posts? “Him indoors”, that’s what she calls me. I ask you! Women! But I have the answer. From now on I shall refer to her as “My first wife”. That should do it!
Yesterday the WordPress stats indicated that this blog had just exceeded 5,000 views. So my thanks to all who have visited and commented and especially my regular visitors who, like friends, put up with my occasional rants yet still come back again. Long may we carry on blogging.