The last two weeks have been long indeed, and it hit me tonight that I’m tired, and that I really need to get away from the computer. My back is doing extremely well, and I want to get out for a nice long, gentle hike. There’s also an Art Deco neighborhood somewhere in St. Lou I want to explore, and a thousand towns I haven’t seen yet.
However, before I take off for a long weekend, tonight I spent some time with my web server logs, checking out who’s visting, and what they’re looking at. Sometimes, if you don’t fixate on ‘popularity’, this can be a bit of fun.
For instance, I was inundated this week from people reaching my site while looking for directions in how to drive in ice and snow. Go ahead and do a search in Google on the words ‘how to drive in ice and snow’ and you’ll see why I had such a giggle from this one. I hope I don’t get sued.
Backtrack is very popular, which pleased me quite a bit. I can see that Talkback looks to match it, though I think that could be due to the novelty. If you pay me a dollar, I’ll tell you the most popular Backtracked sites and Talkbacked webloggers.
“Parable of the Languages” is still my most popular article, even beating out “How to Drive in Ice and Snow”. Will you forgive me if I get a little boost at how well this has done? Especially this week, seeing the numbers and the continued popularity has been balm for a battered writer’s soul. I need to post the sequel, “Parable of the Languages: The Markup Strike Back”, but I’m hesitant — you know what happens with sequels.
Anyway, new college referrals for Parable:
Swinborne University in Australia
UMBC in Maryland
The C# book chapters are surprisingly popular. Interest in C# must be picking up. I need to finish this online book. At the least, it won’t be the hassle, headache, and grief that Practical RDF has been.
My most popular page is http://burningbird.net/burningbird.rdf. Not surprising, that. My second most popular page is mt-comments.cgi. No surprise there, either. Talk talk talk, that’s us. Can’t shut us up for love nor money.
I had a visitor from Tuvalu. Hi!
Then there’s my old friends, the cryptozoologists. In case you’re curious, cyrptozoology is the study of legendary animals thought to be real, or extinct animals thought still to be alive. The practitioners call it “The Study of Hidden Animals”. What animals? Bigfoot, Nessie, and the Tasmanian Tiger to name a few. I connected up with the cryptozoology folks when I was doing research for the “Tale of Two Monsters” articles. (Research. That’s what you don’t do when you weblog.)
I still get several hits for the articles, primarily from this page. I used to get referrals from Loren Coleman, but he doesn’t have his links page anymore.
Loren Coleman is one of the leading cryptozoologists, and author of several books. I have an autographed copy of his book on Tom Slick, which is now out of print. In fact, remind me to tell you the story about Tom Slick, the Yeti, the Dali Lama, and the actor Nicolas Cage that Loren told me in emails long ago.
Why did I write an article about cryptozoology? Why not? Isn’t it fun sometimes just to let your fancy roam? Explore for the sheer joy of the exploration? So if any of you have questions about Champ, Ogopogo, or the Mothman, holler.
That wraps up my walk on vanity lane. Have a fun weekend my gang o’ friends.