I Got Bupkiss

I gotta start planning these posts out better.

Here it is, 1:45 pm EST, and I've got nothing I really have to say. Maybe I should start planning out my entries in advance. Up until now, I've basically winged it everyday, writing as the mood hit me, and about whatever struck my fancy. Sometimes I'd start thinking about what I was going to post the night before. It's a good way to lull yourself to sleep.

I could go to a schedule. You know, like have every Wednesday be Gadget and Gizmo Day, or something. To be honest, I do have another post coming up in that category. I've been working on it for a few hours today, researching things. It's prolly what got me thinking on planning ahead or scheduling posts. Heh.

I do have some eye candy for today that I totally neglected to put in yesterday's posy about teh cyute kitties. It is another "cat" I have owned since around 1988. It is a small, ceramic statuette of Oliver from Disney's Oliver & Company. I fell in love with the frisky, orange feline at first sight, and bought the little ceramic Oliver a few days after seeing the movie. No idea where I bought it. I'm thinking one of those old Hallmark stores that are still in some malls. He is one of the oldest things I own and sits perched on top of my computer desk. (Bonus points if you can correctly identify the partially visible yellow critter to Oliver's right)

Anyhow ...

Two weeks in and I've still not lost the desire to do this blog, which is a good thing. (Well, good for me, I dunno what sort of evil my odd and inane posts are inflicting upon you, my good readers.) I am still trying to find a style for my blog. Not so much in visual appearance; I'm fairly happy with the layout I use now. I still haven't found that little groove in my writing, that small click when something feels right.

In the beginning I was doing a definition of a word that pertained to whatever I was posting about that day. Wrestling the table code into Blogger's strict guidelines was tiresome. I gave that up pretty fast, though I still like the idea. I suppose the little parenthetical asides I occasionally sprinkle into my posts are a part of my style. I've always been a stream of consciousness type of writer.

One thing that I found amusing (and amazing) is that a few international visitors have come by. Admittedly, an extremely small proportion of the total amount of visitors, and none have returned, as of yet. (Raivynn's Roost, annoying the world for two weeks!) Yet, it is the spread of places which have visited that tickles me.

England and Canada do not surprise me; Germany, Indonesia, Uruguay, and Iran shocked the hell out of me. I'm wondering how these folk stumbled into the Roost, and why. None left comments (which are few enough, but they sure brighten a day to see one hehe). I'm thinking they could possibly be some sort of web spider crawling around and making note of what is out there for various search engines. Possibly, another search engine somehow drew them here by whatever arcane search parameters they used. Just a mystery I'll never unravel, I suppose.

You may be wondering how I get all this information of who comes by, when, what they looked at and such ...

It is because I'm psychic!

No, really, I use Google Analytics. It is a free service by Google (d'uh) that gives you more info than I could ever need for a simple, egoist blog like mine. It has all sorts of tracking stuff, much of it related to traffic and marketing. It would be better geared to help commercial sites that sell products and such, but I find a few goodies in the reports that I like. All you do is sign up, add some code to your webpage(s), and you're set!

The main reports I look at are referers (the domain the entry click came from), geo locations (where globally the vistor is from), visits and page views, and trifling things such as what browsers and resolutions are used in what percentages. It doesn't give any specifically linked information like IPs, or who is using what settings; just general aggragated info. I've got a huge freakin' ego that likes to be stroked, and peeking into this stuff does that. (Icky thought, is that like ego masturbation?)

Wow! A post with no point has turned into this long, rambling discourse of inanimate friends, ego stroking, and Big Brotherism ...

So, yeah ... um ... enjoy your day and remember ... I'll be watching yoooouuuuuuu! ~.^