{miscellaneous} – Page 5

Two steps forward, two steps back

After less than a week of stability I again find myself without a functioning phone line. The company responsible assures me that it will be repaired by June 2nd. I’ve been rewatching Deadwood recently so rather than pen a useless rant you may imagine me fulminating à la Al Swearengen. Service may be restored sooner than the 2nd, of course (although knowing BT I wouldn’t bet on it), so stay tuned. Again.

Update: Phone line is back again so normal service will resume.

Hiatus

Ho hum. Internet problems here mean posting will be sporadic for the next few days. My apologies. In the meantime the archive feature has been activated to bring up posts from the past. Stay tuned.

Update: Still contending with a week of All The Technical Problems, not only internet-related but things like my main work computer throwing kernel panics like they’re going out of fashion. Consequently I’ve been rather preoccupied while I attempt to get back to the usual operational status and do important things like attend to deadlines. It’ll still be a few more days before there’s further activity here, I’m afraid. Stay tuned.

Update 2: UK residents will tell you that the iniquities of British Telecom are like Walt Whitman’s contradictions: vast and multitudinous. All being well, however, normal service should be resumed here on the 20th.

Eight

Dharmacakra in the Sun temple, Odisha, India.

Celebrating eight years of interests, obsessions and passing enthusiasms. These days WordPress conveniently prepares a page of stats at the end of each year, and since I generally use the blog anniversary to record the posts of interest this is how things worked out over the past year:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 1,000,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 43 days for that many people to see it.

The busiest day of the year was February 12th with 6,374 views. The most popular post that day was The gay artists archive.

This was more than a million fewer visits than last year. Nothing to do with me as far as I can tell. I read somewhere that Google had tweaked their algorithms which may have resulted in a fall of traffic. I’ve also noticed a lot less comment spam in the past year, something you seldom see at the front end thanks to filters.

These are the posts that got the most views in 2013:
1 The art of NoBeast June 2007
2 The art of Takato Yamamoto June 2007
3 Phallic casts May 2011
4 The art of Oliver Frey July 2009
5 Magicians September 2013

Some of your most popular posts were written before 2013. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.

Okay, WP! Everyone is always after the erotic stuff. No surprise there although there was less of it in last year’s top five.

That’s 210 countries in all! Most visitors came from The United States. The United Kingdom & France were not far behind.

As always, my thanks to all those blue countries for reading and commenting. Here’s Neu! playing After Eight.

This Is Sand

Several hours wasted today trying to root out a computer problem so I’ve little to offer apart from this polychrome sand game. Have fun.

Behold the spam

Via Vintage Ad Browser.

Thanks to the very efficient WordPress spam filter readers here seldom see any spam comments but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any hitting the site. This blog receives an average of around 1,200 a day, sometimes more on those occasions when some algorithm out in the Deep Web turns its Sauron-gaze this way. The programs that post these things occasionally misfire (or are simply badly written) so you find things in the spam list that weren’t meant to be seen in the wild. Dangerous Minds spotted an example earlier this week, and I found another today, mine being a list of garbled “inspirational” quotes that must have been translated to a foreign language then translated back to English. Spam comments are a pain but since they’re auto-generated they’re often funny or simply strange for the ways they mangle the language. A few choice examples follow. There was a lot more of this!

This stupid guy imagine using thin thoughts and consult with wide mouth.
—Charlie Face

Commonsense isn’t really all of that popular.
—Voltaire

Resist much. Follow tiny.
—Walt Whitman

Should you communicate comprehend, get just one feet inside stirrup.
—Turkish proverb

When great modifications take place ever, as soon as good guidelines are involved, usually the majority is inappropriate.
—Eugene Sixth v. Debs

That which can be wrecked from the real truth ought to be.
—P. Chemical. Hodgell

When Christ ended up the following, there is something however definitely not always be: any Roscoe.
—Mark Twain

In no way characteristic for you to malice that which can be properly discussed by simply silliness.
—Hanlon’s electric shaver

Wizard might have it is restrictions, although stupidity isn’t therefore equipment.
—Elbert Hubbard

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