Quotulatiousness

May 17, 2023

Posting will be variable for a little while …

Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

“Flooded Basement” by Perfect Homes is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

The morning QotD posts and the 2am videos will continue as normal, as they’re scheduled months in advance. Other posts will be as and when I get a chance (or the energy) to publish them. The reason: a flood.

Specifically, our sump pump gave up the ghost overnight on Sunday and I didn’t discover this until I walked down the basement stairs on Monday morning and stepped into about a foot of cold water on the basement floor. Our basement is on a few different levels, so the foot or so I stepped into implied there were at least two feet of water in some other areas of the basement. We called the plumber and our insurance agent as soon as I was able to shut off the water main to the house and get back upstairs.

Once the plumbers were able to get the sump pump back online temporarily, the water level in the basement began to drop, just as the clean-up crew were arriving by way of the insurance agent. Things have been hectic around here since then, but especially once the insurance company notified us that our first claim in nearly 40 years was declined, and we had to scramble to find ways to scrape up money to pay for the plumber and the clean-up crew’s efforts. (Unlike normal people, we don’t have a ready reserve of several thousand dollars just sitting there waiting for a random emergency to pop up.)

I don’t know how long it will take to get back to normal, so if you see just the QotD and 2am video posts for a while, you can safely assume I’m still busy with domestic issues.

Fortunately, when Victor moved out, he took most of his valued possessions with him … although he’s bound to discover things he left behind that he now wishes he’d taken with him. I know I’ve lost a small bookcase full of wine books, as they were in the small room we’ve been using as a wine cellar and that’s at the lowest point in the basement. The top shelf might have been above the high-water line, but I haven’t been able to check yet. The wines themselves will be fine, although the labels may be a bit loose.

My moribund model train collection will be thinned out, as a lot of the books, magazines, plans, and other perishable items were also down close to floor level. Everything was neatly boxed up, but those boxes will have deformed or disintegrated in the water, so sorting through everything is going to be a huge pain in the ass.

May 10, 2023

19th blogiversary

Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

19th anniversary celebration badge label in golden color
Image by starline on Freepik

Every year for what seems like a long time, I’ve been quietly mourning the “death of the blog”, which vanished from most peoples’ awareness as just one of the old fashioned things we used to do online before social media ate everything. And yet blogging isn’t really dead, it’s just mostly dead. The good folks at Substack figured out that there were enough good writers — and more importantly, people willing to pay money to read the work of those writers — who didn’t want to put up with bait-and-switch headlines, toxic auto-start video ads, and all the rest of the visual and audio garbage so many “mainstream” sites were extruding.

Unlike the many interesting writers on Substack, I’ve never really used my blog for much in the way of original writing, concentrating more on interesting stuff from others that I wanted to share … I guess that’s what most people started using social media for, until they realized that social media is really intended to hurl insults at those heretics who don’t agree with you 1,000% on every last detail of your political beliefs.

I used to post some rudimentary statistics about blog traffic, but it turned out that the antiquated plug-in I was relying on hadn’t been patched in several years and when it had had enough of gathering stats, it blowed up real good, taking the entire site offline for more than a day before I could get it back online. These days, the WordPress stats indicate a much smaller level of traffic, although the time visitors spend on the blog seems to be getting a bit longer.

Earlier anniversary postings:

Unfortunately, the first five years of postings — when I was merely a freeloading tenant on Jon P’s site … and eventually consuming some 90+% of his paid bandwidth and storage — aren’t accessible any more, at least I haven’t been able to get access for quite some time:

May 10, 2022

18th blogiversary

Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

Eighteen years ago, blogging was already “a thing” and everyone and their sainted mother was starting a blog. The availability of low-cost and even free blogging sites encouraged a lot of people to create a blog of their own and many of them quickly discovered that they didn’t have a lot to say after the first few dozen posts. About five years later, the supply of new blogs starting was trending well below the number of bloggers hanging up the keyboard and shuttering their sites. The rise of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter took even more attention away from what once was a thriving online community. Some old-time bloggers like Iowahawk made the transition to social media very naturally and these days his follower count on Twitter is quickly surpassing almost every major community in Iowa the United States: “Update: 219,350 followers, now the 103rd largest town in the USA #SuckItTacoma #YoureNextSanBernardino”

I noted last year that the staple phrase “Blogging is a stagnant backwater of the internet these days” is still pretty accurate but Substack continues to grow and attract really good writers to its platform. They’re very careful not to call it mere blogging, of course: blogging is tired and old-fashioned and they had to knap their own flint … so not like the cool kids at Substack.

Annual traffic statistics aren’t included in these annual posts any more because the plug-in I had been using since 2009 blew up spectacularly — knocking the site offline for more than 24 hours — so I no longer have anything like a continuous data series to draw on. Over the last few years, I was regularly clocking in between one and two million “hits” in a year, but as you’d expect a lot of those were bots rather than actual human visitors. I’ve seen a slight uptick in traffic from Twitter in the last few weeks, but not really enough to qualify as significant (perhaps the possible Elon Musk take-over has reduced the shadow bans so many conservative and libertarian accounts were subject to).

Earlier anniversary postings:

Unfortunately, the first five years of postings — when I was merely a freeloading tenant on Jon P’s site … and eventually consuming some 90+% of his paid bandwidth and storage — aren’t accessible any more, at least I haven’t been able to get access for quite some time:

May 10, 2021

Seventeen years of undetected crime blogging

Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

Last year, I said “Blogging may be a stagnant backwater of the internet these days” but something definitely changed since then as new platforms have blossomed, drawing many “mainstream” writers into blogging. They’re mostly careful not to call it blogging, of course. Mere “blogging” is tired and old-fashioned and so utterly Plebeian, so their shiny new Substack sites can’t be mere “blogs” … but if it walks like a blog and quacks like a blog …

I used to publish annual traffic statistics, but the plug-in I had been using since 2009 blew up spectacularly — knocking the site offline for more than 24 hours — so I no longer have anything like a continuous data series to draw on. Over the last few years, I was regularly clocking in between one and two million “hits” in a year, but as you’d expect a significant portion of those were automated bots rather than actual human beings. Other than visitors who come here from other blogs, most of my traffic these days comes by way of various social media sites like Gab and MeWe. I used to get a fair number of visits from Twitter, but my Twitter traffic has been dwindling down to almost nothing in recent years (perhaps reflecting the decreasing diversity of viewpoints allowed on that platform).

Earlier anniversary postings:

Unfortunately, the first five years of postings — when I was merely a freeloading tenant on Jon P’s site … and eventually consuming some 90+% of his paid bandwidth and storage — aren’t accessible any more, at least I haven’t been able to get access for quite some time:

May 10, 2020

Quotulatiousness at sixteen

Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

Blogging may be a stagnant backwater of the internet these days, but some of us have been polluting the pool with our blog posts for a long time … sixteen years in my particular case. I used to publish annual traffic figures, but the statistics plug-in I had been using since 2009 blew up spectacularly and I no longer have anything like a continuous series to point to. Over the last few years, I was regularly clocking in between one and two million “hits” in a year, but a significant portion of those were bots rather than actual human beings. As the years have gone by, I’ve actually written less and less for the blog, as the effort involved didn’t seem to generate much interest or reaction (the regular visitors to my comment section are a very small, select, elite crew … thanks, guys!)

Earlier anniversary postings:

Unfortunately, the first five years of postings — when I was merely a freeloading tenant on Jon P’s site … and eventually consuming some 90+% of his paid bandwidth and storage — don’t seem to be accessible any more, at least I haven’t been able to get access for quite some time:

May 10, 2019

Fifteen years of Quotulatiousness!

Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

I’m not one of the original wave of bloggers, but I have been keeping this blog going pretty much continuously since 10 May 2004, which I think is pretty good going. If nothing else, I usually have a month of QotD entries scheduled along with daily 2:00am videos, so if I can’t get online for whatever reason, there’s at least a minimum of blog activity for regular visitors. Those visitors seem to be holding to the same rough volume as the last few years: just over 900,000 non-bot hits so far, which points to a likely two million+ hits by the end of December. Not too shabby for a very off-the-beaten-track blog after 15 years.

Earlier anniversary postings:

Unfortunately, the first five years of postings — when I was merely a freeloading tenant on Jon P’s site … and eventually consuming some 90+% of his paid bandwidth and storage — don’t seem to be accessible any more, at least I haven’t been able to get access for quite some time:

  • (Very belated) Fifth anniversary
  • (Premature) Fourth anniversary (a few days later, I welcomed my 150,000th visitor)
  • Third anniversary
  • (Belated) Second anniversary
  • First anniversary
  • January 1, 2019

    Blog traffic in 2018

    Filed under: Administrivia, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

    As I try to remember to do every New Year, here’s a snapshot of the blog statistics gathered for me by the CyStats WordPress plug-in from 1 January to mid-morning 31 December (click to embiggenate):

    As you can tell if you compare this to last year, CyStats have updated their UI so that relevant bits aren’t quite as easy to screencap.

    Overall, the numbers are down a bit from 2017, but I still feel it’s worthwhile to carry on…

    May 10, 2018

    Fourteenth blogiversary

    Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

    How time flies! It’s been fourteen years since my friend and then-co-worker Jon offered me a “blog” on his MovableType website (he also offered me a template that might have been more suitable to a porn site — black and red background, flaming letters in the title, it might even have had an embedded 70s porn music track — but that’s another story). By 2009, my blog was consuming almost all of his monthly bandwidth (yes, kids, back in those days bandwidth wasn’t “too cheap to meter” … it cost money to shift those bits), so I set up my own WordPress installation at HostGator and have been blogging here since then.

    Blogs aren’t as relevant today as they were a decade-and-a-half ago — social media in general and Facebook in particular having carved away much of the audience — but for the first time since 2014 my annual traffic went up substantially in 2017 (going from over 1.7 million to 2.44 million — 2,446,311 unique visits according to my WordPress stats page, from a total of 3,619,782 hits). Last year, I mentioned that I’d been adding a minimum of one video per day (in the 2am slot, after the QotD entry scheduled for 1am) and between that and posting links to blog entries on Gab.ai, the spike in traffic seems to indicate it was the right decision.

    Earlier anniversary postings:

    January 1, 2018

    Blog traffic in 2017

    Filed under: Administrivia, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

    The annual statistics update on Quotulatiousness from January 1st through December 31st, 2017. The numbers will be a couple of thousand short of the full year, as I did the screen captures mid-morning on the 31st.

    I stopped paying much attention to the blog stats years ago, but the jump in traffic from 2016 to 2017 is amazing! Going from a stable ~1.7 million visits per year to nearly 2.5 million last year is quite unexpected. That’s getting up toward the region where it might seem to make sense to try to monetize the blog … but I tried doing the Amazon affiliate thing earlier this year, and it generated exactly $0.00 in revenue for Amazon, and I got my full share of that revenue (as Jayne put it: “Let’s see, let me do the math: 10 per cent of nothing is, … (mumble) carry the zero …(mumble) … “)

    May 10, 2017

    And another blogiversary rolls past

    Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

    Blogs aren’t as relevant today as they were a decade ago, but I’m still recording over 1.7 million hits every year (1,701,503 according to my WordPress stats page, which translates into 1,287,505 unique visitors). Those numbers are down a bit from 2014, which is still my peak year for overall traffic, when 1,766,068 visits were logged (2015 was down to 1,741,859, but it was the first decline in traffic year-over-year since I started blogging in May 2004).

    While I’ve (almost) always had a daily quote of the day post, in the last few months, I’ve been adding a video of the day as well — I know a lot of people are more visually oriented than I am, so I’m trying to avoid the “wall of text” look that the blog sometimes gets when there’s a lot of written material unrelieved by graphics, photographs, or videos. Am I striking the right balance for you, the readers? Should I be scraping the Wikimedia archives for more graphics to spice up the postings visually?

    Earlier anniversary postings:

    January 1, 2017

    Blog traffic in 2016

    Filed under: Administrivia, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

    The annual statistics update on traffic to Quotulatiousness from January 1st through December 31st, 2016. Overall, the traffic dropped slightly from 2015, which in turn was down a bit from the peak traffic year of 2014:


    Over eight and a half million hits. That’s a pretty good number for an obscure Canadian blog.


    The final count of visitors to the blog will be about 2,500-3,500 higher, as I did the screen captures at around 10:30 in the morning.

    May 10, 2016

    Twelfth blogiversary

    Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

    From blogs being “teh new hotness” in the early 2000s they’ve evolved (or devolved, if you prefer) into a much quieter backwater of the internet — still relevant (at least to some), but no longer the big thing online. I’ve been forced to reduce the pace of postings since my health issues right before the new year, and I doubt it’ll return to those heady days of 5-6 new entries every weekday. In spite of that, I still get a fair bit of regular traffic here (yesterday was an unexpectedly busy day with 9,525 recorded visits), but overall traffic to the blog looks to have peaked in 2014, when 1,766,068 visits were logged (last year was down only a bit at 1,741,859, but it was the first decline in traffic year-over-year since I started blogging in 2004).

    Earlier anniversary postings:

    February 24, 2016

    Blogging will continue to light for a few days at least

    Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:21

    As you may have noticed from a post the other day, we’ve just moved into our new-yet-quite-old house and are up to our armpits in packed boxes and not yet properly set-up furniture and “things”. It will take a while for us to clear paths through the debris, so blogging will be something I neglect for most of the day and perhaps post something a bit later. The QotD posts are queued for at least a week in advance, so there’ll be something to see each morning…

    February 23, 2016

    First the move, then the unpacking 

    Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:22
     

    The boxes of books in my new office

     

    January 8, 2016

    Home again, home again, jiggety-jig

    Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 16:36

    I’m finally home again from the hospital. It was, by far, the longest hospital stay of my life (the previous being two days when I got my tonsils out at age 11 or so). Just the walk from the ward down to the parking garage left me feeling I’d put in a full day’s work down in the mines. Nearly two weeks of pretty much no physical activity leaves a mark. On the bright side, I lost ten pounds or so … but now I’ve got a bunch of pills I’ll need to take at various points during the day. Plus the joy of trying to find a doctor to provide after-care and monitoring (there may be parts of the GTA where doctors accepting new patients are plentiful, but Durham Region isn’t one of them).

    Blogging will probably continue to be below normal volume, but I should manage a bit more than just the auto-posted QotD entries from now on.

    Thanks again to those of you who’ve contacted me through various channels. Your words of support were very welcome.

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