Blog Readership....Explained

So this explains why I have so few readers. And I thought it was just because I do such a crappy blog !

clipped from blindcopy.blogspot.com

The real reason why no one reads your (my) blog.

Ever wonder why the traffic to your blog is so terrible? I too am concerned about increasing my readership, so I decided to gather some information to help me decipher why my traffic sucks.

What I found wasn’t encouraging.

Consider the following facts:

There are approximately 6.5 billion people in the world.

Only 16%of the world’s population (1 billion people) have internet access.

16% of the world’s population is illiterate, which leaves only 840 million readers.

Of that, only 20% of the world’s population speaks English, leaving 168 million readers.

Only 30% of internet users read blogs, leaving 50 million readers.

50 million people, sounds like a lot right? Wrong!

Technorati is currently tracking around 50 million blogs.

That’s pretty simple math, 50 million blogs for 50 million readers.

Therefore, with an average of only 1 reader per blog, then who’s reading your blog?

That’s right, just you. Depressing, ain’t it?

Jupiter Flyby: NASA's Pluto Probe Set for Gas Giant Rendezvous

(Reprinted from Space.com)

Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, is about to welcome a robotic visitor.

NASA’s New Horizons probe will make its closest pass by the gas giant at about 12:45 a.m. EST (0545 GMT) Wednesday in a sort of cosmic stopover on its long trek to distant Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. The planetary flyby comes just 13 months after New Horizons’ launch, with the probe hurtling through space at about 47,000 miles per hour (75,639 kph) on what NASA is billing as its fastest mission to solar system’s edge.

How I wish I could have stowed away on this spacecraft and gone along on its journey

....although it might have been a bit cramped as the New Horizons probe is pretty small.

Videos Of The Week

WARNING: This next video contains GRAPHIC WAR IMAGES !

A Simple Act Of Courage

Sometimes what seems to be a simple action can be an incredible act of bravery. That's what I thought when I saw the following story at Fridae.com. In China five lesbians and one gay man
stood on a busy street giving out leaflets calling for equal rights for gay people. This in a country not exactly known for it's willingness to allow any sort of dissent or openness to ideas that conflict with the government's views. China censors all incoming internet traffic to keep unwanted opinions away from the people.
In such an environment, I think these six people displayed great courage in undertaking this simple action in their effort to have their voices heard.

Here's an excerpt from the article....click the title above to visit Fridae.com for the whole story.
During a busy lunch hour on Valentine’s Day in Beijing’s central business district, six lesbians and gays handed out 200 red carnations wrapped in leaflets calling for the acceptance of gay love and marriage. A Beijing exclusive by Dinah Gardner.
“Love has no boundaries; it is nothing to do with gender,” the flyer read. “We are homosexuals. We also want a life together with our loved one… please support all kinds of partnerships and all kinds of love. Please support same sex marriage.”

A gay man handing out red carnations
wrapped in leaflets calling for the acceptance
of gay love and marriage in Beijing’s
central business district on Feb 14. (Photo by Dinah Gardner)

Valentine's Blizzard

"It's Valentine's Day and all I got was this lousy blizzard!"
How's that sound for a new T-shirt slogan?

Instead of candy and flowers,
it was cold and flurries,
In place of a sweet warm embrace,
There was a bitter cold wind,
Instead of waiting for a loved one to return home,
I waited for a bus to finally return me home.

And that's my Valentine's Day....
Guess I won't get a job writing cards for Hallmark
With that kind of verse !

Here's a photo I just took out of my front window
showing some of the snow piled up.

The Cavalry Is Coming !

Well, actually the cavalry has already arrived. My new Cavalry USB hard drive, that is. It's 250GB of storage should alleviate some of the crowding on my laptop's drive. It's hard to believe I've managed to fill up my 100GB drive in only seven months since I bought the computer, but I was getting 'low memory' messages because the drive had less than 1 gigabyte of space left on it. And no--it's not all porn, either! I listen to a number of podcasts (some of them video podcasts) and tend to get behind in listening to/viewing them all, so they have piled up on me. As well as a bunch of videos downloaded from Veoh I haven't watched yet. I also run across a lot of programs I like to try out (freeware/shareware) some of which I keep which eats up space.
I've already managed to free up about 8GB on the laptop's drive after moving some videos over to the new drive. I still want to add some more memory to the computer as well, as it only has 512MB of RAM and I'd like to double that to 1 GB. When several programs are running, the system tends to slow down and more RAM should help out. And a scanner would be nice to have, too.
I know--I'm such a geek ! But my computer is my best friend, after all....hehehe!

TGIF !

I have just one question--whatever happened to the 4-day work week that was talked about years ago? That we were supposed to have by now.
And where are all the robots I read about as a kid that were going to do all the work in the 21st century so Humans didn't have to?
Ok--I lied--that's two questions....but I still want my robot !!! (And a flying car would be nice, too!)

Videos Of The Week

I was going to go to the theater earlier today to see the following movie, but just couldn't work up the energy to walk there in the cold. But maybe I'll make it tomorrow. Anyway, here's a preview of the movie I'd planned to see:


So instead I sat and watched videos on my computer or from YouTube. I found a couple of movie parodies that I thought were pretty funny. The first is another of the many, many "Brokeback Mountain" parodies that have been made, but this one seemed to me to be better done than most of them and is rather funny. The person who made it did a good job editing the scenes together.


This is an old one from "Mad TV".

And now, after sitting around like a lazy slug all day, I'm going to go to bed. Because despite having done nothing, I'm still tired. Either I'm getting old or it's the cold, gloomy weather making me this unmotivated to do much. Or a bit of both....

PSP On Patrol

From East London:

Cop on duty gets caught playing PSP
The officer and his colleague were so engrossed in their PSP footie game they did not notice when a passer-by took this photo.



It says this cop was playing a "footie" game, footie being a slang British term for football (or what we call soccer).
My question is...shouldn't he have been playing "Grand Theft Auto"?
At least then he could have said he was using it as a "training tool".

Videos Of The Week

To impeach or not to impeach, that is the question. Listen to what some people think in regards to the impeachment of President Bush and/or Vice President Cheney.







Now I know that newly chosen Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has stated that "impeachment is off the table". My question is why should it be 'off the table'? Have crimes not been committed by the President and Vice-President? Has the statute of limitations run out on those crimes? More importantly, if these crimes are allowed to go unpunished, what is to prevent a future President from committing even greater crimes without fear of being held responsible?

An example must be set--that no President is above the law or the constraints placed upon him/her by the Constitution. Otherwise we no longer have a free democratic system of government, but a dictatorship ruled by one person, unanswerable to no one but him/herself.

I say if that table is too small too accommodate impeachment, maybe it's time we got a larger table!
And think of this, Speaker Pelosi : As third in line of succession, if we impeach and remove from office both Bush and Cheney, you will be the next President of the United States!

Sounds like a pretty good incentive to me !