Blogoversary

Originally published on: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:20:30 +0000

I started this public blog one year ago today. Here are my blog stats as I write this post:

Number of posts: 80 Total views from people other than me: 15,473 Busiest Day traffic: 170 views Number of comments: 115

Statistically speaking, I'm pretty happy with what I've managed to accomplish so far. I wasn't sure that I would be able to keep up enough momentum to keep the posts flowing. Somehow, I managed to keep a pretty steady pace.

As I reflect upon the last year, instead of providing links to each of my posts, I'll just cite the master lists at http://www.mailsend-online.com/bloglist.htm and http://www.radiks.net/~jimbo/bloglist.htm

I've learned a few things in the process:

My command-line MP3 player is very popular

I'd never have guessed that so many Windows folks out there would find a command-line MP3 player as useful as I do. It's still frequently downloaded. I hope everyone is having fun with it.

Getting on the right list can bring traffic to your blog

Well, duh.

It's obvious that there are some popular lists and such out there. It's just not always obvious which ones will bring in traffic.

My busiest traffic came from a tweet from a seemingly popular Twitter personality.

My curiosity about using launch4j caused me to be listed with The Java Posse, which drove quite a bit of traffic my way.

I really went out of my way to write a script to embed the social-networking links you see at the end of each of my posts. I think there's a donationware utility out there now that can actually do a better job than my script.

I have found that the social-networking sites I've listed hadn't yet brought a lot of traffic my way.

I do note that everything is relative. I found a bit.ly link for another person's recent blog post where the number of references to that one link had exceeded my total number of visits for the year. The link had been visited over 15,000 times for the one post alone. I've got a long way to go.

Spam comes in many shapes

In addition to the obvious kinds of spam, Akismet had protected me against seemingly innocuous posts in my comments section. Apparently, some spammers must like to see themselves on the web. I would usually search for a specific phrase out of a comment that Akismet flagged as spam and sure enough, the same generic comment by someone using the same name would appear on blogs all over the place.

Very few people who download free stuff leave comments

I don't know what I was expecting here, because I'll do the exact same thing; I'll search for something I need and will download it, often neglecting to thank the author for giving it away.

There are exceptions though. I've gotten some really good feedback in the comments section.

I shouldn't plan too far ahead

I've found that when I planned a topic as a series, I was more likely to fail at delivery either due to my own waning level of interest in the topic or due to a lack of popularity of the subject matter. As I continued to write, I just did so on a one-time basis.

Where I'm going with this blog...

I like to tinker. I like to write code that sometimes doesn't really have a purpose other than satisfying my curiosity about some corner of the programming multiverse. Often, these little experiments disappear into the ether as I upgrade computers and such. I thought that it might be nice to capture them here.

There are also times where I like to write up a post to describe something so that I can refer to the post later. This may seem a bit pompous when I do it, but when I'd told friends in the past that I believed XSLT concepts to be akin to Function Programming concepts, confused looks were about all that I got back in return. It was easier to refer them to my post on generating prime numbers with an XSLT sheet ... then, we could resume the conversation.

While I have shared experiences in my "tale recursion" section, I have tried to refrain from letting opinion bleed too heavily in my writing. That's a trend that I'd like to continue. While I have strong opinions on a lot of contemporary tech topics, I don't know that this blog is the correct place for me to share them.

In the past, I have written a number of articles and have been a tech reviewer for a book. I had actually begun to write a book at a couple of different junctures. Part of the reason that I wanted to create this blog was to see if I could write on a regular basis. I wanted to see if I really had the chops to write a book.

I didn't really constrain myself to a particular topic. I just wanted to see if I had the discipline to do the work. I believe that I do. Now, I just need to determine if I have enough to say on a subject that hasn't already been said.

In the next year, I'll probably just keep doing more of the same. I plan to make some minor cosmetic changes and such, but it'll just be another year where I'll post something that I think is interesting without overthinking it. Hopefully, someone out there will find the subject interesting as well.

Thanks to all of my regular visitors, subscribers, and commenters. This has been fun! I don't expect that to change.

Unless otherwise noted, all code and text entries are Copyright Š2010 by James K. Lawless

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