General – Page 9

The Things I Learn When Scout Sleeps On Me

When Scout sleeps on me while I’m sitting in my chair, she likes to stretch out like Superman across my chest so I can’t really get much done. This evening I had my laptop beside her and could surf the Web but not type.

While browsing I came across a site that reports the demographics of the U.S. audience of a web site relative to the average (and as we all know, my site is far above average). I have no idea how they estimate this or if it’s even remotely accurate, but here’s what it reports about my site:

I do really well in the age group of 3-11 year olds, accounting for one out of every five of my visitors. Probably attracted by the frequent poop references in recent days.
I have a higher than normal incidence of visitors with children. Oh no! Babies having babies!
In regards to earning power, the report says I attract a less affluent audience. To my three year old readers: I’m very, very disappointed in you.
For education level, it reports a high index of college graduates. Oh three year olds, I’m so sorry! I take it back! I’m very, very proud of you! But you probably should have majored in something other than art history.

This Year’s Vacation Notice

My whiteboard art doesn’t seem to be getting better from year to year, although I am making increasing use of color. I’m hoping that my art form (known as stickism) will catch on and I can start paying for my meals by signing napkins like Picasso.

ObamaNation

Wow.

This is the first time I’ve ever voted for a Presidential candidate who won and the first time I felt emotionally invested. While I’m sure there will be bumps and setbacks on the road ahead, I’m just glad we’re going down this road.

Citizen Boolie

I walked to the local library branch today to drop off our ballots. Oregon has a fantastic vote-by-mail system that allows you to fill out your ballot on your own schedule while reading information on the candidates and initiatives. I wish every state made it this easy to vote.

I’ve never voted for a winning President so hopefully I didn’t jinx my choice. I’m an independent and didn’t vote a straight ticket, but I do find it amusing that the Republicans are running an add that claims the government doesn’t work well when it is dominated by one party.

I don’t remember any complaints when they were the dominant party …

Six Months

About six months ago I started tracking my web site traffic and during that time there have been 12,455 visitors from 115 countries.

A few quick thoughts:

80% of my traffic comes from the United States, which is not as high as I expected.
Visitors came from most of the Americas and Europe, much of Asia, all of Australia (all or nothing there), but not so much in Africa.
In Asia, I was rarely visited by countries that end in stan.
87 countries have visited at least twice in those six months.
47 countries visited an average of at least once a month.
15 countries visited an average of at least once a week.
5 countries visited an average of at least once a day.
The top six countries show the long arm of the British Empire: the US, Canada, India, the UK, Ireland, and Australia.
The next six countries show the long arm of Google: the Philippines, South Africa, Germany, Malaysia, Hungary, and Singapore.
I received no visits from the United Republic of Templeton, which upon further research turns out not to be a real country and was never in fact ruled by a little gray cat. In my defense, his passport looked very authentic, it had holograms and everything!
Traffic dipped noticeably during the summer when students were out of school here in the States.
The top search term that brought people to my site? Pictures of moths. Moths! I only have one moth picture on my entire site and it’s not very good. And I’m not ranked highly in either Google or Yahoo for that term, but perhaps I had a brief moment of glory sometimes in those six months.
The majority of visitors referred by search engines are looking for reptile pictures, where my site is currently ranked third in Google. Those hacks at National Geographic are ranked number one so I suppose I have little chance of being top dog. Maybe I should start focusing on moths …
I did notice a number of people arriving at my post called Fleabitis and felt a little guilty about that, since people looking for information on their medical condition are probably not in the mood for me cracking wise about Scout’s flea allergy, so I added a note that the correct spelling is phlebitis and provided a link for more medical info. Whoever thought there could be a downside to me making puns about my cats?

Vacation

A quick update from the road, instead of going to Yellowstone and the Tetons this fall like I normally do, I decided to stay more local and go to Mount Rainier National Park and Olympic National Park.

I finished my stay in Mount Rainier yesterday and had a great visit (despite the weather) and am about to head out to the Hoh Rainforest for some good ol’ forest hiking. I focused on the higher altitude trails in Rainier instead of the lowland forests since I knew I was coming here, but I’m ready for a day of trails with giant trees and little altitude change!

Once I edit the pictures there will be new galleries for hoary marmots and sooty grouse, the marmot gallery in particular should have a number of pictures. I spent a lot of time watching marmots and pikas in the talus fields with Mount Rainier as the backdrop (when the clouds didn’t cover it). I had never seen hoary marmots before and often based my hiking plans on trails with the best marmot and pika viewing opportunities.

We all have our priorities.

There will also be updates to the existing galleries for pika, black-tailed deer, Townsend’s chipmunk, and golden-mantled ground squirrel (or possibly a new Cascade golden-mantled ground squirrel gallery, I need to pin down the species ID).

Oh and a new black bear picture or two, apparently you don’t have to travel to Yellowstone to see bears …

Transplants

So far the plants I moved a few weeks ago are all doing fine. I’m glad I got them established as we’re in the midst of a record heat wave.

I had moved about about a dozen strawberry plants that were growing too close to the fence, and not only did they survive but every one of them is blooming! Even the littlest one has a nice white flower that came up during the week.

We’ve got a couple dozen plants now, all propagated from the few sickly survivors I rescued while clearing the forest of weeds when we bought the house. They responded well to getting more sun when the grapes were pulled up and last year produced a number of offshoots. The berries from the original plants are quite tasty and I have high hopes for the new ones, providing the slugs save a few for me.

The blueberry bush I moved has also survived and this week started to put out a few flowers. It isn’t the sunniest spot in the yard but better than before. If it does well I might move the other two next year into more sun near the raspberries, but I’ve avoided doing anything near the house since we’re getting a new roof in a few weeks and I figure there will be some plant casualties as they work.

If these transplants prove to be a success I’ll try something more challenging, like kidneys or livers.

Visitations Part II

Some more quick thoughts on my web traffic since my last update:

I was mistaken earlier when I said that I had been visited by 49 states with West Virginia the lone holdout. It turns out West Virginia hadn’t visited, that part was true, but neither had Delaware or Rhode Island. West Virginia did visit this week, followed by Delaware, and then finally Rhode Island, so all 50 states have now stopped by. Drinks are on me!
I am unpopular with the druids. Exactly zero visits from the towns around Stonehenge. Zero! This may hurt my chances at becoming Archdruid.
I am also unpopular in Japan (Finland and China have since clocked in, so Japan is the lone holdout of countries I’ve visited). Perhaps the druids have taken over Japan. I need to look into this.
Each country has a two letter identifier at the end of their Internet address, except for the US, which is only fair since Al Gore did invent the Internet. Much like two letter identifiers for the states of the US, however, some of them are not for the countries I expected. For example, did you know that Switzerland is ch, so China is not ch but cn, and Canada is not cn but eh?
Canada has visited but at a much lower rate than I expected compared to the US. I had planned to run a targeted campaign by blogging about hockey sticks and Pocky sticks (attracting both Canadians and the druid-Japanese), but I no longer believe it will be enough to attract my friends to the north. What we need is an invasion. Fifty-Four Forty or Fight! Who’s with me? Hello? Anyone? Hello?

Visitations

I’ve been monitoring web traffic at racphoto.com for a week or two and here are some quick thoughts:

All 12 visits from Ireland have come from Dublin. I’m pretty sure this is Bono visiting my site, I’m a big fan of his and I assume the feelings are reciprocated. Tell the Edge and Adam and Larry I said hi!
Out of the 50 states in the US, I’ve been visited by 49. The lone holdout? West Virginia. West Virginia! One of my favorite places to hike when I lived in Virginia. Come on folks, show me the love.
Visitors came from six continents. Google doesn’t show Antartica, so I’m not sure if they’re visiting or if I’m persona non grata down there.
Visitors came from 38 countries, only one of which I’ve visited (the United States). I know people from China have visited the blog (at the very least to try and spam it) so I’m not sure why they don’t show up in the list. People from Japan have visited before but perhaps not the past week. But what’s up with Finland? People of Oulu, hear my plea! It’s dark and cold, what exactly are y’all up to? I visited you in November when it wasn’t exactly tourist season that close to the Arctic Circle!
Two iPhone visitors stopped by (and viewed a combined total of 3 pages, one more than I would have expected). I can’t imagine what my site must look like on such a small screen, but I’m curious to find out. If I accidentally drop my current cell phone under the train tomorrow and need to get a new one, it’s pure coincidence I assure you.
I’ve only been visited by one of the three countries in George Bush’s infamous axis of evil. I’m disappointed, as my efforts to spread peace, love, and understanding through pictures of my cats has stalled. The visit from Iran doesn’t seem to have attracted the attention of Vice President Cheney as I haven’t seen any entries for “undisclosed bunker” in my logs.
The vast majority (over 85%) of the visitors come from the United States. Apparently the rest of the world isn’t as anxious to learn about America’s newts and squirrels as I initially thought.
I’ve been curious to see how many of the places that I’ve lived (even if just for a summer) have visited. There are a few towns I’ve lived so small they’ll never show up no matter how long I watch, but more places showed up than I expected.
For that matter, the site is getting a lot more traffic than I expected.
There are many more Mac users than I anticipated. I expected the blog to be Mac heavy since many of the people who know about it use Macs, but the regular web site isn’t that much lower. But where are the BeOS and AmigaOS users?
There haven’t been any visits from Atlantis. I was hoping they might slip up and give away their secret location, but so far no luck. I’ll keep watching.
It’s really hard to type with Scout draped on my arms, so I’ll stop now.

A Nice Quiet Weekend

The past few weeks at work have brought added stress even though my workload was usually not bad, as we knew layoffs were coming. I survived the axe once more but can’t say the same for some of my friends. A nice quiet weekend was just what I needed.

The weather here in Portland was projected to be beautiful so I got up before dawn Saturday morning and headed out to Ridgefield. No great pictures as the best subjects came after the first hour of sunlight when the light wasn’t so good, but it was an enjoyable morning nonetheless. The yellow-headed blackbirds have indeed returned, they stayed in the interior of the marsh but their singing could be heard from the road. Hopefully I’ll catch them near the road sometime over the next couple of months before they leave us.

The savannah sparrows were out singing in the meadows as well but I didn’t get the good looks I got last year. Two coyotes were out and about but just out of reach, one had something dark and duck-sized in its mouth. Red-winged blackbirds were numerous and singing, and while watching them I noticed a young bittern just a few feet away at the edge of the marsh.

As I was about ready to leave I spotted a river otter nearby in a narrow channel. I waited to see if it would resurface but they swim fast and can hold their breath for a long time, so it was probably already off fishing somewhere far away.

The rest of the day was spent in yardwork, as was Sunday afternoon. I can barely move but it was lovely weather to be outside. I moved a blueberry bush that was struggling due to lack of sunlight, as well as some strawberries that were too close to the fence. They are both survivors from when I weeded the forest of weeds that was growing under the grapes when we moved in, and from when I dug up the grapes as well.

The strawberries in particular have done well since I sent the grapes on their longest journey, there were only a few straggly plants but with the grapes gone they get a lot more sunlight and now there’s a whole patch of ’em. The berries are surprisingly delicious so I hope the transplants will survive.