Revealing more stuff, and blog stuff.

So, I've joined another Internet fad. If you ever had the burning desire to ask me a private question, then you can do so on my Formspring account, accessible here. Thanks to Maggie and Kerri D. and others for getting accounts, which spurred me into getting my own.

Feel free to ask me just about anything - It doesn't mean that I'll answer it. I'm still getting troll comments from time to time, so while I'd like to take off the comment moderation, that moves isn't forthcoming. Sorry folks. I will say that I have accepted just about every comment that I've gotten in the past couple weeks, so if you didn't see yours posted for some reason, feel free to e-mail me about it - sgre6768@gmail.com. I'm guessing it might have gotten eaten by a spam filter, or something.

The lolcat picture comes from the awesome i can has cheeseburger?

Stats, stats and stats - September 2009

Well, this proved to be popular last month, so I apologize for taking so long in getting it to you this month. I'll probably have October's stats up in a much more timely fashion. Also, as a scheduling note, football picks will now be on Saturdays, and Amanda Meyer's column will be on Sunday nights. That schedule seemed to work out well last week for everyone involved.

You can find September's stats here, by the way. If I get more motivated, I might eventually make some graphs and charts with these numbers. Anyway, on to this month's numbers:

Total number of visits – 543 (up by 135)
Total number of pageviews – 937 (up by 220)
Average time on site – 1:56 (down 7 seconds)
Percentage of new visitors – 42.73% (up about 4.73%)
Most popular days – Sunday, Sept. 13 and Sunday, Sept. 20 (29 visitors)
Least popular days – Friday, Sept. 25 and Saturday, Sept. 26 (10 visitors)
Top Five referrers – Twitter (19.52%), Blogger (17.13%), direct link (14.92%), Google (13.63%) and Google Images (5.89%)
Top Five states – Rhode Island (156 visits), Massachusetts (121), California (25), Virginia (25) and Mississippi (17)
Unpopular states – Nobody visited from Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa, Alabama, Georgia, West Virginia, Delaware, South Carolina and Maine.
Top Five cities – Brighton, MA; Ft. Myer, VA; Medfield, MA; Cambridge, MA; Biloxi, MS
Ad revenue – $0.87, down $0.73
Alltime Ad Revenue - $3.72

The abacus picture comes from this splendid site here.

Scheduling and News - Sunday, September 13, 2009

An example of the Adult Swim schedule. Click here for full-size.

Here is a tentative schedule for the blog in the coming weeks, since I've always liked when Adult Swim posts their schedules on a bump:

- Sunday: Miscellaneous fun
- Monday: iTunes running diary
- Tuesday: A wrap column about how the weekend football picks went
- Wednesday: Miscellaneous fun
- Thursday: NFL picks on early weeks / miscellaneous fun
- Friday: NFL picks on normal weeks
- Saturday morning: Kristin's football picks on normal NFL weeks
- Saturday night: Storytime with Amanda Meyer

With this current schedule, there are three regular features (iTunes running diary, NFL picks and Storytime) and a smattering of other content every week. I will continue to sprinkle in my other semi-regular features, such as Inexplicable Movie Reviews and At The Commercials, instead of giving them their own specific day.

And speaking of a regular feature, let's do one I haven't done in a while - The news!

- Click here for a really good article from The National Post about how the Mexican government is having a big problem cracking down on the drug trade. It reminds me of some of the better work that you'd see in The Wall Street Journal; I think journalism needs more international reporting like this.

Along similar lines, in terms of the war on drugs, The Guardian also had a nice piece in an August issue about cocaine bars in South America, and Bolivia in particular. While I think the article is a bit soft on the abuse aspect and danger of the drug until the end, the enterprise nature of the report is still surprising and interesting throughout. And although the content is a lot different, the enterprise reporting going on in Afghanistan is just as impressive, according to American Journalism Review.

- In stripper news that is actually realistic and not super-sleazy or funny, a Vancouver paper did a really good piece on how strippers and prostitutes are still using Craigslist to setup jobs. The reporter sets up meetings with several of the escorts, and although he compensates some for their time, which is normally a journalistic no-no, the results seem to be worth the overlay. Informative and interesting read.

- In stripper news that is bizarre and surreal, although not what you'd think, a Connecticut man was arrested for dumping paint stripper all over his wife's car, which he then draped with her wedding dress and bouquet. The only thing surprising about this story is that it happened in New England, and not Germany or Florida.

- And in stripper news that is completely what you think, a guy is trying to use pictures of a stripper on a police car near a police deputy to blackmail the deputy from testifying against him in court. Whew; that's a mouthful.

Scheduling

So, what time would people prefer to see this blog updated? I recently found out that I can schedule posts for public consumption at certain times, which is great in terms of helping me get organized. For example, I'm currently typing this on Saturday morning, and I already have the iTunes post queued up to go Sunday morning.

I realize that my readership might prefer seeing posts at a certain time. They're currently set to post at 9 a.m. EST, I believe. (It might be PST; I haven't been home to personally monitor it.) This is really early, so there is something for people there to start their workday with, or to distract themselves from work with. I also like getting the comments in my e-mail while I'm at work, so that I can properly ponder a good response.

However, I don't mind queuing them up for a later time, if people would prefer that. I know #1 commenter and former Tag Team participant Danielle Membrino normally comments at night, so 5 p.m. or 8 p.m. EST can also be accomplished.

How say you?

p.s. Also on the plus side, I finally found a place at the driving range where there is wireless internet available. So, I can update the blog and Twitter from time to time here, which is nice.