Stats - so, only if you're interested in such things

For a long time now, I've been getting the stats from the two Orble blogs that I write on (less and less, as it happens, but then there's a lot going on that stops me from writing blog posts each and every day at the moment).

Surprisingly, in spite of the fact that I'm not writing very much on these posts, the two blogs still seem to be getting read regularly.  Not sure who's all catching up on them, but someone amongst the millions of blog readers in the world must be.

But the interesting thing is that it's almost always the same two or three blog posts that appear at the top of the lists.   On the blog called WorkReport.net there are two posts that vie with each other to appear first time and again.   One of these is a piece I wrote when I was in the middle of my pre-prostate operation time, a time I don't look fondly back on except that it provided me with a good deal of material to write about.    The other is an oddball post that I only wrote because I was getting paid to include a link in it.  It relates to the Titanic Museum in Branson.  This has been one of the most popular posts I've ever written, which no doubt speaks of the ongoing enthusiasm people have for the Titanic disaster.   Curious.

On the other blog, Webitz.net, one particular post has been in the top spot a great deal since it was written.  This is one on what I called the 'Geocities revival.'

Geocities, for those who don't remember, was an enormous site that allowed people to create their own websites on the geocities portal, way back in the dark ages of the Internet.  The site I had was the first website I'd ever put together.  It wasn't exactly WYSIWYG but it was close enough.

At some point in the geocities history, Yahoo took over the whole caboodle, presumably thinking either they were going to make lots of money out of it, or that it was better to put your rival in a corner and beat him to a pulp in due course.  They put him in a corner all right, and then threw him out of the ring completely by closing down geocities, to the horror of thousands of people who'd put hundreds of hours of work into their particular space.   The problem was that if you didn't act quickly enough, all your work would be gone for good - according to Yahoo.  And of course, thousands of people (including myself) didn't act quickly enough - or didn't know what to do to save their material, especially if there was a lot of it.

The result was that suddenly thousands of virtual documents and photographs and so on vanished.  However, the amazing thing about the Internet is that it's not quite so easy to get rid of stuff as all that.   Various groups formed to collect all the data and put it back on line in a different format.

At the time I wrote the blog post, one of these was ASCII by Jason Scott.  This is still functioning, I think, though the most recent update seems to be 2010.  Jason has a lot of other things on his plate.   Another group, OOCities also worked on keeping the geocities material.  I mentioned them too, but like ASCII, they seemed to have moved onto other things, and their geocities material is only partial.

This wasn't good news for those of us who seemed to have missed out.  In particular I was very saddened because two or three short stories that had actually been published elsewhere had gone AWOL in the process.

And then along came reocities.  I explain about them here, in another post, called From geocities to reocities.   Reocities seems to have managed to rescue practically everything that was on geocities.  At least that's the impression I've got.  They certainly rescued my old site (which now looks very cluttery by comparison with more recent webpages), and these days, when you click on the link, it comes up very quickly, compared to the sluggish pace you endured when it was first revived.  

Thank goodness for their perseverance (it must have been an enormous task).

Stats at the all-time high!

Got my readership stats from the Orble.com site today and was pleasantly surprised to see that they were the highest they’ve ever been. Curiously enough, these high numbers are never reflected in their counterpart over on Google Analytics. I’d love to know why the two don’t match, but it’s not the end of the world. I presume Orble’s stats system knows what it’s doing.
Top of the list of posts on WorkReport.net is the one about the Titanic Museum. It’s been top of the list every time I’ve checked the stats. Again this is a curious thing: why does this particular post get picked up time and again? I don’t come up anywhere near the top on Google with this particular item, so how is that a bunch of people find my post each day? And what’s so hot about the Titanic Museum anyway?
I know that the movie, Titanic, is one of the all-time most-loved movies (don’t even consider asking me why), so does that have some kind of offshoot to the Museum? Who knows? As long as it keeps bringing one of my posts higher up the list, I’m happy!
The other top post, the one on Webitz.net, is called 69 Ways. It talks about a blog run by a 13-year-old (at least he was when I wrote the post back in 2007) called Make Money Online with a 13-year-old.
I’d love to know more about this guy – my suspicion is that he’s actually rather more than a 13-year-old. More likely he’s a smart adult cookie who thought that passing himself off as a teenager would have more effect. It obviously does! I wonder how long he can remain a teenager, though? Or won’t people care?
Anyway, his site is still a lot of fun to visit: full of money-making schemes, some of them typical of the Net as a whole, some of them workable. He also has an article on there written by someone else on driving traffic to your blog. It’s the sort of thing ProBlogger does well, and it’s the sort of thing that does drive traffic – just writing about it seems to do it!

Avatar

James Cameron is currently completing a new movie, Avatar, his first feature film since his blockbuster Titanic, which was filmed in 1997. Cameron began the shoot of the new movie with virtual photography (don’t ask me quite what that is), following it up with live-action work. Let’s hope the cast aren’t ‘animated’ in the same way those in Beowolf were.

Cameron wrote the screenplay for the movie as well. It’s the story of a wounded marine who’s sent to the faraway planet of Pandora against his wishes, and finds himself caught up in a battle for survival with the planet's inhabitants.

The 52-year-old Cameron has spent years researching and developing the new filming techniques needed to create the movie's $190 million hybrid of action and animation, and he claims he's been "the busiest unemployed director in Hollywood." He says, "We're going to blow you to the back wall of the theatre in a way you haven't seen for a long time. My goal is to rekindle those amazing mystical moments my generation felt when we first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey or the next generation's Star Wars. It took me 10 years to find something hard enough to be interesting." The sci-fi epic is due to be released in 2009.

Well, at the moment the most interesting factor about the movie is Sigourney Weaver, who can be guaranteed to light up any scene she’s in. Cameron was a brilliant director when he made The Terminator series, but Titanic, in spite of its enormous popularity, leaves me cold: it has some of the worst acting this side of the silent movies, and even Kate Winslet and Di Caprio barely make their scenes work. The whole thing got overloaded with technical stuff and spectacular effects, to my way of thinking. And it was so long: it could have done with a dose of lipovox to thin it down!

And I can remember my first viewing of 2001. Like millions of others, it was a revelation – or so it seemed until you tried to figure out what the heck it was all about. Seeing some of it again in recent years confirms my opinion that it should join Titanic in the Most Overrated Movies of All Time Lists. It’s even worse in terms of length than Titanic (where at least there’s something happening most of the time), the acting is non-existent because there aren’t any characters in it, and Hal is about the only interesting bit of the story.

Titanic 2

Check out You-tube's marvellous trailer for Titanic-2. It's superb.

I don't normally look at You-tube, but I was alerted to this trailer by someone on another site - I couldn't tell if they were taking it seriously or not - and had a look. It has all the hallmarks of the typical Hollywood blockbuster trailer, but the more you look, the more you see it's made up of shots from dozens of other films. Wonderfully done.