As anyone who's read this blog more than once will note, I'm always intrigued by the ways in which people discover the blog.  I've just been looking at the stats helpfully provided by Blogger/Google, and one site that's got me beat as to what it's got to do with me is something called pu.gg.  When you go to this you find it's called Torrent Tracker.   I have sort of an idea what a Torrent is in internet terms - something along the lines of being able to download very large files (movies, for instance) in tiny bits, so that the bandwidth doesn't get overloaded.  At least that's what I gather it is.   So I'm not sure why this particular site would be sending anyone my way, but apparently they did, 34 times, over the last week or so.

More interesting than that little mystery, for me, are the search words that bring people on board.   According to the Blogger/Google stats, this is the list of top ten word searches over the last week that have hooked people up with this blog:

skinny tie
james berardinelli
frederick buechner marriage
graveyard
athlete's hand pictures
chrissy popadics
edgar jepson
how to wear a skinny tie
steve jobs quote about not settling
tui advert

An odd mix, to be sure.   And it's interesting that the skinny tie thing comes up twice.   It may be that when you put skinny tie into Google, a picture of a bloke wearing such a tie comes up in the images; click on him and you'll come to me.  I don't even remember where I found the picture...!

The 'graveyard' post relates to Neil Gaiman's book, The Graveyard Book.   Curiously, I'm about tenth on Google's search list for this, so it's interesting that people find me.   The mysteries of search engines are wondrous to behold.    However, I'm first on the list (as of today) when you put in Frederick Buechner marriage which is something of a surprise.   The Buechner piece is great, and perhaps a lot of people are using it at their weddings these days.   Well, it's all there on my post!

Just remembered that in the script of The Mousetrap, the irritating old lady, Mrs Boyle, talks about the young architect's ties, calling them skinny...or narrow...or something that equally implies disdain for his lack of style.  Actually, now I think about it, I think she just says, 'And his ties' - Agatha Christie has already told us in the script directions that his tie needs to be skinny.  

A different Top Ten

A few posts past I wrote about the Top Ten search queries that bring up my site according to HitTail.
Curiously enough, the Top Ten on Google Analytics vary somewhat from this.
1. The Great Divorce notes makes it to the top.
2. Athlete's hand comes in second. No great surprises so far.
3. Here Lies Eric Ambler comes in third. It doesn't even appear in the other top ten, though it does turn up further down the list of queries.
4. Karl Maugham - the misspelt version gets to number 4.
5. The Great Divorce chapter summaries comes in at 5. But why? I don't think I've ever written about anything like this. Must be just another version of The Great Divorce.
6. Brent Stavig Starbucks is next. Not sure what Starbucks has to do with it, but there you go, our old friend Brent makes this list too.
7. Diana Crowl music. You won't find any reference to Diana Crowl in my blog. I have no idea who she is, but she keeps causing searchers to find me. Well, she's now in a post, so we'll see how popular we get from that!
8 & 9 are both covered by Nintendo jewellery, but with the two different spellings of the second word.
And lastly at 10 is 'new home ministries' - a total left-field one.

Updating the HitTail Top Ten

18 more posts to go before I hit the big 1000. The aim, as I said in an earlier post, is to do this before the end of 2008. I guess I could write a lot of idiotic, meaningless posts - one-liner posts, even - but I'm going to play fair and aim to keep up the extraordinarily high quality of my posts. (Did I hear someone say, Phooey?)
Anyway, it's a while since I checked out HitTail. For various reasons it's gone on the backburner in the last month, along with a few other things. (Partly because I've been more busy musically than I have through most of the year, and partly because of the prostate stuff which I've discussed in several posts on Workreport.net.)
I thought I'd see if there's been any change in the top ten search items that pick up on my site. And nope! They're pretty much the same as they've been in a long while. Here they are again:
1. Athlete's hand - the all time favourite; currently running at over 152 searches, but if we count all the variations on the theme, there'll be far more than that.
2. Mike Crowl. Well, there's a turn up for the books.
3. James Berardinelli. This film critic has been amongst the top for some time. Don't ask me why: I don't talk about him that much.
4. Brent Stavig. Another top name on the list. Extraordinary.
5. The Great Divorce notes. I have never listed any notes about C S Lewis' The Great Divorce. It's only the combination of having mentioned the book and having 'notes' in the title of my blog that brings this one up so regularly. Other books get the same treatment, but obviously not as often.
6. Shrinking shirts. Another one of those items that got mentioned in a post once and have kept this blog in the public eye ever since.
7. Nintendo jewellery. I sometimes suspect that I'm the only blogger to have ever mentioned Nintendo jewellery. I still have no idea what it is.
8. Karl Maugham. Due to my inability to spell Mr Maughan's name correctly, anyone else who spells it incorrectly finds my site.
9. Athlete's fingers. One of the other variations on number one in the list.
10. Chrissy Popadics. I mentioned Chrissy once many moons again - maybe mentioned her again briefly in a later post, and ever since then she's turned up trumps. Wierd.

Comparing this list with the previous one I did in August, there's only one change: The Great Divorce Notes don't appear there. Instead, my name comes up twice, the second time as Michael Crowl. Scary.