Five top blog posts

I'm always interested in stats, though that doesn't mean I always use them well, or understand their finer points. 

Blogger obligingly provides stats on a number of things related to my posts, and, out of curiosity today I checked the top blog posts of 'all time' from my blog. They're a real mixed bag, and there seems no rhyme nor reason as to why any of them should have been viewed so often. 

But for the record (because possibly they'll change at some point) here are the top five posts as of the 16th August, 2017. 

Top of the list is the Commonplace post which dates back to 2011, and is a bit of a riff on the word insurance, and the sorts of things that came up when I searched that word on my Evernote. A more random post you'd hardly imagine. Perhaps people search for the word insurance a lot! It's had twice as many views as number two on the list. 

Curiously enough, I hadn't checked this post for a while. I'd thought it related to an entirely different subject... 

Number two is Random thoughts on the Zirka Circus which goes back to 2010. This was a positive review of a small circus that was touring New Zealand at the time, and in fact has been back again at least twice since then. You'd think small circuses wouldn't be very impressive, but in fact they often include considerable talents (and these people really work for their money), and are very enjoyable. But then, I'm a circus fan from way back. Though I must say I miss the performing animals, even if that isn't a very PC thing to say anymore. 

Third on the list is Skinny ties, also from 2011, which seems a most unlikely subject to be viewed Twilight series, Robert Pattinson. It's been amongst the top five since it first appeared, pretty much. I wonder if it has to do with the photo that accompanies it, which may possibly be the actor from the Twilight movie, Robert Pattinson. 

Fourth on the list is Debating Compost, which dates way back to 2007. It's a brief piece arguing that cooked foods go just as well in composts as uncooked. Though someone's concern about this was that it encouraged rats. That's possible. We used to have a cat who dealt successfully with any rats and mice around the place, but when my daughter moved out, she took the cat with her - it did belong to her after all. During the course of the move the cat walked out the door of the new house and vanished for a couple of months. The daft thing was living at the park just down the road and was being occasionally fed by some kind person who eventually took it to the Vet. The cat had been microchipped, so the Vet was able to identify my daughter as the owner. 

And fifth is Fat amplification, the most recent of the bunch, from 2016. It's merely a bit of chat about the joys and woes of amplification of musical instruments, particularly in a church setting. Maybe the problem is widespread!

Top ten and coincidences

I haven't caught up with my HitTail results for a while, so, having had a reminder from them yesterday, I thought I'd check out what's hot in regard to the top ten keywords.  These top ten words are apparently 15.6% of all my search traffic.

HitTail suggests only one phrase as a keyword this week: random film free, a rather odd phrase, you'd think.  But apparently people have picked this blog up as a result. I tried it, and this blog didn't get listed until the third page - admittedly there were only ten results per page, so that's probably not bad.

Apart from that, and the fact that putting in random film free might not have helped the searcher a great deal when he or she came across my blog, here are the top ten results.  Nine of them are old favourites; only one is a bit out of left field, and that's number four on the list, which comes up as googleads.g.doubleclick.net.  Now I can't imagine anyone putting that in as a search, so it's plainly something a machine has done.  Good luck to it; when I put it in as a search I get the brush-off from Google.  

Zirka Circus review tops the list this time around, with Zirka Circus coming second.  I must be one of the few people to have written about the Zirka Circus, which is why I'm so popular!

Athlete's hand comes third, and bingo! Mike Crowl comes fifth.  The Great Divorce notes comes sixth - people still picking up something I wrote about C S Lewis' Great Divorce at some point and Google matching it up with the title of my blog.  Chrissy Popadics is, as always, on the list, followed by Frederick Buechner marriage.  Penultimately there's James Berardinelli, whom I haven't written about for more months than there are in a year, and probably longer; in fact, I haven't even read much of Berardinelli in the same time.   And finally there's another old favourite: skinny tie (skinny ties is thirteenth on the list.)  It's interesting that the image for the skinny ties post and a photo of Berardinelli appear in the 'Popular Posts' list down the right hand column.  Zirka Circus is there too, and Buechner, so I guess these are there because there are so many searches for them.  Chrissy Popadics appears under her married name of Johnson in this list.  It's kind of a circle really, isn't it?  People search for the thing so the posts become popular, and the popular posts get searched.  Hmm.  

That's just my top ten list, of course.  The list goes on forever, whittling its way down from nearly 300 hits for each search item to just one.  HitTail's reason for existing is to point out the little words that people search for so that you can make more of these; it's the counter approach to the way most SOEs work.  I could look up all these little words, but I thought I'd stick to a simpler task and check out what words or phrases have been searched for today that brought the searcher in touch with my blog.  There are four: betty boop on stage, oscar wilde on art, into the open air sheet music, charles horton cooley.  Charles Horton Who?  

I didn't think I'd ever written about this bloke, but I have.  Considering that I don't appear anywhere near the top on the search results it's surprising anyone found this site, and it's surprising that HitTail says they did.  But there you go.  I remember writing about Betty Boop, but again she doesn't appear in the search results unless I put some connector, like mike crowl.  

The Oscar Wilde reference is there, again requiring some additional input, but into the open air sheet music turns up easily without additional words; fourth on the list, in fact.  And here's a nice coincidence.  Years ago I wrote a post on Boise, which happened to mention Chrissy Popadics.  Boise doesn't turn up in my HitTail results very readily, but Chrissy does all the time.  The coincidence is that my daughter-in-law comes from Boise, and now lives in Minneapolis with my son.  The post that turns up in relation to open air sheet music tells me that the sheet music in question - painted onto a building - is in Minneapolis. 

HitTail catch-up II

Last week HitTail's new email system announced that the following three items would be top of the pops if mentioned in my blog:

the mousetrap study guide 
sequoia cunningham dunedin
people wear ties

This week the list is a little different, with ties dropping out and three other items coming in.  

chrissy popadics
ralph davis musician
salesman in beijing
the mousetrap study guide
sequoia cunningham dunedin

Chrissy Popadics made a comeback on this blog just a month ago, when I mentioned she was now known by her married name of Johnson.   Nevertheless, people still keep looking for her under her maiden name.

I've never written about Ralph Davis the musician, as far as I'm aware, but I've certainly written about Ralph Davis the pastor and commentary writer.   He's one of my favourite commentary writers, and I have (or have lent out) all his books.  Maybe I should have a lapel pin produced saying something like: I'm a fan of Ralph Davis.  That would cover all bases, including any that related to Ralph Davis the musician, who may or may not be this guy.

 The third of the new items on the list today is Salesman in Beijing, which I wrote about at the end of 2009.  The book is by Arthur Miller, and details his trip to Beijing to produce a version of his play, Death of a Salesman.   I suspect people looking for a combination of the words salesman and Beijing are looking for something more in the retail line, however. 

Fashion....or not

I've worn bow ties a few times over the years, but never anything quite as garish as the one in the picture.   I'm hard pressed to think what colour clothing would go with it.  A dark suit would become almost invisible, and anything that matched it in any way would rather defeat the purpose of the formality of the tie.  

I'm assuming formality, because I don't know anyone who wears a bow tie in the normal day.  Except University professors in the movies.   They often seemed to wind up with them, though I'm sure it's not part of their uniform, but it appears that those who do clothing design for movies think it is. 

I've got a couple of bow ties that I've acquired somehow, but 99% of the time they sit in the drawer neglected.  The occasions for wearing them are few and far between these days.  I can't even think what I would have last worn them for, in fact.   Possibly some show where I was playing the piano; nowadays I just wear an ordinary tie - ordinary in the sense of it being your regular tie; not ordinary in the sense of design because I have one that has The Scream on it, and a couple that have piano keyboards on them.  Why wear a tie if it's going to be boring?   I really only wear them now when I accompany singers somewhere.   I haven't worn a tie to work since I don't know when.... I certainly never wore one to the bookshop after the first day or so, because my then boss didn't think there was any reason to.   And I've never worn one to work since. 

Ties, like other things that seem to have been around forever, are going the way of the dodo for most of us. 

I remember some writer on one of the Triond sites berating men for wearing a noose around their necks.   Of course women have never worn anything equivalent, like corsets, or bustles or high heels.   Give me a loose noose anyday over the strain of wearing shoes that break my back....

Musical Ties

Just looking at a site where they've got a sale on silk ties and thinking that the designs on these aren't very interesting. Lots of diagonal lines or straight ties without any design at all.
I don't wear ties very often any more, but when I do I usually put on one of the ones with a musical theme. I bought a couple of these a few years back when we were in Melbourne (the ties were on sale at the Victoria Market) and since then, twice someone's brought me back a musical tie. So I have a bit of choice.
Do I wear the one with the choir singing at the top of their voices, or the one with the piano keys, or the one with the musical notes?
You can see the sort of thing I mean here.

A nice bit of silk around the neck....

Some while ago a youngish fellow I worked with used to scout the op shops for ties for his then girlfriend, who was collecting them. I offered to give them some of my oldies, but apparently they weren’t quite the thing. (I have two ties I wear to musical occasions: one with a piano keyboard on it, and another with singers singing, their mouths all very wide open. Love ‘em both.)

When my wife and I were out garage saleing (?) the other day, we found a couple of ties: one is a Santa Claus one, which was supposed to play something Christmassy, but the music’s broke. Never mind, it’s fun anyway.

I was reminded of all this tie stuff when I came across the Belisi.com site, (or rather, the beingbelisi.com site - being is more important than just visiting!) where the Belisi ties and scarves are promoted – amongst other things such as the 19 goals of a certain number of people – the first is, I want to know God more. Yup, so do I, though there are some days when I’m not sure if he wants to know me – just kidding! Apparently the word Belisi comes from Bellissimo – somewhere along the line the double l and s have vanished – and certainly these ties and scarves are classy. But I don’t like to think what they cost: actually I don’t have think, I know what they cost: $76 apiece (and of course that’s US dollars). Quite a bit to throw around the old neck, what?