reflections

Well folks, today is a special day for me and my blog, which has now been online for 6 whole months! It doesn’t sound like very long, but in terms of blogging it’s quite an achievement!

In the true tradition of blogging milestones, I feel obliged to share some stats that cover the last half a year:

• I’ve had 49,016 unique visitors to the site
• They’ve looked at 101,932 pages
• I’ve written 57 posts
• My most popular post (80,000 views) is this one
• I’ve had 933 comments left by visitors
• The first comment was left by Zep
• Askimet has caught 2096 spam comments
• I’ve got 302 feed subscribers
• Alexa ranks me as 201,043 most popular site
• Compete ranks me as the 267,244 most popular site
• Technorati ranks me as the 27,786 most popular blog (with an authority score of 205)
• 82% of my visitors are using Firefox
• I’ve managed to successfully resist monetising my blog!

I’d like to send heartfelt thanks to everyone who has left comments, sent me messages, or just read my blog - the feedback is what makes blogging worth all the effort, and what keeps my spirits high! I look forward to writing another post like this in 6 months time…

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One of my hobbies is domaining. I buy and sell names on a regular basis, typically for profit - and I have what I consider to be a substantial portfolio. I’m not new to this game though - I’ve been trading names for almost a decade, and I’ve seen all sorts of scams being run around the domaining marketplace…

Imagine my surprise then when I got an email this evening, apparently from somebody interested in buying a domain name I recently snagged in an auction. I was quite excited by the prospect of a quick turnaround on the name - but felt that I should do a bit of Googling on the sender of the message.

The guy who sent me the email called himself Anthony Garringer - and he’s apparently the President of a company called TGNet Consulting. His email address is garringer@toughguy.net.

Here’s what I found out…

Read the rest of this entry »

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When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the two pints of beer.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly, and the pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed again that it was. Read the rest of this entry »

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I can’t imagine that anybody out there is waiting for baited breath for me to start writing regularly once again - after all, there’s a massive selection of places you can go for an interesting read! Until my workload lightens again (hopefully in about a week or so) you could do worse than to check out Smashing Magazine’s 45 Excellent Blog Designs article.

There’s some awesome blog designs in the post, broken down (quite unusually) by the platform on which the blogs run. Some of my favourite themes are featured in it - including Veerle’s Blog, NorthxEast, FreelanceSwitch and WebDesignerWall to name but a few!

What’s bizarre though is that this blog is also featured in the roundup - something that I’m dead chuffed about, especially since Smashing Magazine is one of my own daily reads and a real source of inspiration to me! Thanks guys - I’m truly honoured to be included!

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Wow! What a week! The last seven days have been hectic to say the least, and I’m still in the thick of it now!

The good news is that Britster has finally made it to the Alpha Test phase! I’ve got a great team of testers to work with too, including several bloggers and friends. So the site should be making it’s first public appearance at the end of this month - subject to anything going chronically wrong with it before then!

I’m off on holiday on the 28th though, and I’ve got a shed-load of stuff (including Britster) to get done before I vanish for a fortnight. I’m hoping to write some articles in advance though, so you lot will have something to read while I’m building sandcastles! Any suggestions?

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