A trip down analytical lane....

Back when I did this blog on Geocities while using Frontpage I would from time to talk about various stats regarding the blog... As I go back and read those entries I pretty much deride the one or two "dirty mac users" out there and was pleading with them to change operating systems.

My how times change.

I stopped doing that kind of entry because I lacked a tool in blogger to measure traffic. That is until Cody told me about Google analytics. You people have no idea how hard it has been for me to not talk about what and who comes here on a regular basis. Tonight your no longer that lucky.

Ok here is the setup... I'm looking at data for the last 30 days, so basically since I got from vacation to now. I've had 256 visits total.... these stats are pulled from those 256 visits.

Top browser OS/Combo -- IE/Windows (It should be noted I do not use windows at home... so for all I know this site looks like crap in windows)

Mac accounts for ~16% of all visits with the overwhelmening majority using Firefox

1 person is using Linux... and since it's only person I'm willing to bet I dialed up this page while looking at something on one of my Linux boxes.

And now for something completely different... I can now see what networks visitors are coming from... The top two are "Frontier Communications of America" and "Cablevision of Kingman" which means my parents and brother have hit this site way more then any else... actually of the 256 hits... 96 are directly from Kingman, seriously get a life. (Average time on site 13 seconds)

#3 is Comcast cable at 35 and when I do a map overlay of who comes from where I see I get 35 hits from Colorado... So Eve and Cody are keeping up with me (Hi Guys!) (Average time on site 6 seconds)

#4 is cox communications with 34 hits.... That is folks down here... average time on site 1 minute 59 seconds... Is their porn posted on this site I don't know about?

among some of the more interesting network locations that have viewed my site or whatever reason in the last month....
bay area rapid transit district (bart)
hampton inn oklahoma city (I have no clue on this one maybe a GE field engineer?)
state of nebraska / office of the cio (is their something the state of nebraska wants to tell me?)

Ok that's enough.... next time I do this I will find some othe wierd and unusal facts... in the mean time I'm going to go try and figure out why people are spending minutes at a time on my site.

Many times I've wondered how much there is to know...

In France the "Full Time" work week is 32 hours.... that means that the average French man has a 3 day weekend every week.

When one is spolied like that I think they may lose sight of just how great a 3 day weekend truly is. I'm pretty sure that is why we Americans like to pick on the French so much. All I know is I get 3 guranteed 3 day weekends a year. I may take a day off on my birthday and other then that I'm not really one for taking much time off. So when I take a 3 day weekend for no reason other then I worked a Saturday and I'm taking the time that is due me from work it is a glorious weekend indeed.

This weekend has been made all the sweeter by the following items...

1. Super Mario Galaxy; when your old 8 bit friends come back afte a 10 year hiatus.... it's been a good year for us old school Nintendo gamers; Link, Samus, and now Mario (strangely Luigi is hinted at but is not to be found as of yet)

2. What can only be desctibed as one of the best Saturday's ever.... 5 gallons of beer in the fermenter, a exceptionally good time at Rula Bula, and perfect weather for both events.

3. The Cardinals hitting 5-5 on the season and the playoffs being more then just a distant dream (hell at this point a winning-ish or .500 season would be good).

Oh yeah a good Nascar race to end the season and Elk for dinner.

Yep our French breatheren may get a 3 day weekend most every weekend, but we americans truly appreciate it.

And now another word from a really good bottle of scotch.

So the writers strike, it starting to suck for me... I'm lacking my John Stewart fix. I mean I'm lacking my John Stewart fix to the point that I'm actually watching CNN. It's kind of weird to watch the news and not have a montage of some sort pop up where people are saying things that are 180 degree's from what they were just saying.

So this distinct lack of John Stewart pushed me over the edge, what the hell is this strike about?

The internet is a wonderful thing.

I landed on everyone's favorite Star Trek wonder kid, voice of Aqua Lad and in my world "A" list blogger Wil Wheaton Oh hey he has a couple of links to something called "unitedhollywood.com" WAIT WAIT HE HAS A VIDEO! IT'S FROM THE COLBERT REPORT!!! Oh wait their is no Stephen Colbert, but it's a writer from the Colbert Report. That is good enough for me.

I watch the video and finally decide I wonder where I go when I click on "Unitedhollywood.com"

Oh it's the blog for the writers HEY LOOK MORE NOT JOHN STEWART BUT HIS WRITERS! I got my John Stewart fix finally and then way down at the bottom of the page is a link to a video that talks about what each generation of writers has gone through to get where they are today. It's actually a start contrast to the John Stewart/Stephen Colbert combo.

I read, I watch, I ponder... I ask "What does Ronald D. Moore think?" I check the Scifi.com blog, nothing there since June, check Wikipedia and BAM! Their is a link to to rondmoore.com
and it's my personal fiction writing hero of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Battlestar Galactica. The blog is new and done in iWeb but it's Ronald D. Moore uncensored, the only thing better is Ronald D. Moore with a bottle of Scotch, the smoking lamp turned off, and a podcast recording under way.

Cody as a side note, remember the poker table with the midget from the show "Carnival" when we were in Vegas? This is the guy who wrote the first season, he left before the second season to do Battlestar Galactica!

So I've read and pondered for a while now, and I've come to the conclusion that we should all find a good book/game/hobby and snuggle/curl up/next/to our very bearded/pregnant/sleepy loved ones because this folks is going to a very long haul and we need to do everything to make sure the writers get everything they are asking for.

And for the record yes, I'm a Ronald D. Moore fan boy (didn't know screen writers had fan boys did you?)

Where were you?

So 2.5 years ago I went on a little rant about how downloading TV shows would be the savior of television and gave an example using Star Trek:Enterprise. The things I talked about were merely the logical extensions of a business model that had become wildly popular in the music arena (i.e. tv shows via iTunes)

So after 2 years of itunes goodness of tv shows how many have I downloaded? A total of two, both of them free. What gives? I of all people should be all about watching TV shows off of iTunes. True, however their are a few things that have pretty much stopped me.

1. I got a DVR aka TiVo
2. I got a big screen (like bigger then any computer monitor I will ever have big)
3. I already pay for cable.

So with these three things in place the $1.99 of iTunes just doesn't hack it for me... I will pay <$.0003 per program and fast forward through the commercials myself. Apple TV doesn't hold up compared to my TiVo (in both price points and performance). So where does this leave the whole tv on the internet market?

Kind of in a pickle, people aren't flocking to internet TV, well except for High School Cheerleader Coaches who did a tame routine compared to what she's teaching the girls to do on the field in front of hundreds of people. And even then she didn't post it one of her students did!

Honestly trying to predict the future of television is like reading animal entrails... I'm going to leave that euphemism to you the reader.

Where was I going with this?

Oh yeah, go outside and read a book.