Annual Hiatus

Each year, I take a week off from blogging around Christmas. The holidays, always hectic are especially so this year, to the point that I find myself having to stay up all night to get everything accomplished that I want. On top of that, I am hard-pressed even to write this perfunctory note. I am leaving a couple of things for later that I'd wanted to tackle now....

Annual Report

It has become my tradition to take a snapshot of my blog's statistics about this time of the year, so I will do that now:

statistic	2004	2005	2006	2007
visits/month (1)	130	2,973	4,125	6,786
technorati rank	780,679	43,294	37,607	142,914
TTLB rank	14,889	5,363	4,546	4,262
TTLB creature	wiggly worm	crawly amphibian	flappy bird	marauding marsupial
blogshares valuation (B$)	1,000.00	25,586.63	45,959.95	48,050.26

(1) This is sitemeter's automatic projection for the month based on visits in the past week.

All rankings based on incoming links (Technorati, the TTLB Ecosystem, and Blogshares) have been a little squirrelly all year. I expected to see these dip a little since I haven't had the time to do as much out-linking as I used to (and out-linking often gets reciprocated), and yet the Technorati rank plunged, as had the TTLB rank until just recently. (When I was a contestant in the 2007 Weblog Awards, I was but a slithering reptile.) I wonder whether each service tweaked its ranking algorithm at some point. A few other blogs I pay attention to seemed to track lower with this one.

A more reliable statistic has been site visits, which don't necessarily track with inbound links. Those have been slowly rising, and since people (and not inbound links) read blogs, this means that the blog is being read more.

Of course, all this talk about site statistics is mere prattling when considered in light of (1) all the support it got during the Weblog Awards, and (2) the fact that it is becoming commonplace for a post to start a good discussion among the visitors. Not only is this blog being read, it is causing its readers to think, and that just happens to be an important part of why I write. That is gratifying.

I thank my readers for your support over the past few years.

Couple of Plugs

I would be remiss not to remind my readers of the existence of two great values I have discovered through blogging, or to urge them to consider trying these things for themselves or consider giving them as gifts.

I am speaking, of course, about Craig Biddle's pro-reason, pro-individual rights quarterly journal of culture and politics, The Objective Standard, and Scott Powell's fascinating First History courses for adults.

And remember, readers of this blog can (until Christmas) get a discount for the Powell History courses by signing up for the holiday specials and saying (via email to powellhistory@powellhistory.com) I sent you.

Season's Greetings!

I won't be around here much, if at all for the next week, so let me wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year now -- although I will probably be back by New Year's Day.

-- CAV