Monthly Archives: March 2009

2008 Traffic Statistics

March 25, 2009BloggingAlistair Lattimore

Following on from my 2007 web statistics, below is a summary of what the site saw in 2008.

In 2006 the site had about 95,000 visitors come to the site, which grew in 2007 to around 145,000. With the change in blogging habits through 2008, coupled with the fact that I moved my future technical posts onto a different domain – the site had a slight decline and only saw 134,921 visits over the year. The roughly 135,000 visits generated 176,206 page views which is slightly less page impressions per user compared to last year.

The spike in visits towards the end of May was driven by a burst of interest in zorbing from the United States. It was spread across the different states, however New York drove the most interest for the fun adventure activity. The significant decline toward the end of the year was, not surprisingly driven by a decline in search traffic from Google. There was no single set of search phrases that declined, everything dropped pretty much across the board. The only thing I can attribute it to was that I changed my web hosting midway through November. I was still with the same web host, however the specific web server was different – which hadn’t been changed in a number of years. Fortunately, the search traffic from Google began to recover in January 2009 but it still has some ground to make up yet.

The traffic breakdown for 2008 still reflects the complete dominance that Google holds in the web search space. In 2006, Yahoo! was the first non-Google search engine to show its face at position #11 which improved to five in 2007. Yahoo! have improved their traffic driving potential in 2008 and now sit at position four. Without checking the numbers, it looks as though Yahoo! made it into position four simply because Google Image Search within Australia declined a little. However, in 2007 Yahoo! drove about 1.6% of the traffic of Google web search, which has increased in 2008 to about 2.5%. Great to see such a strong percentage increase for Yahoo!, however they still aren’t competing in web search within Australia.

The most popular posts for the year looks similar to 2006 & 2007, however with a single newcomer:

Given that the same or similar posts have shown up as the most viewed for three years running, it would seem a reasonable assumption that they will again in 2009 unless I start writing about different topics. With that in mind, following is a revised top five list excluding the repeat above:

Removing the heavy hitters certainly changes the landscape, now I just have to wait another nine months to see what the rest of 2009 is going to bring.

Incompatible Compatibility

March 15, 2009General, HardwareAlistair Lattimore

I recently wrote about the lack of backwards compatibility when I needed to replace the cutting blades on my lawn mower.

To make sure I hadn’t missed anything at Bunnings, I dropped in there briefly on Saturday with one of the old mower blades to see if I overlooked the correct set in my last trip. I can confirm that there was only one set of blades matching my description, which I purchased last time.

Ironically, I found another set of Rover blades that weren’t the correct version/model that fit perfectly – go figure.

Backwards Compatibility Failure

March 8, 2009General, HardwareAlistair Lattimore

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that our lawn mower has been cutting the grass a little less efficiently. It’s easy to spot when your mower blades are getting worn down, you’ll notice that your cutting width is narrower than normal and you’ll often leave a trail of grass behind you – similar to what happens when your grass catcher is full.

Before heading down to pick up a new set of mower blades from Bunnings, I checked if there was any particular type I should be buying for my Victor lawn mower. To my surprise, it was stamped into the steel on the blades themselves that they were type X – which I thought would make this process very straight forward.

Arrived at Bunnings and I had no idea that the various lawn mower manufacturers could have so many different variations of their lawn mower blades. Just within the Victor lawn mower range, I think there must have been between five and ten different types. I sort though the different packs and pick up two packets of the appropriate type and assume that it’ll be smooth sailing from here on in.

After going through the painful process of removing the first of the old lawn mower blades, I compare the new to the old and feel confident that it’ll go back together nicely. At this point, the fine folk at looking after backwards compatibility of the Victor lawn mower blades clearly had a fuzzy brain day – as the bolt didn’t fit through the disc that the mower blades are attached to. At first glance, it looked nearly identical – the same half moon shaped bold, similar thread, similar length and thickness – however the new bolt was about 1mm too thick!

As you can imagine, the bolts for lawn mower blades get quite worn as well. The packaging rightfully suggests that you replace all of the old parts with fresh parts, however for the moment I’m going to be forced to reuse the old nut and bolt.

Cuddles

March 2, 2009FamilyAlistair Lattimore

One thing that I adore when giving Hugo his late night bottle are the cuddles. I stir him at around 11:00PM, just enough so that he isn’t completely asleep. As soon as I pick him up, he immediately snuggles into my neck and puts his arms around me. Hugo has been apart of our lives for less than six months, but few things in this world can rival that feeling.