2010 Wrap-Up

This photo of a community garden supporter in front of City Hall was one of my photos illustrating my 2010 guest rant on Garden Rant.


Here's my review and recap of 2010.

Stats

• 73 blog posts
• 41,253 visits
• 36,048 visitors
• 2,185 tweets

Highlights

• July 2010: I attend the Garden Bloggers Buffa10 meetup of garden bloggers.
• Fall 2010: I received my Citizen Tree Pruner's certification.

Most Viewed

According to Google Analytics, from which I've collected these stats, "unique page views" are the number of visits during which a page was viewed. Page views are higher, since the same page may be viewed multiple times during a single visit. Unique pageviews, however, doesn't distinguish multiple visits from the same person or IP address.

2009 Wrap-Up

Agapostemon sp., Metallic Green Bee, Jade Bee, illustrated my guest rant on Garden Rant in 2009.


Here's my review and recap of 2009.

Highlights

• January 27: I attend my first - maybe my only - Plant-O-Rama at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
  
• March 4: Robert Guskind, founder of Gowanus Lounge, dies.
• May 2009: I attend the Chicago Spring Fling meetup of garden bloggers.
• July 29: The City Council approves the Flatbush Rezoning Plan, a story I've been tracking for years on this blog.

There were several personal milestones and achievements, my pleasure in sharing them tempered by the absence of my father this past year, who would have been proud.

• February 2: I presented on Community Blogging at Historic District Council's monthly Coffee Talk series.
• March 12: I was a Neighborhood Association honoree at the Flatbush Development Corporation's 34th Anniversary Celebration Dinner.
• May 2009: This blog reaches 100,000 visitors.
• June 25: I'm among the community leader honorees at Brooklyn Community Board 14's Annual New Member Reception & Awards Ceremony, the first time bloggers were recognized.
• Fall 2009: Completed my Certificate in Horticulture from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

The End of "Gowanus Lounge"

This morning I discovered that the domain for Gowanus Lounge had been appropriated by a commercial site. I learned this afternoon that the domain had been sold.

Gowanus Lounge had been the project of founder Robert Guskind, who died (too soon) in March of 2009. Archived content from Gowanus Lounge is now available at a new, "memorial" domain, bobguskind.com.

I'll be updating my links to the old Gowanus Lounge site to the new domain in his name. It saddens me to have to do this, but I must, since Bob's work is no longer available at the original domain. It's clear to me that the new proprietor of the domain expects to garner hits through links to Bob's old work. I refuse to support that.

Tracking to 100,000 and counting

Sometime this week, one of the counters I use to keep track of visitors to this blog will reach 100,000. I began tracking visits in August 2006, just three months after I launched this blog in May 2006.

Each tracking service counts things differently, and the counters I have disagree on how many visitors I've had. While the lead counter says I've had 99,859 visitors at this writing, another reports only 90,318, a discrepancy of 10%.

For this and other reasons, I don't use these counters for exact tracking, but for trends and general patterns. For those purposes, they're accurate enough; using trackers from different sources balances the systematic counting errors any single algorithm would incur.

So, regardless of whether it's 90,000, or 100,000, or some other number, I am grateful for all the visitors I've had over the years. My goal has never been to manage my "hit count." If it hasn't been obvious, this is a personal blog. I strive to avoid (or at least minimize) self-indulgence, and make my posts timely, relevant, and informative. But it will always be with my own voice. I own my words. I recognize that's not to everyone's taste. For those of you who do visit here, welcome, and thanks.

[bit.ly]

Related Content

The Brownstoner Effect, 2007-11-10
Rabies More Popular Than Sex, 2007-03-02

Meta: Feed Glitch

Update 2009-03-11: Problem resolved. This morning, Feedburner subscriber count is back to the levels of a few days ago,
Update: The problem is largely isolated to Google Reader subscribers. If you use Google Reader to view the feed from this blog, and have been having trouble since March 6, please try re-susbcribing to see if that corrects the problem.
Update: Feedburner stats confirm that my subscribers were cut in half - the number of them, not the individuals - from March 6 to March 7. Still researching the problem.

---

I just noticed that my count of Feedburner subscribers has suddenly dropped from around 175 to just around 105. I believe this is related to my Feedburner feed getting migrated from the old Feedburner to the new Google/Feedburner.

I just logged into Feedburner and migrated the feed. I'm hoping that fixes the glitch. Please let me know, either via comments and by the email in my profile, if you encounter any lasting problems.

Thanx - Xris

2008 Wrap-up

A young raccoon in my backyard in Flatbush, Brooklyn in June of 2008. My post about them was in the top five of 2008, measured both by visits and number of comments.


It was a year of great changes and terrible losses for me. I began 2008 by taking classes at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden toward a Certificate in Horticulture, which I hope to complete by the end of this year. I remain involved in the gardening activism of Sustainable Flatbush, both in the Gardening Committee, and in the Flatbush CommUNITY Garden. I organized a Brooklyn Blogade, a meeting of bloggers, at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and helped with the 2008 annual Blogfest. I also lost two of my best friends: my cat, Spot, at the beginning of the year, and my father, Jerry, just four weeks ago.

To see out this old year and welcome in the new one, I thought I'd review and recap some of what I've written for this blog during 2008, and your responses to it.

Overall stats

Number of posts published: 236 (averaging 2 posts every 3 days)
Busiest month: April, with 38 posts (more than 1 per day)
Slowest month: November, with only 10 posts (1 every 3 days)

22,896 people visited this blog during 2008. There were 32,073 visits, an average of 88 per day. About 70% were first-time visitors.

Greatest Hits of 2008

The most popular content on the blog.

By visits

According to Google Analytics, from which I've collected these stats, "unique page views" are the number of visits during which a page was viewed. Page views are higher, since the same page may be viewed multiple times during a single visit. Unique pageviews, however, doesn't distinguish multiple visits from the same person or IP address.

1. (Magi)Cicada Watch, about the Brood XIV Magicicadas, which unfortunately have been extirpated in Brooklyn, 2008-05-21, 763 visits
   
2. Flatbush Rezoning Proposal will define the future of Victorian Flatbush, my report on a public hearing and analysis of the proposal, 2008-06-13, 483 visits
   
3. Summer Nights, my photographic report on raccoons in my backyard, 2008-06-26, 405 visits
   
4. Sources of Plants for Brooklyn Gardeners, 2008-04-29, 367 visits
   
5. These two posts, both of them memorials, are close enough to call it a tie:
   
   • 90 Years Ago: The Malbone Street Wreck, 2008-11-01, 310 visits
   • Steven Earl Clements, 1954-2008, 2008-11-14, 307 visits
     

Special mention goes to my tutorial on the OASIS mapping service. Although I wrote it in February of 2007, almost two years ago, it was the third most popular page during 2008, with 433 unique page views. It's got "legs".

By comments

It's interesting to me that my two most commented posts this year were both obituaries. It's been a year of big changes in my life.

1. Spot, 2008-02-23, 14 comments
   
2. Gerard Kreussling, 1931-2008, 2008-12-01, 12 comments
   
3. Summer Nights, my photographic report on raccoons in my backyard, 2008-06-26, 11 comments
   
4. Snake in the Garden, Prospect Park, about a guy ripping branches off a cherry tree, 2008-04-26, 10 comments
   
5. Three-way tie, with 9 comments each:
   
   • Brooklyn Bear's Carlton Avenue Garden, 2008-08-19
     
   • Kensington Blogade, 2008-03-10
     
   • Cortelyou Crocuses, 2008-03-06
     

In case you missed it

Here are some other posts that remain relevant, interesting, or which I'm otherwise proud of.

• Code, Spot: Our Lady of Abundance, the follow-up post about picking up Spot's ashes, and the reliquary box we chose to contain them, 2008-03-15
  
• Northeastern Bats in Peril, on the massive die-offs of bats from white-nose syndrome, 2008-03-18
• Meet Mr. Ripley, an introduction to our new cat, an 8-year-old "rescue," 2008-04-14
  
• Ditmas Park West Tree Planting, a photo-essay of my first time planting a street tree, 2008-04-29
• Colletes thoracicus (Colletidae), Cellophane Bees, a photo essay about a colony of these beautiful little native bees I found making shelter in a small corner of my garden, 2008-05-26
  
• Aphid control, which was a project for my Pest Management course in the Certificate in Horticulture program at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 2008-06-09
• Rabies in NYC: Facts and Figures, a response to some alarm raised in the Brooklyn blogosphere about raccoon sightings, 2008-07-08
  
• The Flatbush CommUNITY Garden, Brooklyn's (and NYC's!) newest community garden, 2008-09-16
  
• My continuing photo journal of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
  
• My photographic reports on the 2008 Green With Envy Tours of Brooklyn community gardens
  

Meta: Blogspot "embedded" comments do not work

This evening I found myself unable to sign in to and leave a comment on my own blog. After struggling with it for over a half-hour, I switched this blog's "Comment Form Placement" to "Full Page" from "Embedded." That seems to have circumvented the commenting problem, but I still can't edit my own blog.

If you've tried to leave a comment recently - the past two or three weeks - and were unable to do so, please try again.

Others have reported the same problem in the Blogger Help forums, but no one has gotten any relief.

Please stand by ...

... we are experiencing technical difficulties.


Specifically, the graphics card on my Dell laptop is shot. And, with their stellar support, which I already paid for, I get to wait 3-5 BUSINESS days for a replacement part.

So posting from the FG is going to be slim for the next two weeks.

Some recent and current blooms in my garden

Hemerocallis, Daylily, June 21, 2008


Just some quick photos of plants recently or currently blooming in my garden. The first few were taken two weeks aga.

Meta

I've changed my feedburner feed to remove the merged feed of photos from my Flickr site. I sometimes upload scores or hundreds of photos at a time. Also, often those photos are of events that are of more local community and less general gardening interest. For both these reasons, I think that including my photos interferes with the main use of the feed: subscribing to updates to this blog.

Those of you who want to keep tabs on my updated photos can still do so. My Flickr photostream has its own feed, available in either RSS or Atom format. You can subscribe to my photos directly from there.

Daylilies

I don't "collect" daylilies, at least not the way I try to collect Hosta or native plants. We inherited a few with the gardens when we bought the house. For that reason, I consider them to be "passalong" plants: dependable, sturdy, hardy, tolerant of neglect, vigorous, and so on. I gave away several clumps this Spring. I'll have more to give away over time.

Hemerocallis, Daylily, June 21, 2008

Native Plants

Ascelpias incarnata, Swamp Milkweed, June 21, 2008


Echinacea pallida, Pale Coneflower, June 21, 2008. This photo was used to illustrate "Coneflowers: America's Prairie Treasures", by Barbara Perry Lawton, in the Summer 2009 edition of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's "Plants & Gardens News."

The Shady Path

In this short section of the shady path on the north side of the house, I have my two big-leaved monsters: Rodgersia pinnata, on the right, and Kirengeshoma palmata, on the left. The Rodgersia has a lot of drought damage from our heat wave a few weeks ago, but it's off-frame of this photo. I'm keeping a close watch on the Kirengeshoma, as it also crisps up at the slightest hint of drought. There are buds on it now, which mature very slowly into waxy yellow bells. It benefits here from its location next to my neighbor's mixed border, which gets watered by soaker hose.



Both of these plants are several years old, possibly even a decade. I've lost track of when I purchased them. They're slow-growing, but continue to increase in size every year, despite never being divided in all that time. They are well worth the wait.

I used to keep the Kirengeshoma in a large container, which I could never water enough. It's much happier in the ground. Both of these plants would prefer constant moisture. I have long-term plans to build a rain garden in the shady part of the front yard. When the time comes, both of these plants will be very happy there.

Nestled between them in the foreground is a small, yellow-leaved, purple-flowering Hosta. I've lost the id for this. I think it might be 'Little Aurora.' Any Hosta aficionados out there who can weigh in on what this might be?

Heirloom Canna

Last to share with you today is the Heirloom Canna 'Mme. Paul Caseneuve' blooming in a large, glazed container in the front yard. This is the same specimen that I grew for the first time last year. I overwintered it in the same container in an unheated, but enclosed, section of the front porch. I'm surprised it came back.



It doesn't look as pink as I remember it from last year. The color is more apricot/salmony this year. At least it's got the same bronze foliage.

Related Content

Heirloom Canna "Mme. Paul Caseneuve", August 17, 2007
The Shady Path (Flickr photo set)

Meta: Google Calendar

I finally figured out how to aggregate multiple Google Calendars into a single view. I knew it was possible, because others have done it with my Flatbush Gardener calendar. My calendar has been in the sidebar for some time now, but I have to squish and stretch it so it will fit comfortably. Here's a big version.



I found the trick to aggregation in the Google Calendar Help Center:

If you'd like to customize your embedded calendar, click the link above the iframe field to access the Google Embeddable Calendar Helper. ...
To display events from multiple calendars in the same embedded calendar, simply follow the instructions above to access the Google Embeddable Calendar Helper. Then, check the box next to each calendar you wish to display, listed under "Calendars to Display."
- How do I embed Google Calendar on my website?

The "link" mentioned reads "Customize the color, size, and other options." "Other options" is a rather obscure reference to "oh, and by the way, you can aggregate multiple calendars."

Of more importance is the HTML that gets rendered, in particular, the parameters to the URL which is the src of the iframe which renders the calendar. Here's a partial list of what my calendar widget now contains:

1. %lt;iframe src="">
2. showTitle=0
3. mode=AGENDA
4. height=300
5. wkst=2
6. bgcolor=#FFFFFF
7. src=xrisfg@gmail.com
8. color=#0D7813
9. ...>
   

And here's a translation:

1. "iframe" is the "container" for the calendar. "src" identifies the contents. Here, we're asking Google Calendar to generate the contents for use, based on the other parameters we provide.
   
2. "0" (zero) is programmer for "No" or "Off". In other words: don't display the title of the calendar, "Xris (Flatbush Gardener)".
   
3. The default layout for the calendar. On wide displays, tabs at the top of the calendar allow you to choose different layouts. I chose "Agenda" as the default because it shows the most information about each event.
   
4. The height, in pixels (dots on your display) for the contents.
   
5. "wkst=2" means "Make Monday the start of the week." Doesn't make any difference for the Agenda layout.
   
6. "bgcolor" = "background color." "FFFFFF" means "white."
   
7. Which calendar to display (mine, in this case).
   
8. With which color to display the preceding identified calendar.
   
9. Repeat 7&8 for each calendar you want to aggregate.
   

Meta: #4 (The Brownstoner Effect)

As of this morning, Flatbush Gardener is, however briefly, #4 in Top 100's list of gardening sites. As Willy Wonka would say, "That's just unexpected, and ... weird."

[When I started out writing this post, I was #5. It went up to #4 while I was writing it.]

There are a couple of things going on that contribute to an anomaly like this. Part of the explanation is that I've been home sick most of the week. I've had time to do research and write for the blog, and I know that fresh content is the biggest draw for visitors to the site. However, the larger factor in this anomaly is what I call the "Brownstoner Effect."

I use a couple of different tools to measure visits to the site. Here are charts from two of them, Sitemeter and Statcounter, showing page views and visits to the site over the past 30 days.

SiteMeter 30-day Chart for Flatbush Gardener, November 10, 2007


StatCounter 30-day Chart for Flatbush Gardener, November 10, 2007


A couple of things are visible in these two charts:

• Although their actual counts are different, the shapes of the two charts are roughly the same.
  
• There was a spike in visitors and page views from October 23-25.
  
• There's been a sustained higher than usual number of visitors over the past four days, since November 6.
  

I need to dig just a little deeper to figure out why there's increased traffic on those dates. It doesn't take long to determine that those are days that Brownstoner had a link to one of my posts.

My free Sitemeter account only provides details for the last 100 page views. It's okay for seeing the most recent activity, but nothing beyond that. Also, it doesn't provide any quick analytical views of the data. But I can't see the 100 most recent "Referrals", links from other sites. Right now, for example, 8 of the 20 most recent came from Brownstoner. So the sustained traffic of the past few days seems to be continuing.

My upgraded StatCounter account records the last 2,000 page views. More important, it provides some basic analysis of the data.

		Referring Link
	376	www.google.com
	252	No referring link
	192	images.google.com
	191	www.brownstoner.com
	68	www.blogger.com
	65	brownstoner.com
	46	www.livinginvictorianflatbush.com
	43	ditmaspark.blogspot.com
	25	kensingtonbrooklyn.blogspot.com
	24	search.yahoo.com
	15	images.google.co.uk
	15	www.flickr.com
	13	brooklynjunction.blogspot.com
	11	aolsearch.aol.com
	8	www.kensingtonbrooklyn.blogspot.com
	7	del.icio.us
	7	images.google.ca
	7	search.aol.com
	7	www.google.ca
	6	images.google.com.au

As usual, Google tops the list with 376 of the last 2,000 views. Most of the visits to my blog come from Google searches. I periodically look at what people are looking for when they find my blog. That helps me categorize my content better, and sometimes leads me to improve specific posts. But that's a topic for another post.

In second place, with 256 views when you combine the results for "www.brownstoner.com" and "brownstoner.com", is Brownstoner. You can also see several other familiar (to Brooklyn readers) blogs: Living in Victorian Flatbush, Ditmas Park Blog, Kensington (Brooklyn) (with 2 URLs), and Brooklyn Junction. They're all neighbors who write about local topics.

Next is "No referring link." In theory, this should reflect all views where folks visited my blog directly, without getting referred by a link from another page. In practice, this also includes anyone who is blocking referrer information, or who has cookies disabled, perhaps specifically for StatCounter.

There are always some sources of error in numbers. Identifying and removing them is important to me. For that I prefer the power tool of "hit counters" Google Analytics.

Update: By the evening, Flatbush Gardener was #3.

Meta: Blog Care & Feeding

I'm home sick today, and it's cold out, an opportunity to do some blog maintenance, dust off a draft or two, catch up on some of the huge backlog of blog reading.

Links

I've been working on re-organizing the sidebar. The newest addition is a section titled "Links > Flatbush & Neighbors." For the first time, there are enough blogs and other online resources in my area to warrant its own section; four of the blogs listed there are new in the past few months. I don't want my list for local resources to get lost in the It's "and neighbors" because I want to recognize the connections, geographical, political, and otherwise, we share.

Blogger recently added a "Link List" widget to their layout tools. It's pretty basic, but it captures most of what I've had since the beginning in the larger, longer "Links" section of the sidebar. It can be kept sorted alphabetically, and I can have multiple sections for each group of links. So I'm gradually migrating from my old, manually-edited raw HTML links to the Blogger widget.

Meta: Blogger/Blogspot now provides comment feeds

I haven't had a chance to try this out yet, but Blogger Buzz announced today that you - yes, you - can receive follow-up comments by email. You can subscribe to a post's comments by clicking the "Email" link next to "Subscribe to comments" on the post page.

There's a bit of a catch to it, though:

In order to receive follow-ups via email, you’ll need to post your comment using your Google Account. We only send comments to your verified Google Account so that someone else can’t use this feature to send you email you didn’t sign up for.

Not much worse than I've experienced on some other hosting services, especially TypePad. So, not ideal, but better than nothing.

Links:
Subscribe to Comments - by email! (Blogger Buzz)
How can I subscribe to comments by email? (Blogger Help)

Meta: Email address in profile

My profile now lists an email address. To keep the spam down, it's not labelled as "email." It's at the end of the "About Me" text, obfuscated in the usual dot at fashion.

My blog has become more popular. I'm regularly getting over 120 visitors a day; the average for this month is 190 visitors, skewed by some very popular posts at the beginning of the month. Only 12% are return visits. I've also been getting more involved in my community.

I'm finding that folks want to be able to contact me directly with questions and feedback. Sometimes it's that they prefer private to public communication. Maybe it's that there's no relevant post to which to attach a comment.

Regardless, I'm open to direct correspondence. I've added the email address to my little cards. I realized I should extend at least the same courtesy to my readers!

Meta: Events on the Sidebar

I just changed the page layout to include a list of upcoming events at the top of the sidebar on the right side of the page. I'll keep the focus on local events. In fact, right now, all four events listed are hyper-local, on Cortelyou Road, right down the block from my home:

• Friday, June 15, 8pm-12mid
  Sustainable Flatbush: Urban Permaculture, at Vox Pop
  
• Sunday, June 24, 2-5pm
  Brooklyn Blogade Roadshow, Flatbush, at Vox Pop
  
• Sunday, July 1
  Cortelyou Greenmarket: Opening Day, Cortelyou Road between Argyle and Rugby Roads
  
• Sunday, September 16, 11am-6pm
  Flatbush Frolic, Cortelyou Road east of Coney Island Avenue
  

This is an experiment. Updating it is a manual process, requiring me to change that section of the layout whenever I want to remove an expired event or add a new upcoming one. So, at least for now, I'm only going to include events in which I'm involved, which I'm helping to promote, which I hope to attend, or which I would attend if I could.

Meta: Finding Flatbush Gardener

In the past few days, people have found my blog when searching Google for:

dwarf colony in staten island

A colony of dwarves? A very small colony? Does such a thing exist? Ask Google ...

This turns up my March archive, which happens to have the words "dwarf", "colony" and the phrase "Staten Island" in it, though all on separate posts. It's low on the list; I'm surprised they clicked through.

a boy's soul taken to heaven by angels

When I checked, my blog was the FIRST site returned for this phrase. They get one of my "Blog Against Theocracy" posts. Probably not what they were looking for! Though remarkably on-topic.

happy-corpse

I don't want to know what they were looking for. Of course, this turns up one of my Corpse Flower posts. My Dad wrote: They're looking for Arum Death Plant which was a happy article.

where rabies is popular

Addams Family seeks perfect vacation spot.

Meta: Comment moderation temporarily enabled

Update 2007.06.01: RESOLVED. I've disabled moderation and restored word verification (CAPTCHA) for comments.

---

Due to email problems I'm having, I've temporarily enabled comment moderation so I can review comments before they appear on this blog.

Normally I get an email when a comment is posted. This notifies me when a comment is posted. It also allows me to review the comments and delete the few spam comments that get posted within hours of their appearance.

Because I now need to explicitly review each comment before it appears, there will be a delay before your comment appears on this blog.

In exchange, I've also temporarily turned off the word verification (CAPTCHA) feature which prevents spambots from posting comments.

Hope to get things back to normal soon!

Thanx - Xris

Meta-Meta: Blog-Blogging-Blogging (27 lessons About Blogging)

I'm always interested to read tips on how to blog - and write - more effectively. This list of "lessons" comes from Pick the Brain, via 10,000 Birds:

Over the course of 97 posts and 1602 comments, traffic has grown to over 3,000 unique visitors a day, over 2200 readers have subscribed to the RSS feed, and several articles have been featured on the popular pages of Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Netscape. It isn’t the most amazing start (there have certainly been bumps along the way) but I’m proud of what I’ve built and optimistic the site will continue to grow.

I want to share what I’ve learned, but it’d be pointless to try explaining it all. Rather, I’ve compiled a list of the 27 most important lessons.
- 27 Lessons Learned on the Way to 3000 Visits a Day and 2200 RSS Subscribers, Pick the Brain

I find I agree with most of the 27. I believe I'm even following most of the ones I agree with. A handful I disagree with; maybe I haven't learned that lesson yet, or maybe my context differs sufficiently from P the B that it doesn't apply.

Here's my synopsis, with my reflections in [brackets], including some questions for you, my readers. Read the full post for more explanation of each Lesson. If you have a thought about any of this, please leave a comment.

1. a) help people solve a problem, and b) differentiate yourself.
   [I think I'm doing both. But not every post, or blog, needs to be task-oriented. "Build a raised bed in five minutes with no tools!" In fact, there are already sources of such information out there, biased or revenue-driven they may be. These two goals are in tension, so striking a balance between them is the art.]
   
2. Blogging is not a great way to make money.
   [I never thought it was. I've had a Web presence since the early 90s. It's never been about money for me.]
   
3. Make it as easy as possible for people to subscribe to your feed.
   [I've thought about putting more subscribe widgets at the top of the sidebar, or in the header. But I also get annoyed when I see 20 or 30 different widgets on some other blog or post. How hard is it to subscribe? What would make it easier?]
   
4. Offer a full feed.
   [Here I disagree. I had a full feed at first. I changed it to a digest. I wish I had more control with Blogger about how much goes in the digest. Often the first X words don't make any sense. On the other hand, the first few sentences should make some sense on their own, per #9.]
   
5. A bad post is worse than no post.
   [Yup. I've written my share.]
   
6. Be prepared to completely run out of ideas after the first 3-4 months.
   [It took me about 8 months before I hit a dry spell over December-January. But it wasn't because I had run out of ideas. I always have lots of ideas. I had run out of energy and enthusiasm for it. I had to regroup to find my direction again.]
   
7. It’s not always what you know, who you know is important too.
   [The fuller explanation suggests to use one's contacts for feedback and promotion. I'm getting a little less bashful about that, but my contributions must still stand on their own. ]
   
8. Write catchy headlines and list posts that will be popular with the social sites.
   [Catchy headlines? I have been too clever. The headline and first sentence or two must make some sense. As for popularity, that's never been my strength, and I'm not going to start now. Though I look to statistics about visits and page views for feedback about how I'm doing, I'm not doing this for numbers.]
   
9. Do everything you can to make your headline and opening paragraph as compelling as possible.
   [Compelling, okay, but not misleading. I find these three lines the hardest to write. See also #4 and #8.]
   
10. Courteously encourage friends, family, and casual acquaintances to vote up and link to your posts.
    [You are hereby encouraged!]
11. Don’t write every post for the social sites.
    [I don't write any!]
12. Listen carefully to every piece of feedback but don’t be a slave to it.
    [The most difficult feedback for me to deal with has been communicated through private correspondence. Both instances occurred over the past month or so. Both have caused me to second-guess myself, and ultimately censor my own words. Anyone who knows me knows that's a BIG DEAL. In both cases, I've not been satisfied with the outcome, and I don't know what a preferable resolution would have been.]
    
13. If your writing doesn’t have an edge it might as well not exist.
    [I err more on the side of edge. That's not always a good thing!]
    
14. Always look for a different angle.
    [This is one of my strengths, I think. I like making connections, seeing relationships, understanding systems and interactions. I think that's what I like about natural history, ecology, and environmental sciences. I think it's also what attracts me to technology and engineering. This whole blog experiment is a long arc of making connections among themes and topics which resonate with each other for me.]
    
15. If linking doesn’t provide value to your readers it’s a bad idea.
    [I don't link for linking's sake. It's always something I read, or find interesting, myself. In my sidebar is my real blogroll for Gardening and Nature blogs and sites. Yes, I need to find room for Brooklyn blogs, too! I try to follow the usual best practices for link usability in the body of my posts.]
    
16. Write about your life in a way that’s relevant to your topic.
    [I try to relate my personal life to the themes of this blog. There's a lot I don't write about in this blog. I think there's been only one, maybe two, pictures of my cat. My cat is relevant to me, but to this blog, not so much.]
    
17. Make people think.
    [I hope I do. First thing is to make myself think. See also #14.]
    
18. Don’t be anxious to plaster Google Ads all over the place.
    [I've seen no good reason to ever start.]
19. Design matters.
    [I've tweaked a ready-made template to get the look of this blog. But I've focussed more on content than container. There are some things which annoy me about the way my blog is laid out, which I would change if I had the time for R&D. What would you change about my blog's design?]
20. Posting comments on other blogs is overrated.
    [I comment on thers' blogs only because their post sparks some reaction in me which makes me want to respond. I don't leave comments solely to drive content to my site, though that sometimes happens.]
21. Respond to your commenters, especially the ones who disagree.
    [I try to respond to every comment, though I know I miss a few now and then. I'm glad that Blogger now has the ability to subscribe to comment feeds, though I don't know if anyone does. It would be nice if there was a single feed for allthe comments; that would be a more reliable way of keeping up with the conversations.]
22. Obsessively reading other blogs and checking traffic stats are not productive activities. Your time is better spent doing things that actually increase traffic like creating content, doing research, and posting to relevant forums. [I've left this lesson in its full form, because the author makes several points, and this is something for which I'm still trying to find a balance.]
23. Once you have a bit of success don’t flaunt it but let other people know.
    [I've done this a couple of times, such as this Spring's Rabies More Popular Than Sex and, more recently, I Was On TV! My photography is starting to get more notice, and that's new for me. I'm curious to see where that goes, and takes me.]
24. Make use of blog carnivals.
    [I've contributed to several blog carnivals, and I enjoy finding opportunities to do so. I hosted my first blog carnival, Festival of the Trees #11, earlier this month. And I can tell you, it's an investment. And now I'm one of the coordinators of the first Brooklyn "meat carnival" which will follow up on the success of the Brooklyn Blogfest earlier this month.]
25. Display your best posts on every page in a prominent location.
    [I like this idea. It's easy to do. But what are "my best posts"? Are they the most popular ones? The ones I'm most proud of? I think it has to be a mix. What would you choose to be among my Top N posts?]
26. Read blogs about blogging.
    [Most of these are not that interesting. Frankly, I don't have the time. I've been on the Web, though not blogging, a long time now. For me, blogging is writing, first. I could spawn a parallel photoblog, but, again, I just don't have time. I know that folks like my photography. Maybe I could add a "picture of the week" to this blog which doesn't take a lot of time.]
    
27. Do what works for you. Be completely genuine.
    [Oh, that would never work. I'm far too shy, withdrawn and reticent.]

Meta: Spammers will be shot on sight

[Update 2007.04.18 12:30 EDT: Corrected typos. Masked "language".]

This comment was left on Ths Transetorey Life an hour ago [midnight, 2007.04.18]:

Hi, I like to read alot [sic] of random blogs daily. I average about 15 blogs
everyday. Your blog is among the best that i [sic] have visited today, aside
from some of the other mindless blogs i've [sic] read. Keep up the good work!
I run my own site. It pretty much covers online auctions [link to #$!) here].
Come and check it out if you get time.

How considerate of you to to spam me with a comment on a post in which I share my thoughts and feelings on the 5th anniversary of September 11.

$&#* you, too.

Meta: Rabies More Popular Than Sex

Update 2010.01.03: Corrected all links to the old Gowanus Lounge domain to the new memorial domain.

---

Looking at charts of the visits and page views to my blog over the past month, it's obvious that something unusual happened on February 20 and yesterday, March 1. The first chart is from SiteMeter, the second from StatCounter.


What happened? I got some link love.

I posted about the condoms on 2/16. Gowanus Lounge, another but oh-so-much-more-popular Brooklyn blog, picked up the story on 2/20, and New York Magazine added it to their Web site the same day. And yesterday, New York Magazine picked up the rabies post.

Here's a table showing the number of visits as reported by StatCounter and Google Analytics. Site meter doesn't give me a way to view the numbers, and I can't find a way to capture the Flash-based Google graphics. The numbers are remarkably close, within 5% of each other, so I have some confidence in them.

Source	Visits, 2/20	Visits, 3/1
StatCounter	99	124
Google	94	123

I was surprised when the rabies post out-tracked the condoms post. It's not really a fair comparison. The New York magazine item, a daily feature called Neighborhood Watch, was titled "You, With the Pet Raccoon! Time for Your Rabies Shot" and had a stock photo of a raccoon with gaping jaws. It was also on their home page for most of yesterday. Most of the hits to my blog yesterday were referrals from the New York Magazine home page.