It has been something of an eventful year here at Blogonomicon.  I'll make my usual post of the top ten referrers for the month tomorrow sometime, but tonight I feel like just going over some other blog-related stuff.  Although the blog is offline due to bandwidth restrictions, I can still post to it and the posts will show up as soon as the blog comes back online.

This blog began at Blogspot (original called The Complete Waste of Time Weblog) and was pretty much useless and unknown until about March 2004, when I got a bug up my *** about something related to the Second Amendment and decided I would use the blog to start posting on matters related to RKBA, self defense, concealed carry, and guns in general.  Inspired by reading several other such blogs, I became a gunblogger, and changed the name to what it is now.

About a month later I started seeing referrals.  The first person ever to link to one of my posts was Lest Darkness Fall.  It was exciting and just a little scary at the same time.  Someone had noticed me.  I wasn't in total and complete obscurity anymore.

Traffic continued to grow and eventually I began submitting to the Carnival of Cordite, which really brought in previously unseen bursts of traffic.  My own blogroll continued to grow as I discovered more and more interesting sites.  I did a couple of humorous guest-posts at Samantha Burns and traffic kept going up.

In February of this year, I decided I had had enough of Blogspot and started looking for a new service.  I tried out a few and didn't like any of them for various nit-picky reasons, until I landed at Eponym.

After a couple of months, I began showing up regularly on Eponym's top ten list and it sent my traffic to crazy heights.  I had Eponym take me off the list intentionally because I considered all this traffic to be sort of empty and random.  People would click just because I was on a high-traffic list, load the page, suck up some bandwidth, and disappear.

But still, I wanted more traffic that was more deliberate so I joined a few blogrolls and this turned out to create a pretty even balance between good traffic and empty traffic.

I continued to use both Sitemeter and Statcounter to follow my web stats, but Eponym also has their own in-house stat system which I began to use as well.  I now had exact counts of exactly which pages and which graphics were being searched for and viewed the most.  I also had exact counts of who was referring to me and why.  It wasn't long before I decided I needed to actually pay for this service.  In the beginning I would have never guessed that I'd ever pay for a blog service.

Tomorrow I'll probably include a list of the most highly-trafficked posts for 2006, but for now there's one I'll mention in particular, which I have previously referred to on occasion as "the-post-which-must-not-be-named" because I didn't want another mention of it to increase traffic again.

The Guns of Hellsing is by far my top post for this year, originally posted on March 1.  I made the mistake of hosting all 35 of its graphic files here at Eponym.  At first, this was no problem.  But then last July Google images finally indexed all those files.  My bandwidth and traffic skyrocketed from people looking for pictures and info about that show.  In July alone I had 1,591 hits to that post.  By the time I was forced to delete it, I had had more than 2,500 hits to that post alone.  If I hadn't deleted it, it might have even cracked 10,000 hits for the year.  Today while doing some housekeeping, I discovered that I had never finished moving the entire post to the old Blogspot site like I meant to do.  So tonight I fixed that.  Follow the link above and you will see the full post once more, hosted on the old blog.  Hopefully it will get indexed soon and people will go there to get their Hellsing fix instead of coming here.

A couple of minor points this year were when I made up the header graphic at the top of the page, and when I finally dug into the template and changed the color scheme to something other than one of Eponym's pre-fab templates.  One commenter thought that purple looked "gay."  Whatever.  As you can see, I wasn't dissuaded because 1) I like purple, and 2) no one else on Eponym has a blog that looks like this one, as far as I know.  I guess someone could have copied it without me knowing.  A couple of other people thought it looked "goth," which I don't object to at all.

Another milestone reached this year was when I started doing photoshops and getting into some photoshopping contests.  The first such a one was in September and can be seen here at Cowboy Blob's.  This has been a lot of fun and brought in yet new referrals and traffic.  I haven't done any of that in about a month, partly because I haven't really been inspired to, and partly because the problem I had with my shoulder for a few weeks made it too painful to sit here and tinker with photos for a couple of hours at a time.  By the way, the shoulder is almost back to normal.  I'm still a little shaky sometimes, but at least it doesn't hurt all the time anymore.

And, yet another new aspect of blogging began this year when I recently began posting things I call Ramblings, which are just stories from my own life and stuff like that.  This has mostly been inspired by Hammer.  However, back when I had my first website many years ago, I wrote occasional essays just like these, a few of which I've reproduced here because I thought they were worth reposting.  I first began accessing the internet in 1994, and had my first website up in 1996.  So this year is ten years since I've had some kind of website up, somewhere in cyberspace.  My first website was called Farm Road 539, subtitled "an obscure backroad on the information superhighway."  I created my own background for it by scanning a few inches of one of my own blue jeans with a hand scanner(!).  I also had one way back when called "Pictures of People with Pipes," which is why I have this collection of notable pipe-smokers.  There was one called Owl Sounds, which I never deleted and although I had to move it a couple of times, it is still there at its last home.  Owl Sounds is just a small collection of low-quality sound files that I recorded of the barred owls that make their homes around my house.  In years past, I have been contacted by a few school teachers who told me they were using the sound files in some of their classroom instruction, which was very gratifying.  Another old site that is still at its final resting place is The Shunned Site.  If anyone is interested in the material referenced at The Shunned Site, you can visit The Last Ancient House, which was updated recently and I think is easier to navigate and read.  But, I digress.

One other point is that I was added to Eponym's blog directory under the category of Activism:  Gun Control.  I think I know who made the submission, but I'm not sure.  I didn't do it myself.  For a long time I was in the #2 position after Of Arms and the Law.  Right now I'm at #3 after Of Arms and the Law and Alphecca.  There are a lot of other gun blogs that I think should be in this list before myself, and I am going to be submitting some of them in the future.  I already submitted one a few days ago and will post on it after they decide if they're going to include it or not.

So, this blog is still pretty much all over the map and I can't stick to just one topic with it.  But if I did try to focus on one thing only, it wouldn't be a true reflection of myself.

If I have had one failing with this blog, it is that I have never posted anything that caused anyone to flame me with a really nasty comment.  Some might see this as a success instead of a failure, but it seems to me that I must not be doing something entirely right if I haven't p*ssed at least one person off.

One thing that I plan to post more about in the future is when I find good quality graphics that can be used as desktop wallpaper.  I have done this sometimes, but I am grabbing photos like this all the time and I probably blog about it only 1/10 of the time.  I change my wallpaper about once every week, or two, and I still haven't really made a dent in my collection.

I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who reads this blog, everyone who links to one of my posts now and then, and everyone who has added me to their blogrolls.  When I started doing this, I never thought blogging would become such a big hobby for me, or honestly, that it would become such a big part of my life.  Thanks.

Just wanted to point out this blog that I found, pretty much by accident (one post turned up in one of my gun-related searches):  Strange in San Antonio.

The writer of this blog reports on odd goings-on in the Alamo City and some other general observations.  I've been reading his archives and found them entertaining and interesting.

It doesn't look like he gets many comments, so visit and let him know he's not alone.

I have been looking back through the archives at this end-of-year time and realized that it was one year ago today that I began posting a Pipesmoker of the Week.

The latest is only #45, not #52.  That's because I put it off for a few weeks just recently, and a couple of times I just forgot or didn't feel like it.

If civilization doesn't collapse, by this time next year I should be getting close to the end of my collection.

But it looks like I'll be offline for one day due to bandwidth limits.

I think it's my own fault for hosting more pictures here this month than usual.  I'll have to go back to hosting all the pictures at photobucket.

This is especially remarkable because I recently got a free upgrade to 5 gigs of bandwidth (previously it was 2).

So thanks to everyone who visited here this month.  There were more of you than usual.

UPDATE:  I changed a setting that might help reduce bandwidth a little.  The front page now shows only the most recent 10 posts instead of 20.  On the other hand, I changed the monthly archive setting to display the entire month instead of only part of that month.  I was getting annoyed with my own settings while trying to search back through the archives for something.

Also, I noticed that my "about me" post has been viewed 145 times so far this month.  That's way more than any month previous, so I guess there were quite a few new visitors this month.

I'm already getting hits for Gerald Ford and pipe smoking.

I'm planning on making such a post this coming Saturday.

Pretty strange that the hits are already coming and I haven't even posted it yet.

A long time ago, I tried keeping a paper journal.  I thought that maybe someday I would have kids, or at least nieces and nephews, who might wonder what I was like and what things mattered to me during my life.

It went on sporadically for a year or so, and I gave it up.

A blog may be more ephemeral than a hardcopy journal, but it's a lot easier and I always appreciate the feedback that I couldn't have in regular diary.

So if some of my stories seem pretty boring, and not up to snuff with some other good blogging story-tellers out there, just remember that I'm doing it for the future as well.

I do regular weekly exports that I save to CD.  I've been doing this for quite a while now.

This time I got one for "were people poop in the 1800's era".  I assume by "were" this person meant "where."  It only led them to an old post in which I mentioned "1800's-era Winchesters."  So, sorry I couldn't answer that specifically, but I think that's what the outhouse was for.

I think this is the funniest search so far.

Someone came here today after searching "santa holding a pipe."

I'm glad I could be of service.  New pix will be posted daily through Christmas.

Although I have stopped trackbacks since a few days ago, there's no way I know of that I can go back and shut them down for all my previous posts.

Today's wave, about 20 so far, are referring to Google.  Why would anyone want to use trackback spam that refers to Google (as in www.google.com)?  I don't get it.

1.  Gun Law News
2.  Alphecca
3.  Hell in a Handbasket
4.  Cowboy Blob
5.  Spank That Donkey (Carnival of Cordite)
6.  Oscar Poppa
7.  Ninth Stage
8.  The War On Guns
9.  A Keyboard and a .45
10.  Ride Fast & Shoot Straight


Thanks a lot!

I've shut off trackbacks.  I'm tired of deleting 50-100 attempted spams every day.