Archive for March, 2011
It’s been almost 6 months since I killed all active analytics on my blogs. I scrubbed it of Google Analytics and WordPress.com Stats. The only numbers I get now are passive and highly aggregated and anonymized, webserver logs automatically crunched by Urchin.
I don’t miss the detailed active analytics one bit. I still find out if anyone links to my stuff, through the WordPress Dashboard links widget. But I have no clue about how many people read my stuff, nor how many RSS subscribers there are.
And that’s (still) highly liberating. I can’t let myself play egocentric mind games with numbers. I can’t delude myself into believing this space is Important, or cringe popular because those things aren’t real, and don’t matter.
So now, it’s still just me. And, maybe, a few others out there somewhere. And I don’t think I could ever go back to the number OCD of active analytics. I’ve let go of meaningless statistics.
it’s starting to feel like the arctic winter is slowly coming to an end. the sun’s up longer. blue skies. hopefully things start melting soon…
a lazy wintery sunday at home with The Boy™
evan spent much of the day building a fleet of paper airplanes. he decided to mount several to the blades of his ceiling fan, so they could fly in his room…
Tim Bray tried a little experiment to list browser-suggested URLs for each letter of the alphabet. Thought I’d give it a shot:
- ac.mediatemple.net – Account manager for my Media Temple hosting)
- blackboard.ucalgary.ca – UCalgary’s Bb install
- cpep-net.ca – an OLD project, long ago abandoned
- darcynorman.net – my blog. go figure.
- entrada.com – a vet/med education app
- flickr.com
- google.com – I’m still using DuckDuckGo via browser bar, but go to google directly to search sometimes.
- home.darcynorman.net – no place like home.
- instagr.am – home of hipsterific poser film photography, including my own.
- jentropy.com – how long has this been there? I think the site was abandoned.
- knowledgetree.org – open source shared document repository app
- links.darcynorman.net – my bookmarks site
- mindfulseeing.com – my photoblog
- northernvoice.ca – moose season is coming!
- ow.ly – eater of direct links, killer of web
- photoretouchinglab.com – the horrors!
- Quality Outdoor Gear, Equipment & Clothing – Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) – mec.ca
- reddit.com
- sustainabilityreports.ucalgaryblogs.ca – a current (well, NOW past, project)
- tlc.ucalgary.ca – Teaching & Learning Centre @ UCalgary
- ucalgaryblogs.ca – the best damned campus blogging platform, evar!
- vet.ucalgary.ca – Faculty of Veterinary Medicine @ UCalgary
- www.darcynorman.net – my blog. again. yikes.
- xcal.ucalgary.ca – web interface for some of the UCalgary calendar system
- youtube.com
- zdnet.com
I do much (most?) of my reading through my RSS reader (which runs as a subdirectory of darcynorman.net, which, I’d bet, is why my own domain is listed twice above). The stuff listed here is mostly stuff I use directly and regularly, or stuff that got bounced out of my RSS reader for some reason. (or, stuff that’s linked from gruber’s daringfireball.net, most likely…)
getting ready to leave the school after an anti-bullying presentation for parents.
the space beside the TRW building at the Foothills Campus. I got to walk around the long way, because the Health Sciences building was closed due to a water main break.
the cavernous atrium between health sciences and TRW buildings on the foothills campus