Girt By Anniversaries
Happy anniversary, Girtby.net, you’re one year old today!
Girt by Growth
Here are the numbers from the first year:
Posts: 122 Comments: 214 (non-spam) Visitors: 56,832 Pages Viewed: 157,648 (excluding robots) Total traffic: 2.59GB
This is far more than I had ever expected, in all areas. By far most of the traffic seems to have occurred after posting the local wordpress mirror HOWTO back in February. This article kickstarted girtby’s traffic, as you can see on this graph (September in progress):
Of course building traffic is not really the purpose of girtby.net, but it is gratifying in a way that people other than myself seem to be amused by this humble blog.
You can’t see it on a graph, but blogging on girtby.net been great fun, and it has definitely served the purpose it was originally intended to. Thanks to all humans who visited my online ego, hope you enjoyed your stay. Thanks especially to those who take the time to post comments and blog posts in reply. It’s very gratifying.
Girt by Firsts
September 2004:
- First post
- First frantic reworking after posting due to terrible choice of words/phrases/subject
- First draft abandoned after realising that I actually don’t have anything interesting to say about some topic
October 2004:
- First spam
- First mega-post that provokes the sound of crickets
- First wordpress plugin
- First use of workplace catchphrase in a post (“Hulk SMASH X! Y make Hulk ANGRY!”)
- First picture of footwear posted. This image is still popular with Italians (1, 2), Russians, Slovenians, Swiss zombie fans and Dutch kiddies.
- First throwaway post of some web snippet that crossed my path, and is now 404-ed.
- First post entitled “Girt by X” when I couldn’t think of a more witty title.
November 2004:
- First disastrous prediction
- First (and last) moblogging
- First Microsoft bashing
- First (and only, so far) change of hosting provider
December 2004:
- First quoting of a character from Buffy in order to make a legitimate point.
- First important realisation on the nature of blogging. Also the first one-word post.
- First explanation of the name girtby.net
- First Pimpin’ of the rig!
- First Best-of Post
January 2005:
- First legitimate comment by someone I didn’t know (congratulations Ludwig Van Nemotode).
- First comment by the author of some software that I wrote about.
- First slashdotting. Not as exciting as it sounds: my (first and only) “ask slashdot” submission was accepted, and they linked to me. Some suckers clicked on the link. Most of the internet didn’t.
February 2005:
- First naming of a company as “wankers”
- First HOWTO. This article remains the highest-traffic page on girtby.net.
- First major Wordpress upgrade.
- First del.icio.us bookmarking
March 2005:
- First makeover.
- First adoption of dud web tech.
- First actual software posted. AppleScript counts, right?
April 2005:
- First response from a wanker company.
- First recycling of a letter to the editor of a local paper (it was never published there anyway).
May 2005:
- First time considering is-it-spam-or-not.
- First Apple bashing.
June 2005:
- First cyberstalking (by, not of, me)
July 2005:
- First offering that provokes the sound of crickets.
- First lively(ish) debate in comments.
August 2005:
- Longest post to date (2,600 words).
- First (and only, so far) defamatory comment deleted.
September 2005:
- First anniversary post (but don’t expect another one next year, this was a lot of work!)
Greatest Hits
You might not have noticed, but I think the style has changed gradually, hopefully for the better. I started off blogging furiously and trailed off to a more sustainable rate as the months went by. The linkpimpin’ posts became less frequent, and I am now (mostly) immune to web memes. The style now is less stream-of-consciousness, more considered, more betterer writtin’s, and in general more rewarding to write.
Looking back, I’m quite proud of the short posts like Catachresis of the Year and YAGA. But I think it’s the more lengthy, recent posts that are my best work. Go ahead, take a stroll down memory lane:
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