Data Mining
One of, if not THE main reason I moved to wordpress from livejournal was that livejournal didn’t offer the ability to see statistics. And the best part about those statistics are seeing what searches on google are leading to hits on my blog.
These statistics are not at all what you would expect, but they are fascinating. For example, the most frequent search item that people use to find this blog is ‘clock’. Searches that involve that word have landed on this blog more than 1,070 times. I just can’t fathom that! I’m sure there are entire blogs devoted just to clocks. As far as I know, I have only really mentioned clocks two times, and in passing at that. How far down the list must my blog be that people are finding me?
After clocks, my next two most searched for items are running neck and neck at just over 200 hits each. Kate Micucci is narrowly beating out searches related to the Mario ? box. The first I feel okay about since I actually took time and energy to write up an informative post. The second I feel a little bad about, since my post is really just a summary and link-through to another post. Still, at least in those cases I’m fairly sure that the searchers got what they were looking for, as opposed to all those clock people.
Sometimes when I look at the search results, I know exactly which post of mine the person found. For example, when someone for some reason searches for ‘smell my gas’, well, I know I happen to have a post with that name. Same goes for ‘phantom pig‘, though I’m not sure why anybody is searching for either of those things. Or when I see one for ‘job hunting secretly’, I chuckle to myself thinking, “Oh ho buddy, have I got a post for you.” I’m always glad when I feel like I have satisfied a request. Another example, I know the person who searched for ’awesomest man ever’ definitely found what they were looking for.
Sometimes I know which post they found, but I’m not really sure if I have satisfied their request. For example, requests like ’larp babes’ or ‘hot larpers’ obviously led them to this post, but it doesn’t look like they found what they were looking for. Or ’what do hipsters eat’ obviously led them here, but were they wanting to learn how to be a hipster or were they just generally curious? Like, “What the heck DO they eat?”
Some posts I really, really hope they DIDN’T find what they were looking for, or else I would get a little self conscious, like the person who found me by searching for ’fat man at baseball game’. I don’t *think* I’ve been to any baseball games lately, but hey they found my blog didn’t they? The same goes for 15 or so hits I’ve received on ‘odd looking people’. I mean, I’m not so attractive, but I hope nobody would describe me as “odd”. But here they are on my blog! (j/k by the way, I know those hits go here)
Some search terms are very specific to where I have no idea what they were searching for at all, much less how in the world they ended up on my blog. Take, for example, the search for ’picture of 6 rings march 14,2009′.
Then there are the very odd searches, like ‘zombie solution stuck in a building‘ or ‘how to explain a picture to a dead rabbi’. Aside from having no clue which post on my blog could have possibly fulfilled the search criteria, do you think someone communes with the spirit of a rabbi who died before the invention of the camera? And this person thought maybe he’d find someone in a similar situation on the Internet whose advice he might ask?
I think one of my favorite search items was ’pickle pops and cancer’. I am SO vindicated on that one! Unfortunately, I haven’t had any hits on ‘nun skin‘ yet.
The new Me
So…the new me!
I mentioned a while ago that I was getting pretty frustrated with LiveJournal. Everybody knows time has sort of passed them by, but in particular it is ridiculous that they don’t have an integrated search feature! I also was annoyed with the lack of support for Google Analytics or any sort of page tracking at all. Those were probably the two biggest problems.
So I got a Blogger account and spent some time getting that all set up the way I wanted it. I really like how Blogger lets you adjust the style sheet manually if you want to, something that WordPress charges you extra for. With Blogger I could integrate Google Analytics (you better be able to since they are both Google products!) and of course there is a search feature (again, Google) so I was happy enough about that. I went back and forth for a long time, but eventually it was clear the only reason I was staying with LiveJournal was loyalty.
So I was all ready to make the switch when I discovered that you can’t easily import into Blogger! I certainly wasn’t going to let all of my old posts disappear! There were clients you could download to do it, but it essentially amounted to adding all of your old entries and then backdating them. Kind of annoying.
Of course WordPress is sort of the hmm hmm hmm of blogging and I kind of always felt deep down inside that a computer programmer aught to be using something a little more complex than LiveJournal. Really though, the ease of importing is what caused me to make a 90 degree turn at the last minute and set up a WordPress account instead.
So I like the integrated page tracking / analytics from WordPress, the search capability, and I already mentioned the built in import (and export should I change my mind) functionality. I like the ability to customize the sidebar that I didn’t have with LiveJournal. I like having the comments on same page as the entry so you can look up and reread it, as opposed to the Blogger style where the comments are on a separate page. And LiveJournal had the stupid idea to ignore my nice style I spent all that time setting up when you clicked on the post or went to look at the comments! I also like the idea that with WordPress I can always host my blog in my own domain in the future if I so choose, not just redirect there.
So anyway, here I am! I don’t have a mood or music setting with each post, but frankly I won’t miss them! Sometimes it was annoying to try to think of my mood and the whole thing seemed kind of myspacy (although pre-myspace). I have a lot of options to explore (a lot more than I had with LiveJournal) so I will probably still be tweaking things for a while.
So tell me loyal readers…what do you think?
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year?
Better late than never, right?
Hey, I’ve been busy. Did the usual 3 state trip (IN, MI, WI) over the break. It was exhausting! I couldn’t believe how much stuff we had to bring for Evie. We couldn’t have fit very much else in the car. How do you do it with more than 1 kid? It’s still not over with yet, we still have more traveling for the next two weekends (IN and WI respectively). I was really worn out by vacation. 
I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that Evie has apparently stopped sleeping.
Okay, check this out. Yeah, I read that book…saw the movie too. Were they Rita Hayworth pictures by any chance? You’d think they’d at least make prison escape movies that were up for best picture required watching for all prison guards.
So I get frustrated with LiveJournal from time to time. (BTW did you notice all those annoying “link preview” things are gone now when you hover over hyperlinks on here?) I found a program the other day that downloaded all of the content and comments from this blog and saved it on my computer. So I have it now, which opens up the option to switching to another service (probably blogger because Sara won’t let me pay for my own domain). But should I? Loyal readers what say you?
On one hand I think I would have better features since I won’t pay for an account on LiveJournal. On the other hand would I be disloyal to LiveJournal and to Stacy if I switched? Although it seems like a long time ago, I really started this with her in mind and it kind of feels disloyal to her memory to switch to something else.
Myspace videos
Sorry, problem fixed with the videos. You should be able to see them now. Thank to Jen for pointing out the problem!
Speaking of technical issues, what’s the deal with the pop-up window things when you hover over the links on my blog?? I guess in time I could come to like it, but my first instinct is nuh-uh! I don’t know if you can turn it off or not. I’m also annoyed there is a search box at the top that doesn’t search my journal! And while I’m complaining about things, I wonder if I’m allowed to use Google analytics yet?
Weekend Update
First off, I’m reposting the search box now that my last one has moved off the page:
Hopefully I won’t have to do that forever. Yet another LJ annoyance!
Okay, so now to what has actually been going on in our lives lately!
Two weekends ago we went to Purdue for the Alpha Phi Omega 75th anniversary. We had a good time, it was a good weekend. Unfortunately not many people turned up from our “era.” Most of the people who came were recent graduates or from a really long time ago. I was hoping to see some of the people I was friends with while I was there. The weather was a little crappy…okay it was a lot crappy! So we didn’t go around Bug Bowl very much. We did a couple of service projects and went to a dedication ceremony for Professor Teaford. That was one of my favorite parts, it was really good to see him again. I would have trouble believing there could be any individual that could be more devoted to an organization or be a better adviser, not to mention the most entertaining professor that could possibly exist. The highlight of the weekend was the banquet at the renovated stadium. Some of the highlights included a past national president speaking, a presentation about our chapter (Alpha Gamma) through the decades including research on some of our traditions and how they started, and a short speech by a guy who pledged in the ’40s and talked about keeping the chapter alive through WWII. So anyway, it was a good time and too bad for all you guys who didn’t show up because you missed out!
During the week after that I was supposed to go to a conference in Detroit, but that fell through. So Sara had invited her sister to come and stay here in the meantime. It was a pretty low key visit, we didn’t really do much. It was nice to have her here, but unfortunately she got sick towards the end. That weekend we visited a friend of Sara’s from grad school who recently moved to Chicago. The highlight of that trip was playing with the parachute! Remember like when you were in grade school and you played with the parachute? Well, they have one to play with their son and it was good time.
We also spent money like it was going out of style! Behr paint was on sale, so we spent $400 on paint and paint supplies! On Sunday we went to a store to look at chairs and we ended up buying a chair AND a crib! We had been looking for a crib for a long time and hadn’t found anything, so we just stumbled onto the perfect one. For the chair, we were looking for a rocker/glider for the baby’s room, but we ended up buying a little more substantial one that we can use in the living room one day.
Sunday night my mom and brother showed up. Nathan was just there to borrow the car to continue on to WI for job interviews. Mom got her passport fixed on Monday (after many trials and tribulations) and then left for Japan on Tuesday! She’s there now. Unfortunately I had to wake up at 5 a.m. to take her!
So this weekend, we had the final walk-through on the condo today. There was nothing really to report about that, it went pretty smoothly. Tuesday is the big day! After that we will be a couple of homeowners. Today I watched the NFL draft for about 8 hours and tomorrow we will go visit Dabu and play games.
Aaaaaand I think that actually brings us up to the present! I expect that updates are going to start being few and far between since we are going to be this busy for the foreseeable future.
More stuff
Okay, I came across this and it is hilarious:
I assumed it was a photoshop or something, but I still got a chuckle out of it. Obviously we go to Snopes and check it out. Turns out that it is real…sort of. It really was in the newspaper, but the person who wrote it is a lawyer and obviously wrote it to be humorous. There are some pretty good responses to the newspaper listed on the snopes page. The best part is at the bottom:
Evidently Mr. Meskimen has been receiving a number of direct inquiries about his bit of satire, as the voicemail at his office phone presents callers with the following message: “If you are calling about the Daylight Savings Time letter and wish to explain global warming or daylight savings time to me, I would urge you to get a sense of humor and/or a life, in that order. Unless, of course, you want to pay me for an interview; if so, please leave your telephone number and I will expediently return your call.”
Now this is sort of interesting, have you checked out Alexa? It’s been around for a while obviously, but it is still an interesting site to check out. Basically it tracks the popularity of all the websites on the Internet. So it is interesting to see which sites are popular or moving up or dropping. You can also search for any site and receive a ranking of how popular that site is. Unfortunately it doesn’t rank LiveJournal pages individually, so I can’t see where I am at. It just shows the statistics for www.livejournal.com. If only livejournal didn’t block me from using google analytics…
Didn’t I already type this?
Okay, first things first, here is the rest of the post that I typed up and lost last night. LJ has really been pissing me off lately with their java-script removing. Perhaps it is time to look elsewhere.
So you’ve probably already seen this since it was national news, but these people just attended their school’s first integrated prom. When I saw that title, I thought it was going to be a retrospective on some old people who attended their first integrated prom in the 60s. Nope, 2007! I just can’t believe such a thing was still going on.
Speaking of things that are crazy, there is actually a political party in India extolling the rights of the undead. I’m not kidding, go read the article! “We are using elections to highlight the problems of living dead,” said Bihari. “We know we cannot win elections but through election we can sensitize people and officials about this problem.” Remind me not to go to any country that has enough Zombies to have them qualify as a voting block (40,000 according to the article). And who would be crazy enough to lead up the Zombie party? “His reasons for pursuing the cause stem from his own experience. He was declared dead in 1976…”
I don’t know how this works exactly, but according to Peter King on MMQB if you go here and watch the video “What kind of world do you want” by Five for Fighting, $0.49 will be donated to autism research. Not a bad deal, considering it is actually a good song!
A new look! (sort of)
Well, you will (maybe) notice some changes around here at ShaneBlog. Actually, you might not since I am striving to keep the old look as much as possible. I thought about changing it, but I still like it after all this time. Anyway, anybody who has tried to do custom styles with LJ (probably none of you since nobody uses LJ anymore) knows that it is fairly frustrating. Switching templates but trying to keep the same look took me about 3 hours.
I think the biggest feature missing in LJ is the search capacity. Supposedly they are working on it. I would like to add a search section in the sidebar, but aparently that is for paid customers only, so until I figure out some way around the LJ restrictions…
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Ho hum
Nothing much to say tonight. I want to give some props to MegDesk today. It’s a great look into life in Beijing (although she’s moving to Oslo soon). Two good long posts about Beijing traffic today and I think they really give good insight into how different things are there. Plus, she actually has like a website, not some free LiveJournal like a chump. That impresses me more than anything else!
You know what? Maybe that’s all I had to say. Good job Meg!
myspace
Well, here I am on myspace. That’s right, I said it, myspace.
Here’s the thing about myspace. It’s kind of funny how the more things change the more they stay the same. Myspace basically offers what millions of Internet services have offered before it, and actually does a pretty piss poor job of it if I might say so. It has crappy features, isn’t very easy to use and encourages people to make god-awful layouts. It’s like looking at a parade of early 90s webpages until you want to claw your eyes out. I do laugh though when people are so into it, it’s like “Oh yeah, I remember being excited about all the things you’re talking about when AOL debuted 15 years ago.” Maybe I’m just showing my age. Anyway, each one of these services (Prodigy, AOL, geocities, webrings, heh even LiveJournal I suppose) has had its day in the sun and now it’s myspace’s turn.
But hey, there is something to be said for popularity! I’ve recently had several successes at finding long lost people on myspace. If everybody in the world is going to register in one global directory, then that’s a good place to look for them! So I figured I better register with said global directory, at least until the next big directory comes along, on the off chance that sombody might look for me (I’m not holding my breath).
But, I still like good ole LiveJournal and plan on keeping my blog right where it is for the forseeable future.
That is all.
P.S. Yeah, I’m listening to an Avril Lavine mp3…and I’m liking it
59
YEARG!!!!!!!!!!!
I just wrote the longest post I’ve ever written and the internet ate it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SCREW YOU LIVE JOURNAL
I just flew in from Advanced Software System Design and boy are my arms tired
Started my new class tonight. Seems okay. I don’t think it will be too hard, but I think it will be very boring.
There was a 9 car pile up on 422 today which made my < 1 mile drive take 30 minutes. How dare they inconvenience me?
Yesterday I thought I messed up Sara’s family’s computer network when I was trying to help her over the phone…turns out it was just because her cat likes to sleep on the router and there is a loose connection!! And here I felt guilty.
Talked about apartments with Sara tonight. I have to admit, I’m getting kind of excited about it. I want her to come and visit so we can look at places. Well, that’s part of why I want her to come visit! 
I lost 3 lbs. this week in the contest, for a total of 25 lbs. in 6 weeks. I’m still in first place with 2 weeks to go. I think I only need to lose like 3 lbs. to beat Preston’s all time record.
I’ve been doing tons and tons of stupid LJ quizzes and they’re awful…it’s like they’re all written by 12 year olds. Oh wait, they were.
I have been wasting time lately like it’s going out of style (and believe me, it will NEVER go out of style) but then again is it really a waste if I didn’t have anything to do? Hopefully I can find something to do this weekend. I had been pretty busy, so I guess it just feels like slacking in comparison.
I wish I had something to do so I could stop thinking about what it’s going to be like to be married.
I wish I had friends who actually posted in their journals.
Good night.
What a night
Well, I didn’t accomplish much tonight but at the same time I did. I spent a good 5 or 6 hours playing around with LJ, learning the ins and outs. I tried many many different layouts and color schemes until I settled on one I liked. I was very frustrated that I couldn’t change the color of the *very* top little part of the page…you’ll notice the grey isn’t exactly the same shade as the rest of the page. (Side note, why do I spell grey with an e? Where did I learn that?) I found that I like the control the old S1 pages gave you, rather than the new S2 style. In actuality it’s a little too complicated…I’d like something in the middle somewhere. I did learn tons about style sheets in HTML tonight. It’s been a long time since I’ve done any HTML and I wasn’t ever great to begin with. Luckily it’s easy enough to pick up. After I finished setting mine all up, I went and helped with hers. She wasn’t looking for anything too complicated.
The one thing I didn’t do tonight was work out. I’m in the middle of this weight loss competition at work so I feel semi-guilty about it. On the other hand, I’ve lost 19 lbs. in 3 1/2 weeks so I don’t feel too bad about it. I’m already down 5 for the week. So far losing the weight has been ridiculously easy…it makes me wonder what the hell people are talking about when they say they can’t quite lose that last one or two pounds. I think they’re probably just lazy.
My absolute biggest pet peeve in the world is people who refuse to take responsibility for things. The U.S. is not a great place to live if that sort of thing bothers you. As far as weight loss goes, I wish people would just wake up and realize losing weight is about the easiest thing in the world. You don’t even need to do anything, you just need to *not* do something. There’s no magical cure or diet that’s going to come along, just stop shoveling food into your fat face. People love to use that excuse of “willpower”…i.e. “I can’t help eating all the chocolate cake, I have no willpower!” Well you know what? Willpower is bullshit, it’s a word that we made up so we’d have an excuse to allow ourselves to eat chocolate cake. Everybody wants to believe that they are afflicted with something outside of their control so that they can continue to bitch about their situation in life without doing anything about it. Why bother? If I sit around on my fat ass long enough, someone will come up with some social program or magic drug that will fix everything for me.
This week was loooong. I don’t really even know why it got to me so much. I think it’s just because I haven’t been getting much sleep lately. Next week is probably going to be even worse though, because I have a 20 minute presentation to give for my Operating Systems class on Tuesday and a final on Thursday. On top of that I’m going to be trying to work some extra hours during the week so I can leave early on Friday to drive down to NC to visit my fiancée. I just get so worn out when I visit her; it certainly isn’t a vacation. I’m trying to save vacation for the wedding so I end up working really long hours the week before and after to offset some of the time I’m taking off. Working long hours like that really wears you down fast. Then you have a 7 hour drive in each direction which wears you out. Then in the middle when I’m down there she wants to be pampered!! I wish someone would pamper me sometime.
Well I should probably go to bed. All that sleep I’m not getting and all. I’ll probably read for awhile too. My back hurts something fierce after working on a computer for 8 hours and then being on a computer at home for another 7. If I get a repetitive stress injury, it’s not going to be carpal tunnel, that’s for sure. Sometimes it feels like my back is breaking in half. Oh well, no one to blame but myself.
Like a kid with a new toy…
…I’ve got to post every 10 minutes. Don’t worry, it won’t last long.
I was just looking up people from back in the day who used LiveJournal. I was surprised to see that some of them still post now and again! It prompted me to contact Stevie and Linda, who I used to be good friends with but now I haven’t talked to them in years.
I got to tell you it’s been really tough being on here. Makes me think about Stacy a lot. Maybe that’s why I don’t talk to Stevie and Linda anymore. Stevie was a great friend, I hate losing touch with people.
Such is life…
First Post Ever
Hey Stacy, this one’s for you. It’s impossible for me to think of LiveJournal and not think of you. Too bad I never made this when you used to tell me to…
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