It seems that I've been doing this a year now.
(Well, that's technically not true. Way before I knew was blogging was, I was already doing it but I didn't know it at the time. I got the idea from Alan Cox. My old on-line journal covered my doings from part of 1999 through 2002. Of course, only a few friends were reading it. It had no syndication. I didn't know what RSS was. I didn't know I should know. And the software was just 2 simple Perl scripts, a Makefile, and a single table in MySQL. Like Radio, it build pages statically and pushed them to the server via FTP or rsync.)
I started this blog at the suggestion of Jon Udell, originally playing with UserLand's Radio. I gave up on Radio after a few days of remembering why I didn't want to depend on Windows for something so important. In fact that first attempt at blogging is still hosted on UserLand's server.
A month or so after I began, we started syndicating my Linux entries and MySQL entries on the Linux Magazine web site.
My first post was about hardware and on-line communities. Since then I've moved on to a MovableType powered blog hosted on one of my co-located servers. And now I write entries in a variety of categories: MySQL, Linux, Perl, Random funny stuff, etc.
Late last year, I also started my flying blog to document my glider training and subsequent fun in the air. Later this year I'll begin training for my power training and continue to log my progress there.
Let's look at some numbers.
In the past 365 days, I've posted roughly 732 entries. That averages about 2 per day.
My top 10 posts (based on the number of times viewed in the past year) are listed below. You can hover over the link to see the number of hits each has had as of today.
A lot of those, like DVD Player Hacks, RedHat ISOs, and Penis Puppets are mostly thanks to Google. Others, such as the MySQL related posts and the 10 Habits are thanks to lots of bloggers linking to them. The MySQL Full-Text story was linked from the MySQL home page for a while. That generated a lot of hits.
It's interesting to note that no one force drove the bulk of traffic. Some was from other bloggers, some from Google, and some for other publicity. Notable entries are: Slashdot, Scripting News, Daemon News, MySQL AB, Barrapunto, Jon Udell, Phil Windley, and so on.
In the last year:
Since I log all traffic into MySQL, that was pretty easy to figure out. :-)
I had no idea it would last this long. And I wasn't prepared for
all the benefits I'd reap from blogging. I've met
a
lot of interesting people via this blog--to many to mention. If you
consider the time and energy that I put into reading other blogs, this
has been quite an undertaking--but a completely worthwhile one.
My blogging in some way or another influenced a few others to jump on the bandwagon. In no particular order:
If there are others, please let me know. If you don't belong on this list, tell me. My memory can be fuzzy at times.
Trivia: Dan and Brandt's blogs are hosted on this server too.
Okay, I'm done rambling. For now.
Philip Greenspun on Chinese cars and the future
Ars Technica: Google doesn't like Googling
ArsDigita: An Alternate Perspective, found via trained monkey
Ice Cream made via liquid nitrogen via several bloggers