Opus 400

Nostalgia is supposed to be for one's childhood, or maybe a first love, or the high school years. Me? I find at the moment that I'm having nostalgia for the time I was trying to think of something clever to say for my 300th post--which was 42 days ago. (See http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/300.html.)

I noted then that the time between each hundred posts was growing shorter. I thought that that trend would not continue. Well, it has. The first 100 posts took me 305 days, the second 75, the third 56, and now 42. I'm not trying to make that happen--it just kind of does.

Of course, what matters isn't quantity, but quality. Is my writing getting better because of increased experience? Getting worse because I'm cranking out too many words a day? Staying about the same? I don't know--you can answer that as well as I can. It's hard for me to be objective about my own stuff.

But I can tell you that I enjoy it more and more as time goes by, and spend a greater portion of my idle time (and poker-playing time between hands, if truth be known) thinking about what to write. I have never written so much in my life--not even back in college. (I tended to take the nerdy science classes that didn't require much writing.)

The graph above is the site's basic traffic report, from Google Analytics. It starts on August 22, because that's when I first installed it. The dips to zero in December aren't real. That's when I was playing around with the site's design, and when I started using a new template (twice in one week), each time I forgot that I have to manually add back the special hidden code that Google Analytics uses to collect data.

The peaks come when something I've written gets linked to by another blogger or on one of the poker forums. There's also a weekly cycle, with dips on weekends and small peaks on Mondays, which suggests that a good number of readers are logging on while at work. Hey, all of you slackers, is this what you're getting paid for???? (Just kidding.)

For all of you who read, who take the time and effort to post comments, who share posts with your friends, who post links to stuff I've written on your own blogs or on the forums, and who click on those stupid ads on the left (don't forget, please!), I thank you heartily.