Happy (Real) Blogoversary!

Ok, I'm doing structured procrastination. I'm procrastinating writing.... by writing :). But this is fun and less pressured. And hell, I don't really care what you think about what I say or how my writing sounds b/c you're not making a 1 second decision as to whether or not I should get a scholarship for the rest of the duration of my phd studies. On the other hand, you very well could be if you're holding my application and googled my name. Well, honestly, I've blogged so much, what's the probability that you actually got to this post? I'm sure there's tons of other incriminating stuff on my blog. Quoting from my favourite comic: FUCK. THAT. SHIT.

Anyways, the real reason for this post, is to celebrate the "true" anniversary of my blog! Back in April, I celebrated a fake birthday for my blog. It's fake, b/c I didn't really blog for 2 years. I really started blogging 1 year ago (ok, 1 year and 1 day ago b/c I was too busy procrastinating my work yesterday and couldn't justify blogging when I had writing to do).

Blogging is viral. Once you start reading friends' blogs, it makes you want to blog (I blame Sarah, Rob, and Nusraat). When I started, I had low expectations that it'd last. I have previously kept a journal, but I stopped b/c I would like go on vacation, miss a week or two of writing, and then I wouldn't want to write in the journal unless I wrote about everything that happened in the vacation, but I'd never get around to that, so then I just stopped. That almost happened over the Christmas break, when I went down to LA and Mexico. I kept saying that I was gonna blog about it, but I was too lazy, so I didn't. It was really because of my readers that I had to continue blogging despite missing some stuff. It's a good motivating force to have people breathe down your back and pestering you about blogging when you haven't for a few days.

I'm quite surprised that not only have I been blogging for a year, but I have been blogging a lot. I blog constantly. In the past year, I blogged 367 times!!! Yes, that's really an average of 1 post / day. And it's not like I posted a billion times in one month and then didn't for a month. The longest period I went without blogging was I think 11 days, and that was b/c I was on vacation. Other than that, the biggest gap was probably less than a week. I feel that I have an obligation not only to myself to blog, but also to my readers. But don't get me wrong, I enjoy it, unlike other kinds of writing.

Ok, so why do I blog? I think I've talked about this several times, but I'm writing it down here anyways. It's good to reflect after blogging for a year.

1. I blog for myself.
   • It serves as a record of what I've done in my life. It's something that I can look back upon later (a week, a month, a year, 10 years, 25 years, etc.) and remember what I went through or look up something I did or figure out when I did something. To tell you the truth, I have already looked back at my blog for this purpose.
   
   
   • It's therapeutic. Sometimes I just need an outlet to rant.


2. Connect with friends.
   • I lived in Winnipeg for 18 years (Thompson for 4). I've been here in Toronto for 3. I've gone to Seattle and San Francisco for internships and literally met people from around the world. This blog serves as a conduit for me to communicate with my friends in a broadcast manner without the need to repeat myself.


3. Establish an online presence
   • It was an unintentional consequence, but my blog helped me secure my place as Amy's roommate in her condo in California because it served as a sort of background check / character reference for Amy and her co-workers. I also post a link to my blog on social networks. I figure, I have nothing to hide.


4. Dispense useful knowledge
   • Sometimes I like to write about things that randoms can find useful as well. The main motivating factor is to record it for myself and also be something that I can refer my friends to, rather than repeating myself over and over, but it has the added benefit of gaining some traffic for my blog and attention for what I'm writing about.
   • Examples include several of the top posts listed below.
   • Shut-up Sarah.

But really, it's mainly #1 and 2.


I don't blog to:

1. Make money


2. Brag (some random commented saying this. I couldn't find the comment just now, but my reply was that I don't brag on my blog b/c my blog is for me, I leave the bragging to my school website)


3. Serve as an outlet for you to procrastinate


4. Get attention (ok, well, I'm not complaining, but it's not really why I blog)


5. Ruin peoples' reputations. Ok, maybe I do do this :). Sorry Mike!

Here are the most viewed posts over the past year. Most of them are boring and not reflective of my typical post, but I'm too lazy to make any other list of posts.

1. Alarm clocks are bad. How to wake up and feel better.


2. Encrypted blog posts


3. Why anyone cared about my blog and how my post got famous


4. Escaped, but without my dignity


5. Ultimate Skirt Pictures


6. Dollarama


7. OMG, STOP PEEING IN MY ROOM!!!


8. How I Met Your Mother


9. Orange Juice Fermenting


10. Recent Comments in Blogger


11. More Blog Eye Candy


12. RSS is key – c’mon, everyone’s doing it, why aren't you?


13. Blogger comment feed and comment posting improvement


14. The greatest video of all time


15. Korean food, oh how I've missed you!


16. Converting Java to C#


17. All girls slumber party


18. RIP Mailblocks


19. Off-site and Gay Pictures


20. Not your typical board games

The majority of the traffic to my blog (~100 - 200 unique visitors / day) come from search engines. I get some weird searches. Here are some of the most popular search terms (from people using Google, Yahoo, MSN search, Google image search, Google blog search, etc.) that get (or have gotten) to my blog:

1. waking up


2. vincent cheung


3. dollarama


4. how to wake up in the morning


5. alarm clocks


6. nusraat


7. all girl slumber party


8. peeing


9. skirt pics


10. google benefits


11. gayglers


12. natalie dee


13. fob hairstyles


14. gay pictures


15. fermented orange juice


16. jumping higher


17. u of t ski and snowboard club

Here's a map of the top 500 places my visitors came from in the past year. The size of the orange dots are proportional to the number of page loads from that location. For those with poor geography, the two massive dots are Winnipeg and Toronto, with Winnipeg slightly edging out Toronto. Can you find yourself?



Here are the top 20 places my visitors came from in the past year (20 biggest dots from the picture above). The numbers in brackets are the number of visits from the place, whatever that means (it's not always easy to determine when to count a visit as a visit if a person comes back, like when does one visit end and the next one start). Caveats: this does not include people that read my blog from feed readers and larger cities are sometimes broken down into suburbs.

1. Winnipeg (2,614)


2. Toronto (2,234) <-- bigger than Winnipeg when you add in the suburbs, but don't tell Winnipeg


3. Los Angeles (446) <-- no idea who these are


4. London (413) <-- nosy Brits


5. Singapore (386) <-- randoms


6. Mountain View, California (345) <-- Google interns


7. Springvale South, Australia (314) <-- stalker


8. New York (307) <-- random, especially "team"


9. Vancouver(303) <-- I know a few


10. Madrid (300) <-- I'm popular in Spain


11. Montreal (282) <-- can't all be Adam


12. York Mills (250) <-- part of Toronto


13. Calgary (235) <-- I know 1 or 2 there, but I don't think they read


14. Seattle (231) <-- maybe from my internship


15. Chicago (226) <-- might know


16. Houston (221) <-- ?


17. San Francisco (214) <-- more Googlers?


18. Ottawa(210) <-- might know some


19. Downsview (199) <-- part of Toronto


20. Portland (191) <-- ?

I'm gonna keep blogging. Let's see how long this lasts. Thanks for reading!