Lost In France

French Favourite

As I have mentioned Feedburner has been a huge boost to th esite visits. As far as I can gather it is a result of me sharing my posts via Twitter. I am no expert or avid follower of Social Media but that it my current view on the situation.

Another thing that I have noticed is that of my top ten all time posts on this blog, five now come from this month , or since I started sharing on Twitter.  So sharing on Twitter, which I don't really use that much, is beneficial to audience reach. And I only started doing this because Google ditched Google+ !

One of the real oddities is a huge number of visitors from France. Now I am not French , I don't post in French or feature much French related stuff aparat maybe bands like one of my favourites Gong,  or the darker Magma (who have some great logo / images) and are with listening to if you can take their relentless sound.


As I have said I do not know if this is just a blip , a short spike, or permanent, though obviously I am hoping it is permanent and I am happy to keep sharing on Twitter if this is the result.


I am currntly enjoying the lovely weather as we head towards the Bank Holiday Weekend and think I will share with you Gong's "I Never Glid Before" the finale from "Angel's Egg" the middle of the "Rafio Gnome Invisible" trilogy , one of my favourite ever riffs despite it being quite complex while retaining an excellent self depracating playfulness. Gong are extremely accomplished musicians with a wonderful way out sense of humour.

Expectations

Last month I expected to get 30-50 hits per day on the blog with maybe 20-30 for each post. At the end of April Feedburner seems to have somehow picked up the blog and now I am expecting more that a thousand hits a day. That's a twenty to thirty fold increase but I am now expecting that. I personally have done nothing knowingly to casue this, and I don't know if it's a temporary or a permanent thing , so I am just appreciating the attention while I am getting it.

I had never heard of Feedburner and in theory if I start getting too many hits I may have to look at self hosting rather than using the blogger.com platform (which I believe is part of the Google Empire.

Recent post visits are in the multi hundreds so hopefully one of them will depose the "Buying Lion Pooh At Dobbies" post from 2009 which has been at the top of  my posts for years although in reality the top one is "Devon - Record Shop Heaven" from 2010 which is far more relevant to my main blogging areas.

So what should I share with you today. Given we're talking about numbers, maybe I should share my most visited Youtube slideshow which features Christopher Lee's take on the Paul Anka song "My Way" probably more familiarly heard by Frank Sinatra and Sid Viocious.

Forget It ... Lets Burn Kings Landing

Tonight I have watched a lot of TV but then thought it's time for bed, then suddenly remembered I had a delivery from Tesco as they were offering 25% off wine and it meant I could order sparkling water as well, so it means I won't have to cart it back from a local supermarket in my rucksack. That isn't really a problem and it does stop you buying to much , a maximum of four bottles instead of the fifty that came tonight.

It seems that Feedburner is keeping up the hits on the blog, at the moment 1,200 so far today, when I was lucky to get maybe 1,500 a month. I'm not complaining about it, maybe someone might leave a comment if these aren't actual robots.

Lot's of people have been complaining about the end of "Game of Thrones" but I thought it was fine, if a little rushed and now we have "Lord of The Rings" and "His Dark Materials" to look forward to.

It is stunning the amount of television that we have at our disposal, and these days we don't even have to record it it to watch when we want as we can stream it. I actually watched a DVD of "The Golden Compass" tonight and very good it was. Lee Scoresby was inspired by William Scoresby who's house I pass every time I stay in Whitby.

Someone soundtracked the burning of Kings Landing with Metallica's "For Whom The Bell Tolls" but it is rather pedestrian metal and didn't do it for me, I was sure I could find a better soundtrack. I didn't have to do anything, someone had shoehorned "Hells Bells" by Ac/DC onto it and that's what I will leave you with, best seen on a big screen and turned up load.

Feedburner and Interrupted Dreams

It looks like the huge increase in visits is due to being picked up by something called Feedburner which is some kind to data feed. I'm not sure if this is permanent, although I wont complain if it is. I'm not sure if this is as a result of me sharing the blog posts on Twitter or including a link with my most visited Youtube slideshow. , 26K views and featuring Christopher Lee, so it could have been any one of those. Twitter has resulted in a few retweets and also I tried MeWe after Google dropped their social sharing although I do not think that has resulted in any visits. I use it to post on then stipe the post to post in Twitter on my phone.

This morning I woke at 5:30 and thought I had quarter of an hour to enjoy, but fell back into an unspecified dream and the was rudely awoken by the alarm going off seemingly about thirty seconds later. That's is the problem with falling asleep when you are about to get up. It always amazes me that often at night sleep refuses to come, but when you have to get up, especially for work, sleep is so, so welcoming.

I'm over halfway through Stephen Fry's "Mythos" and thoroughly enjoying it and am now thinking about which book will come next.

So what should I share with you tonight, Huw Stephens featured Caught By The River and from that Jeff Barrett's Labe's first single release was "Under Dubwood" by The Dubwood Allstars featuring the tones of Richard Burton and the music of King Tubby (think it was used for Ali Baba by John Holt)

Apathy In The Uk

Apathy From The Uk

This is nothing major. Although I am English and live in the UK, I would expect my UK visits to be top 3 normally but they are not.

UK Visits are less than half the USA and Germany and only 20% of the French visits. As I have said before the Unknown region has me flummoxed, maybe some rogue robots.

I'm not complaining, this is just an observation, and lets face it the uSA is far more populous than the UK though I don't think France is (though it is much bigger. Germany is slightly bigger (though that may be completely wrong as I am too lazy to check it out at this moment, but I am glad for the visits)

The recent visit explosion (for me) has boosted the site income from about 10p per week to £10 per week which is a significant increase which I wasn't expecting.

The blog is not about making money but acting as a diary and sharing interesting stuff with people.

I wasn't intending to do this post until tonight, and the title came to me and I thought I'll make a start on it. Although it's about people visiting this blog the title could also apply to political engagement and taking an interest in things that actually affect your life, but most people would rather watch a soap and make a cup of tea.

So maybe I should take the song that I stole the title from and Share a little Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias (a typical Manchester name) with you. I bet you thought I would go with The Sex Pistols didn't you?

FactoryZoo

Just shoved together two of my most liked record labels Factory from Manchester and Zoo from Liverpool because I do  have a book called "Factory".

Factory was the imprint of Tony / Anthony Wilson and brought us among others Joy Division , Happy Mondays , New Order and lots more as well as lots of iconic design ideas. The Hacienda Club used the black and yellow warning stripes , now every time I see it I don't think WARNING I thing HACIENDA or FACTORY . A brilliant idea. The film "24 Hour Party People" is about Tony Wilson and the lasting enigma of Factory Records. It was also responsible for releasing "Reach For Love" by Marcel King, one of my favourite records ever. It's also Shaun Ryder's favourite Factory single.

Everything on Factory had a catalogue number (The Hacienda was FAC51)

Zoo Records from Liverpool was nowhere near as influential as Factory but I remember getting a compilation (Street To Street: A Liverpool Album - 1978) and loving "Match of The Day" by Big In Japan, who featured Holly Johnson, Ian Broudie , Bill Drummond and Budgie. The label also featured Echo and The Bunnymen , Teardrop Explodes and lots more so still very important.

It is quite surprising that Zoo Records are almost impossible to track down these days and a lot of the Factory compilations are similar. Discogs seems to be the best way of sourcing them.

So it's Sunday , the weather is gorgeous , so I may relax and enjoy it or possibly nip out for a walk, but either way I am going to have a relaxing day. Hope you do too.

A Strange Thing

A strange thing happened on the blog today . Normally I'll get 100 hits if I post and 20-30 if I don't.. I did post today but I have had nearly a thousand hits today from the mysterious "Unknown Region". This is probably just some mad robot but will it is nice to have your hits increase, it only matters when it is like that on a daily basis. It would be nice to think these are reading visitors, but I would only know that it was if people were to leave comments or communicate with me about it.

The numbers are below:


As yet there is nothing, which does imply robots.

So I will see if this continues into tomorrow, and if it does , or I start  to get communications , I won't be sure why, as I haven't done anything differently to what I have been doing over the last ten years.

This post number 1918 so the post numbers are like the years from the last century, 1918 being the year World War 1 ended, so maybe if the year / number is significant I will mention something about the significance.

Maybe I could even choose music related to the year 1918, and in looking I found a metal band called Sabaton who have produced a concept album about the Great War. It is almost amusing how noticing one thing (the post number was the year that WW1 ended) which resulted in me finding even more music that I have never heard before.

A short post with a new band for you to check out, Sabaton with  a Great War concept album.