2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,600 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 60 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Blogging year 2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,800 times in 2010. That’s about 9 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 15 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 38 posts. There were 165 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 161mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was December 1st with 201 views. The most popular post that day was Lessons for “V d Tweeple” & “We the people” on forging India ahead .

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, twitter.com, indiblogger.in, en.blog.wordpress.com, and expat-blog.com.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Lessons for “V d Tweeple” & “We the people” on forging India ahead November 2010
15 comments

2

A few words about me November 2009
15 comments

3

A good year spent in the land of cheese and chocolates! May 2010
47 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

4

Why is Rahul Dravid so underrated by the Indian media & public? November 2009
15 comments

5

Saurkundi pass trek – A travelogue. November 2009
2 comments

Looking back at a thousand hits, and looking beyond the numbers….

This blog is reaching a small milestone of a thousand visitors today. Nothing great in the blogosphere, but just a mini landmark for me to acknowledge and smile about! It’s also time for me to look at more stats that WordPress lets you analyze, and reflect on the blogging experience so far!

To start with, some stats trivia for those who like stats for the heck of it:

The most read blogs have been:

1. The home page – fair enough, you all want to know a little bit about the stranger who wrote the blog; but a whopping 417 people have visited my home page, and I dunno how many of them actually read any blog post!
2. A few sentences I wrote regarding Ramachandra Guha’s book “India after Gandhi”. Damn this Guha man, much as I admire him, he is stealing my thunder. 70 people visited that page, must have gone to Outlook magazine from there, and onto reading more about Guha from there on. Who the hell is Vasu now? 😦
3. My post on Rahul Dravid. That was original content, and I still find that funny. Yeah Jammy, you have given me so much cricket viewing pleasure all these years, and now more people have visited my blog because of you, than they would have otherwise. 65 hits out of a thousand tell me that cricket still sells big time amongst Indians. I could write a few hundred posts on the game I love the most, but thankfully, that’s not my intent! 

People from the following countries have been most frequent on the blogs: Switzerland, India, U.S, U.K, and Canada. More or less expected, but someday I want to expand to countries where I have never been, or don’t know anybody. I want to hear from people from Mongolia, or Uruguay, or Kazakhstan, or Madagascar, and reinforce my belief that our planet is a global village, and that people can connect and bond beyond barriers! 

Now this is the incredibly funny part. Here are the most interesting key words or search terms that have been used most visit my blog:

1. Rahul Dravid shirtless (Also searched: Rahul Dravid ex girlfriend, hmmm…in some way  it makes me feel good that it’s not only the Indian men who are desperate!)
2. Indian sheep (Also searched:  funny sheep, British sheep)
3. Found the message before I finished typed
4. Free typing program
5. Mallu sex in net cafe & Kama stories in telugu (when did I ever become a porn writer / up loader? damn you people, find this stuff else where on the net!)
6. One world one tribe (who are you, my psychic connection buddy?)
7. Kraft locked down pcs (Hmmm I should get money from Kraft now!)
8. Why don’t IT departments give employees money? (I wish I had the answer to that mate!)
9. Manali bars (There is so much more to this incredible small town apart from bars)

 Now move over stats & silly jokes, it’s time for introspection. 

I have been writing this without any specific agenda or target. The key motivations were, and remain:

1. Sharing my opinion on any current social topic, or an older one that I find significant. I also try and balance popular topics, with stuff people do not normally discuss much about. The big factor here is my transition to an avid reader of newspapers & watcher of T.V news to a fully online person. I shun most traditional media now, and the internet gives me incredible abilities to filter through biased opinions and get to the truth in most things.
2. Getting stuff off my chest, that I do not have friends I can talk to about immediately
3. Write something on a topic I am curious to learn more about, and use the incredible powers of Google, WordPress, and websites such as Swiss Expat blogger, Indiblogger, and Youth Ki awaaz to read more articles, and blogs on the same. It’s been a very rewarding exercise!
4. Write something useful to share whatever good experiences I have had.  I wrote something about Yoga that a few people found very helpful and they signed up for yoga programs. A few lazy bum friends of mine signed up for YHAI treks based on my travelogue. I can’t claim to transform the world, but a few people benefitting from what I wrote makes me feel good. Really good!
5. To try and have a creative pursuit / pet project that keeps me going beyond the four corners of my office cubicle, apartment. It’s been nice to constantly think of something to write, write a few drafts, delete them, write it up better, publish them, and follow what people say!
6. To write about my culture and my country and spread the word about how cool we are; to challenge what we accept as cool, but is not quite so; and to share my experiences on the good things I have picked up where my travels take me! i believe every person who interacts with a foreigner or lives abroad, is an ambassador for his country and has to do his bit to break down artificial barriers we have created amongst ourselves!
7. Now this is something I am yet to do justice to, but is a motivation nevertheless. To get out of my writing comfort zone and try things I haven’t before: Fiction, poetry,etc. Also, challenge myself to write crisper, write funnier (incredibly tough to do. I always thought i was a funny guy when I talk, but to translate that to words on a blog has been very challenging!)

But having done most of what motivated me in the first place, I know I can do much more! To do that, I would love to hear from people who have subscribed (Started off with family and dear friends, spread to some good Samaritans I have never met!), and other regular readers. I want to hear which blogs you liked, which you didn’t, which topics you want to read about, which articles made you think or had an impact (if any), and if you area non blogger, whether reading my blogs have made you feel like writing yours some day!

So, this is my biggest push so far to make my blog very interactive and conversational, rather than the way it is now with me saying things you never read, or ignored, or you had an opinion but never said it.

I need all the encouragement from friends, family, fellow bloggers or curious strangers! Even a one liner or a smiley as a comment on any of my posts, would be appreciated 🙂

Here is a big thank you to those who have been here, let alone read & commented.

Cheers!

Vasu

P.S: If you liked this post, you may enjoy reading: https://vasusworld.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/playing-around-with-words-images-themes%e2%80%a6/