Vital Statistics
Not being one who does subscribe to the 'blogs as popularity contest' school of thought, I don't tend to pay a great deal of attention to my traffic logs. I'm occasionally intrigued to see my referrers, and search terms are always good for a laugh, but the actual numbers don't hold much interest.
However, I thought I'd take a look at which of the newly-selectable stylesheets is proving the most popular*, and while doing so, I suddenly noticed something.
Even without today's traffic, March has proven to be the busiest this place has been (in visits), ever. There've been more than a fifth again the number of visits than the previously busiest month, which was August last year. Not to mention one hundred additional referrers (I can't get at all of those just at the moment, but I will.
So what happened? Did lots of people suddenly discover me a month ago and add me to their recommended reading lists?
*It's the default, by the way. Followed by Barber Shop, Red Nose Day, The Blues, The Greens and Negative in that order (though note that the last three have been around less time than the others).
Absolutely Fucking Outrageous
I've been generally quiet on the subject of the war since it started, feeling unequal to offering judgements on much of what we're seeing, and also increasingly unable to view the situation with equanimity owing to family circumstances.
But....
Today's Sun carries a front page story (massively) headlined 'Proof', which details the destruction of an 'Iraqi terror camp'. According to the publication (which I will absolutely not credit with the description 'newspaper'): "The discovery of the base was seen as proof that Saddam Hussein IS directly involved in terrorism in Britain."
The article then goes on to describe the findings at the camp, which was operated by the group Ansar al-Islam, and quote 'terrorism experts' and 'intelligence experts' in discussing the possible uses of the Ricin that it's alleged was found there.
Several minor details, however, seem to have passed right by the Sun 'journalist', possibly the most significant of which is that Ansar al-Islam, linked as it is to al-Qaeda, strongly opposes Saddam Hussein's regime. The BBC at least took the trouble to point out this fairly basic fact, together with the detail that so far, no Ricin actually has been found there. The Independent also points out that Mullah Krekar, the Ansar al-Islam leader has frequently denounced the Iraqi leader.
I'm not stupid enough (and certainly not naive enough) to be surprised by agendas in reporting, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a lack of outright lying.
Blogshares – WTF?
Okay - am I just the only one who didn't know about this?
My blog is apparently trading at $177.61 today.
Blogshares appears to be a system that allows trading in, well, blogshares. I'm in their system, though I don't know why, as are Dave, Lisa Jane, Stuart and Kenny (all of whom allegedly have links to me), as well as Oin, Gert, Sarah, ChrisC, John, Tammy, David and Clayton (who allegedly don't, even though most of them actually do.)
(Also note that I just by definition increased the value of the shares in all those blogs, as the system is based on linkages. I hope you're all grateful.)
I say again - WTF???
Seriously though - did anyone else know about this?
[Via Metafilter]
Sexiest In Sci-Fi
SFX Magazine have published a supplement showcasing the finalists in their ''Sexiest Sci-Fi Stars" award for this year. Generally-speaking, all terribly predictable, but the lists are below - anyone like to state a preference? I know what mine are 
The Men:
Viggo Mortensen (LOTR)
Tobey Maguire (Spider-Man)
Tom Welling (Smallville)
Orlando Bloom (LOTR)
Elijah Wood (LOTR)
Ben Browder (Farscape)
Alexis Denisof (Angel)
David Boreanaz (Angel)
James Marsters (Buffy)
Connor Trinneer (Enterprise)
The Women:
Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy)
Alyson Hannigan (Buffy)
Charisma Carpenter (Angel)
Eliza Dushku (Buffy/Angel)
Kristin Kreuk (Smallville)
Liv Tyler (LOTR)
Jolene Blalock (Enterprise)
Jennifer Garner (Alias/Daredevil)
Claudia Black (Farscape)
Alyssa Milano (Charmed)
The List
Alison and I have this list of films that we'd like to go and see. In the last couple of months, it's been getting longer as more we want to see are released, at a quicker rate than others drop out of being on release. This is compounded by the fact that we've been truly dreadful at organising cinema trips recently.
But today we finally made it to see something. And weirdly, it's one that had indeed dropped off the list and been consigned to 'wait for the DVD' limbo. But out of nowhere, my local cinema has retrieved it for two screenings this week.
It's The Quiet American, based on the novel by Graham Greene, and starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser. So for the first time in an age, I have something new to write up a review for. Let's see how long it takes me to do....
Gridlock
I don't often post links to games, but I thought I'd make an exception and share Gridlock with you. Getting the blue block out of the box is frequently a lot harder than you'd think. It's curiously addictive for such a relatively 'unexciting' game. [Via diamond geezer]
Northern Lights
Having discussed the South Bank Show on Philip Pullman a couple of weeks ago, I resolved to read his His Dark Materials series. I managed to get started on Northern Lights this week and I was very impressed with it. In fact, I was also a little surprised that it was a children's book at all - kids these days must have significantly wider vocabularies than in my day - the language is pretty damn' impressive. The themes too are hardly childish - the effects of experience on innocence, honour, betrayal, torture and some very high concepts, all realised within a created world fascinatingly dissimilar to our own. Simon mentioned that the first book is actually the slowest of the three, so I'm looking forward to being carried along in the next couple.
Categorisation
Earlier in the month, when I was putting this new look together, for the first time I set up Movable Type so that I was categorising my postings. The categories aren't displayed, because I haven't decided how I want to use them, and I can't imagine ever wanting to do a 'list by category' index page, but I thought I'd put them in place so that I had them to experiment with. I went back and categorised some previous postings too, but the thought of going back through the entire journal to do so is a bit frightening.
Anyway, in an idle moment, I thought I might at least post what the categories are, and the way my postings split out among them. So without further ado:
Blogs and Blogging: 21 Entries
Comics: 2 Entries
Just Plain Weird: 3 Entries
Life: 42 Entries
Links: 14 Entries
News: 11 Entries
Politics: 19 Entries
TV and Film: 13 Entries.
I'll try to do a monthly revisit of this obviously-fascinating subject.
From The Guardian
Courtesy of trips to meetings and the joys of the AvantGo Guardian channel, I've actually managed to do some reading of the thing today, so I thought I'd share a couple of items.
"Last month Stephen Downs was handcuffed and arrested after refusing to take off a Give Peace a Chance T-shirt in a mall in Albany." Gary Younge on America's intolerance of dissenting voices.
"Blair accuses opponents of war of "appeasement" - in spite of the fact that, in many cases, their active opposition to Saddam's dictatorship well predates his. (I signed the 1987 early day motion against arms exports to Iraq. Blair and Gordon Brown didn't.)" Tam Dalyell expanding his view that Tony Blair is essentially a war criminal.
Forum
I've mentioned it occasionally in the past, but here's an unashamed plug. Comic writer Mark Millar (The Authority, Ultimate X-Men, The Ultimates), hosts a forum on his website, and I seriously recommend it. As well as comic-related discussions that manage to rise well above the "Everything Marvel/DC/Image/Dark Horse/CrossGen (delete as applicable) publish is automatically crap, nyer nyer nyer" level, the News and Current Affairs area frequently generates an impressive level of debate, and The Pub is always good for sordid discussions on any number of subjects. (I've been contributing to the "Does size matter?" discussion this evening.)
My total post count there since it relaunched a couple of months ago is a bit weedy, largely because it was one of the sites I couldn't access during my DNS trouble, but I'm working on increasing that standing. Though I'll never compete with the regulars.
Seriously - for a mix of comics and non-comics stuff, where everyone is welcome, I'd recommend dropping by.
UPDATE - 00:40 Thursday morning: You see, this is exactly the sort of conversation I like about the place. Pointless, but ever-so-slightly challenging.