Why so popular?

Just browsing my blogroll this morning, as I do most days, and suddenly I noticed my chart position has shot up to 18 - or 6 in the blog charts. Now that's pretty much unprecedented, especially as I've been posting next to nothing. So, is the ranking site suffering a glitch, or, unbeknownst to me, has some better known and well read site linked to an obscure old post? I shall investigate...

Surely I didn't get a massive spike just by mentioning Diamond Geezer? 135 page views for that post, as opposed to between three and seven for most - but why? Maybe it's just coming from people searching for DG?

My most popular post ever is the one on the dangers of health and safety, with 940 views - more than three times the next most popular (which was about my Moo Christmas cards). But my very boring recent posts, since the new year, have been attracting around 100 views so far, which again is two or three times as many as the pre-Christmas ones.

Traffic sources don't seem to shed any light on it - certainly neither Diamond Geezer nor CanalWorld Forums appear in the top ten, either for the last month or for all time. So I'm mystified. But how can I make sure it lasts?

Why can't I write a blog as good as Diamond Geezer?

Because I'm too sodding lazy, that's why.
Sorry.

News for cats

Rather sad news actually, in that there has been a fire at a local cattery and it appears that all the inmates have either perished or escaped (except for two who are in hospital suffering from smoke inhalation).

However, no news story - even one involving cats - is so tragic that a little light relief can't be found in the official spokesmen's statements to the press. Viz. one Pat McFarlane of the Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service who told the BBC that 'tackling the fire had been difficult because of the number of cats being looked after on the site'. I really have no idea what that means. However, he counterbalanced that bit of incomprehensibility with a classic understatement of the obvious - when animals are trapped in a fire and subsequently manage to escape, apparently they 'tend to leave the scene'.

Internetty thoughts

I see that Jim of Starcross has,albeit reluctantly, returned to Blogger, having switched to Wordpress in protest at Google's tax practices. I sympathise with both actions. Whatever the faults of Google and Amazon - and I am wholeheartedly signed up to the view that in some respects they are the work of the devil - I not only use them, but also respect them, for one overriding quality that their competitors somehow lack: they make things easy. I don't buy from Amazon to save money; I do it to save hassle. And to my mind, that is a key and very significant part of providing a good service - which should be recognised and supported whatever their other faults.