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I'm not feeling great tonight. Some food issues, fatigue, a headache, maybe some health. The kind of thing I felt all the time a couple of years back, when we were working diligently to keep me alive. Which is not to say I'm getting sick that way again -- I'm vastly better. I'm just tired and kind of sick.
Which, admittedly, brings me a little down. Oh, I'm not feeling major depression or anything. Just the kind of "down in the dumps" you get when you're feeling sick. I'll admit I don't like bagging 'Snark for the day -- that must be neurotic, somehow. No one can claim I neglect the thing. But still, when I have to call a weakness of the brain, it makes me feel bad.
But there's something I can do when I'm feeling down. It's sheer, cheap egotism... and it feels unusually good.
There's a free service called reinvigorate.net. They provide realtime sampling of traffic to my site (unlike the once a day logs I get from Pair). I only get a sample of the traffic, really, but it does show up. And usually I stick to the referrers, which shows me a snapshot of where people are coming from.
But watching the referrers leaves out something. It leaves out the people who come straight to your site without following a link. It leaves out the people who have you bookmarked. It leaves out your actual regulars. As a result, you start focusing unusually heavily on who's linked you, not on the actual people who just... you know, show up
But Reinvigorate has a "traffic monitor" page. It actually tracks the sample in real time using Java. And... this is goofy, but when you have it running and a person goes to your site... it makes a little chirping sound.
One by one, the referrers show up, chirp, chirp chirp. But far more often... far more often... it just says "none." No referrer. Someone went straight to Websnark.
When I hear that chirp... it means a real live human being, right that second, has chosen to go to my website, and read my words.
It's pathetic, perhaps, but when I'm feeling a little down, I can go to that site, and I can listen to the chirps, one, two, threefourfive... six....
Six sets of eyes, looking at what I've had to say. And in the end, that's what I wanted. I write because I have to, and because I want people to read what I've written. And this reminds me they actually do.
And that's pretty cool.
Which, admittedly, brings me a little down. Oh, I'm not feeling major depression or anything. Just the kind of "down in the dumps" you get when you're feeling sick. I'll admit I don't like bagging 'Snark for the day -- that must be neurotic, somehow. No one can claim I neglect the thing. But still, when I have to call a weakness of the brain, it makes me feel bad.
But there's something I can do when I'm feeling down. It's sheer, cheap egotism... and it feels unusually good.
There's a free service called reinvigorate.net. They provide realtime sampling of traffic to my site (unlike the once a day logs I get from Pair). I only get a sample of the traffic, really, but it does show up. And usually I stick to the referrers, which shows me a snapshot of where people are coming from.
But watching the referrers leaves out something. It leaves out the people who come straight to your site without following a link. It leaves out the people who have you bookmarked. It leaves out your actual regulars. As a result, you start focusing unusually heavily on who's linked you, not on the actual people who just... you know, show up
But Reinvigorate has a "traffic monitor" page. It actually tracks the sample in real time using Java. And... this is goofy, but when you have it running and a person goes to your site... it makes a little chirping sound.
One by one, the referrers show up, chirp, chirp chirp. But far more often... far more often... it just says "none." No referrer. Someone went straight to Websnark.
When I hear that chirp... it means a real live human being, right that second, has chosen to go to my website, and read my words.
It's pathetic, perhaps, but when I'm feeling a little down, I can go to that site, and I can listen to the chirps, one, two, threefourfive... six....
Six sets of eyes, looking at what I've had to say. And in the end, that's what I wanted. I write because I have to, and because I want people to read what I've written. And this reminds me they actually do.
And that's pretty cool.