One Hundred Not Out

A day or so ago I noticed from my stat counter that the number of visitors to this blog was about to hit the one hundred thousand mark - at one point, when the counter was stuck on 99,999 for what seemed an eternity, I began to speculate on the odds that the entire Internet might spontaneously decide never to visit remote central again, and that I wouldn't live to see 100,000.

Eventually someone clicked and the counter ticked over, which meant I was then able to concentrate on wondering what the visitor numbers would show if I'd added the stat counter earlier than I had - for the first year and a quarter of remote central, there was no stat counter installed, so I have no idea of visitor numbers for the first 15 months - although I strongly suspect that during its infancy, the principal readers of this blog were myself, a couple of friends, and possibly next door's cat, if it was raining outside.

Obviously 100,000 hits in the overall context of the Internet and sites that receive heavy traffic is comparatively tiny, but in the context of this blog I consider 100k to be something of a milestone, so this is just to say a big thanks to everyone who has been kind enough to visit over the past three years or so; in particular I'm very grateful to Martin Rundkvist, who then wrote his Salto Sobrius blog, and was as far as I'm aware, the first person to give this blog a plug - in any event, visitor numbers jumped considerably after his mention, and I'd also like to thank everyone else who has posted links etc. to this site over the years.

And on the subject of other blogs, here's a couple I saw this week which I liked - most of the links on my blogroll are to mainstream sites and organisations, but from time to time I come across other slightly more abstract blogs which offer a fleeting glimpse into people's lives and their immediate surroundings - there seem to be very few good ones in this category, but from time to time, I'm lucky enough to find one or two.

The first is the Lavin blog which I found whilst searching for a suitable image portraying Japanese beer - as can be seen, the linked blog relies heavily on images from everyday life, with no accompanying text, and it could be argued that it's more suited to appearing only on Flickr or somewhere similar. But that aside I like this blog because its contributors aptly demonstrate how a minimalist but vivid approach to adding visual content can be very effective - and sometimes it's nice just to look at things and not have to read anything of an explanatory nature.

The second blog I saw this week is from France, and goes by the name of 'One Of These Days'; it also has some very good sets of images, although in this case there is added text and the occasional piece of music and video embedded within, giving the overall impression of a digital scrap-book - plus I'd have to admit that my positive reaction to this particular blog was in part mitigated by the fact that the editor had declared herself to be a fan of remote central via VerveEarth. In contrast to the Lavin blog, 'One Of These Days' has much more in the way of written content, and although the images are often more abstract, they're more varied and just as appealing to the eye, in my opinion.

Both reminded me of another blog I'd looked at before, Pippi's Adventures, as there is some commonality of elements, and I daresay there are many other blogs of a similar nature of whose existence I'm unaware and which are equally as good - all of which vaguely prompts me to consider starting a separate blog from remote central to incorporate some of the ideas behind the three that I've mentioned here - but that's more for the future than the present.

So in the meantime, thanks again for all the hits, next stop 1 million, which by my reckoning should be achieved sometime in the next decade or two forward from here.

image 'macarons' from here