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 Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,400 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 51 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 101 posts. There were 88 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 6mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was December 14th with 78 views. The most popular post that day was LINQ Performance Tuning: Using the LookUp Class.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were ifreestores.com, social.msdn.microsoft.com, en.wordpress.com, facebook.com, and icreditcard.biz.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for microstoven, eband patches, igrouping example, expandoobject linq, and microstoven recipes.

Attractions in 2010

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

1

LINQ Performance Tuning: Using the LookUp Class November 2010

2

Convert an XPS to JPEG, PNG, TIFF or BMP in A4 Pages November 2010
3 comments

3

ATI Mobility Driver Upgrade – Installer Blue Screens October 2010

4

Build Pivot Tables from Analysis Services Cube in C# June 2010

5

LINQ SelectMany and IGrouping October 2010
1 comment

Start a new Blog? Or use the Menus Option on this one?

Introduction

I’ve been thinking about expanding the range of content which I post into the Blogosphere. The types of things I was considering posting include:

• Recipes: Things I’ve adapted to suite my tasks and requirements.

• Cooking Tips: There are things one picks up, learns or discovers, which could make useful reading.
• I should start writing about “Cooking for One”. This I find is a very is a poorly serviced element in the cooking and culinary arts sphere. Almost all of the recipes I find are for family meals. So, unless you fancy eating leftovers for a week, or freezing the remainder until you feel like eating it again, they are not much help. Downscaling recipes is something which I do experiment with at time, and I’m getting better a doing this as time goes on. Oh, the joys of being a single cook.
• I also have two other “niche” cooking styles which are worth blogging about. These are:
  • RC (Remote control) cooking. An old style of cooking which is often done mainly in the oven. The main principle is; set the timer, and forget, until the timer rings and dinner is done.
  • “Commando” Cooking. This is the “hit and run” cooking. The main principle here is a fast as possible. Switching the stove on,  to completed meal, in the minimum of time.

• Guitar Stuff: Sheet music which I use to practice, maybe some Guitar Pro files as well.  If I start posting files, they will have to go on my “Sky Drive”, WordPress would not recognise Guitar Pro files as being a valid upload file type.

• Creative writing: One of my motivations for starting blogging was to get back into doing some creative writing. This objective is something which I’ve been remiss in, thus far.

The Pro’s Of Using The Menus Option

There is a fundamental reason why utilisation of the “Menus Option” should work, or at least the experiment is worthwhile performing. That reason is that the structure of the menus can “invert” the nature of a blog. The meaning of “invert” in this context is that: A blog is a chronological series of posts where the latest entry is at the “top”. The “inversion” that the menu option allows is for the first written (the oldest ,or chapter 1 in the case of a book) to be presented as the first entry in a list (be that a menu, or a list of links on a page).

There are a number of reasons to think that going down this track is going to be the most profitable approach. These reasons include:

• the WordPress advice contained in the “Write a Book” help page. The nub of the discussion on that page is that it is possible to write a book on WordPress. The set up is something which will require some thought. The advice is around “Chapters” of a book. A present, I think, I’ll be writing short stories, rather than a book. But that is my expectation at present, which may well change when I start writing.
• the WordPress advice contained in the “Custom Menus” help page. The demonstration of the implementation describes setting up the type of structure which some of the “new” content could be. So, again there is advice that expanding the types of content in a blog should work.
• Looking around the blogs on WordPress, I’ve seen examples which seem to work. So, I’ve some other peoples good ideas, I can copy and adapt to my own ends.

The Con’s of Using The Menu Option

There are a couple of things which are potential negatives for the menu approach. These downsides include:

• I’ve no way of setting the menu option up in a “sandpit” (a not online environment).  I’d not like to “kill” my live site with the modifications. It’s probably doable, only adding the top level menus when I’ve all of the underlying elements working right. I should post a question on the WordPress.com Forum about a “sandpit” environment.
  • And before I get the comment, just install the WordPress.Org version of WordPress, and work on that version. My poor notebook would melt down if I added another web server, web sites and the like to it. Time for an upgraded notebook, maybe, but that’s a story for another day.
• I’m not sure that adding more topics into the current blog is “right”. I’m not sure what the correct blogging etiquette is. Is multiple topic blogging “best practice” blogging? This is a small concern for the following reasons:
  1. The title, and tag line, on the blog, “Craig’s Eclectic Blog”, and “An eclectic collection of thing that catch my eye”. These statements allow me to, within reason,  to pretty much include whatever I choose. There is a warning that there will be a mixture of subject matter found here.
  2. It’s my blog. The corollary of that is: “I make the rules for what gets blogged about!”.
  3. I blog for pleasure, not for money, and not for fame. So, mixing topics may be a commercially poor choice for professional bloggers. But for amateur blogging, it’s probably acceptable.

A Plan Of Attack

As alluded to above I think I will use the menu option for adding new types of content to this blog.

The development and implementation strategy:

1. I think I can quarantine the additions to the structure of the blog site from the main part of the site. This should prevent me “breaking” the main part of the site.
2. This will be a process of developing the subpages independently. So long as I can get a URL to the page so I can test in the browser. I will be able to get to the pages as I development the through the “Administration Console –> Pages” menu as well.
3. Testing components as I build them.
4. When all is working, then adding the Menu to the “Top” (home page) of the site, and wire up the menu to go to the URL of the new page(s).

That’s the theory.

Next comes the practice. But, “there’s many a slip, betwixt cup and lip”, and “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”.