WordPress and Statistics
I was on a roll – the numbers just kept going higher and higher. The gambler in my soul knew that it was all an illusion, that it had nothing to do with my current entries and everything to do with the Christmas season and seasonal entertainment, but you know how it is, when you’re rocking along, you get this euphoria that excludes logical thinking.
Christmas Day it all came to a screeching halt.
Numbers back to normal.
WordPress allows you to see how a post has performed over a lifetime. These are my all time top performers. All in all, I would estimate that people looking for tried-and-true recipes have accounted for a full tenth of my statistics.
Christmas Divinity Candy 4483
Christmas Punch, Rum and Rumless 2418
Easy Kraft Christmas Fudge 1526
My one wish in the New Year would be that WordPress would find a way to let us click somewhere and see our posts in order of all-time “hits.”
The highest scoring non-recipe hit-getter?
Levantine-Gulf-Persian Warrior Women, 1799, one of those posts you write in an idle moment with a idle question. And oh, the responses! I learned so much from my readers on this one.
What True Love Looks Like to Me
Here are three of my very favorite presents given to me by AdventureMan. I like diamonds just fine, and at the same time, I really am not a diamonds kind of girl. I worry about losing things like that. I’m hard on watches, I do things with my hands and I break things. Better for me are gifts I don’t have to worry too much about breaking, losing, burning, misplacing . . . all the things that break my heart about earthly treasures.
Every time I look at these things, I see love. These are presents that protect me, that might help me help someone else at just the right time. You probably recognize two of the items, the third is a wind-up flashlight, so that I never need to worry about batteries failing – when the light begins to dim, you just crank away.
Actually, I am going to share two photos, because while the first one is the one I had planned:
This is the one that happened first, and it made me laugh because it also is about true love:
AdventureMan knows what will make me feel safe. It may not look romantic to you, but it looks like true love to me.
Here is today’s challenge. Grab your camera – or your keyboard – and show us / tell us what true love looks like to you?
End of Year Musings
Hello, friends, I am back. We had the most amazing and wonderful adventure, and we are refreshed and happy to be back sleeping in our own bed again.
So of course, one of the first things I do when I get back is go through all my e-mail and then take a quick look at the blog. Even in my absence, the stats stayed high – until Christmas Day, when they dropped to about half. . . and there they stay. (Big grin) If this hadn’t happened last year, too, I would be shocked, but remember last year when I published all those great Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes? Those are what has pumped up the statistics. Most days in November and December, the Christmas Punch – Rum, and Rumless and the Christmas Divinity Candy have pumped those stats up above the thousand visitors / day mark several times.
Last year, it took me until September to match my December statistics. I wonder if I will ever match this December’s?
Like many bloggers, I write this blog for the sheer joy of writing. I don’t want to be a person who watches my stats, and at the same time, it interests me what interests YOU, the reader. What interests me also is that many times the most visited entries keep getting visits months later, even over a year later, and from time to time these earlier entries get a comment. I have seen the same thing on Jewaira’s blog, and although we are very different bloggers, she is still my primary blog-role-model. She is a blogger who, through sheer imagination and good writing has kept a loyal and enthusiastic readership. . . I want to be Jewaira when I grow up, bloggily speaking.
Don’t we all do a little personal inventory as the old year ends and the new year is about to begin? I’m not big on resolutions, but I am big on behavioral changes, and this week is a good week to muse, to ruminate, to think about what I want the future year to look like.
Is there some area YOU would like to explore in the new year? Some aspect of your character you would like to develop? Some talent you would like to give an opportunity to grow?
Christmas / Eid Blessings
My friends, I wish you all the happiest, happiest celebrations. I wish you all the blessings of family, and friends, and enough food to eat and a roof over your head. I wish you quiet joy, and peace. Peace be upon you, brothers and sisters, and may your celebrations bring you joy.
AdventureMan and I will also be taking a break for a week to celebrate Christmas and to renew our spirits. I’ll be out of touch for about a week. God be with you!
Adoration of the Shepherds and Adoration of the Magi
1500-20
Oil on oak panel, 91 x 59 cm (each)
Groeninge Museum, Bruges
Bloggers Changing the Face of News in the Middle East
“So are the “new media” – blogs, websites, chatrooms – now becoming the only truly independent media in the Arab world?”
This article is from today’s BBC News in Depth:
New media dodge Mid-East censors
By Robin Lustig
BBC radio presenter
It’s never easy writing about media freedom.
Even in countries where there is no official censorship, all reporters know there will always be some restraints on what they can say – editors need to be persuaded, owners need to be kept happy, the law has to be obeyed.
Where there is official censorship – where, for example, it is a crime to “bring the government into disrepute” or to publish material which “insults the dignity of the head of state” – the problems are all the greater.
No freedom is absolute, yet some media are a great deal freer than others.
In the Arab world, in general, the media have been heavily politicised.
Governments have tended to control the main media outlets – the main daily newspaper, the main TV and radio networks – and where independent media have been allowed, they have often been owned by opposition parties or by businesspeople with clear links to political organisations. (The establishment of the Qatar-based al-Jazeera TV news station was a rare special case.)
But then, one day, along came the internet. And it was as if someone had blown open a few million doors.
Egyptian successes
Now, everyone can write – weblogs, or blogs, were born, giving everyone with access to the internet exactly the same opportunity to write and publish as the most powerful media tycoon.
You can read the rest of this article by clicking here, on BBC News.
Yasmin Farms, Kuwait
“But this is just as good, madame.” the produce manager was telling me, but I’ve tried this spinach, and it’s NOT!
“The spinach from Yasmin Farms, which I bought here, has the BEST taste,” I told him again, “please, please, tell me when the Yasmin Farms spinach will be delivered and I will make a special trip to buy it. It isn’t like the others, it’s better.”
This is some of the best tasting spinach I have ever tasted:
I wonder what else Yasmin Farms grows?
Grown in Kuwait!
“Madame,” he shook his head sadly, “I think there is no more spinach from Yasmin Farms this year.”
I love fresh spinach. I love it in salads. I love to cook it just a little, with garlic. I love to cook it just a little, with soy sauce and tahini. I love to cook it and serve it with a little bacon. I love to use it in dips. I love to use it in vegetarian lasagne. I love to use it in cassaroles. I even use it raw in sandwiches.
Spinach is one of the joys in my life, and the spinach from Yasmin Farms is back in the Sultan Center, for only a short time. I bought so much – we will be eating spinach and more spinach! 🙂
I also found Kuwaiti artichokes! We cooked them up last night, and they were nutty, and delicious.
Back in October, something happened that changed my life unexpectedly. I was visiting Fonzation and he had a post on How Old Are You Really? You take this test. It is a long test. Then, a couple hours later, they send you your results, how old your body is, given your health history, your family health history, and your habits.
OK, here is a truth I am ashamed to tell you. I felt pretty confident I am younger than my real age.
So I took the test, and came out two years older than my real age because I don’t get enough exercise. It really hurt my feelings. And then, because you have to give them an e-mail where they can send the results, they started sending me a little newsletter telling me little hints that would help me lower my real age, and they were mostly hints I could incorporate into my life easily. Things like telling me that artichokes – which I love anyway – have a huge amount of fibre. So last night we had delicious, fibre-filled KUWAITI-grown artichokes. What a treat!
Both AdventureMan and I are really trying harder to live healthier lives. We ate breakfast this morning (neither of us likes breakfast) and he had oatmeal, a very special oatmeal that my best friend sent from Seattle, and I had a healthy oat-y granola, and we both had blueberries in our cereal. Blueberries are amazingly good for you – I have learned from this health newsletter. (Breakfast is a lot easier when you are jet lagging, wide awake at three and have some time to kill before going to work.) Skipping breakfast is another thing that is bad for your “real” age, as it turns out.
This test is not like “what kind of flower are you,” which is fun, and frivolous and gone from your mind two days later. Two months later it is still having an impact on us. Visit his site and take this test. And then RUN to the Sultan Center and buy some Yasmin farms spinach!
Expiration Dates
Thank God for other bloggers. Simply Stinni, in addition to having some drop-dead fabulous recipes, often has good little tips for shopping in Kuwait. One reminded me to check expiration dates, something I just don’t even think about doing.
As I was preparing for a party, I needed some cream cheese for a dip. When I checked the expiration date, this is what I saw:
From August 2007 to May 2008? Horrors! I am aghast. What kinds of preservatives would you have to use to give cream cheese such a long shelf life??
There must be some local equivalent, a very mild soft cheese that I could use. You know I love buying local, buying fresh – help me out here. What can I use in place of processed cream cheese?
Two for Kinan
I wouldn’t know you if I passed you on the street, but you are my book-friend, and I am sorry for your recent illness. Your posts at Kinan’s Little Place Online are so addictive. You write so openly, and with such wit, that we feel like we know you, at least a little. In spirit, we form a kind of community, don’t we?
You know I love the sunrise. Every time I take one of these shots, I think of how you would enjoy it. These are for you, Kinan, to brighten your day and to wish you salaamat.
December 7
December 9
Take That, Paxil!
One of the blog sites which has been using my blog content to attract people to its pages is Paxil Online. Here is the comment I left on their page today:
You seem to be lifting the content from several of my blog entries. I do not want to be associated with Paxil, which is an antidepressant associated with violence, suicide and anti-social behaviors in young men.
The young men who shocked the world in Columbine both had taken antidepressants. The most recent mass killing in the US was also by a young man who had been on antidepressants. The use of antidepressants by young men must be closely monitored; the big pharmacological firms don’t want you to know how often these medications are associated with thoughts of suicide, hallucinations, violent and anti-social behavior.
I don’t think they will be lifting this content! 🙂
What Flower Are You?
What I love about this “test” is that using a bunch of irrelevant questions, they come up with categories which identify what kind of (totally random) flower you are. Total HOOT!
The results appear unreliable and the percentages add up to more than 100%. Have some fun.
You can take the test HERE at What Flower Are You?
Your Score: Water Lily
You scored 56% exotic, 52% fragile, and 72% complex!
Traditional flower symbolism: purity of heart, wisdom, eloquence.
Your opposite is the Calla Lily.
| Link: The What Flower Are You? Test written by gnomee666 on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test |
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