Fortjuly Anniversary

So, if a fortnight is 14 days (but counted as nights), then a fortjuly should be 14 years. I suppose it should really be a fortwinter to align with the counting nights aspect. But that would mean we’re on the 13th “day” (year) of this blog, and this post celebrates the blog’s 14th anniversary, so fortjuly it is.

As in: “It has been fourteen years — a fortjuly — since I started this blog.” By other metrics: 1,438 posts (42 pages); 1,996,695 words (damn, just missed it being a cool two-mill); 287,266 sentences; or 63,337 paragraphs.

As usual, there are charts and lists.

I’ll get to those in a moment, but I want to vent a little about WordPress messing things up for my twice-a-year stats orgy by no longer reporting page hits for Home page /Archives — the landing page for the blog. The WordPress app on my phone does report them, so I can include them in some stats, but it’s unfortunate they are now excluded from page view reports on the website.

The CSV files of those reports that I download have long been a sore spot because, if any of the post titles reported have double-quotes in them, the CSV WordPress emits is invalid CSV. I reported this years ago — it’s a simple thing to fix — but the bug remains.

For example, my post “Imaginary” Parabola appears in WordPress CSV files downloaded today as [“””Imaginary” Parabola”] when it should be [“””Imaginary”” Parabola”] — all double-quotes inside the enclosing double-quotes must appear twice (the square brackets are just my way of indicating “field” here.). I gave up on hoping WP would fix it and modified my own software to compensate.

I’ve long been frustrated by the Jetpack stats package and the way it shows tables as bitmaps rather than tables that can be copy-pasted or screen-scrapped. Which may be the point, but it makes it harder to do my own things with stats. (I wish WP had an API for pulling stats stuff in a format that’s easy to process, but I’m unaware of one.) Adding some injury to insult, some of those bitmap tables lack scrollbars, so if they don’t fit on your screen, you’re out of luck.

More importantly, why do ancient stats sometimes change? Every time I do this, old data changes. Not much, usually just a page hit or three, but enough to mismatch my tables. It’s bad enough having to enter recent data by hand but having to also update old data sucks. I can’t understand why it would change — possibly something to do with dates or time zones? I wonder if I see different data when I do this after New Year’s versus when I do it in July. A Daylight-Saving Time error perhaps?

Whatever. Time for some charts:

The uptick in traffic I saw in 2024 has turned into a slight downtick in 2025 (possibly just regression to the mean). The off-the-chart spike is from those strange few days last November when something — some web-crawler or other — was very busy here [see A Blog Invasion?]. There is also some influence, I suspect, from that Babylon (Anime) post (see below).

Looked at year-by-year in terms of actual page views (and visitors):

That grey Home curve is what WordPress no longer reports (but which I was able to get from the WP phone app).

My rate of posting here has definitely gone down in the last years:

But I’m just as wordy as ever:

(I took 2017 off.) Speaking of words, I mentioned the 1,996,695 words above (two more posts should put me above two million). According to my word counter, there word 41,072 distinct words found. The 50 most-used words, unsurprisingly, are:

1. the (108,983)
2. a (53,935)
3. of (47,495)
4. and (47,236)
5. to (45,974)
6. is (33,225)
7. in (30,382)
8. I (29,199)
9. that (27,305)
10. it (24,245)
11. for (15,182)
12. but (13,965)
13. as (13,914)
14. with (12,716)
15. on (12,320)
16. this (11,173)
17. one (10,878)
18. are (10,867)
19. or (9,662)
20. we (9,536)
21. be (9,495)
22. was (9,306)
23. so (9,255)
24. my (8,949)
25. it’s (8,850)
26. have (8,551)
27. you (8,499)
28. not (8,020)
29. about (7,964)
30. all (7,955)
31. an (7,618)
32. at (7,615)
33. from (6,870)
34. they (6,512)
35. can (6,485)
36. just (6,319)
37. what (6,162)
38. there (6,053)
39. if (6,043)
40. which (6,032)
41. by (6,025)
42. some (6,020)
43. more (5,840)
44. me (5,563)
45. has (5,312)
46. time (5,288)
47. out (4,738)
48. like (4,702)
49. how (4,607)
50. 1 (4,316)

On a related note, the word counter also tells me that my 1,438 posts (and 42 pages) have these HTML tags:

• 23,283 links (<A> tags)
• 787 quoted sections (<BLOCKQUOTE> tags)
• 7,522 images (<IMG> tags)
• 84 tables (<TABLE> tags)
• 285 ordered lists (<OL> tags)
• 222 unordered lists (<UL> tags)

And a variety of others (a total of 167,569), but these are, I think, the most interesting. In previous years, I spent a lot of time going over all my old posts and ensuring that every paragraph is enclosed in <P> tags. That the word counter found 63,337 of them — the same number of paragraphs counted — confirms I didn’t miss any.

The big news this past year is the Babylon (Anime) post from August 2021. It went almost entirely unnoticed for three years and then suddenly took off last August (so it wasn’t on my radar at all last anniversary).

Since then, with 5,544 views, it has become my third-most viewed post in the 14-year history of this blog.

But I think the fun is about over now. I thought it was over last December, but it spiked later in the month, and the second round was bigger than the first. I think there may be a third round starting in early March. I suspect these are from someone sharing a link with their particular group.

Here are the Top Dozen Posts over the 14 years:

1. From the Far Side (10,703; 466)
2. My Grandfather’s Axe (6,479; 51)
3. Babylon (Anime) (5,544; 2,898)
4. Sideband #17: Ready when you are, Mr. DeMille (5,513; 391)
5. Rick O’Shay (5,071; 315)
6. Gibbs’ Rules (4,411; 1,056)
7. Deflection and Projection (3,987; 9)
8. Santa: Man or Woman? (3,441; 2)
9. God is an Iron (3,235; 96)
10. Elephant Story (3,176; 330)
11. Flat Space of the Torus (3,107; 709)
12. Abacus and Slide Rule (3,033; 179)

Most are posts that have appeared in past years. The first number is total views; the second number is views this year. The Babylon (Anime) post is a new addition, and the Gibbs’ Rules page worked its way onto this list starting last year (it continues to do well):

I mentioned how the “Imaginary” Parabola post is a problem for the WordPress CSV files. It stands out because it’s done pretty well lately:

It’s an aside in a four-post series about the cardioid shape of the Mandelbrot fractal. [See “Imaginary” Numbers, The Complex Plane, and The Heart of the Mandelbrot for the other posts in the series.].

The post on the “Ready when you are, Mr. DeMille” joke is a steady performer:

Even if it’s no longer in the #3 spot. The Rick O’Shay post is also pretty consistent:

The latter is a special favorite of mine for reasons I’ve mentioned in the past. (Note that the vertical scales on these can vary.)

The Top Dozen Thirteen Posts (so far) this year are:

1. Babylon (Anime) (2,898)
2. Gibbs’ Rules (1,056)
3. Flat Space of the Torus (709)
4. Strong Female Characters (660)
5. From the Far Side (466)
6. Sideband #17: Ready when you are, Mr. DeMille (391)
7. QM 101: Bloch Sphere (386)
8. QM 101: Bra-Ket Notation (377)
9. Elephant Story (330)
10. Rick O’Shay (315)
11. Joe, Jim and Bernie (237)
12. Musical Scale Modes (211)
13. StoRy: FiRe vs WateR (191)

Some minor (but gratifying) surprises in the last three (which is why I went for 13, and it’s just occurred to me that I should have had Top 14 lists considering the fortjuly anniversary). The Hillerman books (#11) are still among my favorite mysteries of all time, and I really loved the movie, RRR (#13). That the post about musical scales is getting views is a surprise.

Flat Space of the Torus started bringing in views about a year after it was published. Lately, there has been something of a surge:

I still think it’s the big image of Torus Earth.

Strong Female Characters is another that took a year to find an audience:

Nice to see it getting views. It’s a cool list (if I do say so myself).

§ §

This took more time today than anticipated, so I think I’ll leave off for now. It’s Friday night — Beer Night (along with Saturday nights)! Or, on special occasions like anniversaries and whatnot, champagne. Definitely gonna pop open a bottle tonight. (Sometimes it’s Moscow Mules if I’m not feeling like beer.)

Anyway, have a great Fourth of July weekend.

Stay fortright, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

∇