Who are you?

I signed up to Google Analytics recently, a free service which reports on access to your website. And I have to say I've found the results absolutely fascinating. I've been checking in fairly regularly to see what new results are available, an have been impressed with the detail of the data.

Obviously this is a small blog, and not many people visit it, but I'd been curious for a while as to exactly how many people DID visit it. I now know the answer. Since the 7th of June there have been 17 visits to my site. A number of those are going to be me using it to link to other places, but a decent number of them aren't. Google Analytics allows you to drill down on a map a see where your visitors are from, of the 17, 11 are from Melbourne, most are probably me, however, 3 are from Perth, 1 is from Montreal, 1 is from somewhere in SE Asia (but Google was unable to specify exactly where) and 1 is from London (possibly a friend from back home).
So that's kind of interesting. Welcome to our foreign cousins!

The other report that is interesting are the sources of these visitors. 7 came direct, those will be people who've got me book marked, and a number of those visits will be me, possibly all. I got 5 referrals from Blogger.com, which I think is possibly me checking a post after I've published it. I also got 3 from Rods site, cheers mate! The final 2 were from Google, and from there, I can get the search terms used to find my page.
First up
all dressed backed potato
Which alerted me to a typo in one of my Peru posts, as obviously that should be BAKED potato. Strange that someone else made the same typo in their search, and somehow found my site because of it. My page wasn't the first in the list though, so they obviously had to work their way down to me. I wonder what they were after? Baked potato recipes perhaps?
The second search string was
tablets to stop you pooing
Which I guess took them to the post on Peru and the stuff we'd packed. I was a little surprised by that one when it popped up this morning. To the person who found my page from that search term, I sincerely hope you found what you were looking for, and I'm sorry my comments on "tablets to stop you pooing" weren't more informative. Perhaps I should have included some brand names and a location to go to buy them. I can't comment on effectiveness as ultimately I didn't need them.

In total, I've apparently had 7 absolute unique visitors to my site, a number from which I'm sure I can grow... if I can just keep up the pace of posting... Obviously I need some more good search phrases in my posts, and possibly more discussion on pooing...

Fear the Geometry!

Following on from yesterdays post concerning the shooting here in Melbourne, police have apparently identified the shooter and are tracking him down. The age had this to say:-

"Hudson, a member of the Hells Angles bikie gang, is known to police in Queensland after being involved in a shoot out with rival gang the Finks in March last year."

Ah yes, the Hells Angles, a little known geometric faction of the Hells Angels gang. Well known for having Pythagoras theorem tattooed across their knuckles.

Original story here

Also I noted a story saying that Kara, the apparent intended victim of the attack enjoyed "living dangerously", a thrilling deduction apparently made after reading her MySpace profile. In my brief look this morning, I didn't see much that seemed particularly dangerous, beyond the usual idiotic tendency of MySpacers to put up every detail of their social life up on the web for all to see, including where they're going and when they're going to be there. Frankly, to me this seems to take all the challenge out of stalking someone. With all the gate crashed parties and attacks going on as a result of MySpace posts, I wonder how long it'll be before people wise up and start injecting a little anonymity into their online personas...

Interesting Day.

It's been an interesting morning here in Melbourne. A triple shooting took place a couple of blocks from my office this morning, about 8:15/8:20. Early reports suggest that it may have been following on from an altercation in a bar nearby where a guy (possibly the shooter) tried to drag a woman out of the bar by her hair (nice to see a return to the traditional Neanderthal pick-up techniques there) he was stopped by some other drinkers. Sometime later he was seen trying to drag her into a cab out on the street, and when 2 guys stepped up to help her, he shot them, and then apparently also shot the girl. One of the guys is dead, and the others are in hospital being treated.
I actually arrived at the office with no idea anything untoward was happening, but shortly afterwards there were police outside our building and we got a call from one of the other workers saying that he wasn't allowed into the building, there was an armed guard outside the building, and a cadre of police armed with shotguns and machine guns had entered the building. Us drones inside the building of course saw and heard nothing of this, and would have been blissfully unaware of the chaos unfolding around us in the CBD were it not for phone calls from staff saying they couldn't get in, or were going to be late because of disruptions to trams or blocked roads etc.
The prick with the gun is still at large unfortunately, though he has apparently ditched the gun at a nearby building site, and it has since been found. We can only hope that he didn't get his prints off it which would make it just a matter of time before the police nail him. The fact that they've not picked him up yet though suggests that he's got away from the city now.
If you want more details, just head over to www.theage.com.au and see it splattered all across the main page.

Back in Oz, and working hard.

Yup, I'm back in Oz (and have been for 2 weeks now) and working hard once again. The holiday was just absolutely awesome, and I'll share some piccies via this blog soon. The flight home was long, about 30 hours of travelling + waiting at airports all up. There were issues with the luggage as well, poor communication from LAN staff (really at an international airport, why put someone who speaks poor English on the help desk?), and unhelpful check-in staff. K's luggage ended up arriving home several hours after us.
Other than that though it was pretty cruisey. Saw plenty of films (The pursuit of Happyness, School for Scoundrels, Man of the Year, Deja Vu, Night at the Museum, some of these were on the out bound journey though) and read alot. And slept, so I was reasonably fresh when I returned home.
I'll post more when things have settled back down, but for now, it's just good to be home.