Gobsmacked !!

About a month ago I installed a web tracking gadget on my blog because I was starting to wonder if I was just talking to myself, nothing new about that little gem ..... but anyway it's first reports came back and I was astonished to find out that my blog is read quite widely, if you look at the map above each orange dot is at least 20 - 30 visits and most of them are multiple reads over a period of days.... Overall in the past three weeks I've had well over 900 hits with thousands of page views..... it's a pretty comprehensive report and you can drill down and find out what people are reading and how long they read a page, and even where they come from.... "I know who you are !!!" and of course the operating system you are running, what resolution your screen is set to and of course your host name, the level of detail is quite frightening, it stops short of reading your bank statements or cloning your credit card however.


I have to say when I installed this I was simply expecting X amount of people read this page for X minutes.... it goes so much further than that. it even tells me how long a particular person read a page for .... AMAZING !! ..... I was even quite chuffed to find out that one of my daughters is reading my blog :) :) ... (that's it now.... she will never darken my blogs pages ever again.... up to her but she is most welcome to read)

The code involved is a very short piece of java script embedded in my blog, but it just goes to show how when you think you are surfing the web anonymously that your every move could be tracked, I'm pretty surprised and shocked at how many people actually read my blog, to be honest I was expecting maybe 40 or 50 people tops.... but I'm truly gobsmacked at the numbers.... OK we aren't talking thousands here but even so :)

Anyway whoever you are thank you for wasting your time and in such a manner :)

Oh in case you're interested the code is from Google Analytics all perfectly legal, and not some hackers code I've found on the Undernet .... :)

Marathon or Snickers anybody ?

Andrea is running in next years London Marathon !!! :) she has a "Golden Bond Charity Place" and she is running for Asthma Research....her welcome pack arrived this morning :) ....... Apparently it's not the Flora Marathon any more but the Virgin Marathon, either way it's the same circuit she did a few years back.

She is really excited about it, although I can't see what the excitement is about with the thought of running 26 miles around London..... but each to their own.... either way she has to raise £1500 sponsorship between now and the Marathon, but she's already been promised £500 from the school for a non uniform day, so that's a long way towards her goal. She was spurred on by the recent and tragic death of a schoolgirl at the school she works at who died from an asthma attack. That said her training is going well and she seems to be enjoying it....... thus far.

The only other thing of note was me upsetting my step daughter last night.... I was rudely awoken at stupid past midnight to the TV blaring some inane drivel downstairs.... I waited, I listened... then I realised that there was no way on earth my step daughter would watch what was on, because it wasn't either "Friends, Hollyoaks or 90210 the reprise, anyway I quickly came to the decision that she had fallen asleep on the sofa (again) ......

I weighed up the options ie/ turning off the distribution amplifier in our loft.... but thought no that wouldn't do the TV much good showing a blue screen all night, plus the total waste of electricity....... so there was only one thing for it, I sighed, launched myself out of bed then trudged downstairs not in the best of moods and sure enough when I got into the lounge there she was curled up in a ball on the sofa.....with the TV blasting out, I'm pretty sure if I had rolled a live grenade in the room and it had gone off, she would have merely grunted and turned over..... Anyway I marched over to the TV and jabbed at the off button in an annoyed fashion and off it went.......silence.....utter bliss... I then turned on my heel in a foul mood and went back to bed...to be fair I did consider waking her up for about 2.387 nanoseconds... but it passed without a decision being made.....

I was greeted this morning by a very grumpy 15 year old who asked "why didn't you wake me up last night ?" to which I replied

"For God's sake you're 15 now, if you can't get yourself to bed, I'm certainly not going to wake you up.... if you want to freeze to death downstairs instead of going to sleep under your duvet.... then that's your problem not mine...... just you make bloody sure you turn off the TV before you decide to go to sleep next time...." and I was about to add "Or I will wake you up next time but with a cup of cold water" .... but in a true Kevin and Perry styleeeee off she huffed to school.... she's learning but it's a slow process Mrs Patterson........

But to be fair and good on her though, because she is supervising donkey rides tomorrow at some show for some extra pocket money, fair do's on the girl she's much more enterprising than her older brother who seems to be under the impression that somebody will gladly employ him to play xbox games all day.... Oh and he is going to University now, Army last week, Uni this week.... probably Al Qaeda next week, which is all well and good but I hear their pension plan is pretty rubbish.......

Well that's it Summer is officially over

At least for now anyway, we've had torrential rain here today albeit in short blasts, the really weird thing is it's still very warm, although the rain has freshened things up a bit. We had to have the fan on in our bedroom last night it was so hot, I fell asleep to the hum and rattle of it.... but it was nice having that cool breeze play over you.... Freya was fascinated with it in the morning.....

Nothing much else to report except FOMO boy is still waiting for his birthday present off his Dad, which still hasn't arrived, despite his father telling us and him that he has sent it.... Disappointed isn't the word for it......it's not the first time this has happened (or the second....if you get my drift) and the kids are pretty wise to this kind of behaviour from their Dad, which is why he doesn't want to go to France with him on holiday.... I don't blame him really.... you can only go on breaking your word so many times before people simply don't believe a word you say any more..... it's sad really because we've both encouraged the kids to keep in contact, and we usually end up having to make them feel guilty over not ringing their Dad.....

Oh well, what will be, will be, I guess.....They are old enough now to make their own choices.........It's most certainly not through the lack of trying on our part.......