Here’s a selection of the December highlights for christian-sauve.com:
1. Mmm. Numbers…
My Prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…
Report for: christian-sauve.com, December 2002 Total Visitors 3,813 Total Pageviews 8,042 (Corrected Total: 5,764) Average Pageviews Per Day 259.4 (Corrected Average: 185) Total Hits 14,302 Total Bytes Transferred 225.0MB Average Visitors Per Day 123 Average Hits Per Day 461.35 Average Bytes Transferred Per Day 7.259MB
The “corrected” numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other files mistakenly considered “pages” by the statistics pre-digestion engine. The results are roughly equal to last month.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
/www.christian-sauve.com/index.html 236 /www.christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 159 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2001.htm 141 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 135 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1999.htm 125 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2000.htm 114 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/2002/books02f.htm 83 /www.christian-sauve.com/texts/amazon-bookmarklet.htm 83 /www.christian-sauve.com/francais/index.html 82 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/2002/books02d.htm 82
…which is roughly consistent with last month’s results. Gee, do you suppose movie reviews are popular…?
Interestingly enough, I noticed about 47 (unsuccessful) attempts to hack my formmail script over the month of December. Silly, silly spammers…
If you care about such things, (I do!), here’s a depressing look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors):
Explorer|6 1352 Explorer|5 1067 Scooter|3 456 Netscape|5 291 Netscape|4 177
…and once again, the Forever-Damned Netscape 4 browsers still account for nearly 5% of all visitors… sigh… though it seems to be slooowly dwindling down.
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 855 yahoo.com/search 298 www.google.ca/search 192 yahoo.com/bin/search 101 msn.com/results.asp 69
…which once again reaffirms my faith in the all-powerful Google. MSN was on the rise; Yahoo fell slightly. With Yahoo’s acquisition of the inferior Inktomi search engine, chances are that hits will diminish from that source.
Aside from the usual sources of referrals (sites I’m updating, remnants of my previous sites and friends), here are two new mentions of christian-sauve.com:
- I have always said that librarians are cool. Now that www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/2002/12/18.html has mentioned me and my Amazon bookmarklets, I now think they’re even cooler.
- A lovely link from Lee Silver’s personal/professional site at www.princeton.edu/sites/lsilver/pubs/ eden_reviews.htm, to my review of his book Remaking Eden.
3. Ohh! Reader comments!
It was an interesting, dumb and puzzling month from the readers’ mailbag.
1. A friend writes to ask, in part:
…n’ayant pas de dictionnaire anglais-français, c’est quoi des turnips?
Turnips are navets. Navets are turnips. But the real question is; are they evil?
2. It could have been an amusing comment on my deficient editing skills, but it turned out to be a particularly annoying spam sent through my own contact page: (I have rubbed out the particulars of the contact information)
Traduction technique du français vers l’anglais et de l’anglais vers le français.
Technical translation from English into French and French into English.
Brian Mxxxx
B. x. International
7xxx, rue Lacoxxxxx
Montréal Qc Hxx 1xx
(514) 251-2xxx – (514) 251-8xxx
bxxxxxxxxional@videotron.ca
Well guess what, Brian M…? You get my coveted “Spammer Moron Award of the Month”. Be proud of it, because that’s the only one you’ll get from me. Next time I’m in Montreal, I’ll make sure to drop by your place and pitch my web design services even as you start opening the door.
3. Ooh; I really liked that one. An anonymous coward wrote in to say:
Are you on crack? You have the best movies all over the place, not to mention having some of the very worst at the top.
I assume that this refers to one of my yearly movie retrospectives, which do express opinions about films that may not be identical to other people’s feelings about particular motion pictures. (1999 would be a good example, as I was unimpressed by the Oscar-winning AMERICAN BEAUTY and THE INSIDER, but gave good marks to fun stuff like THE MUMMY and DEEP BLUE SEA)
Well, I shall consider “Are you on crack?” to be a badge of distinction. Especially from someone who can’t be bothered to give even an alias.
4. I like to play reference librarian from time to time. A “Terry” asked:
Can you help me locate titles of Womens Magazines of the 1900-1930s?
As it turns out, study of golden-age Women’s Magazines are a really hot topic in feminist study groups. There’s even a book on the subject, whose reference I sent to “Terry” but can’t be bothered to track down at the moment.
5. This is a good one: I mentioned in my review of The Princess Bride that I’d picked up a mint edition at a second-hand sale. Alas, a reader assumed that it was a mint First Edition (exceedingly rare and expensive these days) and wrote in to ask
I noticed that you said you picked up a copy of the Princess Bride. Is it by any chance a first edition? I am looking for one for my wife – and found your site/review via google. If its a first edition, would you be willing to sell it?
Alas, I quickly disabused my correspondent of that notion, and directed him to abebooks.com. Everyone was happy.
6. An enigmatic reader (let’s call him Mario L.) wrote in about my “Free Movie” essay, leaving his name and email address but no message. A query asking for a clarification went unanswered. Go figure!
4. Search Queries Oddities
(This being the crowd-favourite section in which we take a look at the search engine queries used by various browsers to find christian-sauve.com)
4.1 – Top ten queries
Let’s take a look at the top ten search queries used to stumble upon my site:
>free movie tickets 20 >free movie screenings 15 >solaris movie explanation 11 >sauve 6 >biodome movie 6 >amazon isbn 5 >how to become a movie reviewer 4 >isbn lookup 4 >that bringas woman 4 >stomach shrinkage 4
Same old, same old…
4.2 – My name is (what?)
Yep, the usual Christian stuff:
>christian action league movie reviews >christian book reviews 2 >christian dieting >christian films of the seventies >christian nude dude on raw >christian online movies >christian passive aggressive >christian fads >wwf superstar christian acti on figures
Oh, those wacky Christians… Are Wrestling and Christianity allowed to be discussed together?
>short christian thoughts
That’s when your religion doesn’t allow you to have any longer ones.
4.3 – Local Issues
>ottawa movie tickets 2 >famous player movies ottawa >winter exercise walking ottawa
Bleh. Movies. Walking. It’s January: Pick one.
4.4 – Let’s all go to the Movies!
>solaris book compared to movie >solaris explanation (x2) >solaris explanation movie (x2) >solaris french reviews >solaris review explanation >solaris review explanation movie >solaris reviews and explanation >solaris spoiler plot ending >explanation movie solaris >explanation of solaris >explanation of solaris movie (x2) >movie solaris explanation (x3) >plot explanation of the movie solaris >review christian solaris
Hot hot hot: Solaris, the movie! One wild guess: It’s a hard film to understand?
4.5 – Everybody was cyber-stalking!
Let’s rake the web logs for a sampling of America’s current celebrity perversions:
>amanda peet the whole nine yard nude >asian fetish ming-na >book on shu qi >emma watson fake nude >erika eleniak nude scenes in 1992 film under siege >françoise yip nude (x2) >halley berry naked (x2) >halley berry swordfish (x3) >isabelle cyr pictures >jennifer connelly waking the dead nude >jim carrey kate beckinsale american neurotic. >lauren holly picture down periscope >roselyn sanchez naked >roselyn sanchez nude (x2)
Apart from the Emma Watson stuff, I can agree with the rest of it.
>what was kari wuhrer thinking when she starred in 8 legged freaks
Oh, how about “Money!”?
4.6 – The Perv-a-tron!
>babe with glasses
Hmmm…
>babe sex powerpoint presentation
I can think about “babe sex”. I can think about “PowerPoint Presentation”. I just can’t imagine the two having any business together.
4.7 – Strange, disturbing and wondrous…
>chainsaw divorce
That’s when “dividing possessions in two” goes too far.
judith reeves stevens control freak
>submariners humour
The joke about the screen door *never* fails.
>the sad societies of trekkies
They’re not a “sad subculture” anymore: Now they make up a full society.
>what is a surrealistic essay
One that you don’t remember writing…
>worst book reviews of 2001
Oh, christian-sauve.com is the right place indeed for the worst book reviews of the year!
Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… available for parties.