Here’s a selection of the January 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 4,378 Total Pageviews 8,605 (Corrected Total: 5,136) Average Pageviews Per Day 277.6 (Corrected Average: 166) Total Hits 15,389 Total Bytes Transferred 256.3MB Average Visitors Per Day 141 Average Hits Per Day 496.41 Average Bytes Transferred Per Day 8.266MB
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. Total results are roughly equal to last month; corrected results are slightly lower.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
/www.christian-sauve.com/index.html 231 /www.christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 224 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2001.htm 172 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2000.htm 139 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 127 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1999.htm 111 /www.christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 102 /www.christian-sauve.com/links.html 97 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/index.html 87 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/2002/books02f.htm 84
…which is roughly consistent with last month’s results. Gee, do you suppose movie reviews are popular…?
If you care about such things, (I do!), here’s a depressing look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors):
Explorer|6 1550 Explorer|5 1137 Scooter|3 592 Netscape|5 408 Netscape|4 176
…and once again, the Forever-Damned Netscape 4 browsers still account for nearly 4% 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 889 yahoo.com/search 313 www.google.ca/search 214 yahoo.com/bin/search 137 msn.com/results.asp 93
…all of which rose slightly. Go Google!
There were no new links seen this month.
3. Ohh! Reader comments!
Not much, but one of them made my month!
1. A very, very simple comment:
Thanks for reviewing Creature Tech.
Doug
For anyone keeping track at home, this is Doug TenNapel reacting to my review of Creature Tech, one of my favourite books of 2002. Needless to say, this comment left me speechless for a minute or two.
2. Now that I have a page on how to get free movie tickets, it looks as if I’m an authority on the subject. Hence
are there any websites i can give my email and they will send me an opportunity to be apart of a premiere?
Alas, that would be too easy, wouldn’t it be? Nope, the hard way (become a super-celebrity, having friends in Hollywood) is still the best.
Interlude: Meanwhile, on another site…
I don’t just maintain christian-sauve.com. I’m involved, in some capacity, on four other sites. While my personal site remains my primary focus, well, I’m paid to take care of the other ones. As it happened, my most interesting web-stuff in January 2003 happened there.
It began as I was reviewing site statistics at the end of the month. Something was obviously, dreadfully wrong with one of the sites: a massive bandwidth spike had nearly killed the server on two successive days, easily increasing by more than 700% the total amount of data we were sending out.
I checked the page views table. Nope, nothing there. I checked the new referring URLs list for the week. Uh-oh.
It turned out that something very important had happened that week, but I hadn’t connected the dots until that moment: Google had performed its monthly "Google Dance", updating its database and more specifically, its image index.
As a result, whoever was looking for images about JOHN Q, THE SUM OF ALL FEARS or UNDERCOVER BROTHER (three recent DVD releases) saw our pictures come up first: As a too-good webmaster, I usually give out appropriate filenames to my images, and so got to the top of the list.
I’m sure that dozens of web surfers stole (saved) pictures off our web site those first few days. I’m not terribly concerned about them.
It’s those morons who can’t be bothered to outright steal the image that bother me. In flagrant ignorance of every shred of decent HTML advice, these people simply link to my site in order to display the images.
This is stupid for three reasons
- It sucks my bandwidth: Nothing on the web is free. My hosting fees go, in large part, to pay for the bandwidth my hosting company has to buy in order to send out bits from my web page. By linking directly to my images, those pirates are simply stealing from my bandwidth rather than using theirs. In many cases, these morons are pirates. Nearly ten thousand hits (!!!) came from a warez site using my picture of JOHN Q as an advertisement for their newest DivX rip.
- It shows an appalling lack of civility, HTML skills and design acumen: Not one of these thieves asked for permission. Not one of them seemed to have remembered the basic HTML advice given to newbies; DON’T LINK DIRECTLY TO IMAGES. Furthermore, I was aghast to find out that the images were not used to promote a cure for cancer or an extensive critical analysis of said films: In one particularly sad case, the LiveJournal gibbering idiot simply wrote "Last night, I saw [IMAGE]" Gaah.
- I can now control their web page: I was a touch frustrated. So I renamed my "good" images to cryptic titles, and instead changed the images being used to display such slogans as "LiveJournal users are MORONS …especially when they steal pictures from other web sites" and "STOP STEALING IMAGES, you pirate". These slogans now grace their web site until they (or I) take away these pictures. In the meantime, I can put hard-core pornography or pro-terrorist slogans instead… and there’s nothing they can do to stop me. They are, after all, using my resources.
My next step is to gently email the offenders and point out what’s been on their page for a week or so…
Moral of the story: Don’t annoy a webmaster.
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 (x38) free movie screenings (x28) solaris explanation (x9) how to get free movie tickets (x8) isbn lookup (x8) solaris explained (x8) françoise yip nude (x7) amazon isbn (x6) carolyn porco (x6) sauve (x6)
Same old, same old…
4.2 – My name is (what?)
Yep, the usual Christian stuff:
>christian advice on losing weight >christian best movies 100 >christian book reviews jared diamond >christian books ottawa >christian fantasy writers >christian films movies >christian graffitis >christian movie editing >christian movie recommendation & gt;christian movie review (x3) >christian movie reviews (x3) >christian movie reviews trapped >christian novel six figure book advances >christian parody within dracula >christian recommended movies >christian movie tickets
Oh, those wacky Christians…
>Christian Sauvé (x3) >christian sauve (x3)
Hey! Me!
4.3 – Local Issues
>film can ottawa hull >how to get free food in ottawa >ottawa famous player cinema >porn theaters ottawa >orleans cineplex odeon >south keys cineplex odeon
Bleh. Movies. Food. Porn. It’s January. What can I say?
4.4 – Let’s all go to the Movies!
>solaris christian >solaris film explained >solaris movie explanation (x5) >solaris plot explanation (x2) >solaris spoilers explanation >solaris story explained
The Solaris huh-festival continues…
4.5 – Everybody was cyber-stalking!
Let’s rake the web logs for a sampling of America’s current celebrity perversions:
>angelina jolie nude scene from hackers scene number >annette benning's hair (x3) >emma watson fake nude >francoise yip >halley berry naked movie >julianne moore nude photo shortcuts >kirsten dunst spiderman hairstyle >leelee sobieski liaisons >lela rochon stripper >mia kirshner late nude shots >penelope cruz's haircut >phoebe cats nude >rebecca pidgeon nude naked >renee russo >shannyn sossamon hairstyle >sigourney weaver images aaah >stories of ariana richards >roselyn sanchez biography lesbian >roselyn sanchez naked candid
!!! I especially like "Phoebe Cats" and "Sigourney Weaver images aaah"
>antonio banderas desperado texts music >colin farrell naked (x2) >george clooney from dusk till dawn tatoo pictures >honest peter facinelli nude review >john cleese topless >vin diesel avatars
Some are looking for guys too… But seriously: John Cleese? And why would Peter Facinelli be dishonest when nude?
4.6 – The Perv-a-tron!
>nude movie reviews
"Hi! Today, I’m reviewing SPIDER-MAN, but I’m doing so in the nude!"
>japanese leather hitwoman
Why does she have to be a leather Japanese hitwoman?
>wet t-shirt contest on californian beaches
Whee!
4.7 – Strange, disturbing and wondrous…
>sandra bullock apology time travel
News flash! Time travel is discovered, human history is in jeopardy, Sandra Bullock apologizes!
>fahrenheit 451 central idea >fahrenheit 451 christian (x3) >fahrenheit 451 original story >fahrenheit 451 worst book >fahrenheit 451 reviews (x2)
Apparently, it’s essay-writing season in high schools across America…
>i hate amelie poulin
Sacrebleu!
>1995 movie canada war
CANADIAN BACON. Next!
>techno thrillers without the garbage
As opposed to garbage without the techno-thrillers.
>summary of movie baby genius
"Trash. Horrible. Beyond redemption. Avoid at all cost."
You’re welcome.
Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… shivering in the Canadian winter.