Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:
1. Mmm. Numbers…
My prickly "Urchin" web stats engine tells me that…
Report for: christian-sauve.com, March 2006 Total Visitors: 9,920 Total Pageviews: 22,400 (Corrected Total: 13,802) Total Hits: 25,243 Total Bytes Transferred: 461.5MB Average Visitors Per Day: 320 Average Pageviews Per Day: 722.58 (Corrected Average: 445.2) Average Hits Per Day: 814.29
The "corrected" numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered "pages" by the statistics pre-digestion engine. All results are significantly higher than last month; see below for reasons why.
Our top ten most popular pages are:
christian-sauve.com/index.html 524 christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 323 christian-sauve.com/reviews/2001/books01b.htm 214 christian-sauve.com/texts/worldcon-2004-noreascon4.htm 201 christian-sauve.com/about.html 172 christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 160 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2001.htm 132 christian-sauve.com/writings.html 131 christian-sauve.com/ccntact.html 129 christian-sauve.com/francais/index.html 122
Few changes this month, except for the unexpected presence of reviews from February 2001 (see below). Movie material continues to be a top draw.
If you care about such things, (and who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Netscape|6 5774 (2491) Explorer|6 2244 (1772) Googlebot|2 503 (307) Netscape|2 293 (new) msnbot|1 245 (new)
Netscape|2? Whuut?
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 791 (675) www.google.ca/search 228 (197) wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Horseman 104 (new) yahoo.com/search 79 (54) google.co.uk/search 75 (75)
That Wikipedia mention is a shock, right? Well imagine my surprise when I saw it early in March and discovered that it lead to a copyright violation notice about Wikipedia’s article on the Lapierre/Collins thriller The Fifth Horseman. Apparently, some clueless idiot had copy-and-pasted my review of the book as a Wikipedia entry. As regular readers of my reviews already know, Neutral Point of View isn’t one of my specialities: The offending article was detected and then, according to Wikipedia convention, flagged as a copyright violation and thendeleted a week later. I’ve always been impressed by Wikipedia, and their collective behaviour in resolving the issue is admirable. Bravo!
A number of other links were spotted this month, with the best one being a mention of my "Free Movie Guide" at http://fxblader.wordpress.com/2006/03/11/ a-short-guide-to-free-advance-movie-screenings/ :
Christian Sauve has a some great tips for how to get free movie tickets. The article, A Short Guide to Free Advance Screenings, is an oldie but goodie — last updated 2003, it is optimized for Ottawa, but applicable everywhere.
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
A deluge of mail landed in the christian-sauve.com mailbox in March. Judge for yourself:
1. An anonymous coward writes to say… (censored for your pretty eyes:)
you should write your own book if you can do better, you peice of sh*t
Classy!
As it turns out, my "anonymous" correspondent forgot that I had access to my server logs, which include his non-so anonymous IP address and the path to and through my site. After investigation, it turns out that "anonymous" is not an author (thought that would have been sweet), but some guy Googling for, of all things, "term limits vince flynn screenplay". (It also turns out that "anonymous" hails from Des Moines, Iowa and uses Mediacom as an ISP, but that’s another story.)
What really makes me giggle is that in nearly ten years of reviewing, my review of Vince Flynn’s Term Limits may be the only one where I complain that the story’s political stance isn’t right-wing enough. As reviews go, it’s also somewhat positive: If "anonymous" flipped out about that particular review, his head would probably explode upon reading some of my subsequent material…
2. I get all sorts of questions, but Ben (from Boston) sent one that was actually interesting:
I really want to hold a screening of the documentary, March of the Penguins, but I do not know how to retain the rights cheaply and easily. Can you give me a list of possible discount movie- rights lenders. My charity organization, (…) is interested in holding a screening of this movie for charity and need you help on information. Thank you so much!
After some research, here’s what I sent:
Though I’ve arranged for public screenings of movies before, keep in mind that my experience is valid for Canada only: In my case, I’ve had a very good experience with Audio Cine Films (http://www.acf-film.com/) in arranging for what is called a "public performance license". (…) Also in Canada, http://www.criterionpic.com/ is also in the business of granting public performance licenses, though their selection is far smaller.
Now, none of that helps you given how you hail from Boston. I’m not familiar with licensees in the US, but a cursory web search shows that both http://www.mplc.com/ and http://www.swank.com/ are in that business. Of the two, I believe that swank.com is the most appropriate choice for you: Not only does MPLC seem more concerned with umbrella licences, but Swank.com has a special area for college campuses; chances are that they’ll be able to answer your questions. They may also be able to point you in the right direction in acquiring promotional material for your showing. (…)
I have no clue whether that figure I mentioned above is comparable to the price you will be quoted: These things vary by year, planned audience, profit/non-profit or setting. (Though, curiously enough, not by movie.)
Finally; if you think that current system makes little sense and seems designed to exploit anyone who just wants to show a movie, join the club and lobby for copyright reform. (But in the meantime, pay the license fee…)
3. On the other hand, how do you answer a question like this?
I am an Egyptian journalist. Thank you for the Science Fiction link. I would like to ask you a favour: could you please send me a site address where to find French films tackling French joournalists in the Sixties? I would be trully grateful.
Eh? My feeble attempt at an answer:
Unfortunately, I don’t know of any French film about French journalists during the sixties: There are probably a few, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. I think that Jean-Luc Goddard made a few movies in the sixties featuring journalists: Check out MASCULIN FEMININ and MADE IN THE U.S.A.
4. My attempt to explain SOLARIS continues to win raves:
I just finished watching So
laris for the first time. I did understand the majority of the film- the ending did confuse me though. That is until I ready your commentary. I see how they left it open to the viewers imagination. I didn’t get that at first, and your description of the film clarified it for me. I guess I’m just used to modern films dictating emotions with straight cut stories that leave nothing to the imagination. I will admit that Solaris is not the type of movie to see in the theater, but I is an excellent rental if you are open to thinking during a movie. Thank you for your opinions and commentary, it is greatly appreciated. Keep up the good reviewing.
4. Search Queries Oddities
(This being the section in which we take a look at the search engine queries used by various visitors to find christian-sauve.com)
Here are our top-ten queries:
fight club book review 12 advance screenings 11 christian sauve 10 solaris explained 9 good films 9 advance movie screenings 8 solaris explanation 8 free movie screenings 7 sauve 7 solaris movie explanation 6
Not much to say here. Can you tell people are still puzzled by SOLARIS even four years later?
>yesterday was a lie
Yeah, well today is a dream and tomorrow is a promise. Have a nice day.
Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.