From the Web Site Report Archive (2004)
For a long, long while, starting in 2002 when I could finally get reliable web stats about this site, I obsessed about “my” web analytics. How many visitors? What browser did they use? What were they looking for? I published monthly summaries (which wasn’t all that obsessive, given how it led me to regular site improvements) and provided commentary. I stopped in late 2010, when it became more of a chore than a fun thing to do.
By 2018, the site reports were cluttering the site with low-value content, and (after making a backup) I decided to clean up and delete those old reports. Still, there were a few snippets worth preserving here, either for historical value, a few chuckles or a glimpse at old-school webmastering. Here it goes, copy-and-pasted more or less chronologically from 2004, with additional commentary in [italicized brackets]:
January 2004
Here’s a selection of the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:
1. Mmm. Numbers…
My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…
Report for: christian-sauve.com, January 2004 Total Visitors: 5,370 Total Pageviews: 11,301 (Corrected Pageviews: 7,260) Average Pageviews Per Day: 364.55 (Corrected average: 234.19) Total Hits: 18,639 Total Bytes Transferred: 380.7MB Average Visitors Per Day: 173 Average Hits Per Day: 601
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. Results were all up by nearly a sixth, a good bounce-back from the lull of the december holidays.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
christian-sauve.com/index.html 299 christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 149 christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 145 christian-sauve.com/texts/solaris-explanation.htm 143 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2002.htm 135 christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 133 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1999.htm 121 christian-sauve.com/texts/being-canadian.htm 120 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2000.htm 119 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2001.htm 110
Same old, same old. “Being Canadian” cracks the top-10.
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 2479 (2001) Explorer|5 727 (599) Netscape|5 641 (536) Netscape|4 568 (592) Googlebot|2 383 (286)
Down, Netscape 4.x, down…
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 680 (659) yahoo.com/search 251 (297) www.google.ca/search 216 (169) msn.com/results.aspx 180 (136) google.com/imgres 68 (New Top-5)
Very stable results.
No new links in December.
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
The christian-sauve.com mailbox was empty this month, at the exception of a few messages at the beginning and end of the month that were not intended for public disclosure. So what happened? Well, how about a mailto script that, for three weeks, didn’t have the appropriate execution rights? Who’s the moron? I am…
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)
4.1 – Top ten queries
>solaris explanation (x24) >sauve (x14) >solaris explained (x11) >solaris movie explanation (x7) >free movie screenings (x6) >being canadian (x6) >carolyn porco (x5) >solaris movie explained (x5) >christian movie reviews (x4) >amazon isbn (x4)
Here too, same old business as usual.
4.2 – Strange, disturbing and wondrous…
>christian sauve the princess bride >christian sauve's book reviews
Even after years looking at web site referals and search queries, I will freely admit at being freaked-out by those direct queries. Brr.
>was h. c. anderson sex life iffy
Don’t ask me! I don’t know!
February 2004
Here’s a selection of the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:
1. Mmm. Numbers…
My prickly “Urchin” web stats engine tells me that…
Report for: christian-sauve.com, February 2004 Total Visitors: 5,124 Total Pageviews: 10,879 (Corrected Pageviews: 6,460) Average Pageviews Per Day: 375.13 (Corrected average: 223) Total Hits: 18,121 Total Bytes Transferred: 364.9MB Average Visitors Per Day: 177 Average Hits Per Day: 625
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. Total results are slightly down; average results are slightly up. That’s what happens in a 29-days month.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
christian-sauve.com/index.html 381 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2002.htm 187 christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 181 christian-sauve.com/texts/solaris-explanation.htm 180 christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 134 christian-sauve.com/texts/being-canadian.htm 133 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2001.htm 132 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2000.htm 128 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1998.htm 119 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1999.htm 107
Same old, same old. “Being Canadian” stays in the top-10 for the second straight month.
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 2825 (2479) Explorer|5 617 (727) Netscape|5 600 (641) Netscape|4 439 (568) Scooter|3 162 (New)
Sweet; Netscape 5 looks poised to pounce on Explorer 5 for second place.
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 736 (680) yahoo.com/search 377 (251) msn.com/results.aspx 254 (180) www.google.ca/search 199 (216) msn.com/results.asp 96 (New)
The introduction of the new Yahoo Search seems to have have a small impact.
geocities.com/canadian_sf/smith/ smith_reviews.htm may be a new link to one of my reviews, but I’m not sure.
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
Not a lot… a few FormMail attacks, a query about how to see the new HARRY POTTER premiere (how should I know?) and a question on the True Definition of SF that may very well end up forming the kernel of an article sooner or later.
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)
4.1 – Top ten queries
>solaris explanation (x30) >sauve (x16) >free movie screenings (x16) >solaris movie explanation (x14) >john landis directed which two michael jackson videos in the 1980s (x13) >fred flintstones extraterrestrial friend (x13) >solaris movie explained (x11) >who was fred flintstones extraterrestrial friend (x10) >fred flintstone extraterrestrial friend (x8) >top-grossing movie of 1990 (x8)
Looks like a few trivia questions were answered this month.
4.2 – Strange, disturbing and wondrous…
>does being canadian make me part french
No.
>site de Christian Sauvé
Pop quiz: You’re using a search engine. You’re looking for Christian Sauvé’s web site. Do you type “Christian Sauvé” or “Christian Sauvé’s Web Site” ?
March 2004
Here’s a selection of 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 2004 Total Visitors: 6,267 Total Pageviews: 13,856 (Corrected Pageviews: 8,722) Average Pageviews Per Day: 446.96 (Corrected average: 281) Total Hits: 22,866 Total Bytes Transferred: 505.2MB Average Visitors Per Day: 202 Average Hits Per Day: 737
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 up by roughly 15% over last month.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
christian-sauve.com/index.html 388 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2002.htm 247 christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 213 christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 208 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1999.htm 181 christian-sauve.com/texts/being-canadian.htm 178 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2001.htm 157 christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 154 christian-sauve.com/texts/solaris-explanation.htm 146 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2000.htm 139
Same old, same old. “Being Canadian” stays in the top-10 for the third straight month.
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 3249 (2825) Netscape|5 876 (600) Netscape|4 763 (439) Explorer|5 627 (617) Googlebot|2 231 (new)
Excellent: For the first time, Explorer 5 disappears under Netscape 4, and Netscape 5 moves in second place. Save for the ridiculously high total of N4x visitors, things are as they should be.
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 794 (736) yahoo.com/search 486 (377) www.google.ca/search 258 (199) msn.com/results.aspx 237 (new) msn.com/results.asp 105 (96)
Looks like the Yahoo/MSN/Google search engine war is heating up…
Two “new” links this month:
- Students are encouraged to learn about Canadian bilingualism from my “Being Canadian” page as part of the “Bilingualism Webquest” at http://projects.clearview.ab.ca/~dmccann/ humanities/WebQuestBilingualism4/ HISTORYOFBILINGUALISM.htm
- Robert Reed links to my (unimpressed) review of his novel Marrow at starbaseandromeda.com/reed.html
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
March was a very busy month for the christian-sauve.com mailbox. Let’s see the damage:
1. Everyone loves free movie tickets. Unfortunately, not everyone notices that from Ontario, I can’t know too much about Anaheim screenings:
Hi I live In Anahiem, Ca. I was wondering if you know any test screening that are coming to my area.
Er, no. Sorry.
2. Some occult/new-age/conspiracy-theory writer sent me a thoughtful form letter which read, in part,
I would like you to check out my book through [xxx] where you can find links to many five star reviews including a comment by [xxx]. This is my first published book but I have more than 20 more to come to market which I have completed in the last two years after years of research and other preparations. It is available through Ingrams and I am available for interviews.
…and then sent just a phone number for contact information. I have enough books to read as it is; maybe some other time.
3. I woke up one morning to find an anonymous contemplation of things in my mailbox:
pour moi christian c’est quoi
[Literal translation: for me christian is what]
Beautiful. Zen-like. Thought-provoking. Unanswerable.
4. The undoubtedly lovely and sagacious Caroline leaves no return email but is kind enough to write…
Grat and Fun site, specially while reading the reviews that you didn’t like. I agreed in almost all of them, the rest, well I haven’t read them. Keep it up, and try reading the rest of the Harry Potter Series. Specially the 3rd.
Fear not, Caroline! Barring catastrophe, I will read all Harry Potter books. Sooner, but probably later… as soon as they’re all out.
5. Some background information: Years ago, I read the autobiography of a mercenary called “Frank Camper”. While my initial review exhibited some healthy skepticism about Camper’s claims, several correspondents since then have been kind enough to set me straight and confirm the veracity of the book. This month, I got another message saying, in part…
I read a review you did about Frank Camper some three years ago. […] Yup I read his book and yup he is all that. Sometimes the truth is a bit more unbelievable than one can imagine. Of all the book I have read of Franks the one you reviewed was actually quite factual. […] Well thats all, just figured I would give you an update if you even care. Mostly because you were man enough to admit you had to eat a little crow. Not easy to find a real man now a-days. Just contacted you out of respect.
It’s one terrible thing to write nonsense, but it’s even worse not to correct it. I’m happy (and not a little proud) that thanks to the Internet, my review has now been updated to reflect the real story.
6. Two (two!) formmail attacks this month, from “jmathis555” and “forexdragon”, both at AOL.com. Quite annoying.
7. I also got some sharp comments about my French-language Camera Oscura movie-reviewing column on another site, but you don’t care about that, right?
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)
4.1 – Top ten queries
>solaris explanation x22 >top grossing movie of 1990 x18 >free movie screenings x17 >sauve x12 >solaris explained x9 >top grossing movie 1990 x8 >top-grossing movie of 1990 x6 >nude scenes featuring vin diesel x6 >in what book does the character van helsing first appear x5 >1990 top grossing movie x5
Hm, I wonder why the sudden interest for top-grossing movies of 1990…
4.2 – Strange, disturbing and wondrous…
>how did meteors from mars arrive on earth
Fed-Ex.
April 2004
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, April 2004 Total Visitors: 6,284 Total Pageviews: 12,864 (Corrected Pageviews: 7,666) Average Pageviews Per Day: 428.8 (Corrected average: 255) Total Hits: 17,950 Total Bytes Transferred: 399.2MB Average Visitors Per Day: 209.46 Average Hits Per Day: 598.33
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. Most results are slightly lower than last month.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
christian-sauve.com/index.html 336 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2002.htm 270 christian-sauve.com/texts/solaris-explanation.htm 225 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1999.htm 207 christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 190 christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 186 christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 185 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2000.htm 152 christian-sauve.com/search.html 116 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1998.htm 115
Same old, same old, almost: The Search page cracks the top-10 for the first time.
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 3415 (3249) Netscape|5 903 (876) Explorer|5 553 (627) Googlebot|2 546 (231) Netscape|4 354 (763)
Sweet: Not only is Netscape 5 getting better results, but Netscape 4 continues its well-deserved slide downward.
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 940 (794) yahoo.com/search 429 (486) www.google.ca/search 250 (258) msn.com/results.aspx 247 (237) google.com/imgres 106 (new)
Thank you Google.
Two “new” links this month:
A LiveJournal user noticed my article on Losing Weight and linked to it from livejournal.com/users/mordrith/ He also left a message and asked a question (see below) but forgot to leave an address or a URL. Fortunately, someone somewhere clicked on the link and allowed me to figure out what happened. (You can follow the link to see my answer, or keep reading)
This is pretty darn cool: I noticed a link from http://grographics.com/webactivism/ 2004_04_01_archive.php, followed and found the following blog entry:
Friday, April 16, 2004: A french guy who is almost on track
dear sir,
drop the old-school self effacement and useless meta information (i.e: this is the theory behind how I code this) and stick to what sets you apart .
Thank you,
Christopher Robbins
Given that Mr. Robbins had the guts to go on and make comments about uber-designer Jeffrey Zeldman’s web site in his next blog entry, I figured I should at least pay attention to the comments. And the truth is that my home page did indeed have a touch too much meta-information and self-effacement at the expense of the site’s content. Bad design, bad! So, until my next redesign, I shuffled a few things, wrote new copy and slightly altered the main page.
And so I replied to Mr. Robbins with…
Dear sir,
While I obviously do not share your lack of enthusiasm about old-school self effacement and useless meta information, your comments are well worth pondering, have already affected the web site (slightly) and will continue to resonate through my next redesign initiative. It is an honour and a privilege to have taken some of your time and attention.
While the above reply was stuck in cyberspace (due to strange problems, my first attempt bounced after five days), I noticed that someone reached my index page by typing “old school official website” even though the world “old school” are nowhere to be found on the page. It then dawned on me that thanks to the blog entry, my site was now googlebombed for “old school self-effacement” in much the same way that www.microsoft.com is the first Google result for “Internet Explorer” thanks to all the links for “Internet Explorer” going to Microsoft. In this case, “old school self-effacement” is such a rare expression that it only takes one link to do the trick.
I was quite amused about that, and so was Mr. Robbins. You can read his answer to my email on his blog mentioned above. Damn fine reviews indeed… Thanks!
I also got linked from discussion boards at democraticunderground.com/ and thedvdforums.com/forums/, but couldn’t figure out the reference (and their search engines didn’t help). I can’t say I’m particularly intrigued by the thedvdforum link (it’s probably a link to my “Solaris Explained” page, but the democraticunderground link has me troubled.
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
April was a very busy month for the christian-sauve.com mailbox. Let’s see the damage:
1. Some have to deal with a girl from Ipanema; I had to deal with two girls from Alberta.
Some context: Last month, I saw that a teacher over at the Clearview School Board had selected my “Being Canadian” essay as a reference on the impact of Bilingualism on Canada. Great!
Great, except when a bunch of high-school kids, bored out of their minds with bilingualism assignments, start sending messages like…
who are you really?
why do people ask about you?
why do you have thistlis as your fav food?
what do you have to do with canadas history?
eggs says hi!
Okay.
Next, I received (from another schoolgirl):
Hey! WHta do you think about bunnys eeating lettuse? Shul they eat carrots? tELL ME WHAT YOU THINK.
I couldn’t resist and promptly replied…
If the lettuce is eating the bunnies, then I think that’s interesting. Especially if the bunny fights back. In a robot suit.
If the lettuce starts eating the carrots, then that becomes even more interesting. Don’t forget that carrots are irremediably evil: Have you looked at carrots? They’re shaped like submarines, torpedoes, nuclear missiles even. Very evil. No, I don’t think that the lettuce should start eating carrots.
Now, I usually know better than to expect subtle grammar flames to have any impact whatsoever on high-school students with such difficulties with the English language. And so came back the inevitable reply…
Hey Again! You wrote me back fast last time I wrote! Do you have a life? You probabaly don’t. Pathetic. Well i was wondering what you think about Taylor Shell. I know you don’t know him but from the name what do you think?
Once again, I couldn’t resist taking a shot at a silly answer:
At first I thought it would be a really great pulp fiction / action movie hero
name. You know: “Taylor Shell! Ladies’ man, man’s man, man about town! Punches Nazis in the face! Laughs at Satan’s minions and then bitch-slaps Beelzebub himself! Babe magnet, friend of small furry creatures, protector of the poor and oppressed! Dispatches evil with taglines such as ‘You’ve been shelled!’ or ‘You’re nothing spe-shell!’But then I found out that it’s a girl name on Google.
Oops.
The level of discussion degenerated from there. To quote their next message…
why would you like to eat Thistles?
and the otherday my friend emailed you and you wort back really fast so i wanted to ask… are you really lonly or somethin.
…and then again from the other schoolgirl…
Hi! It’s me again! Expect an email everyday cuz I feel annoying you. Um…whats withtn the name Chritian? Where did you get it from?
By that time, I had my fill with bored sub-literate schoolgirls, and so concluded my answer (“You’ll have to ask my parents”) with…
By the way, how is that WebQuest bilingualism assignment going? Three cheers for the people of Stettler, Alberta!
The panicked answer was almost immediate:
how do you know where i am? and the web Quest? how do you know this?
and from her friend:
How did you know we live in Stettler? That was a little freaky.
Indeed. I explained (after referring to one of them as “a spice girl”):
Easy. My web referral logs have shown a steady amount of visits coming from [URL] which, obviously, is the WebQuest page. Which would explain how a surprising number of Clearview students have found my page lately and emailed me about it.
Then, from your email address and occasional grammatical slip-ups, it’s easy to guess that you’re a student at the Clearview school division, and the fine web site at http://www.clearview.ab.ca/ contains enough information to complete the picture.
Further confirmation is given by your IP address (and that of your friends also emailing me), which resolve to school computers in the clearview.ab.ca domain. I suppose I could compare the IP addresses and map out the individual computers but, hey, I’ve got other things to do.
and received….
Oh I see. I guess it makes sence.
and that was pretty much the end of this whole sorry odyssey. Well, aside from the inevitable parting shot from one of them:
you know you shouldn’t call my friend a spice gril cuz she doesnt even look like one.tsk tsk tsk plus its not very nice to swear at peaple on e-mail…are you bald and fat? i beleive so.
After that stinging rebuke, how could I even bear to write them back? It all ended with…
why havent you like wrot back in like …a month? it’s verey rude!
and that was that.
2. A dissatisfied (but hopefully not too disgruntled) reader writes to complain…
Please place in your reviews a notice that you might give away plot points. I just learned, before i read the damned book, that the chinese nuke someone in the bear and the dragon. damn. nice site otherwise, though
Yikes. Plot spoilers. I know those can be hugely annoying to unsuspecting readers. I don’t feel particularly guilty in this case, however, given that…
- The review referred to is my trashing of Tom Clancy’s The Teeth of the Tiger, the twelfth book of Clancy’s “Ryanverse” series of which The Bear and the Dragon is the tenth. When I review a book in a series (and believe me, I took great pains to say that it was such a review), I tend to assume that all previous volumes are fair game (see my increasingly bitter reviews of David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, for instance)
- My offending phrase reads like this: “Curiously, little is said of the plane crash on the Capitol (Debt of Honor) or the Chinese nuclear strike (The Bear and the Dragon), presumably because those didn’t fit.” Yup, I was spoiling non-events that didn’t even affect the book. But then again, I’m merely “spoiling” a Chinese nuclear strike, which is somewhat obvious not even halfway through the book. But who is nuked during that attack? Aaah, that’s the real spoiler…
- Trivia: About that “plane crash on the Capitol”: Tom Clancy holds the unfortunate distinction of having had that particular spoiler printed on the first page of USA Today when, scant weeks after Debt of Honor was published, a small Cessna did crash on the lawn of the White House.
In any case, I felt sufficiently rattled to add a note about spoilers to my “Reviews FAQ“.
3. The half-anonymous Matthew from Toronto wrote back (after an initial comment) to say…
I see that I was published on your December web site and feeling proud and valued decided to write again. Your dieting page made me feel it was worth trying to lose the pounds (I’m about 30lbs overweight) but what really got me going was the guy in the Bay where I was trying to buy some pants who suggested that I was going through denial as he produced his tape measure and proved himself correct.
I have re-joined the gym and been doing light cardio 4-5 times per week for the last 6 weeks (minus one excessive eating/drinking week away). I’ve lost 4-5 pounds which is depressing but I’ve lost 1.5″ from my waist. Ha, not in denial anymore.
So thanks again for the diet starter and do you know what the five stages of xxx are (and what is ‘xxx’s’ real title)? I believe it is 1. Anger, 2. Denial, 3. ???, 4. ???, 5. Acceptance. (…)
…and not having an email address I could send an answer to, I’m stuck replying in a semi-public web page…
- It’s no use denying when fashion service salespersons are involved; given how they’re specially trained to make us feel good about ourselves (and hence more willing to spend), any criticism from their part is, er, harsh. And likely to be true.
- Don’t lose the faith. Losing weight takes weeks before producing any real results. It’s my understanding that during that period, you’re trading off fat for muscles with no difference in weight; but then watch out once the muscles are in place and the fat starts to burn off.
- From memory, fact-checked with Google: The five stages of grief outlined by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross are, in order, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. There is a really good Frasier episode (6.01: Good Grief) structured around the process if ever you want to memorize the sequence.
4. Only one formmail attack this month, this time for an account named angelrrsmr at AOL.
5. The lovely Elizabeth from New York wrote in to point out that…
I was just looking at your pictures from your trip to New York- glad you had a good time in my city. It’s a great place. 🙂 So, this is totally nitpicky- but you’ve misidentified the “phallic tower of Columbia University.” That’s not Columbia University- that’s the Riverside Church, which is near Columbia, but isn’t part of the University at all.
Looks like the trip was a while ago, since you visited the WTC, so, you probably don’t even care- but there you go.
Elizabeth is absolutely right, except for one tiny thing: We (the entire staff of christian-sauve.com) care. We care a lot. In f
act, we care so much that the page was updated with our contrite excuses not even five minutes after receiving the corrections. Boy, are we embarrassed. The appropriate imaginary members of our staff have been fired.
7. The mysterious Mordrith wrote to say…
I just read your weight loss article, pretty impressive. (…) Recently I thought about joining a walking group instead of just taking my dog for a run. I was wondering if you ever walk with a group or if you have kept mostly to yourself ?
and I tracked down his LiveJournal (oops! First wrote “LiverJournal”) to reply…
I walk alone. For one thing, I walk quickly : five to six kilometres per hour when I hit my stride, and few people can actually keep up. (And fewer still actually want to walk for three or four continuous hours.) For another, it’s easier to pause, improvise, hop on random buses and just see where any given street goes when alone. While I’m not averse to the thought of walking with a group (great for hiking!), it seems inconsistent with my power-walking style.
9. A stranger with impeccable taste wrote to say
You are funny-Thanks!
My pleasure. Unfortunately, I’m not sure for what or for whom I’m funny. So I’ll just take it personally.
10. You won’t believe this, but I got an email from another Christian Sauvé in Rockland, Ontario:
We share the same name, and I believe you also use to live or still do, in Rockland.
Born in Ottawa, raised in Plantagenet, Lived in Ottawa the past couple of years and moved to Rockland a year ago. I also am a web designer.
That’s it!
To many web designers share my name…
When I’m not consumed by a full-blown identity crisis, I’m strangely comforted to think that Rockland Ontario, my hometown, is also the world-wide capital of Christian Sauvé web designers. With two of them for a total population of 8000 people, it’s highly unlikely that any other place on earth will ever beat this one-for-4000 ratio.
All kidding aside, if every you need a pro web designer, head over to www.sumoxl.com and hire my namesake: Not only is he making a living out of this stuff, but he’s also a much better graphic designer than I’ll ever be.
11. Finally, to cap off this emotion-packed month, my favourite email of the month:
I WANT 2 C U NUDE AND SEND THE P{ICS TO ME AT (deleted)
Wow! Some people work years to climb to the top of their profession, become a megastar, appear on magazine covers and then have tabloids hunt down nude pictures of them. I, on the other hand, merely put my reviews on-line and look at that! Fame at last!!
(The Traceroute of the IP stopped being useful at an Australian node, leading one to suspect that this wasn’t, in fact, one of the Albertan schoolgirls being cute.)
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)
4.1 – Top ten queries
>solaris explanation x39 >solaris movie explanation x26 >solaris explained x22 >solaris movie explained x15 >free movie screenings x10 >being canadian x8 >sauve x8 >christian statistics x7 >nude scenes featuring marisa miller x5 >solaris interpretation x5
Who’s Marisa Miller, you ask? A swimsuit model, apparently…
4.2 – Strange, disturbing and wondrous…
>memento seems like a gay movie
Really?! Don’t you say!?
>how did meteors from mars arrive to earth >how do movie reviewers get free tickets >how does the movie hoop dreams relate to art >how to get free movie tickets >how to get movie preview tickets >how to get old movies >how to lose weight from midriff >what does the name sauve mean >what is silicon valley >what movies went to theaters in 1998 >what percent of the worlds population is christian >what was the rising action in the movie holes >where to rent the movie godzilla 1998 >which chapter cryptonomicon captain crunch >who invented the chainsaw biography
They ask questions. We don’t answer. Well, except for this one:
>what is good about being canadian
Pretty much everything!
May 2004
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, May 2004 Total Visitors: 6,181 Total Pageviews: 12,929 (Corrected Pageviews: 8,010) Average Pageviews Per Day 417.06 (Corrected average: 258) Total Hits: 19,708 Total Bytes Transferred: 448.3MB Average Visitors Per Day: 199.38 Average Hits Per Day: 635.74
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. Most results are similar to last month’s.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
/www.christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 370 /www.christian-sauve.com/ 358 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2002.htm 220 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 204 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1999.htm 200 /www.christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tick... 193 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1980s.htm 135 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1998.htm 134 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2000.htm 130 /www.christian-sauve.com/search.html 129
Same old, same old. Not sure what’s so interesting about my New York report.
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 3309 (3415) Netscape|5 940 (903) Explorer|5 594 (553) Googlebot|2 494 (546) Netscape|4 284 (354)
Not only does Netscape 5+ continues its steady ascent upward, but Netscape 4 is well on its way to its long-deserved obscurity.
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 823 (940) yahoo.com/search 369 (429) msn.com/results.aspx 279 (247) www.google.ca/search 227 (250) google.com/imgres 181 (106)
Stable results.
No “new” links this month per se, but I got mentioned on a well-read LiveJournal and saw a pleasant spike in visits after that. Cool.
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
Very quiet month of May for the christian-sauve.com mailbox. Let’s rummage through it and see what’s in there…
1. Hmm. Anonymous and Cryptic…
Test-test
Oh wait, that’s just me, midway through the month, trying the “contact” form to see if it was still working.
2. “Mathew” reaches across the Atlantic to say…
American Psycho is not a “teen horror film” at all.
Granted. In fact, in my review, you could even read…
(…) Even though many might mistake the film as belonging to the slasher genre, it’s considerably more unnerving than your usual teen horror film (…)
Sigh. I’d blame it on deficient reading skills if it wasn’t for my usual doubts about my own writing skills.
3. A mysteriously pseudonymous correspondent from The Big Apple writes to say…
where can i get free screenings in nyc? thanks
Don’t know. Please don’t look at me like that; I just live near Ottawa, after all.
4. No month would be complete without a FormMail spam attack or two, and this month “smsmnsys” and “sohardtopicksn” (at AOL, always at AOL) is to blame.
5. Finally, my favourite comment in a long while came from the lovely Carolina in Mexico, who wrote to suggest…
I recently sent a comment about Harry Potter, you should give it a shot to the rest of the books. Also, I want to know what do you think of the book Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the word by Murakami, I can’t remember the name right now. I totally agree with you in the Jericho files, too bad I didn’t read your review, coz it wasted my time, big time. Anyway i enjoy your page, mostly I agree, and Keep that work. You have a supporter here in Mexico.
So, in order,
- I certainly will read the rest of the Harry Potter series. Until the whole series is published, however, I will pace myself to the rythm set by the release of the movies.
- Thanks for the recommendation: Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World certainly sounds like the type of novel I’d enjoy. I’ll keep an eye out for it, though I can’t make any promises given my current stack of stuff to read.
- I’m so sorry that I couldn’t warn you about Alan Gold’s awful The Jericho Files in time. Another victim I couldn’t save…
- Thanks for the kind words. It’s good to know that christian-sauve.com has an international audience!
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)
4.1 – Top ten queries
>free movie screenings x20 >solaris explanation x17 >solaris explained x16 >mcdonalds x9 >1997 action film x9 >starship troopers 2 x9 >edward scissorhands symbolism x8 >book red sf x8 >nude scenes featuring shannyn sossamon x7 >sauve x6
Some pretty inappropriate stuff in there …
4.2 – Strange, disturbing and wondrous…
>caleb carr killing time reviews >caleb carr's angel of darkness >caleb carr's the alienist book summary
This is amusing: One month, and “they” (them searchers) manage to hit my reviews of Caleb Carr’s three novels. (Only a reference to my review of his The Lessons of Terror is missing.)
>classical song when stuff blows up movies
My guess would be “1812 Overture”
>please tell me about the book godzilla made in 1998 >what dose i'll stop short of in context mean >what kind of vehicle did tom hanks drive in the movie bachelor party >what's new in dreamweaver mx 2004 >where do free movie tickets come >who plays in the dvd grind in 1994
They ask. They beg. And still we don’t answer.
June 2004
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, June 2004 Total Visitors: 6,108 Total Pageviews: 13,764 (Corrected Pageviews: 9,210) Average Pageviews Per Day: 458.8 (Corrected Average: 307) Total Hits: 20,857 Total Bytes Transferred: 517.2MB Average Visitors Per Day: 203.6 Average Hits Per Day: 695.23
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. Most results are similar to last month, sometimes lower (the Total numbers) and sometimes higher (the Average numbers) thanks to June having only 30 days.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
christian-sauve.com/index.html 383 christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 351 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2002.htm 249 christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-...htm 244 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1999.htm 205 christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 185 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2001.htm 182 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2003.htm 161 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2000.htm 146 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1996.htm 145
Same old, same old. Not sure what’s so interesting about my New York report.
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 3055 (3309) Netscape|5 1336 (940) Explorer|5 435 (594) Googlebot|2 284 (494) msnbot|0 250 (New)
Yup, you read that right: After years of bitching about it, Netscape 4 finally drops out of the Top-5. As an added bonus, Mozilla-based Netscape|5 derivatives continue to gather more and more users, now up to more than a third of the IE|6 numbers.
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 702 (823) yahoo.com/search 210 (369) www.google.ca/search 202 (227) sympatico.msn.ca/results.aspx 176 (New) google.com/imgres 154 (181)
It looks as if search engines took a holiday early this year. There’s an interesting new player in the form of sympatico.msn.ca
New (and thrilling) link this month: Nicholas Whyte’s Hugo Awards 2004 critical roundup (explorers.whyte.com/sf/Hugo2004.htm) mentionned my review of Robert J. Sawyer’s Humans thusly: “…Only Max of SF Reviews, and to a lesser extent J.B. Peck of SciFi.com and Christian Sauve, share my reservations.” (He didn’t like it) Woo! Such exalted company!
On the other hand, at least two of my photos were linked from other sites, a particularly annoying practice I can’t stand. (Short explanation: They steal my bandwidth for the benefit of their sites, without any acknowledgement.)
- Some idiot at “mafiarpg.com” nicked a picture of a hotel room from my New York travelogue (go figure). I had to register at the site to find the offending page. Then I renamed the file and left them with a broken link. Heh-heh.
- The second incident was vastly more annoying: a moron at the blogging site xanga.com stole a picture, but the silly useless Urchin web statistic engine can’t let me see the Xanga user name nor what picture is being used without my permission. Gaaah.
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
Moribund month for the christian-sauve.com mailbox. Let’s flip it over and see what drifts away…
1. One blank message. Unknown origin.
2. As a sign of how quiet the month of June ended up being, I didn’t even get one Formmail attack. (Though there was a fairly comprehensive automated attempt at guessing the name of my formmail script.)
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)
4.1 – Top ten queries
>mcdonalds 20 >sauve 13 >starship troopers 2 12 >free movie screenings 10 >carolyn porco 10 >solaris explanation 9 >solaris explained 8 >dollmaker 7 >christian statistics 7 >how to get free movie tickets 6
As usual, I can’t figure out why some of those queries are leading visitors to my site. christian-sauve.com doesn’t even show in the Google Top-50 for mcdonalds, starship troopers 2, free movie screenings or dollmaker.
On the other hand, I was thrilled to find out that christian-sauve.com is now the top result in google for “sauve”, over and above those scum-suckers that rent sauve.com for profit. As an added bonus, it means that in programs like Firefox that use Google as a way to resolve unresolvable URLs, christian-sauve.com is only five letters away!
4.2 – Strange, disturbing and wondrous…
>what are the graphically manipulated parts in the animated disney film shrek >what boxer_s life story was titled raging bull >what is fluff cinema >what is the symbolism in edward scissorhands >where can i get free movie screening tickets >which mode is ed norton in in the car crash scene in fight club >who are the protagonist / antagonist in the movie pleasantville >who framed roger rabbit christian movie review >why people should be proud to be a canadian citizen because of candas history
So many questions. So little interest in answering them.
>was hitler a christian nonsense
What the heck is that supposed to mean?
>nude scenes featuring kirsten dunst >nude scenes featuring lucy liu >nude scenes featuring marisa miller >nude scenes featuring michelle rodriguez >nude scenes featuring tia carrere
I sense a theme running through… but what could it be?
>turgidness >unlikable >unmemorable
They search for those things. Google does its job. They find this site. Everybody wins.
July 2004
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, July 2004 Total Visitors 6,741 Total Pageviews 14,038 (Corrected Pageviews: 9,347) Average Pageviews Per Day 452.83 (Corrected Average: 301.5) Total Hits 20,388 Total Bytes Transferred 494.2MB Average Visitors Per Day 217.45 Average Hits Per Day 657.67
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. Most total results are slightly higher than last month, most of the average numbers are lower.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
/www.christian-sauve.com/index.html 327 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2002.htm 279 /www.christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-...htm 259 /www.christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 255 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1999.htm 226 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2000.htm 202 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2001.htm 200 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2003.htm 167 /www.christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1996.htm 160 /www.christian-sauve.com/texts/100films.htm 142
Same old, same old. Not sure what’s so interesting about my New York report. Photos, probably.
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 3576 (3055) Netscape|5 1578 (1336) Explorer|5 461 (435) Googlebot|2 216 (284) msnbot|0 202 (250)
Netscape|5 continues to gain steam and Netscape|4 is banished to the netherworld of the sixth unseen place. Life is good.
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 731 (702) sympatico.msn.ca/results.aspx 272 (176) yahoo.com/search 211 (210) www.google.ca/search 160 (202) ask.co.uk/ix.asp 121 (New)
Not much change, except for the British AskJeeves.
No new links for the outside world this month.
On the other hand, I suffered two nasty (and nearly-simultaneous) hotlinking attacks from morons at blogging sites xanga.com and naver.co.jp. That pushed me over the edge: No, there wasn’t any bloody rampage, but I was sufficiently ticked off to call my host’s tech support and have them activate the features I needed to implement hot-linking protection. Done! That should be the end of it, now.
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
Moribund month for the christian-sauve.com mailbox. Let’s flip it over and see what drifts away…
1. One test message. Mine.
2. A Chinese reader was kind enough to write…
hi, I ,a Chinese already read the book– “the winds of war” and “war and remembrance” by Herman Wouk (Chinese version) over ten times. however, I can not buy a English version because I live in China where has not such version. So, can you help me gain a English version?
Unfortunately, all of my attempts to answer back bounced off their nasty mail server. So here’s what I sent:
Generally speaking, when I’m asked where to buy a book, I recommend the following sites:
* www.amazon.com: Good for new books, OK for older ones.
* www.abebooks.com: Excellent for older books.The problem is that I don’t know if these bookstores will ship to China: I’m in Ottawa, Canada, and I’m unable to help you in this matter.
You may want to either verify if there is an English-language bookseller that will ship to China (maybe from Australia, Singapore or Hong-Kong) or if you can special-order a copy of the books from your local bookseller.
www.amazon.com *will* ship books to China, but it’s expensive and requires
a credit card number. As I said above, it may be easier and cheaper to go through a local bookstore, or an on-line bookstore from Australia, Singapore or Hong-Hong.
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)
4.1 – Top ten queries
>nude scenes featuring marisa miller 73 >carolyn porco 33 >nude scenes featuring kirsten dunst 18 >free movie screenings 14 >sauve 12 >solaris explanation 10 >solaris explained 9 >sauve.com 7 >starship troopers 2 6 >georgia adds swastika middle finger to state flag 6
As usual, I can’t figure out why some of those queries are leading visitors to my site. Go figure.
(The “Carolyn Porco” hits are due to the July 2004 success of her work on the Galileo space probe. It’s not every day you see someone with whom you exchanged a few emails appear on the national evening news!)
4.2 – Strange, disturbing and wondrous…
>what country singer played the lead role in the movie pure country >what is being canadian >what substance was used as blood in the movie raging bull >when is mel gibson gemini man coming out >where can i find fan fiction for once upon a time in mexico >why fast action cuts work in movie
So many questions. So little interest in answering them. Well, except for the last one: fast action cuts don’t work in movies.
>the reptilian shapeshifting of george bush
Heh. I know it’s a reference to my review of David Icke’s Alice in Wonderland… but it’s still an amusing thing to see in weblogs.
>nude scenes featuring catherine zetajones >nude scenes featuring charlize theron >nude scenes featuring elizabeth berkley >nude scenes featuring famke janssen >nude scenes featuring heather graham >nude scenes featuring michelle rodriguez >nude scenes featuring mila kunis >nude scenes featuring penelope cruz >nude scenes featuring tia carrere >nude scenes featuring vin diesel
Whew! Those perverts never take a month off, don’t they?
August 2004
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, August 2004 Total Visitors 6,275 Total Pageviews 15,163 (Corrected Pageviews: 10,466) Average Pageviews Per Day 489.12 (Corrected Average: 337.6) Total Hits 20,225 Total Bytes Transferred 485.8MB Average Visitors Per Day 202.41 Average Hits Per Day 652.41
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. Most total results are similar to last month’s… except for the pageviews counts, which are significantly higher.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
christian-sauve.com/index.html 399 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2002.htm 271 christian-sauve.com/texts/solaris-explanation.htm 250 christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 232 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2000.htm 213 christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 210 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1999.htm 203 christian-sauve.com/texts/100films.htm 188 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2001.htm 161 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2003.htm 157
Same old, same old. Not sure what’s so interesting about my New York report. Photos, probably.
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 2794 (3576) Netscape|5 1697 (1578) Explorer|5 395 (461) Googlebot|2 339 (216) Netscape|4 234 (New Top-5)
Netscape|5 gains, Explorer loses and Netscape|4 makes an unwelcome comeback in the Top-5.
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 733 (731) sympatico.msn.ca/results.aspx 215 (272) yahoo.com/search 202 (211) www.google.ca/search 142 (160) google.com/imgres 79 (New)
Not much change.
One minor links from the outside world this month: http://reviews.authorstore.com/2004/ 08/bookrelated_boo.html decided that it loved my Amazon bookmarklets.
I also started noticing a number of links from a place called devaddict.com. After having to register to access their forums, it turns out that the “referer” field was used by an automatic bot (purpose mysterious) rather than the proper “browser” field. I left after reading a most satisfying series of flames from other irked webmasters.
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
Interesting month for the christian-sauve.com mailbox. Here’s the total:
1. One Paulette asks…
How can I start receiving free sneak preview movie tickets?
Gnaaah! The whole point of my article on the subject is to tell you how to do it! It changes from city to city, season to season!
2. A dissatisfied would-be reader writes to say…
I would like to read your TorCon3 report, but the pictures are blanking out the middle of the screen over most of the text.
I admit I’m using a pretty ancient browser just now, but I’m hoping you have a plain text version of the page that I could read?
…Some turnips are more evil than others.
After investigation, this turns to be a problem with IE5 for Macintosh. A fix is forthcoming, as soon as I can find a suitable text platform…
3. A friend travelling around the world makes contact from far far away, and points out that…
…Did you know that if you type in “French Canadian curse words”, you are #5?
Woooooo!
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)
4.1 – Top ten queries
>solaris explanation 43 >solaris explained 25 >nude scenes featuring marisa miller 22 >free movie screenings 13 >nude scenes featuring michelle rodriguez 13 >solaris movie explanation 11 >sauve 9 >nude scenes featuring vin diesel 6 >solaris movie explained 6 >book red sf 5
As usual, I can’t figure out why some of those queries are leading visitors to my site. Go figure.
Needled by a friend, I’m starting to suspect that the “nude scenes featuring…” queries are from a bot simply scouring the web for stuff like that. Consider the following…
nude scenes featuring brittany murphy 4 nude scenes featuring catherine zetajones 3 nude scenes featuring dina meyer 2 nude scenes featuring elizabeth berkley 2 nude scenes featuring kate hudson nude scenes featuring kirsten dunst 5 nude scenes featuring lucy liu 2 nude scenes featuring penelope cruz 3 nude scenes featuring piper perabo 2 nude scenes featuring sophie marceau nude scenes featuring thandie newton 3
4.2 – Strange, disturbing and wondrous…
>what entails being canadian >what is christian bales favorite type of music >what vehicle did tom hanks drive in the movie bachelor party >where can i find the cast of the beverly hillbillys movie
So many questions. So little interest in answering them.
>ugly duckling movie where female character transforms into a beautiful swan
And then they go “Oh, we liked her better when she was human.”
>website where you can find conservative reviews on movies
Certainly not here.
September 2004
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, September 2004 Total Visitors 5,807 Total Pageviews 14,624 (Corrected Pageviews: 9,934) Average Pageviews Per Day 487.46 (Corrected Average: 331.1) Total Hits 23,885 Total Bytes Transferred 646.3MB Average Visitors Per Day 193.56 Average Hits Per Day 796.16
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. Most results are lower than last month, except for the hits total, boosted by many new pictures in the Noreascon4 report.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
christian-sauve.com/index.html 296 christian-sauve.com/texts/worldcon-2004-noreascon4.htm 231 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2002.htm 228 christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 218 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2000.htm 193 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1999.htm 183 christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 150 christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 137 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1997.htm 136 christian-sauve.com/texts/solaris-explanation.htm 131
The big news of the month is, of course, the boffo numbers for my Noreascon4 report. (See below for the secret of my success)
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 2607 (2794) Netscape|5 1579 (1697) Explorer|5 369 (395) Googlebot|2 273 (339) Netscape|4 171 (234)
Not much to report here.
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 637 (733) www.google.ca/search 156 (New) yahoo.com/search 133 (202) sympatico.msn.ca/results.aspx 132 (215) google.com/imgres 71 (79)
Eh.
One major, major link from the outside world this month: Someone over at Noreascon.org noticed my convention report and linked it (along with a bunch of other reports) from the main page of the convention site. Wheee!
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
Interesting month for the christian-sauve.com mailbox. Here’s the total:
1. A faithful reader asks…
I was going through your site, and I couldn’t find the review of The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. (…)
I so seldom get request for reviews that I decided it was time to read The Da Vinci Code. The result can be found in the latest reviews.
2. Oops:
I would like free tickets to advanced screenings, I didn’ see anything to fill out.
Um. No. My article tells you how to find the contests and gives you tips on how to participate. If I was in a position to give free tickets… well, things would be very different around here.
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)
Our top-ten queries:
>solaris explanation 16 >solaris explained 9 >being canadian 7 >book red sf 7 >christian statistics 6 >christian sauve 6 >losing weight 6 >mcdonalds 4 >how to get free movie tickets 4 >symbolism in edward scissorhands 4
Few surprises here.
Evidence continues to mounts that there is a webbot out there scouring the web for celebrity nudity content. Let me present the evidence:
>nude scenes featuring brittany murphy 7 >nude scenes featuring carrieanne moss 2 >nude scenes featuring elizabeth berkley 1 >nude scenes featuring jenna elfman 2 >nude scenes featuring jordana brewster 1 >nude scenes featuring kate hudson 1 >nude scenes featuring kirsten dunst 4 >nude scenes featuring lucy liu 2 >nude scenes featuring marisa miller 5 >nude scenes featuring michelle rodriguez 6 >nude scenes featuring penelope cruz 8 >nude scenes featuring shannyn sossamon 5 >nude scenes featuring tia carrere 2 >nude scenes featuring vin diesel 5
Suspicious, wouldn’t you think?
>movie muddy cow romance 1998
This almost sounds like something I want to see.
October 2004
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, October 2004 Total Visitors 4,984 Total Pageviews 12,185 (Corrected Total: 8,469) Average Pageviews Per Day 393.1 (Corrected Average: 273.2) Total Hits 18,057 Total Bytes Transferred 425.6MB Average Visitors Per Day 160.77 Average Hits Per Day 582.48
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 lower than last month.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
christian-sauve.com/index.html 270 christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 237 christian-sauve.com/texts/worldcon-2004-noreascon4.htm 144 christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 143 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2001.htm 137 christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 134 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1997.htm 123 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1998.htm 121 christian-sauve.com/texts/100films.htm 116 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2002.htm 108
My Noreascon 4 report continues to attract attention. Movie stuff completes the list.
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 2331 (2607) Netscape|5 1095 (1579) Googlebot|2 421 (273) Explorer|5 246 (369) Netscape|4 135 (171)
Not much to report here.
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 488 (637) yahoo.com/search 199 (133) sympatico.msn.ca/results.aspx 146 (132) www.google.ca/search 116 (156) google.com/imgres 77 (71)
Eh.
One old, old link resurfaced from the depths of LiveJournal this month, a simple name-less link (livejournal.com/users/nothings/70966.html) to my Top-100 film list. I even get props from a commenter: “The dude has Airplane! and Blues Brothers ranked right next to each other. He gets a thumb up from me.” Yay!
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
Interesting month for the christian-sauve.com mailbox. Here’s the total:
1. Another Sauve wrote to say…
fun
…to which I’d be hard-pressed to disagree.
2. Rick Klaw (Author of Geek Confidential, which I reviewed in the September 2004 reviews) wrote to say…
Thanks for the comments on my book and column. I can’t disagree with some of your criticicms. Though it’s interesting that every room criticizes different things. I am glad overall that you enjoyed.
Perhaps you’ll be glad to hear that I am currently shopping a new book with all original material.
Despite my mixed review, I’m honestly thrilled to hear that another book is forthcoming from him.
3. An unknown SF writer (let’s not name names) thought it would be a good idea to dump a press release announcing his latest novel in my mailbox. Without commenting on the quality of the book (which, for all I know, could be as good as his breathless hype suggests), let’s just say that anyone who think they’re going to perk up my interest through a cut-and-paste job is, er, wrong.
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)
Our top-ten queries:
solaris explanation (x12) free movie screenings (x9) book red sf (x8) being canadian (x7) amazon bookmarklet (x6) isbn lookup (x6) symbolism in edward scissorhands (x6) losing weight (x5) solaris explained (x5) that bringas woman (x5)
Few surprises here.
More evidence about a webbot scouring the web for celebrity nudity content:
nude scenes featuring cerina vincent nude scenes featuring dina meyer (x3) nude scenes featuring jennifer connelly nude scenes featuring jordana brewster nude scenes featuring kirsten dunst (x6) nude scenes featuring marisa miller (x12) nude scenes featuring michelle rodriguez (x4) nude scenes featuring penelope cruz (x4) nude scenes featuring shannyn sossamon (x3) nude scenes featuring sophie marceau (x4) nude scenes featuring vin diesel (x10)
Intriguing choices, though.
>canadian separatist diet >shrek 1 as a form of human existential approach
“These words… I don’t think you understand what they truly mean.”
Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.
November 2004
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, November 2004 Total Visitors 5,103 Total Pageviews 12,679 (Corrected Total: 8,859) Average Pageviews Per Day 422.63 (Corrected Average: 295.3) Total Hits 17,112 Total Bytes Transferred 403.3MB Average Visitors Per Day 170.1 Average Hits Per Day 570.4
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 a bit higher than last month.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
christian-sauve.com/index.html 317christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1998.htm 244christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 195christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 152christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2001.htm 142christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 141christian-sauve.com/links.html 125christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2002.htm 125christian-sauve.com/novel/index.html 120christian-sauve.com/texts/worldcon-2004-noreascon4.htm 117
The NaNoWriMo blog was a draw this month. My Noreascon 4 report continues to attract attention. Movie stuff completes the list.
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 2279 (2331) Netscape|5 1014 (1095) Googlebot|2 647 (421) Explorer|5 366 (246) NaverBot 1.0 146 (New)
Not much to report here.
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 451 (488) yahoo.com/search 213 (199) sympatico.msn.ca/results.aspx 156 (146) www.google.ca/search 142 (116) google.com/imgres 85 (77)
Google seems to be losing steam these days.
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
Interesting month for the christian-sauve.com mailbox. Here’s the total:
1. Mike, from Switzerland, writes…
I just found your page in the hope to find something about proto profiling, a type of neurolinguistic programming NLP (Brain- and behaviour research). It should be a subject of one of your texts, but because there are so freakin’ many, I thought it’s a lot faster to ask you where to find it, because if somebody knows it, then you! 😉
… and here’s my reply:
Thanks for writing. Unfortunately, my only instance of “proto-profiling” refers, as you have found, to the early criminal profiling method described in Caleb Carr’s novel The Alienist. From what I can gather about “neurolinguistic programming” through sources like wikipedia it does seems like a field I’d be interested in.
Alas, there isn’t much on my web site to help you. Apart from reviews of some general business creativity books, Douglas Rushkoff’s highly interesting treatise on persuation and a sarcastic take on Dianetics (which you could very well disregard) there isn’t much related content on my web site yet. Sorry for not being more helpful, but I have a novel to get back to…
2. A mysterious and tenacious R.W. wrote to ask…
I am searching the title of a movie realisation 2003 subject: the operation “eagle claw” in the desert of Iran in 1980 the operation was conducted by COLONEL CHARLES BECKWITH from the DELTA FORCE.
Being reasonably well-informed about Eagle Claw (the 1980 Iranian hostage rescue mission, which failed thanks to poor planning and an unbelievable series of mishaps), I really really tried to find a movie about it that I would have missed. Unfortunately, latter details suggested that we were looking for a 2003 movie that featured the hostage crisis, but wasn’t dedicated to it. (It was for a contest of some sort, I gather.) After much fun research, I came to the conclusion that the movie in question was the sports drama MIRACLE, which briefly used the hostage crisis as part of its background. If someone else has a better idea, contact me.
3. …and we cap the month by an empty email. Okay. Better than nothing, I guess.
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)
Before going into the “Top Ten” queries, let me briefly note that one fine November day of 2004, I received nearly a hundred hits from variations on the query “What is the name of Chris Nielsen’s daughter in the 1998 movie WHAT DREAMS MAY COME”. (The answer, courtesy of the IMDB, is “Marie Nielsen”, played by Jessica Brooks Grant). Quiz challenge going on somewhere else on the Internet? Well, duh.
Also, unnamed porn-bot was back with the usual assortment of search queries about naked celebrities:
nude scenes featuring brittany murphy 2 nude scenes featuring catherine zeta-jones 4 nude scenes featuring dina meyer 3 nude scenes featuring elizabeth berkley 2 nude scenes featuring heather graham 2 nude scenes featuring julia roberts 1 nude scenes featuring kirsten dunst 6 nude scenes featuring marisa miller 7 nude scenes featuring penelope cruz 2 nude scenes featuring sandra bullock 1 nude scenes featuring shannyn sossamon 9 nude scenes featuring sophie marceau 4 nude scenes featuring vin diesel 11
This being said (and all such queries excluded), here are our top-ten queries:
solaris explanation 11 symbolism in edward scissorhands 8 losing weight 7 solaris explained 6 edward scissorhands symbolism 5 amazon bookmarklet 4 christian sauve 4 that bringas woman 4 being canadian 3 christian movie review 3
Few surprises here.
>movies lists are no good for conservative christians
It’s too easy to make fun of queries like that.
>gabrielle is a robot from riaa you can't fight against her
Beyond simply “what the heck does that mean?!”, I’m completely fascinated by this odd query. It evokes teen rebellion against terminator-style IP rights enforcement and suggests universes far beyond the scope of eleven words.
>austin powers the poet who never behaved
Oddly amusing!
>a promising new technology is described in luscious detail and then exploited for
Interestingly enough, if you feed the above query into a search engine, it takes you directly to my review of Michael Crichton’s Prey, which includes the run-on sentence “Once again, a promising new technology (nanotechnology, to be precise) is meticulously described in luscious detail, and then exploited for cheap thrills as everything goes wrong, protagonists are threatened and the survival of the world is at stake.” How does one random Joe J. Surfer end up entering that particular search query? My best guess is that “random” Joe J. Surfer would, in fact, be a high-school teacher checking an unusually well-written student review for plagiarism and… finding the original. Busted, sucker!
December 2004
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, December 2004 Total Visitors 5,621 Total Pageviews 13,962 (Corrected Total: 9,943) Total Hits 18,019 Total Bytes Transferred 416.9MB Average Visitors Per Day 181.32 Average Pageviews Per Day 450.38 (Corrected Average: 320.74) Average Hits Per Day 581.25
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 a bit higher than last month.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
christian-sauve.com/index.html 346 christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 229 christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 157 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1998.htm 146 christian-sauve.com/links.html 144 christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 137 christian-sauve.com/texts/100films.htm 134 christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1997.htm 130 christian-sauve.com/search.html 130 christian-sauve.com/texts/worldcon-2004-noreascon4.htm 126
Few changes this month. Movie material continues to be a top draw.
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 2049 (2279) Netscape|6 1309 (New!) Googlebot|2 628 (647) Netscape|5 320 (1014) Explorer|5 314 (366)
Netscape 6’s triumphant arrival on the list indicates not so much FireFox’s increasing popularity (though that’s not something to dismiss), but updated web client definition for the Urchin web stat engine. It’s worth noting that a lot of the Netscape numbers are from spider bots self-identifying as such. (Perhaps to give free numbers to whoever wants IE’s share to go down.)
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 588 (451) yahoo.com/search 191 (213) www.google.ca/search 121 (142) sympatico.msn.ca/results.aspx 104 (156) google.com/imgres 74 (85)
Nothing to report here, if it wasn’t by truly annoying web-referal spam attacks by the morons over at x*py.com, aizz*.com and bl*ginc*me.com. Can’t fool me more than once, guys…
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
Busy month for the christian-sauve.com mailbox. Here’s the total:
1. Jeff Vandermeer, writer of Veniss Underground, reads my review (briefly: not bad!) and writes…
Hey–thanks for the review of Veniss. I found it frank, honest, and refreshingly free of b.s. or posturing.
Thank you sir.
2. My explanation of SOLARIS (2002) continues to accumulate anonymous raves:
This solaris review is the only reason that I even sort of understand what the heck is going on with that movie. Thanks!
Naw, thank you.
3. A lengthy discussion about how to get free movie tickets followed the following message…
Hi Christian, I was looking at your site, and read what ya wrote and I was wondering how you get an invitation to movie premieres, and was wondering if theres a way I can. (…) Were you at phantom premiere 2 days ago? (it was great) Also you know when are some upcoming premiere dates for NYC (or way to see)?
…which made me realize that I really dropped out of the free-movie-tickets game since 2001.
Needless to say, very few of what I have to say about getting free tickets in circa-2001 Ottawa is even remotely applicable to movie-mecca NYC.
4. Yet another writer saw it fit to use my comment form to drop me a press release hyping their newest book. Sorry, not interested. (And no free publicity for you, sir!)
5. Finally, a mysterious and pseudonymous colleague wrote to suggest…
I’d like to see you review more foreign cinema. Especially your thoughts on the works of Fassbinder and Kaurismaki. Have you ever seen good anime such as Miyazaki and Takahata? A must for film buffs.
…which sounds like a set of pretty good recommendations to me. Here’s to increased movie literary in 2005!
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:
solaris explanation 15 solaris explained 9 solaris movie explanation 9 losing weight 7 amazon bookmarklet 5 frank camper 4 free movie screenings 4 how to get free movie tickets 4 monique sparvieri 4 sauve 4
Few surprises here.
>claustrophobic googolplexes
There’s poetry in these two words. Or maybe just a googlewhack.
>cute redhead christian screenwriter
Suddenly, i’m curious: can there be more than, say, half a dozen people on the planet qualifying for this search query?