{ 1 comment }
December 2009
“You can’t improve what you don’t measure” is a maxim for many fields. Engineers, businesspeople and athletes may all have their own way of phrasing it, but however it’s put, they repeat it to each other all the time.
The act of measurement becomes murkier when applied to creative endeavours such as blogging. The qualitative stuff – How many people read the blog? Which articles were the big ones? Is the readership trend going up or down? – is pretty easy. A little StatCounter code embedded in the pages of The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century and Global Nerdy does the tedious stuff; I just look at the data and interpret it. As for the qualitative stuff, I’ll leave that as an exercise for the individual reader.
Accordion Guy’s Stats for 2009
Once again, The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century passed the “2 million pageviews” mark. As of this writing, here’s how the numbers break down:
- 2,198,906 pageviews – that is, the number of web pages from the Accordion Guy blog that were downloaded. Every time you www.joeydevilla.com, one of the individual article pages or hit the “refresh” button on your browser while reading my blog, it registers as a pageview.
- 105,599 returning visitors – when you visit Accordion Guy, the StatCounter code embedded on every page attempts to leave a “cookie” – a tiny scrap of data stored by your browser – for anonymized tracking. If the StatCounter code sees that your browser has already stored an Accordion Guy cookie, it means you’ve visited the site before. The cookie data includes the date and time of your last visit, and if it’s been more than an hour since you last visited the Accordion Guy blog, you’re counted as a “returning visitor”.
- 1,672,393 first-time visitors – the opposite of a returning visitor is a “first-time visitor”. If the embedded StatCounter code can’t see an Accordion Guy cookie stored by your browser, you’re counted as one of these.
- 1,777,992 unique visitors – this is a calculated value: “unique visitors” is simply the sum of returning and first-time visitors.
Here’s an incredibly compressed chart showing the day-to-day activity on the Accordion Guy blog:
The spikes in the graph represent the most popular articles. The rightmost spike, which also happens to be the tallest, represents the How Fanboys See Operating Systems article from December 16th. That one got featured on Reddit and re-tweeted like crazy.
Here’s how the numbers look for each quarter:
The trend is up-slightly down-up-slightly down, but still rising overall.
Global Nerdy’s Stats for 2009
Accordion Guy is my “hobby” blog. It’s the forum in which I express myself, tell stories and jokes, share pictures I’ve taken and point to interesting things I’ve found on the ‘net. I write it “just for kicks”, and the moment I stop enjoying writing it, I’ll stop.
Global Nerdy is a different beast. It is my second personal blog devoted to programming, internet technology and the nerd lifestyle, my first being The Happiest Geek on Earth (which Cory Doctorow called me in this Boing Boing article, which points to The Accidental Go-Go Dancer, in which I chronicled my brief stint as an accordion-playing go-go dancer at a downtown Toronto nightclub). Global Nerdy is both: T
- An exercise to make me a better programmer and tech advocate through writing about the field, and doing the necessary legwork and research to support that writing, as well as
- Self-promotion. Yes, it’s also a mercenary playing-to-win, look-at-me, hire-me, separate-myself-from-the-crowd, I-am-ten-Scobles blog.
I can say with certainty that Global Nerdy has helped me land my last three jobs, which includes my current one as a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Canada – a job I landed in the middle of the econopocalypse of 2008 after getting laid off. In spite of all the job market doom and gloom, I was unemployed a mere three weeks.
This year, Global Nerdy crossed the “1 million pageviews” mark for the first time. Here’s how the numbers break down (for an explanation of the terms, see the Accordion Guy review above):
- 1,608,638 pageviews
- 60,340 returning visitors
- 1,263,873 first-time visitors
- 1,324,213 unique visitors
Here’s the chart showing the day-to-day activity on Global Nerdy:
The spikiest period is in late January, which represents the buzz around the Winning the Gnu article, in which I won Richard Stallman’s auction for a plush version of the Free Software Foundation’s mascot, the gnu.
Here’s how the quarterly numbers break down:
Eek – a downward trend!
If viewed in isolation, this would be a worrying development. However, there’s another blog that’s been getting the readers that would normally go to Global Nerdy, and I’ve included a screenshot of that blog below:
Canadian Developer Connection is Microsoft Canada’s developer blog, and it literally pays the rent. As a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, I’m paid to write it, and my performance – and yes, my bonus — is judged on the number of articles I write for it and the impact those articles have.
Furthermore, I’m trying to be Microsoft Canada’s most prolific, most-read and most influential blogger. After that, I’m aiming for Microsoft worldwide. I think my closest competition is my friend, and coworker (and guy who recommended me for the job), David Crow. Here’s how we stack up, blog-wise, according to Alexa:
In your face, Drinky Crow!
(I’ll admit, he’s got an edge on me in Twitter followers – I have 4,498, he has 4,719 – and we each have our own spheres of influence. And hey, he’s the man behind DemoCamp – I just help out.)
As a result, I’ve been doing two things:
- I’ve been writing Global Nerdy articles and cross-posting them to Canadian Developer Connection.
- I use Twitter to promote those articles, but I link to the Canadian Developer Connection one first, and the Global Nerdy one second.
I still think of Global Nerdy as my primary tech blog; I’m just nice (and pragmatic) enough to share my material with Microsoft. Should the day come when Microsoft and I part ways – I can’t see such a day on the horizon, but the era of the lifelong “company man” has passed – I’ll still have it. There’s also the fact that sometimes, there’s stuff I’ll post here that I won’t post in Canadian Developer Connection, such as when I’m speaking for myself and not on behalf of Microsoft Corporation.
The Blogs Over the Years
Accordion Guy is a long-running blog – not the longest-running by a long shot, but pretty long-lived, having had its start in November 2001. I’ve been measuring it with StatCounter since 2005, and here’s how it’s been doing since then:
There was a slight dip from the 2008 to 2009 numbers, and the cure is simple: write more, write better.
Global Nerdy is a newer blog – my friend George Scriban and I started it as a career-booster in mid-2006. George no longer writes for Global Nerdy, what with his being very busy with stuff at Microsoft’s main HQ in Redmond, and my job is a little more in-your-face than his. Global Nerdy’s maintained an upward trend, with an big shot in the arm from my joining Microsoft in late 2008:
Again, the mantra for Global Nerdy in 2010 is simple: write more, write better!
To of you who read either of my blogs – thanks for the great year, and expect great things in the new decade!
This article also appears in Global Nerdy.
{ 3 comments }
Whenever I’m asked “What’s your best Christmas story?” I always tell this one. I posted it on this blog back in December 2002 under the title The Best Christmas Present Ever. For reasons that you will discover soon enough, it’s not likely to be adapted into a made-for-TV Christmas special any time soon – at least not on the major networks. Enjoy!
Recognized (December 2002)
I was in a store on Queen Street West that specialized in the kind of funky clothing that appealed to club-goers and the snowboard/skateboard set, looking for cheap presents for my cousins. The manager saw me and asked “You don’t still have crabs, do ya?”
It took me a moment to realize what she was talking about.
“No, I don’t,” I replied, “that was my friend.”
“Riiiiiight.”
I’m going to kill his ass, I thought.
The Frantic Phone Call (December 1998)
Four years prior, I was at the same store, buying a sweater for my cousin. While standing in line waiting for my turn at the cashier, I got a phone call.
“Joey, I need your help!” said the voice on the other end. It was my friend — whom I’ll call “X” — and his voice was panicked.
“What happened?”
“OhMyGodIThinkIGotCrispyCrittersFromTheBathroomAtThisReallyCoolGayBarInNewYorkWhenIWas
VisitingMyBoyfriendAndTheyReallyItchAnd…”
His voice was so loud that I had to hold the phone a couple of inches away from my ear.
“You got what?” I asked. “Crispy Critters? Is that fried chicken? What the hell are you talking about?”
“CrispyCrittersJoey!” he repeated, still speaking a mile a minute. “IMean…” and then he slowed down to enunciate every word: “I…HAVE…CRABS!”
He said it loudly enough for everyone around to hear, at which point they all took a step away from me. The cashier — who today is the manager — grimaced at me.
“Hey, I don’t have crabs, my friend does,” I said to her.
“Friend, huh?” she said incredulously.
X was still rattling a mile a minute on the phone.
“JoeyYouHaveToHelpMeItItchesLikeCrazyAndICan’tAffordTheCreamCanYouLendMeSomeMoney
ItItchesItItchesItItches!”
He was phoning me from a pay phone near the Eaton Centre, not far from where I was. I arranged to meet him at the large fountain on the bottom floor, as it was near a Shoppers Drug Mart where we could buy the anti-crablouse goo.
I hung up and noticed that everyone — the people in line as well as the cashier — were giving me funny looks and keeping their distance. The cashier took my credit card the with the tips of her thumb and index finger, holding it as if I’d handed her a very full week-old diaper.
Damned X, I thought to myself. He gets the STD and I get the “unclean” treatment.
Rendezvous
Minutes later, I was walking towards the Eaton Centre fountain. X ran towards me, ready to give me a hug when I stuck out my left arm, firmly placing my hand on his chest.
“Can we skip the hug while you’re still a travelling flea circus?”
“Oh yeah.”
“I know that there’s some kind of cream for it, but I don’t know what it’s –”
“Slut-o-cillin.” (That’s not the real name of the cream; I just can’t remember what it was).
“You sound awfully familiar with the treatment.”
“Oh, I’ve had them before.”
“Of course.”
Ooh…Pants!
On the way to the drugstore, we passed by a store that had a sale on pants.
“Hey,” said X “before we go to the drugstore, can I try these on?”
I threw him a look that said Have you completely lost your mind?
“Oh yeah.”
I Hope You Know That This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Credit Record
The pharmacist was young and easygoing, but concerned about me. “He might not be the only one who needs slut-o-cillin. If you’ve had sex with him recently…”
“Oh, he’s tried,” I said, “but no, I’m just buying it for him.”
“That’s a little…unusual. I mean, I thought that because you were buying it for him that you were…ummm…together.”
“Oh no,” X said. “Joey’s such a breeder. You know he says he’s never had a cock in his mouth? Not even once?”
“Keep that up and there’ll be no cream for you, fleabag.” I muttered.
The pharmacist rang up the bill; the slut-o-cillin cost thirty dollars. I had a twenty in my wallet. “How would you like to pay, sir?” asked the pharmacist.
“Uh, is there a bank machine nearby?”
“All out of cash. I tried getting some on my break.”
“Let’s try Interac then.” I handed him my bank card and he swiped it in the debit machine. We failed to get a connection to the bank computer. With the Christmas rush, the lines were all tied up.
“Do you have a credit card, sir?” he asked.
“Yes, but I’m…uh…really trying to avoid putting this particular order…aw, hell. Take it.”
I turned to X. “If this credit card purchase ever ends up haunting me, I’m going to fucking kill you.”
Merry Christmas, Fleabag
Before we parted ways and I headed home, X turned to me and spoke.
“I know I’m a pain in the ass a lot of times, but I wanted to say thanks. I don’t know too many people who’d do this for me.”
“You’re welcome. Just try not to get into this kind of trouble all the time, willya?”
I reached into my wallet, pulled out the twenty and gave it to him.
“Use this to wash all your clothes and your sheets too. In hot water. Maybe not in your usual laundromat, ’cause you’re not going to win any popularity contests.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is the best Christmas present ever.”
That little bit of gratitude made it all worthwhile. If he weren’t such an ant farm, I’d have given him a hug.
And a Merry Christmas to You Too, Gentle Reader!
Whether you celebrate it with bells on, or don’t celebrate it at all, have a safe, happy and infestation-free holiday.
{ 1 comment }
How’d I miss this video? At TechDays Winnipeg, Dylan Smith of ANVIL Digital (and speaker in the “Fundamentals” track), showed me this it’s-funny-because-it’s-true video that’s been around since May that looks at the vexing expectations that clients have of vendors in IT and the creative industries:
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
{ 0 comments }
Click the screenshot to see the original tweet.
Must…fight…mental image… AIEEEE! Mental image winning! Mental image winning!
And yes, the Danny_DeVito account on Twitter is one of those “Verified Accounts”, which means that it’s a safe bet that it’s Danny DeVito, the actor, director, producer and all-round classy guy, or at least some assistant tweeting on his behalf.
{ 1 comment }
For no reason other than kicks, here’s a video shot earlier this summer – me playing the “Keyboard Cat song” on accordion on a patio at the end of a beery evening in Ottawa:
(If you haven’t heard of Keyboard Cat, here’s an explanation.)
{ 0 comments }
The person who took this “Ontario Giant Runt Club” photo – who goes by the online moniker “Bourbon Baby” (oddly enough, it’s not a pseudonym for bourbon aficionado David Crow) – did a little research and found that “giant runt” refers to a breed of pigeon; this is a pigeon fancier’s club in Toronto.
In case you were curious, this place is located at 615B Brock Avenue, just off Bloor Street West, halfway between Lansdowne and Dufferin. West End pigeon fanciers unite!
{ 0 comments }
Post Typography have a clever way of making their business cards – and more importantly, the contact info on them – memorable:
{ 0 comments }
It’s hard to believe, but the seven-city cross-Canada tour known as TechDays 2009 is over. We had the last one – TechDays Winnipeg – on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week. Here are some photos I shot during the event.
The Day Before TechDays Winnipeg
Of all the TechDays venues, I would have to hand the “swankiest speaker prep room” award to the Winnipeg Convention Centre, with its wood panelling, private washrooms, loads of closet space, plentiful tables, very comfortable leatherette couches and all-round 1980s styling. I can imagine a young Flock of Seagulls or Duran Duran hanging out here after a show, entertaining groupies:
During the holidays, many people like to decorate their storefront and home windows with fake spray-on frost. In Winnipeg, where the temperatures were hovering around –35 degrees C (-31 degrees F), you don’t need that stuff – they’ve got the real thing! Here are the side doors on the ground floor of the Winnipeg Convention Centre:
Here’s a closer look:
And just for kicks, an even closer one.
I must tip my hat to the people of Winnipeg for toughing out those kinds of temperatures, year after year.
The Convention Centre had a secret stash of Christmas trees, ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice:
One of the perks of being a TechDays Track Lead is that nobody asks questions when you rearrange the signs for an art shot:
Day 1
John Bristowe, track lead for the green-shirted Developer Fundamentals and Best Practices track, just had another baby, so he was tied up with Dad duties (congrats, John and Fiona!). I donned a green shirt took over as acting track lead for his track and recruited D’Arcy Lussier to host my track, the orange-shirted Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform track.
The first speaker for Developer Fundamentals and Best Practices was Jeremy Wiebe, who presented the very popular Tips and Tricks for Visual Studio session:
How popular was it? Popular enough that people were overflowing out of the rows:
…and we even had to drag in some extra chairs to create a new row at the back:
This was an attentive crowd. There were a lot of “I didn’t know you could do that in Visual Studio!”-type reactions.
The second session of the day was given by Dylan Smith: Test-Driven Development Techniques:
Once again, a good crowd.
During lunch, my coworker, IT pro evangelist Rick Claus and I did a presentation on some of the new features in Office 2010, with me showing off some of the new graphics goodness in PowerPoint 2010:
The sessions resumed in the afternoon with Uwe Schmitz talking about Patterns for the Rest of Us. I was a bit surprised at how few hands went up when I asked how many people had read or even attempted to read Design Patterns by the “Gang of Four”.
Most of Uwe’s audience was in the same room as he was:
But one guy, whose back was made sore by the conference room chairs, took a clever approach. We broadcast all sessions’ projections and audio on a monitor outside every room, so he took one of the comfy chairs in the hallway outside and set himself up for some living room-style viewing:
I told him that with his sunglasses and the way he was seated, he reminded me of the old ads for Maxell tapes from the 1980s:
After Uwe was Dave Harris, who presented A Strategic Comparison of Data Access Technologies from Microsoft:
Day 2
The outside temperature improved for the second day: it became a relatively balmy –20 degrees C (-4 degrees F). What a difference 15 degrees makes!
The first session was Practical Web Testing and was delivered by the team of Tyler Doerksen and Robert Regnier:
I stepped out to drop in on the track which I had put together, my orange-shirted Developing for the Microsoft-Based Platform track. While the Developer Fundamentals and Best Practices track typically had big draws on Day 1, Day 2 is when the Platform track brought in the crowds:
The session was the popular Introducing ASP.NET MVC, and in Winnipeg, it was delivered by Kelly Cassidy:
An unfortunate set of circumstances speaker shortages and cancellations means that Rick had to deliver all the presentations for day 2 of his track, Servers, Security and Management. That’s 300 minutes in total behind the lectern. It’s quite fortunate that he knows his stuff and that his theatre training makes him an excellent presenter:
Meanwhile, back at the green track, Aaron Kowall presented Better Software Change and Configuration Management Using TFS:
During his session, he presented a very important truth: Build automation is not just merely pressing “F5”:
At lunch, Rick hosted a demo showdown between me (representing developers) and my coworker, IT Pro Evangelist Rodney Buike, trying to determine who could do the better Windows 7 demos. I won, thanks in part to my demo of the most obscure Windows features: the Private Character Editor.
Joel Semeniuk needs no introduction. I simply told the audience that “Joel has forgotten more about Team System than I will ever learn. Besides, what I know about Team System can be summarized in the two words ‘jack’ and ‘poop’.” Here’s Joel in action, presenting Metrics That Matter: Using Team System for Process Improvement:
I love this shot of Joel – he looks like a general addressing his own private banana republic:
A closer look:
The most popular afternoon snack was served between the third and fourth sessions of Day 2: Canada’s favourite snack – donuts!
My SD card corrupted the photos of the last speaker of the day, Steve Porter, who did a fine job presenting his session, Database Change Management with Team System. My apologies, Steve!
And finally, to make up for the fact that I did not properly capture D’Arcy Lussier’s hair — an asset in which he takes great pride — in yesterday’s video interview, I now present a close-up shot of his coiff:
My thanks to everyone at TechDays Winnipeg – attendees, speakers, staff and organizers – for making it an great way to close out the tour!
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
{ 6 comments }
No visit to Halifax is complete without a stop to the Lower Deck pub for a pint (or five), and no rock band is complete without an accordion. A fortunate combination of the two came about when I went to Halifax to help run TechDays there in early November, and it resulted in the performance recorded in the video above, in which I joined the band for a rousing and drunken version of Steppenwolf’s classic, Born to Be Wild. Let this be a reminder to you: the accordion is not just a machine that creates music; it also creates serendipity.
Oddly enough, the band had never played the number before, but that never deterred them from doing so in front of an audience, and they played it as if it were a well-established part of their repertoire. This is not the first time that this has happened either – the Zaitchik Brothers, the band at our wedding reception, had also never played Born to Be Wild before, but we brought the house down. I’ll have to post a video of that one sometime.
I think that there’s something so basic, so primal, so inherently rock-and-roll-y in Born to Be Wild that it’s encoded into the genetic memory of rock musicians and hence they can play it on command without having rehearsed it.
{ 3 comments }
The Millennium Falcon bed is a great gift for the Star Wars fan in your life. Think of the new, sordid wrinkles that classic lines from the movies take on when uttered in it!
- Han Solo, at Mos Eisley Spaceport: "She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid. I’ve made a lot of special modifications myself."
- Obi-Wan Kenobi, upon seeing the Death Star: “That’s no moon!”
- The Death Star attack briefing: “The approach will not be easy. You are required to maneuver straight down this trench and skim the surface to this point. The target area is only two meters wide. It’s a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction…”
- Han Solo, during the attack on the Death Star: “You’re all clear kid, now let’s blow this thing and go home!”
- Princess Leia, upon first seeing the Millennium Falcon: “You came in that thing? You’re braver than I thought.”
{ 0 comments }
Microsoft Ottawa’s Kitchen. It has a decent view.
Every Microsoft office has a “touchdown area”, a place filled with cubicles where visiting or mobile workers can work. I avoid these like the plague.
Thanks to all the work I’ve done in cafes or coworking spaces, I prefer to set up in Microsoft’s “kitchen” spaces. The wifi is just as accessible there, but the lighting is natural, the tables are larger. the fridge with all the free Diet Coke is nearby by and it doesn’t feel so boxed in. Unlike cafes, you can leave your stuff at the table when you go for a bathroom break.
So, when I hung out in Microsoft’s Ottawa offices on Friday while waiting for my coworker and travelling buddy Damir to finish his meeting, I eschewed the touchdown cubicle and set up shop in the kitchen. These photos show what my “office” looked like, and believe me, it’s a lot nicer than a veal-fattening pen-like cube.
A lot of office workers might balk at the idea of working in a kitchen space, but consider this: people have been working in kitchens for millennia. Its centralized placement in homes and workplaces as well as its layout and design are the product of countless generations doing work that sustains life.
On the other hand, the modern office has its roots in the Industrial Revolution. Its design is based on the concept of employee as interchangeable production unit and the hypothesis that people are naturally lazy and must be coerced into being productive.
Hence in the absence of a workshop-like environment (such as the Hacklab, where I often work), I opt for the kitchen.
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
{ 2 comments }
At long last, we come to the last city in TechDays’ seven-city conference tour: Winnipeg! The combination of venue availability and perhaps a little masochism puts me and my coworkers in a city notorious for brutal winters in mid-December. Take a look at the weather forecast for the days I will be there:
(If you’re American, the high for Monday translates to –9 degrees F; the low is –26 degrees F. There’s a reason the city has the nickname “Winterpeg”.)
Fortunately, we were given our official TechDays-branded winter jackets at the Ottawa conference last week, and when they’re worn with the fleece lining, they’re incredibly warm. In fact, I found myself boiling in my jacket in Ottawa’s just-below-freezing temperatures when I wore it with the lining, which means that it should keep me toasty in Winnipeg’s deep freeze. Still, I’m glad that the walking route from the hotel to the conference venue can be done mostly indoors, with the notable exception of one street crossing.
In spite of the temperatures, I’m looking forward to the trip to Winnipeg later today. See you there!
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
{ 1 comment }
