This post is totally pointless & contains neither wit, wisdom or senseless ramblings.
It just celebrates reaching my target of a whole, complete year with a post every single day.
200weeks - triumph of quantity over quality!!!!
Thanks to all those who have kept up
I must be going up in the world.
I logged in last night to do my usual posting & checked out my blog stats to see how many people don’t visit this blog. I thought I’d logged in to someone else’s site because the number of visitors were four times the usual average.
It turns out that someone has written an article at the Register which links back to my blog entry about the wheelie bin police. The graph of my visitor stats must look like a police blogger doing paperwork when PSD knock on the door; all little peaks & troughs with a massive big spike.
So hello if you’ve found your way here via the Register, although, judging by today’s stats, you’ve probably buggered off back to the Register for some proper reading material.
A Post a Day for One Year update
If I don’t have a heart attack & Professional Standards don’t knock on the door, tomorrow’s the day!!!
I’m glad to see Inspector Gadget has resumed posting, no word about his brief ‘disappearance’, still, seems to have prompted some more book sales. I have to confess, on seeing that his book had been published I ordered a copy from the good folk at Amazon.
I have PC Copperfield’s book & PC Bloggs, but I’ve read neither of them. I’ll have to see if I can start Gadget’s book on my next set of rest days, if they’re not cancelled again.
Meanwhile, isn’t it grand that everything the police do in America is filmed?
Here are two incidents involving members of the public with guns, each has a different oucome.
BLUtube is powered by PoliceOne.com
BLUtube is powered by PoliceOne.com
Inspector Gadget’s new book “Perverting the Course of Justice” is out, published on 2nd September.
There’s a little bit of concern over at the Inspector’s blog at the moment. The last post is a reference to not trusting Professional Standards Departments and a previous entry about the book has been deleted from the blog.
Over 100 comments on the latest entry express concern, worry & support & much hand-wringing over whether the Rubber Heel Squad have finally nailed the good Inspector.
Gadget himself has made no response to all to the comments & his publisher, Monday Books, has made two two tantalising comments about not being able to contact him & then a very hurried call.
Â
It’s all very strange.
Update: The publisher has heard from Gadget & is not so worried, Gadget advises of hectic 24 hours, more to follow…
Â
Â
Â
This blogging business is a funny old lark, I’m not sure I’ll ever really understand it. One thing I’ve learn in the 3 years I’ve been doing it is that you really can’t tell what posts will provoke some kind of response & what won’t.
Take my "Those missing data scapegoats in full" article, a light-hearted look at who is to blame for all the missing data cockups we’ve been having in the last year. I filed it under "The Job - satire". These are the bits I try to put my most creative efforts (if ever there is a creative side to me). And usually take up more brain power than the rest of my stuff - probably because it takes more effort to think than it does to just slag things off. This particular entry got 4 comments in a week.
Then I go and put some rambling musings about what to do when I retire & it gets 11 comments straight away. Thanks, by the way, for the advice. I’ve got a little way to go before I need to make any decisions. Doubtless you’ll be updated when I make a decision one way or the other.
Anyway, notwithstanding the above, it’s great to see people taking part in my blog. When you scan down the page it’s rare to find a post which at least 1 person hasn’t commented on, this makes a great change from times gone by - thanks very much to everyone who does!
I’d like to welocme lots of new visitors this week. Occasionally someone posts a link to one of my blog entries & I get loads of visitors as a result. Well this week I’ve got two lots of new visitors.
Welcome to all the folk from ‘pepipoo.com‘ who have come over to read my entry on the chap who lost his appeal against a speeding ticket. Pepipoo is, as far as I can make out, a site where you can get loads of advice to get out of a speeding ticket. Unfortunately, the discussion of my entry on their site is blocked unless you are part of their paying members, so I’ve no idea what they’re saying. Doubtless, lots of stuff about how wrong it was that the learned professor lost his case & had to pay costs.
Welcome also to all the folks from the ‘psychForums‘ who have linked in to my story about the rapist freed from Broadmoor despite still being a grave threat to women. It seems the psychs think that the quoted phsychiatrist has got her diagnostic criteria muddled up. Personally, I haven’t a clue, but welcome all the same!
Just some blogging stuff today.
It seems my story about the guy who bought a Taser for his wife was picked up on by ‘reddit’, I don’t know anything about this site but it seems to be a list of links to interesting articles. It doubled my hit rate on the day of that post taking it to over 600 visitors in one day, which I think is probably the highest I’ve ever had; I normally vary between 250 & 400 visitors a day. How bloody ironic is that my most popular entry wasn’t written by me!?! Anyway, welcome to anyone visiting me from reddit, it would be great of a few of you chose to call back some time!
I’ve removed a few links from the blogroll. I really only want to link to live sites & several appear to have stopped or at least not posted in several months. So I’ve removed:
I’d be happy to add them back if they start working again. And on that note, if you want to trade blog links with me, please let me know & I’ll be glad to add you.
I think today marks 8 months of blogging a post every single day. Yes, this is the most productive Police Blog in the Blogosphere. (OK, sometimes I go for quantity rather than quality, it’s true). What started off as an attempt to post every day for a month slipped into three months & then six months, so I guess it would be rude not to try for a whole year (although when my holiday comes up it might be interesting).
Thanks to my small band of regular supporters & commenters, it would be soul destroying if nobody ever reacted to anything I typed, either pro or against (or indifferent). I couldn’t do it without you!
I was wondering what makes a good blog in general and a good police blog specifically. I know the ones I like & I also recognise ones which I don’t. I guess it’s a matter of personal taste but there are one or two really popular blogs out there which don’t light any fires for me. Yet they are read in the thousands.
So, you read blogs, presumably there is something here which persuades you to give up your valuable time to read it, you probably read other blogs too. What is the secret of a good blog, or in other words, how can I improve this one? Is it the subject matter, the writing style, how important is humour/seriousness? Is length of post a factor, pictures? What is it which makes you want to come back to read the next update?
Suggestions greatly received….
I got interviewed the other day, not by PSD thankfully, but by another police blogger. You can check out the interview in Twining’s unique style over at his blog, The Twining Chronicles.
I got tagged also by regular contributor, Annette, but owing to me not really understanding all this tagging business I didn’t know what to do. Apparently you have to mention 7 random facts about yourself & then tag 7 other people. I hope Annette will forgive me for not tagging anyone else but I don’t have 7 online friends.
Here are my random facts.
I’m not sure what that lot says about me, if anything.
Of the reasons I write this blog, one of them isn’t because I want a book deal.
Good luck to those who have, though. I bought PC Copperfield’s "Wasting Police Time", (I didn’t get past the first 20 pages because I had this feeling I’d read it all before - on the blog). I also bought PC Bloggs’ "Life of an on-call girl". I’ve not read that either. I might buy Insp. Gadget’s forthcoming book, & not read it as well.
Nope, I don’t want a book publishing deal… not like their’s anyway.
The kind of book publishing deal I want is more like Cumbria PC, Matt Hilton, who has just signed an £800,000 deal for a five book series of crime thrillers!
PC Hilton is now ex-PC Hilton having resigned on receipt of his good news. I can’t imagine what part of the £800,000 book writing deal has caused him to leave such a great job.
Yep, that’s the kind of book deal I could do with. I’m already dusting down "The Tails of Tigger the Cat", which I wrote for bedtime stories a few years back. Now I only need to find an agent.
It’s official. This blog is shite, it says so on the internet so it must be true.
Commenting on police blogs, PCSO Bloggs says, "After a while, though, you run out of material. You say your piece and then all that’s left is to comment on political news stories and post the odd YouTube video."
Oh dear, I commented on a political story this week AND posted a YouTube video, so it must be me she’s talking about!
And now, with this entry, I’ve gone & done another post which lacks material, is old & unoriginal… Wait a minute! It’s brand new, it’s all my own work & therefore must be original, things are looking up, perhaps it’s not me after all.
Mind you, I’ll give PCSO Bloggs one thing; it is very difficult coming up with something to post day in, day out, every bloody day for 7 months. 420 posts & counting (as opposed to PCSO Bloggs’ 79 posts.) So what I lack in quality I certainly make up for in quantity which is all that matters, according to my pie-eating tutor.
Maybe I’m just being a little sensitive & paranoid & it’s not me that the good PCSO is complaining about or maybe this blog really is shite.
It keeps me off the streets.
(or is that not what policing is about?)
The astute amongst you may have noticed a new link on my Blog inks to the right here.
Nightjack is a detective. I mis-spelled it when I wrote this post & used a ‘M’ instead of a ‘N’ which put me in mind of someone considering a moment or two of self-abuse.
It seems to have started in February & if you’ve not seen it yet, check it out, it looks like it’s going to be a great addition to the Police Blogger Community. (just make sure you come back here too!)
… of posting a blog every single day.
Not a bad achievement though I say so myself.
Must be worthy of a post with very little content or effort…..such as this one!
I’m often surprised how people find my little blog.
I’ve mentioned Facebook & Safe Speed recently appearing in my stats. I found a new one this week. I’ve been linked to from IPEP - The International Police Expertise Platform. I have no idea what the site is all about but the name gives it a certain flair. They have an extensive links section including a list of police blogs throughout the world. I’m one of only a few UK Police Blogs listed. I feel so humble, thank you.
Oh I’ve just noticed on the IPEP website that it is a division of the Police Academy of the Netherlands. I can’t see any of the official UK Police organisations linking to the heretics that are us police bloggers.
Hello to the people who are visiting as a result of hearing something or following a link on Facebook. I don’t understand these things except to say that someone appears to be passing round a link to my blog via a message system, or email or something. My logs tell me this, I have no idea how it works.
Are there any of you out there who can help me with setting up Wordpress? I would like my links to go into categories, but at the moment they are just showing in one long list. I know it is something to do with changing something in the template but I don’t really know what to change. I know other police bloggers use Wordpress & have their links showing in categories, how do I do this - help!?
It struck me yesterday that I have now been blogging for 5 months with a post every single day. I can tell you that’s no mean feat. There are times, like today, as I write this at 23.45hrs, that I have nearly missed the deadline.
I took the opportunity to have the web stats emailed to me by the host who provides the webspace for this blog. I have to admit, this was somewhat inspired by Inspector Gadget reaching a massive 1 million hits - well done to him!
In September 2005 I had a total of 60 visitors who visited a total of 176 times and loaded 483 pages. A year later there were 1,347 visitors who visited 5,736 times with a total of over 10,000 pages. By September 2007 I was getting 1,800 unique visitors loading nearly 20,000 pages.
Things are looking even better for 2008; in 2007 I had a total of 220,000 hits (page loads). We’re only one & half months into the year and already I’ve got 53,000 hits. I can’t even blame this meteoric rise on my friends, colleagues & family since none of them know I do this thing called blogging.
If things go as they have been I’ll be well on my way to 1 million hits some time in 2009, not bad for a little blog which doesn’t have anywhere near the following of the ‘Big Three’. Maybe I should aim for 1 million hits before the 200 weeks is up (which will be in the first half of 2009).
It would be great if more of you ‘quiet’ readers would join in.
Thanks to everyone who told me where they found this blog & how long they’ve been reading it, that post alone got me a record comments list. There’s still time to help me with it, just visit the Home Work post.
I’d be really grateful for some assistance from you lot out there.
I’m trying to make sense of my user stats and would love to know how you found my blog & how long you’ve been reading it.
Can you leave a quick comment on this post please, I’ll be your bestest friend…
I apparently, have a reader who is a nurse in A&E, Mousie. She commented on my previous post about drink driving as I suppose be both see the aftermath of such, only we see it slightly earlier than she(he?) does.
Mousie kindly made an entry on her(his?) website saying "If you’ve never read 200 weeks before, now’s the time" & linking to the drink drive video article. So if you’re visiting this blog as a result of following the link on Mousie’s blog - welcome, and big thanks to you, Mousie.
The reason for the gratitude is that my hit rate in the last 24 hours as somewhat rocketed - well in my terms it’s rocketed, I expect many others are used to seeing figures well above what I reach.
To give you an example, when Inspector Gadget added me to his links, he became the best referrer to my blog over & above David Copperfield’s by maybe 3 to 1. Today, 42 people visited me from his blog. I’m usually happy if I get over 200 unique visitors a day so a quarter of them coming from him is quite impressive. I have had over 300 visitors I think twice, my maximum being 316.
I’ve just logged on to make up something for today’s post only to see that Mousie has sent no less than 150 visitors and yesterday I had 417 visitors, today I have 579 - 274 above my record!!
Cheers Mousie, I’ve not linked to any non-police blogs yet, so in honour of your patronage, I’ve added a link!
Blimey, I knew Inspector Gadget was popular but didn’t realise quite how popular.
A couple of days ago I made mention that he didn’t link to me, he obviously caught site of that and added me on his blog links. On the day he did that my hit rate doubled. Now I say doubled in a Government-speak type of doubled as in, wow doubling is a lot. Unfortunately, it’s not so quite so impressive when you realise that the visitor rate here isn’t very high to start with. On the newish stats thingy I have it shows I usually get between 90 and 200 visitors per day, the highest in the last 3 months or so being 265.
On the day Gadget added me to his site this went up to 362. Sadly 2 days later it’s back down to normal levels. But interestingly I got most referals from David Copperfield’s blog followed by PlanetPolice. Now Gadget sends me the most people. The last 2 days he is sending me double what Copperfield’s blog sends. Does that mean he is doubly as popular as Copperfield? I haven’t a clue but if you’re visiting me from Inspector Gadget for the first time - Hi and thanks for taking a look.
Thanks Gadget, BTW I just got the Xmas Radio Times and see you are on Xmas Day, multi-talented!
Well, that makes 3 months with at least one blog entry every single solitary day, hurrah for me.
And that’s the easiest blog entry I’ve done for some time.
About
