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.
I just noticed I’ve managed to post a blog every single day for TWO months!
And a big thank you to the people who have supported this blog over the last two months too! It’s great that most of my posts are being commented on now & gives me such a warm feeling inside. Mind you, it’s not easy, several times I’ve been siting her at 20 minutes to midnight having not posted that day and wondering what the f*** to post about - that’s usually when Mr Internet Video comes to the rescue, so if you see a video, you’ll know I took the easy way out!
Well it seems the recent changes to the ‘back end’ I made have speeded up the site a bit with nobody reporting hung pages or dreadful loading times for a while now.
It appears that Belfast Peeler has given up the blog, all blog entries have been removed apart from the most current which appears to suggest someone at PSNI has found him out, if that’s true, that’s a shame, another nail in the coffin for police bloggers.
The Sleepy Policeman hasn’t posted since the beginning of July so I’ve removed that blog from the list. Police Camera Paperwork & Unlikely Cop haven’t blogged for a several weeks, will keep an eye on that to see if it’s just a temporary lapse.
I used to have a link to Police.UK which was the government Police portal set up when the police.uk domain name was first registered. There’s a limp message on the front page saying the service is no longer available. I’m not sure what happened there, maybe nobody used it.
And yes, this little roundup is just a way of making sure I have a post every day which so far I’ve managed since the 13th September!
I got a pleasant surprise today. I went to check the forums over at police999.com as I usually do a couple of times a week, to see that they have a new design for the website. On the front page is a small section called "Police Blog Friends" in which they link to yours truly together with a small select bunch of "WhichEndBites", "Toytown" & "Planet Police".
So welcome to anyone who might have clicked on that link!!
I’ve just realised I’ve made one post every day for a month. Phew!
I have to say it’s an awful lot of work. I’m spending my day wondering what the bloody hell I’m going to talk about. I’ve read more papers in the last few weeks than I have all year up ’til then. But I have to say I’ve enjoyed it.
Part of the reason I wanted to give it a go was to see if I could garner some extra involement from my readers in the form of comments. Most of my entries have comments you could count on the fingers of a half-eaten Kit-kat (or less) so the jury’s still out on that. I also wanted to see if it increased the amount of people visting.
Unfortunately, the stats plug-in I’ve been using for the last 18 months seems to slow the site down. I turned it off a couple of days ago and it appears that maybe the site is now loading more normally. I added a new stats plugin which is supposed to use far less load on the site so it will take me some time to see if readership is up.
Can I just take the opportunity to thank those of you who continue to read my blog (even if most of you are silent). If you’re a new reader, let me know and tell me how you found my blog.
I’m not promising to blog every day from now on, but I have a few ideas for the next few days so I’ll see how it goes.
Oh, and to WhichEndBites - yes you’re right it’s now much less than 200 weeks to go, quite a lot less. I don’t know when you get your resettlement courses but the lunches on ours are very good.
PlanetPolice.org is a police blog amalgamation. They trawl through various police blogs and reproduce posts with links back to the individual sites.
I had a few posts from my blog on there, some time ago, then for some reason they stopped posting my blog entries there. I was going to make a blog entry about it something along the lines of thinking it was an online advert for PC Bloggs, the Inspector Blog & David Copperfield, so many of their posts appear there and what have I done for them to lose interest in me, when I visited yesterday, it was the same, lots of entries from the big three, a few from one or two others & none from me.
Imagine my surprise, when I came to write the piece tonight and checked PlanetPolice I found no less than 7, count ‘em, seven 200weeks’ entries. Not that I object to having my posts reposted elsewhere, far from it, it’s nice to think someone feels they may be worthy of reporting.
In recognition of my recent re-entry into PlanetPolice’s blogs, I’ve added a link to them on my blog-roll. If you are PlanetPolice, reading this now, thanks very much, it’s great for us less-visited blogs to get some extra exposure, so don’t be a stranger!
Thanks to the reader who saw some people were having slow load times on this site & suggested a plugin thingy which is supposed to help improve the speed of the page loads.
I’ve added it.
Is there any difference?
A few people have mentioned that this blog is slow to load and the comments system takes even longer which might be a clue as to why I get very few comments.
I’d be really grateful if you could let me know whether the site is slow or slower than usual for you because I really have no problems loading it or replying to comments, it seems fine from my end, but enough people have mentioned it that it must be an issue for some. Is it the same for everyone else? Doe sit really take so long for the comments screen to open that you give up waiting?
Please let me know. In the meantime I;ve contacted the people who provide the blog space to ask for assistance in speeding it up.
Hello?…….Hello?……..HELLO?
No, I guess not…
A post a day for 13 days, my world record. 14 posts with a total of 11 comments.
Over 200 posts in 2 years with an average comment ratio of 1.7 per post.
Yes, I am getting disillushioned.
I often wonder who reads this blog (if anyone!) and how they find the site. It amazes me the amount of people who tap something totally unrelated into a search engine and end up here, most of them must be so disappointed.
Here are a few search queries in a 24 hour period this week:
- Criticisms of PCSOs - There are probably lots depending on who you speak to, visit any police forum for a random selection
- beresford solicitor - Why would anyone be looking for a scummy solicitor?
- police999.com - Police Information portal with forums, lots of criticims of PCSOs there.
- police constables blog david copperfield - the original, sorry to disappoint you now that you’re here instead of there.
- the sharp end police - people actually want to look for that Home Office propaganda mag?
- johnno hills - ex-cop now running a campaign for proper policing
- custody sergeant - a good one is your friend, a bad one is a wanker.
- advertising on police websites - you can do it here for a few free samples (provided it’s porn or donuts you’re selling)
- Nina Hobson - how do you spell that sound you make in your throat just before you spit?
- other jobs related to bing a policeman - I don’t know any policemen called Bing, much less whether he has any related occupations.
- download ansaphone messages - record it yourself you lazy bastard
- miners recovering solicitors fees - miners don’t recover solicitors fees, the solicitors have spent them on a new Aston Martin
- is it possible to get a job with police cautions? - If Police Cautions is the name of a company & they are currently recruiting I’d guess, yes.
- police epaulettes number what mean borough code - English not your first language eh? Try the Met Police website.
- free bloggs - someone after my own heart, no I wouldn’t pay money for this blog either.
- christmas leave luton to belfast - how the bloody hell did you think coming to a police blog would solve that problem?
These are all genuine search queries from my logs taken from one day this week.
The identity of PC David Copperfield, he of the Policeman’s Blog & "Wasting Police Time" book has come out of the closet in grand style on last night’s Panorama edition on the BBC.
It turns out Stuart, as he is, resigned form the job in June and is taking up a post as a police officer in Canada. Good luck to him. He did a great job and had one of the most successful blogs on the internet. It was certainly talked about in many places, although it seems from his latest post that he’s moving on now. There aren’t many of us who can say we’ve been talked about in the Houses of Parliament! I was surprised that he only had 4 years in the job which means he must have been well disillusioned about half way through his probabtion. I thought it took at least 2 years to become thoroughly pissed off with this job. My only other surprise was, well how can I put this, so young and so little hair.
If you didn’t see the 17th September edition of Panorama, you can watch it online until the next edition next Monday. You’ll find it on the BBC website.
Best wishes David/Stuart, thanks for the work you’ve done on behalf of us ordinary coppers, and thanks for being the inspiration behind me starting my blog!
Just carrying out a bit of blog maintenance & I notice a few new police blogs plus a few which have drifted off into blog-history.
There seem to have been some hacking going on at blogspot.com. Midlands PC’s blog seems to have been hacked & all posts deleted to be replaced with a long list of meaningless words & an advert for Amazon. Police Probationer’s blog appears to have been hacked and replaced with adverts.
You’re Nicked has packed up blogging.
I’ve removed a few from my sidebar which haven’t been updated for months on end.
Here’s a few new ones….
If you’d like your police blog added to my links section, let me know.
(A bit more leave and a recent death in the family have kept me from this blog for a little while, but hopefully, I’m back with a few more posts.)
Well, it’s a Happy Birthday to Me! Two years of blogging and still going.
I’ve not had a visit from the Rubber Heel Squad & the Thought Police up at HQ, I suppose I can be grateful for that.
Isn’t it a shame that we can’t share our thoughts & experiences within the Police Service for fear of being tracked down by a unit determined to stifle what should be our free speech. Such is the paranoia that, to date, I’ve not told a single person that I write this blog. Not a colleague, friend or family.
Maybe when the 200 weeks is finally up I will come out of the closet & really reveal some of the shite that goes on behind the closed doors of Police HQ. To do that currently with a lot of the stuff I’d like to talk about would probably reveal the force in queston so I only really talk in generic terms.
Still, not too long left now.
What’s happened to MidlandPC’s blog & how long has it been offline?
As of writing this visitors are met with a message from Blogger.com saying "This blog is under review due to possible Blogger terms of service violations & is open to authors only". Is there a story I’ve missed while I’ve been sunning it up elsewhere?
And on the subject of Police Blogs, it seems that You’re Nicked has decided to quit.
It’s not often I get anywhere first these days but it was nice to see on my trawl around the blogs after my soujourn that I beat several of them to the Derbyshire Police in the Flood video by 3 weeks in some cases.
Blues & Twos seems to have quit as there isn’t a post since January.
I was just checking out my site stats and found that I’ve had about 240,000 hits since I put up the little stats widget thingy thing in May 2006 which tells me stuff about my visitors, like how many there are and how they found the site.
I noticed a couple of folk have come here via a police blog I haven’t seen before. It’s gotta have a top prize for a brilliant name - Police, Camera, Paperwork!
Go and check it out and while you’re there, scroll down to the "A Disclaimer" article and have a look at the Ali G video where he trains with the US Police. I’ve not seen that one before and it had me in tears.
You can find the blog at: Police, Camera, Paperwork
Blimey, is it really over 2 weeks since I last added an entry to this blog? Not keeping up my New Years’ Resolution very well, am I?
I’ll slap myself on the wrist (not in view of anyone at work otherwise someone will want a log on it and it crimed) and try to do better in future.
In the meantime;
I must update my blog more regularly, I must update my blog more regularly, I must…….
Well, it seems that at least one of my New Years’ resolutions fell at the first fence - posting more regularly on here!
I honestly don’t know where some of the other police bloggers find the time. I mean, don’t these people have lives? They can’t all work in the Control Room.
The demands of working full shifts, finding excuses not to do various pressing DIY jobs around the house and trying to avoid the family take up more time than enough already.
Still, I’ll try and do my best to keep it updated as much as possible despite nashki77’s comments.
Mind you, I am limited to making entries when the wife and kids are out or asleep given that not even my wife knows I run this blog, let alone any friends or colleagues.
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