who's out there?

Rhonda asked me about the blog. Why I wrote it. Who was watching.

She posited it was mostly for me. This is true. It is my log book, my astronomy diary, as it were. But I do share things that I think others might benefit from, tips and tricks, cool web sites, how-to notes, repair discoveries, software updates, etc. Some feedback received susses this out.

I suspect I have about a dozen casual readers. Maybe some formally follow; I think most just have me in their bookmarks. Some comment. I'm sure others are silent. Of course I shamelessly promote my blog with RASC members.

I told rho the comment system was not locked but all submissions were moderated. Whoa. Never noticed it before, the total count. There are 488 approved comments (plus 15 never released), a surprisingly (to me) large number. Interesting to think of it that way.

I checked the published comments for names: Eric, Katrina, Grace and Tony, Elaine, Jay, Doug, Matti, etc. All RASC people, mostly in the Toronto Centre. And then many people from afar, whom I did not know. Complete strangers who probably found an article via a Google Search.

We checked the stats, which I said that I generally ignored. The Pageviews over the last week showed hundreds of hits with a spike of over 150 on Saturday. But most are from bots in Russia and Poland. So weird. Views from Canada hovers around 4th or 5th spot.

Getting close to 10 000 posts (since the early 2000s)...