Follow

Just a short post about an odd thing. I didn't really use twitter until Google ditched Google+ and I looked for new ways to share my blog post as Facebook also seemingly stopped feeds. I'm not sure how many I followed or how many follower I had (this blog after twelve years has FIVE followers) so I am not the most popular person on the planet, but I am sure I had about seventy followers and followed a similar number of people.

Every few days I get a new follower but the number of followers I have seems to remain at a constant 77 (just checked it's now 78) which is a lot more than this blog (despite it's now daily 1-1.5K visits (and yes I know a lot will be robots and apparently French people (Merci, Merci pour les visites)  so overall that is a success and it's only since sharing the blog on Twitter that these visit spikes took off. Below are two images showing the spikes and the fact that France is the source of a lot of visits.

Big In France

Big In 2019

So since twitter , Feedburner picked me up and that I think is the main reason for the reason hike in hits. I would like to hit 300K by the end of the year and at the current rate that could happen by mid October , but that is assuming I sill get over 1K hits a day.

So I though I would just post this listening to the Giorgio Moroder album "Deja Vu" , and while it's OK it's not as adventurous as I expected although "74 is the New 24" is quite good and the first song that would fit with the "From Here To Eternity" album which is one of my favourites. That was followed by an excellent take on Suzanne Vega's "Toms Diner" with Britney Spears, which shows it's always good to listen to a whole album. Not as good, in my opinion, as "From Here To Eternity" but more than listenable with some good points.

I've also realised that Giorgio Moroder's moustache is almost as iconic as Frank Zappa's (see below)

So "74 is the New 24" would be a good one to share with you and the video is cool too.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Atheist

I'm currently reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and the foreword tells me that anyone reading this will be an Atheist if they finish it. This is the sort of evangelical preaching that annoys me about Richard Dawkins. I ton't like being told I am wrong without empirical evidence and I almost want to say I believe in God just to spite him.

I was made to go to church  by my parents until I was ten then it was my choice. I went to Catholic schools and some teachers every week tried to trip you up on what had happened in mass and certain pupils would tell teachers that you hadn't been to Church which resulted in various fors of denigration and punishment.

Jesuits taught me at secondary school and some of them were extremely logical by admitting that only faith could justify their position. That earned my respect because they were fine with people who were "unbelievers" .

Through my life I have come across lots of great religious people and none of them have tried to convert me.

In 62 years I have seen no evidence of God but I am always open to be proved wrong, that's PROVED wrong not told I'm wrong.

And I do have faith, faith that the sun will rise, faith that the light will turn on when I flick the switch, faith that the kettle will boil when I switch it on, a little less faith that I will get a phone signal or Amazon Prime will work when I want to watch a prong.

Because of evolution I believe that our minds continue after death, so it doesn't really bother me, but evolution tends to keep the good adaptable bits and in a lot of humans the mind is the most interesting and flexible part.

So "The God Delusion" is four hundred pages and quite a large book so think this will take me about a month to finish.

I'm still getting a thousand hits a day on the blog so the Feedburner thing  (something to do with syndicated content) is still working although a side effect is lots of visits from France for some reason though I can't say I'm complaining.

To go with this I'm going with "Faith" by George Michael just because I like it.

Lost In France

French Favourite

As I have mentioned Feedburner has been a huge boost to th esite visits. As far as I can gather it is a result of me sharing my posts via Twitter. I am no expert or avid follower of Social Media but that it my current view on the situation.

Another thing that I have noticed is that of my top ten all time posts on this blog, five now come from this month , or since I started sharing on Twitter.  So sharing on Twitter, which I don't really use that much, is beneficial to audience reach. And I only started doing this because Google ditched Google+ !

One of the real oddities is a huge number of visitors from France. Now I am not French , I don't post in French or feature much French related stuff aparat maybe bands like one of my favourites Gong,  or the darker Magma (who have some great logo / images) and are with listening to if you can take their relentless sound.


As I have said I do not know if this is just a blip , a short spike, or permanent, though obviously I am hoping it is permanent and I am happy to keep sharing on Twitter if this is the result.


I am currntly enjoying the lovely weather as we head towards the Bank Holiday Weekend and think I will share with you Gong's "I Never Glid Before" the finale from "Angel's Egg" the middle of the "Rafio Gnome Invisible" trilogy , one of my favourite ever riffs despite it being quite complex while retaining an excellent self depracating playfulness. Gong are extremely accomplished musicians with a wonderful way out sense of humour.

Apathy In The Uk

Apathy From The Uk

This is nothing major. Although I am English and live in the UK, I would expect my UK visits to be top 3 normally but they are not.

UK Visits are less than half the USA and Germany and only 20% of the French visits. As I have said before the Unknown region has me flummoxed, maybe some rogue robots.

I'm not complaining, this is just an observation, and lets face it the uSA is far more populous than the UK though I don't think France is (though it is much bigger. Germany is slightly bigger (though that may be completely wrong as I am too lazy to check it out at this moment, but I am glad for the visits)

The recent visit explosion (for me) has boosted the site income from about 10p per week to £10 per week which is a significant increase which I wasn't expecting.

The blog is not about making money but acting as a diary and sharing interesting stuff with people.

I wasn't intending to do this post until tonight, and the title came to me and I thought I'll make a start on it. Although it's about people visiting this blog the title could also apply to political engagement and taking an interest in things that actually affect your life, but most people would rather watch a soap and make a cup of tea.

So maybe I should take the song that I stole the title from and Share a little Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias (a typical Manchester name) with you. I bet you thought I would go with The Sex Pistols didn't you?

Is It Too Darn Hot?

Yesterday I was in Edinburgh and at times in was so hot that had to dive in to shade to get a little relief. While I am not a hot sun person, I definitely prefer the weather sunny that to grey dark skies. I alsthink of the walks to work with the wind is so cold that it's almost trying to burn your face off. We've also not had much rain, last year was almost perfect, sunny during the day raining at night. It is great wehn you don't really need an umbrella.

Today it's so hot in th ehouse that even a nightgown is uncomfortably superfluous, but luckily I have a couple of old Preston North End replica shirt that hide my body from the public while keeping me cool, after all in our Daily Mail / Dail Express / Sun dominated nation we don't want any bare flesh unless it's some photo shopped female in one of those rags do we. Some people are only happy when they have something to be offended by.

I finally cut ties with someone on Facebook when he tweeted that there was no need to demonstrate against Donald Trump and everyone should just chill, which in my opinion is there a backing for racism, misogyny, bullying (fill in your list), this comes on the back of him trivialising my friends and continually criticising while excusing Tory misogyny and racism.

Anyway today France play Croatia in the World Cup final, and I have just had the most awful cup of instant coffee, and it's L'Or and it is truly bitter and awful , the jar is going in the bin when I get down. I have had their stuff before and it was fine, this is disgusting. God I am sounding like a Daily Mail reader. I AM NOT.

Anyway I am now going to have a coldish shower, and go out and get the papers. Today is a day when I am expending no effort whatsoever. I wasn't even going to write this, but I already have done. Two songs have been going through my mind "Too Darn Hot" by Ann Miller from Cole Porter's musical "Kiss Me Kate" for obvious reasons and "Too Much Ain't Enough" by Tom Petty, because even though I've said I'm going to do nothing, I will do somethingand I probably will overdo it and at the end of the day think there is something else I should have done.

So you get both songs and now it's shower time.