It's right now somewhere...
Above, or to the right, depending upon how it's rendered are this blog's "all time" statistics, filtered by posts.
I had thought that the "coldest night" one was the leader, but I stand corrected.
Coming up with a brilliant post title like "A Scary Moment," seems to give one a lop-sided advantage in attracting visitors.
I have read that particular post, and it isn't anywhere near my best piece of writing (that distinction would fall to what you're reading right now...) I can only think that something freaky happened, such as, perhaps for some reason, someone with a high traffic blog linked to it. Perhaps the picture that I culled through Google was subsequently clicked upon by (more than 6 thousand?) other people, who were directed to this blog as the "source" of it.
Or, maybe some hacker attempted a "denial of service" attack on this blog by loading that page 6,000 times in the space of a minute, in an attempt to crash some server...
I wish there was a way to find out what the deal is.
This is a big part of the reason that I am studying the "Learning Perl" book, along with using it as a hobby in writing the program to format these blog posts, so that the first three words of each paragraph are a bit larger and in a different font, the paragraphs are each in a different color, with none of the colors being too dark against the almost black background of the blog, etc.
That particular program is "in the shop" right now, so that formatting hasn't appeared in a while, but it will be back very soon. Oh, and the nice "you have just read x words" feature at the bottom of each post; can't forget that.
Eventually, I want a program that will scan the whole 22 megabytes of words I have written here since 2007 and will arrange them into a dictionary; which will tell me, for one thing, how large my vocabulary is, and ultimately, every time I use a word that is not in my dictionary, it will be highlighted, with maybe a "You have just used a new word" box popping open "add to dictionary?"
This will encourage me to use words that I am sure I have never used before, just to exercise the program.
And, my friend, David Veautour in Massachusetts has suggested that I could have the program supply me with a "word of the day," out of the dictionary of the English language, from words that I have never used.
But, being able to sleuth out the reason that a particular post got 9 times as many hits as its runner-up would be a nice fringe benefit of becoming a Perl programming guru...
There is probably a clue in that, a lot of the highest traffic posts occurred in 2012, a couple of them just a week apart; this might have been around the time that Google bought Blogger; and the might have been having glitches.
One glaring anomaly about the leading post is that, none of those 6,000 plus "people" left a comment. Not even Alex in California!
One would think that something as wildly popular as that count implies would elicit at least one. "Me and 6,100 of my friends really enjoyed this post," type of thing...
Linux To Go On Hard Drive
I don't know why I hadn't thought of this before.
The only reason I have been running Windows 10 on this machine is because, on the Linux version of the Audacity audio editor, the slider to adjust the microphone input level is stuck on 100%. No support for a Snowball microphone might be the problem.
This means that a snare drum has to be played about 8 feet away from the Snowball microphone and vocals have to be sung from about 18 inches away to avoid popping sounds, etc.
On the Windows version, I can set the level at 38% for the snare, 83% for vocals, and it makes life easier. I use 100% to capture the background noise to feed to the noise reduction effect.
Everything else is a pain in the ass with Windows.
It takes 2 minutes to open the file manager, sometimes. Another minute for the menu to pop open to do something with a file, and then another minute to delete it, or rename it.
Then there was the time that I merely wanted to fire up the laptop to quickly reference something and wound up staring at a screen that said: "Windows is updating, don't turn off your computer," for about 10 minutes, and then "Installing updates 4%, 5%, 6% etc." for maybe another 10 minutes; and I had to ask myself: "What purpose would punching the screen as hard as you can serve?" in order to keep myself from doing so.
I realized today that I can put Linux on the same hard drive, on its own partition and use it for everything; switching to Windows only for Audacity. A dual boot system, it's called.
But, if something goes wrong with the installation, I might be blogging from the public library for a while...
Chapter 3.
Treats of a trip to Howard's, chasing after a bike, during which I am treated like a dog, by a control freak.
It was a pain to go and get a bike that I don't really need, but, I didn't want Howard to start to think that I must not want it very badly, if I let too much time go by before going to get it.
I was trying to make it there by about 1:30 PM, so that the Sunday meal that is a regular occurrence there, after church, might still be laid out on the table, and Berta wouldn't have to dig things out of the fridge and re-heat them for me, as she always insists that I eat when I go there.
I made it by about 2:30 PM, and there was still barbecued chicken, eggplant, asparagus, bread and cinnamon rolls that Berta made from scratch out.
The bike is a cheaper one than the Specialized Rockhopper that I ride, but works pretty well, and Howard had gotten new pedals to put on it.
Some adjustments were necessary, and Howard produced some tools, along with a pump, and we went to work on it.
I learned firsthand why he has complained about Ken, Berta's boyfriend, being a "control freak."
The guy came over after I had loosened the nut to adjust the height of the seat, and started to insist that it was the set of nuts and bolts directly under the seat which I wanted to adjust.
Those of the ones that allow you to tilt the seat forward and backward. Ken thought that that was what I was trying to do. He was noticeably drunk.
Then, he began to insist that "the rule of thumb" was to set the seat level with the handlebars, and wouldn't shut up until I had humored him by setting them so.
Then, he insisted that I sit on the bike to see if this was comfortable for me, at one point, yelling:"Sit!," as if I were a dog.
He then said that the purpose of adjusting the seat was so that both feet touch the ground when you're sitting on it.
"No, the purpose of adjusting the seat is so that, at the bottom of a pedal stroke your knee will be slightly bent, which gives you the most torque and utilizes your leg muscles most efficiently. If this means that you can't touch the ground with both feet while sitting on the seat, then you'll just have to hop up onto it a bit and then hop off when you come to a stop," I said, remembering the manuals that came with the bikes that I rode for years as a kid.
"No, it's so you can put both feet on the ground!" roared back Ken, who added that he has worked on many, many bikes.
He then said that it was a "24 inch" bike, which supposedly had some bearing upon how high he thought the seat should be.
As I sat on the seat, which was level with the handlebars, to humor him, it slid down, as I hadn't tightened the bolt after raising it. When I got off it, it was no longer level with the handlebars, like he said it had to be.
"There, that's perfect, now leave it that way!," apparently too drunk to have noticed.
"No, it slid down when I sat on it," I said and started to rotate it to the left and right while pulling on it in order to work it back up.
"What are you doing?," he nagged, and then pointed to the set of screws immediately under the seat, telling me, again, that those are the ones I needed to loosen to raise the seat. He thought I was trying to tilt it backwards, I guess.
Howard kept his silence.
After Ken had gone off, I lifted the bike and showed Howard the "26 in." in raised letters on the sidewall of the tire and said, sarcastically: "24 inches, I guess Ken was right!"
I remembered a time when I showed up on a previous bike which needed air in the back tire. I asked Howard if he had change of a dollar, so I could use the air pump at the gas station up the street.
"Don't worry about it; I have a compressor, said Ken."
We became busy watching a football game and I forgot about the tire, until I was ready to leave and I mentioned it.
"Already done!" said Ken.
I went out and discovered that, in fact both tires had been inflated to the hardness of a rock.
I didn't want to sit on the thing for fear of exploding them. I've had enough bikes to know pretty much what the recommended pressure of "45 to 60 pounds" feels like when you squeeze a tire. I pushed the bike until I was out of sight of Ken and then let some of the pressure off. When I got to the gas station up the street the tire gauge on their machine indicated almost 80 pounds of pressure still in each tire.
Ken had just gone slap happy and pumped the hell into them, like the George Thorougood, Little Feat, Robin Trower, James Gang cranking, beer drinking redneck that he apparently is.
"He knows everything about everything and refuses to be corrected," said Howard, adding that he is "a control freak."
If he had known how Ken was, especially when he drinks liquor, he never would have moved into the house, he said, and would still be living in Sacred Heart Apartment A 105.
This was part of a series of events that compromised the peace and joy that I had gained from reading "The Power of Now," by Ekhart Tolle. I was pissed off at Ken, especially when he had snapped "Sit!" and pointed to the seat of the bike.
I was able to remain calm, but fought the urge to calmly say: You know, you're really a fucking idiot, Ken.
If every cyclist set their seats so they could plant both feet on the ground, then they would be pedaling with their knees bent at such an angle as to reduce their power output and would have sore muscles in short order. I'm 99% sure of that.
I've taken 120 mile bike rides, back when I was 15 years old...you just slide off the seat when you come to a red light, and then plant both feet on the ground. Am I right? Let's hear from the 6,100 of you on this matter!
When Is A Meal Not A Meal?
Howard said that, Ken and Berta asked him if he could start supplying one meal per week.
Sure, said Howard. Friday was agreed upon.
Friday came around and Howard brought home 3 Subway sandwiches, only to discover that Ken had none-the-less cooked a meal.
Howard ate his sandwich "and the other two are still in the fridge."
Ken didn't make it, so it wasn't a meal," was Howard's theory.
I had thought that the "coldest night" one was the leader, but I stand corrected.
Coming up with a brilliant post title like "A Scary Moment," seems to give one a lop-sided advantage in attracting visitors.
I have read that particular post, and it isn't anywhere near my best piece of writing (that distinction would fall to what you're reading right now...) I can only think that something freaky happened, such as, perhaps for some reason, someone with a high traffic blog linked to it. Perhaps the picture that I culled through Google was subsequently clicked upon by (more than 6 thousand?) other people, who were directed to this blog as the "source" of it.
Or, maybe some hacker attempted a "denial of service" attack on this blog by loading that page 6,000 times in the space of a minute, in an attempt to crash some server...
I wish there was a way to find out what the deal is.
This is a big part of the reason that I am studying the "Learning Perl" book, along with using it as a hobby in writing the program to format these blog posts, so that the first three words of each paragraph are a bit larger and in a different font, the paragraphs are each in a different color, with none of the colors being too dark against the almost black background of the blog, etc.
That particular program is "in the shop" right now, so that formatting hasn't appeared in a while, but it will be back very soon. Oh, and the nice "you have just read x words" feature at the bottom of each post; can't forget that.
Eventually, I want a program that will scan the whole 22 megabytes of words I have written here since 2007 and will arrange them into a dictionary; which will tell me, for one thing, how large my vocabulary is, and ultimately, every time I use a word that is not in my dictionary, it will be highlighted, with maybe a "You have just used a new word" box popping open "add to dictionary?"
This will encourage me to use words that I am sure I have never used before, just to exercise the program.
And, my friend, David Veautour in Massachusetts has suggested that I could have the program supply me with a "word of the day," out of the dictionary of the English language, from words that I have never used.
But, being able to sleuth out the reason that a particular post got 9 times as many hits as its runner-up would be a nice fringe benefit of becoming a Perl programming guru...
There is probably a clue in that, a lot of the highest traffic posts occurred in 2012, a couple of them just a week apart; this might have been around the time that Google bought Blogger; and the might have been having glitches.
One glaring anomaly about the leading post is that, none of those 6,000 plus "people" left a comment. Not even Alex in California!
One would think that something as wildly popular as that count implies would elicit at least one. "Me and 6,100 of my friends really enjoyed this post," type of thing...
Linux To Go On Hard Drive
I don't know why I hadn't thought of this before.
The only reason I have been running Windows 10 on this machine is because, on the Linux version of the Audacity audio editor, the slider to adjust the microphone input level is stuck on 100%. No support for a Snowball microphone might be the problem.
This means that a snare drum has to be played about 8 feet away from the Snowball microphone and vocals have to be sung from about 18 inches away to avoid popping sounds, etc.
On the Windows version, I can set the level at 38% for the snare, 83% for vocals, and it makes life easier. I use 100% to capture the background noise to feed to the noise reduction effect.
Everything else is a pain in the ass with Windows.
It takes 2 minutes to open the file manager, sometimes. Another minute for the menu to pop open to do something with a file, and then another minute to delete it, or rename it.
Then there was the time that I merely wanted to fire up the laptop to quickly reference something and wound up staring at a screen that said: "Windows is updating, don't turn off your computer," for about 10 minutes, and then "Installing updates 4%, 5%, 6% etc." for maybe another 10 minutes; and I had to ask myself: "What purpose would punching the screen as hard as you can serve?" in order to keep myself from doing so.
I realized today that I can put Linux on the same hard drive, on its own partition and use it for everything; switching to Windows only for Audacity. A dual boot system, it's called.
But, if something goes wrong with the installation, I might be blogging from the public library for a while...
Chapter 3.
Treats of a trip to Howard's, chasing after a bike, during which I am treated like a dog, by a control freak.
It was a pain to go and get a bike that I don't really need, but, I didn't want Howard to start to think that I must not want it very badly, if I let too much time go by before going to get it.
I was trying to make it there by about 1:30 PM, so that the Sunday meal that is a regular occurrence there, after church, might still be laid out on the table, and Berta wouldn't have to dig things out of the fridge and re-heat them for me, as she always insists that I eat when I go there.
I made it by about 2:30 PM, and there was still barbecued chicken, eggplant, asparagus, bread and cinnamon rolls that Berta made from scratch out.
The bike is a cheaper one than the Specialized Rockhopper that I ride, but works pretty well, and Howard had gotten new pedals to put on it.
Some adjustments were necessary, and Howard produced some tools, along with a pump, and we went to work on it.
I learned firsthand why he has complained about Ken, Berta's boyfriend, being a "control freak."
The guy came over after I had loosened the nut to adjust the height of the seat, and started to insist that it was the set of nuts and bolts directly under the seat which I wanted to adjust.
Those of the ones that allow you to tilt the seat forward and backward. Ken thought that that was what I was trying to do. He was noticeably drunk.
Then, he began to insist that "the rule of thumb" was to set the seat level with the handlebars, and wouldn't shut up until I had humored him by setting them so.
Then, he insisted that I sit on the bike to see if this was comfortable for me, at one point, yelling:"Sit!," as if I were a dog.
He then said that the purpose of adjusting the seat was so that both feet touch the ground when you're sitting on it.
"No, the purpose of adjusting the seat is so that, at the bottom of a pedal stroke your knee will be slightly bent, which gives you the most torque and utilizes your leg muscles most efficiently. If this means that you can't touch the ground with both feet while sitting on the seat, then you'll just have to hop up onto it a bit and then hop off when you come to a stop," I said, remembering the manuals that came with the bikes that I rode for years as a kid.
"No, it's so you can put both feet on the ground!" roared back Ken, who added that he has worked on many, many bikes.
He then said that it was a "24 inch" bike, which supposedly had some bearing upon how high he thought the seat should be.
As I sat on the seat, which was level with the handlebars, to humor him, it slid down, as I hadn't tightened the bolt after raising it. When I got off it, it was no longer level with the handlebars, like he said it had to be.
"There, that's perfect, now leave it that way!," apparently too drunk to have noticed.
"No, it slid down when I sat on it," I said and started to rotate it to the left and right while pulling on it in order to work it back up.
"What are you doing?," he nagged, and then pointed to the set of screws immediately under the seat, telling me, again, that those are the ones I needed to loosen to raise the seat. He thought I was trying to tilt it backwards, I guess.
Howard kept his silence.
After Ken had gone off, I lifted the bike and showed Howard the "26 in." in raised letters on the sidewall of the tire and said, sarcastically: "24 inches, I guess Ken was right!"
I remembered a time when I showed up on a previous bike which needed air in the back tire. I asked Howard if he had change of a dollar, so I could use the air pump at the gas station up the street.
"Don't worry about it; I have a compressor, said Ken."
We became busy watching a football game and I forgot about the tire, until I was ready to leave and I mentioned it.
"Already done!" said Ken.
I went out and discovered that, in fact both tires had been inflated to the hardness of a rock.
I didn't want to sit on the thing for fear of exploding them. I've had enough bikes to know pretty much what the recommended pressure of "45 to 60 pounds" feels like when you squeeze a tire. I pushed the bike until I was out of sight of Ken and then let some of the pressure off. When I got to the gas station up the street the tire gauge on their machine indicated almost 80 pounds of pressure still in each tire.
Ken had just gone slap happy and pumped the hell into them, like the George Thorougood, Little Feat, Robin Trower, James Gang cranking, beer drinking redneck that he apparently is.
"He knows everything about everything and refuses to be corrected," said Howard, adding that he is "a control freak."
If he had known how Ken was, especially when he drinks liquor, he never would have moved into the house, he said, and would still be living in Sacred Heart Apartment A 105.
This was part of a series of events that compromised the peace and joy that I had gained from reading "The Power of Now," by Ekhart Tolle. I was pissed off at Ken, especially when he had snapped "Sit!" and pointed to the seat of the bike.
I was able to remain calm, but fought the urge to calmly say: You know, you're really a fucking idiot, Ken.
If every cyclist set their seats so they could plant both feet on the ground, then they would be pedaling with their knees bent at such an angle as to reduce their power output and would have sore muscles in short order. I'm 99% sure of that.
I've taken 120 mile bike rides, back when I was 15 years old...you just slide off the seat when you come to a red light, and then plant both feet on the ground. Am I right? Let's hear from the 6,100 of you on this matter!
When Is A Meal Not A Meal?
Howard said that, Ken and Berta asked him if he could start supplying one meal per week.
Sure, said Howard. Friday was agreed upon.
Friday came around and Howard brought home 3 Subway sandwiches, only to discover that Ken had none-the-less cooked a meal.
Howard ate his sandwich "and the other two are still in the fridge."
Ken didn't make it, so it wasn't a meal," was Howard's theory.
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