250,000 blog visitors and counting...

Today begins a new year...it also marks the crossing of a threshold, for me. This morning, my blog visitor count crossed the quarter of a million mark and, at 6.30 pm Malaysian time, on 1/1/10, New Year's Day, I have had 250,080 visitors to my blog, in total, since it began on September 19th 2006.

Now, to some a quarter of a million visitors may not sound like much. However, I would like you to think about it, for a bit. How many people do you think you will meet, personally, in your lifetime? No matter how gregarious you are, there is just no way it is going to reach a quarter of a million. How many people, in your lifetime, will you actually speak to? Again, no matter how gregarious you are, it is not going to reach a quarter of a million - unless you are a performer of some kind and take to the stage on a regular basis - and talk about yourself. However, on a personal basis, there is no way you are going to speak to a quarter of a million people. Thus, that quarter of a million people that I have communicated with, is a very significant number: it is many times more than the number of people I could possibly have communicated, personally, to, in a lifetime of random chatter.

So, even though I have not left my computer to do so, I have managed to "chat" to many lifetimes worth of people, in the three years since my blog began. I think that is an unexpected and worthy accomplishment since, when I began my blog, I had no idea how popular it would prove, or whether anyone would find it and read it at all. I was writing, expressing my thoughts at the time. I had no idea of the size of the audience I would reach.

By another scale of reckoning a quarter of a million people is a significant number, too. Imagine, for instance, that that represented the number of book sales, I had made. It is quite something to sell a quarter of a million copies of a book. So, compared to the typical sales of books, my blog has proven to be a "best seller".

I am conscious, however, that there are much more successful blogs in this world. Yet, I am not crestfallen to know this. Those other blogs are not, like my own, niche interests. They are usually focussed on a mass market interest - such as film star gossip, some young woman's love life, or the like. I cannot, therefore, expect to compete with revelations of Tom Cruise's private life, or Brad Pitt's kids.

I am happy to know that my blog is being read by people with an interest in what interests me - and that is enough. That there should have been so many of them, over the past three years, is quietly pleasing.

Thank you, for reading. If you have enjoyed any of my posts, do let others know about my blog, so that they can enjoy it, too.

Happy New Year.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

IMDB is the Internet Movie Database for film and tv professionals. If you would like to look at my IMDb listing for which another fifteen credits are to be uploaded, (which will probably take several months before they are accepted) please go to: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3438598/ As I write, the listing is new and brief - however, by the time you read this it might have a dozen or a score of credits...so please do take a look. My son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, also has an IMDb listing. His is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3305973/ My wife, Syahidah Osman Cawley, has a listing as well. Hers is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

Technorati Ranking for The Boy Who Knew Too Much.

By reason of nothing more than randomness, I decided to check my Technorati ranking, yesterday. I found myself rather stunned by the result.

Those of you who are long term readers of my blog will have noted a blog post I wrote on May 27th 2007. Then, I remarked that my blog was doing unexpectedly well. I had a Technorati authority of 23 - which meant that 23 independent blogs had linked to me in the previous six months - and I stood 222,604th out of all the world's then, 71 million blogs, in Technorati ranking. These rankings are an indicator of how important other people think the blog is, as it is measured by the number of people who decide to link to it, from the rest of the blogosphere, compared to how many people are linking to all the other blogs. I was, at the time, rather pleased to have my, then, young blog, considered so highly by the rest of the blogosphere.

Yesterday, I saw a surprisingly different tale concerning my blog. Firstly, it should be noted that, according to Wikipedia, Technorati was tracking and ranking 112.8 million blogs by June 2008. Presumably they are likely to be tracking more now. Anyway, have a guess where my blog was listed, out of such a giant horde of blogs, in significance in the blogosphere, yesterday?

Well, I was stunned to note that my blog was listed as the 15,157th blog in the world out of all of its hundred million plus blogs! Not only that but astonishingly its authority was listed as 419. This means that, in the previous six months, 419 new bloggers decided to link to my blog. To my mind, that is a very large number.

To put it into terms that might be more meaningful, my blog is in the top 99.987% of all blogs, worldwide.

Now, I must point out that Technorati is measuring blog importance in terms of the number of people who think it worth linking to a blog. It is not measuring purely the traffic to the blog. My blog remains a niche interest, in regards to its subject matter, but what is clear, is that those who do read it, appreciate it, more than is typical - for a lot of people are linking to it.

Thanks to those who have linked to my blog. I am really amazed to learn that there are so many of you out there. It is appreciated and acts as a spur to keep on writing.

I did note something even more interesting. Technorati indicates that my blog has fallen in rank recently. Thus, an authority of 419 is NOT the peak it has reached. It has, in the recent past, been even more popular.

If you have a blog, and like anything that you read here, I would be grateful if you could link to the posts that you like, or to the blog head page. Thanks very much.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.

IMDB is the Internet Movie Database for film and tv professionals. If you would like to look at my IMDb listing for which another fifteen credits are to be uploaded, (which will probably take several months before they are accepted) please go to: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3438598/ As I write, the listing is new and brief - however, by the time you read this it might have a dozen or a score of credits...so please do take a look. My son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, also has an IMDb listing. His is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3305973/ My wife, Syahidah Osman Cawley, has a listing as well. Hers is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)

IMDb Starmeter: up, up, up and away!

The IMDb Starmeter is a very interesting idea. It is found on the Internet Movie Database. What it does, quite simply, is measure the interests of the global internet audience - more specifically, WHO they are interested in, and by how much.

Everyone who is included on IMDb, the Internet Movie Database, has a Starmeter reading. This ranks them in relation to every other celebrity, tv and film professional in history. Well, almost. You see, it is a funny thing, but almost everyone who has distinguished themselves from the 20th century onwards has ended up on television at some time or another - as a result, they have ended up on IMDb, too. The IMDb Starmeter measures the number of people who click on a person's home page on IMDb and tallies up the global interest in that person. Then each person is ranked with respect to every other person. The result is an ordered list of whom, in the world, everyone is interested in.

Not only does the IMDb Starmeter rank people, but the home page of every person listed shows the change in interest in that person, week on week. This is a direct measure of fluctuations in traffic to that person's IMDb page.

Now, a couple of months ago, someone began a listing for my family because of a tv show we had done in the UK. Since then, I have noticed something I think is unusual: every week, our Starmeters have risen. Thus, for a full consecutive two month period, interest in reading our IMDb home pages, has increased week on week. In the last week, for instance, interest in my home page has risen 122% and interest in Ainan's home page has risen 182%. These are pretty big gains considering that in the last eight weeks or so, there have been gains each and every week of anything between 11% and 639%.

So, if you would like to check out our IMDb pages - which are being updated over time, with new credits and listings as and when they are approved, please take a look at the links below. If you would like to track them over time, just take a look every week or so. They are updated at the beginning of the week, US time.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.IMDB is the Internet Movie Database for film and tv professionals.

If you would like to look at my IMDb listing for which another fifteen credits are to be uploaded, (which will probably take several months before they are accepted) please go to: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3438598/ As I write, the listing is new and brief - however, by the time you read this it might have a dozen or a score of credits...so please do take a look. My son, Ainan Celeste Cawley, also has an IMDb listing. His is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3305973/ My wife, Syahidah Osman Cawley, has a listing as well. Hers is found at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication prohibited. Use Only with Permission. Thank you.)