Slowly picking up the threads

I’m currently going through an experience that I’m sure many people go through at this time of year.

RibbleheadIt isn’t possible for me, or for many other people, to leave on summer vacation with a clean plate and a clear mind. There are inevitably things that continue on while we are away and there are things that we need to pick back up on our return. These things aren’t just ‘work’ thinks, there are many things outside of my workplace that are also in the same place.

I try not to multi-task anything because I know that I’m very poor at it (I’m also quite sceptical of anyone who tells me that they are). But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things which are part completed or tasks that follow-on from other tasks left floating in mid-air.

The problem is that sometimes it’s not always easy to pick up where we left off and there are follow-on tasks that we know are there but can’t remember quite what they were. We have lists and write reminders to help us, but they don’t always quite get us there.

One good example of this are the set of blog posts that I’ve been writing on my changing workplace. If you are a follower of these updates you will have noticed that I haven’t written a new one for a couple of weeks. The truth is that I wrote the last post prior to my two week break and scheduled it to be published on the first week of absence with the intention of writing another one on the week of my return. The problem is, I’ve forgotten where I was up to. The thread of thought and the progress along that thread has slipped out of my memory and I now need to go back before I can go forwards.

It doesn’t help that I’m a better starter than I am a finisher. I’d rather pick up a new thread than finish the old one. So sometimes I get part way through a thread and just leave it there.

So apologies that you haven’t seen more meaningful updates from me, they will be coming, but it’s going to take me a little while to get back up to speed.

(I’ve also got some photographs to upload from our holiday, not many this time, but it’s another job I need to get around to)

Not taking myself so seriously

Notice anything interesting about the chart below? It’s a chart of the number of visitors to this site:

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Apart from a small general uplift in overall visitors across the period shown the most significant factor is the number of visitors on a Friday. I always get way more visitors on a Friday when I publish a Because it’s Friday blog which always reflects the lighter side of life. It’s a good job I’m not really writing for popular appeal Winking smile.

I’m a publisher?

According to The Register I could be regarded as a publisher and subject to regulation if I was based in Australia:

LindisfarneBloggers whose online scrawling earns just 41 page impressions a day could be forced to apologise to those they wrong on their sites and issue corrections, under a proposed new model of media regulation for Australia.

Under those numbers I would count as someone who needed to be regulated, that is if you class this site as a news site. I’m not sure what counts as a news site? I’m sure that this site could be classed as news under some of the dictionary definitions? I comment on things that are current?

The report then says “If a publisher distributes more than 3000 copies of print per issue or a news internet site has a minimum of 15 000 hits per annum it should be subject to the jurisdiction of the News Media Council, but not otherwise.” The report adds that “ These numbers are arbitrary, but a line must be drawn somewhere.”

We, in the UK, are still in the middle of the enquiries into the actions that sparked the discussions in Australia so I’ve no idea whether anyone is thinking of a similar thing over here. I can’t imagine that 15,000 hits a year would be a sensible number for the UK market though.

King Google the Generator

When it comes to referrals Google is still the absolute king (at least on this site).

Lindisfarne MonksThe following chart shows the percentage of visitors that I received by location for all of last year.

At 62% Google generates, by far, the most traffic. Those young pretenders to the throne Twitter, Facebook and even linkedin barely register on the radar, I get more traffic from all of the people using an RSS reader:

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Is there any wonder people give so much attention to their Google ranking!

I’ve put the pictures back

As part of trying to resolve some performance problems on this site I got rid of the pictures in the header.Over the last couple of days I’ve put them back along with some new ones because some people commented that they missed them.

You might be wondering where some of them are, others are a bit more obvious:

This is San Francisco harbour.

This is Grasmere taken from a beach at the Rydal end. It was taken just before we went swimming on a lovely summer evening.

Lavender in our garden which is a favourite with the local bees.

Another garden picture.

On holiday in Italy we were at the top of the Tower of Pisa as the sun set. This is the view back towards the duomo.

A more local picture this time, taken at Cobble Hey gardens in the Through of Bowland.

From north west to north east, a lovely sunset taken from the beach at Banburgh.

One of my favourite places is Borrowdale in the Lake District.

More lake district, looking across Derwentwater towards Borrowdale.

One summer we decided to try out a Maize Maze. This was the sculpture in the middle.

More sculpture, this was on display at Chatsworth, and on sale – we decided not to ask about the price. They are contemporary terracotta warriors designed by Yue Min Jun.

Another sunset, this time at a local nature reserve called Brockhole.

More lake district and more swimming, this time it’s Buttermere, it’s late spring and the water hadn’t really warmed up yet.

From Lindisfarne looking back towards the mainland.

Finishing off with a view from the far north of Scotland at a little hamlet called Tarbet which is the place where you go to if you want to visit Handa island.

The pictures are configured so that you will get a random one for each page and post that you visit. If you want to see different ones then you need to click around a bit.

There are some others and I’m likely to update them from time to time.