Oh, look, it's my blog stats.
Blog statistics were one of the things that surprised me the most when I started blogging. I mean, I didn't even know before that webmasters can tell where their visitors come from. Furthermore, I didn't expect that the majority of visitors would come from Google. Or is it just my blog that's like that?
My rate of visits is probably pretty modest. I guess I'll never conquer the world... And I guess my ponderous brooding is sort of a small niche. Anecdotes, human interest stories--I'm not very good at that. Data and information--I'm not particularly good at that either, except within a narrow specialization. I'm mostly good at making abstract rhetoric.
Oh, and puzzles! I can't say I've ever seen a really good puzzle blog (though there plenty of good websites with other formats). Most seem heavily biased towards sudoku and other grid puzzles. Grrrr...
Anyways, part of it is that I'm no good at self-advertisement. I'm too modest to submit to carnivals that often. It's precisely because of the low quality of the Carnival of the Godless that I feel most comfortable submitting to that carnival. And despite skepticism being the central theme of the blog, I don't actually write anything that I would consider submitting the the Skeptic's Circle. My stuff is too speculative and abstract. I wonder if there are other carnivals worth submitting to. But darn it, I don't even keep track of carnivals anymore.
Oh the other route to fame is through commenting on other people's blogs. The problem is that I hardly participate in the blogosphere conversation. Those two outlying points on the above graph are the one time that I linked my null physics post on Pharyngula. It remains my most popular page, despite being one of the more poorly written ones IMO.
But forget fame. Forget the conversation. Blogging has done wonders to my writing ability!
Oh, and in other news, same-sex marriage is made legal in California! Awesome!