Flowers

In the Cave at Udo Shrine (2)

In the Cave at Udo Shrine (1)

Unrelated Segments

This Week in Hockey...

... my beloved Boston Bruins handed the Vancouver Canucks their collective asses on a platter. After losing the first two games (of a best of seven) in Vancouver--games which were very close and they could just as easily have won, the Bruins won the next two in Boston by a combined score of 12-1. The Bruins kicked ass. With two of the last three games in Vancouver, the Bruins will have to win one away. The next game is in Vancouver tomorrow morning (Japan time). I'll be watching with a hangover. I hope the Bruins are feeling as nasty as I will be...

==========

Link Land

--Future events such as these will affect you in the future.

--You won't.

--I grow concerned for your craniofacial integrity.

--The most feared punctuation on earth.

--Top thirty Japanese emoticons.


==========

Rainy Season

It's generally a chore for me to find anything positive to say about rainy season in Japan... Wait, here's something: Because it's raining, I can't walk the dog. Because it's raining, I can't go out for my regular walk and exercise. Because it's raining, I can start drinking beer earlier. Because it's raining, I can post something on my blog. Because it's raining, you have to read this drivel... I guess it's all a matter of perspective...


==========
It's possible, perhaps likely, that Sitemeter sucks.

I'm not really one to dwell on how many page hits my blog gets each day or month or whatever. Considering the effort I generally put into this blog, I figure I get about as many visitors as I deserve--sometimes maybe more. I *am* interested, however, in how people (aside from friends) end up here. I'm interested in the search terms they use, what pictures or posts seem to draw attention, that sort of thing. Like most (maybe all?) of my blogging friends, there are no ads on my site. Just me blowing my own horn... Like most bloggers I know, I've been using Sitemeter to keep stats for this site since Day 1.

Anyway, of late I've been checking out Blogger's stats for my site and comparing them to what Sitemeter says happens in these parts. (In fact, it was only recently that I even noticed that Blogger offered a "stats" tab.) The screen grabs below are from earlier today.

Here's what Sitemeter says (from this afternoon):

And here's what Blogger says:

Now, the two numbers that jump out at me have to do with today's visitors and the total, or all-time visitors. The daily visitors numbers tend to be much higher according to Blogger. And, Blogger has only been counting for about a year, but Sitemeter has been counting for about 8 years. The two systems, whatever they are, don't even come close to matching up.

Common sense tells me that Blogger/Google has a much better handle of traffic on its own sites that any third party could. The two services measure somewhat different metrics, but if Sitemeter's actual hit count is as far off as it seems, then it is pretty much useless.

I've noticed that Blogger stats records a lot of spammy-looking page hits. But I've also noticed that Sitemeter misses a lot of really legitimate page hits from actual links. (I'm reminded a bit of Technorati--is there a more useless site on the web?)

I'm very close to dumping Sitemeter...

==========
Heartrippers: getting ready to rock Miyazaki this summer.

We changed the name of our band...

Back down to a 3-piece, a little heavier, a little jammier. Now if only someone besides our middle-aged ex-pat friends would come and see us...

At Udo Shrine (2)

At Udo Shrine (1)

Random Crap on the Beach: Some Frayed Rope

Random Crap on the Beach: A Lightbulb

Random Crap on the Beach: Driftwood

Wildflowers**

**Or whatever...

Random Crap on the Beach: More Rope

Butterfly

Random Crap on the Beach: "1305"

On the Beach

Unrelated Segments

It looks like the exercise regimen I put myself on after being abducted and anally probed by aliens disguised as doctors is starting to show results. I've lost 4-5 kilos in the past few months, and last week I discovered that I've gone from a (Japan) large to medium at the local Uniqlo. I've had to make new holes in my belts. If I've cut down at all on eating, smoking, or drinking, it's only during the 1-2 hours a day I'm walking/exercising. Pretty good deal, I'd say. In fact, the walking/exercising itself is a bit addictive...
-----
This photo blows my mind.
-----
Oh, you hate your job?
-----
The web has saved my life: Unless I've been occupied at work or important family-related stuff, I've been able to watch my beloved Boston Bruins make their way to the finals of the Stanley Cup. There is *no* hockey on TV in Japan. I don't consider myself a particularly whiney kind of ex-pat (at least not for several years), but having hockey at mt fingertips is an incredible stress-reliever. Well, so long as the Bruins are winning, anyway...
-----
Is Game of Thrones good, or what? It reinforces my belief that TV will, eventually, eclipse movies. There may always be good movies, but stories with money and production unconstrained by a 2-hour "time limit"? Bring them on. Bring them all on...

Random Crap on the Beach: Buoys

Random Crap on the Beach: Some Rope

Numbers

Dead Moth

Stoned

Beacon #6

Dusk, After the Rain

Rainbow

Vending Machines, No. 133

Sidewalk

Vending Machines, No. 132

Inside Looking Out

Technicolor Dreams...

Rocks and Water

Riverside

Water Over Rocks

Vending Machines, No. 131

Merkabah

"Pray for Japan"

Crashing Wave

Colors (4)

Bright

Falls

Colors (3)

By the way...

If you're having trouble posting (the spinning wheel in the post box), go into the "Settings" tab and switch back to the old editor. It worked for me.

I don't know if this is a Firefox 4 issue or if it's a Blogger issue...

Yellow and Purple Purple, Green, and Gold!**

**By special request!

Black and White

Colors (2)

Vending Machines, No. 130

Cosmik Debris

Look here, brother, who you jivin' with that cosmik debris?

Frank Zappa probably sounds like so much noise to a lot of people. To me, that "noise" is the sound of the universe itself. Here's Frank, sounding more bluesy than "noisy":



Yeah.

News from the Old Country

While I was away on a brief holiday earlier this week there was an election in Canada. After several years of minority governments, my countrymen have decided to give the Conservative Party a majority. Outsiders may see this as a swing to the right in Canadian politics, and in a relative sense I suppose it is. More objectively though, calling a Conservative victory in Canada a "swing to the right" is like calling a Democrat victory in the U.S. a "swing to the left." Yeah, right...

The Liberal Party was almost wiped out in this election. Liberals have governed Canada for most of my life, so this is an interesting development. Interesting, but not unforeseen. The Liberals have been rotting from the inside for several years now.

The really big news is the NDP (New Democratic Party). I've been away too long to really know what these guys have been up to lately (and frankly, living in Japan is the perfect excuse not to follow Canadian politics...), but they used to be a real Left Wing party--unicorns in every backyard, free hot dogs for the kids, all that crap. The NDP is now the official opposition in Canada. This leads me to believe that either a) they've toned down the "heaven on earth" of most truly Left-leaning parties, or b) a lot of Canadians have lost their fucking minds. I'm going with a) because...

The NDP did something the Liberals could never manage to do--they completely obliterated the Bloc Quebecois. The Bloc is (was?) a political party whose sole reason for existence (hey, like Orwell, I think if I can say something in English then I should; if it gives me, in this particular instance, a certain feeling that I can't really describe to say it in English, well, that's life!)... Where was I...? Oh yeah, the Bloc existed only to destroy Canada. At one relatively recent point they were actually the official opposition. Good fucking riddance to a party that never fielded candidates outside of Quebec, and that benefited from the very political system and country it worked to destroy.

Apparently the leader of the NDP, Jack Layton, is quite a compelling figure. I honestly don't know much about the guy (I'm not following Canadian politics, remember?). Today, though, I saw this story from the CBC, in which it appears that Layton (in 1996) was a customer in a massage parlor that was raided by the Toronto police. No charges were ever laid but, somewhat strangely (well, not really) this story was leaked to the media a few days before the election.

I remember (back when I was still living in Canada--sometime around the Pleistocene Era) getting into a political argument at a party with a middle-aged woman (er, I was younger then...). In what I'm sure she considered a death blow to my left wing rantings, she blurted, "you liberals are all pornographers!" I think they call this a "straight line" in show business; it was certainly the line that I'd been waiting for. I countered, "yeah, well, you conservatives are all thieves, and what's wrong with fucking anyway?"

Remembering that encounter makes me feel a bit homesick...

Colors (1)

Small Shrine by the Side of the Road

Kite (3)

Basket of Shells

At Play Among the Tetrapods

Kite (2)

Dork with a Camera