A personal bloggy milestone

I realise that, in the grand panoply of the global blogosphere, this is but a mote of dust, on a scale more diminutive than a grain of fine sand tossed into the vastness of the universe. BUT, if you had asked me, some three-and-a-bit years ago, as I hesitatingly tapped out my first post, to visualise 200,000 visits to this blog, I would have laughed at the preposterosity of such an idea. However, yesterday evening (Jakarta time), the image above appeared on my Typepad dashboard.

I still can’t quite believe it. I know that this milestone is, in large part, the result of repeated visits by a small number of dedicated readers, and to all of you, my eternal gratitude. The remainder of this statistic is made up of the serendipitous visitors – and, should you be one of those who happens on this post and lingers long enough to read it, thank you. It’s a pleasure, for example, to see how the activity drops off during school holidays, leading me to conclude that I am somehow helping someone out with something that they wanted (or at least needed) to know. It’s a periodic fascination to look at the “keywords” analysis that shows me how a particular search term has led someone here – a selection from the last couple of hours:

• Coastal tourist complexes
• sand grains which have been magnified
• You have a 7-minute sand timer and an 11-minute sand timer. How can you use them to cook a piece of…
• global sediment discharge
• murano glass factory in venice
• permo-triassic event
• bacillus pasteurii uses
• alcanivorax borkumensis oil spill
• 2004 tsunami
• pink coral with tentacles
• verkhoyansk mts map

plus, of course, the ever-popular “Andrew Clemens.”

It’s not that I scrutinise and analyse these things on a daily basis, but it’s intriguing, to say the least. So there we are, enough introspection – but all this brings an added dimension to life that I never anticipated, and which is very much appreciated. SIGNATURE

Comments

Malcolm (2012-03-08):

As a new geomorphology grad student, I’ve appreciated your passion for a certain category of sediment grains and the knowledge of it you’ve imparted to us via your book and blog.

Sandglass (2012-03-09):

Malcolm, thanks, your comment is very much appreciated.

Mohsen al-Dajani (2012-03-09):

Congratulation Michael, your blog has been a great resource for me in the past and I am sure it will do much more in the future…onward!

F (2012-03-10):

Hurrah! As a small token in celebration of this, your bloggy milestone, I offer some recent finds. Perhaps they are not something which you have encountered already. ;)
http://www.eeescience.utoledo.edu/faculty/stierman/oakopen/gsa/P05.htm
GEOPHYSICAL AND GIS INVESTIGATIONS OF THE OAK OPENINGS SAND RIDGE
http://www.geology.ohio-state.edu/~vonfrese/gs100/lect18/index.html
Scroll down almost to the bottom to see the missing sand and shoreline, figs 18.31 & 18.32.
Cheers!

Richard Bready (2012-03-10):

Congratulations, Michael! A milestone well worth noting, on a sedimental journey. “Even small quantities…rapidly start amounting to significant numbers” (Sand, p.68), and yours are now positively Archimedean. What a fascination, to see those query terms, one after the next as though you could watch the trickle through a sandglass, grain by grain. And all drawn toward you by the skill and dedication of your efforts. As a dedicated reader, I look forward to many more posts, many more search hits, myriad after myriad.

Sandglass (2012-03-10):

Thanks, Richard, as always.
“A sedimental journey” - why didn’t I ever think of that???

Sandglass (2012-03-11):

F: thanks for the comment, and the links. No, I hadn’t picked up on them - coastal management and barrier islands again (see the latest post)!

Suvrat (2012-03-12):

congratulations Michael - hope many more sand grains wash up to your web shores!

Originally published at: https://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2012/03/a-personal-bloggy-milestone.html