A frank look at my third year

Today marks three years since I first posted on Chip’s Quips.  I guess this blog will survive to adulthood after all.  Here are links to the first two bloggiversary celebrations.

During the last year 321 new posts were created here, up from 254 the year before – although 240 of this year’s were collections of links, leaving only 81 instances of original writing on this site, or about one every four or five days.  I’d like to do more of that here in the coming year — we’ll see if I’ll be able to devote the time to it.  In 2008, I continued my pace at TechRepublic and increased my posting at [Geeks are Sexy].  I don’t expect to slow down on either of those.  I added 19 posts to Chip’s Tips for Developers (my private plan to post once a week there falling way short of the mark).  I converted my business site into a blog in April, and posted there a whopping 6 times.

1901 comments were left on this blog over the last year — we’ve had some excellent conversations, and I thank every one of you for stopping by and sharing your perspectives.  Um, except for you spammers (yeah, you know who you are).

Page views and subscribers have both leveled off it seems, and didn’t differ materially from the year before.  It’s been a lot longer than a year since I gave up my quest for the Technorati Top 100, though.  If you ask me, Technorati isn’t even an authority on authority any more (if it ever really was).  I write what I like, and if you like it too then we can both be happy.

To make the distinction between popularity and quality more stark, here are the five most popular posts from the last year:

1. Parental incentive – cut and paste from an email.
2. To all the editors I’ve loved before – stoking the text editor wars for page views.
3. Banana about programming – stole the idea from an email.  Added language wars for extra success.
4. How to clean the toilet without using that nasty brush – cut and paste from an email.
5. Ruby, romance, and revenge – reviewing recent reads.  Book reviews are always good for some traffic when they google the titles.

Now, here are the five posts that I liked best:

1. A Pearl of great worth – memories of my grandmother
2. Don’t drink it – thoughts on religion
3. The worst and the best – how the life of a child is the most precious thing
4. Conversation with a neighbor – my first attempt at science fiction
5. The mud pattern – reality slapstick

What would you like to see more of on this blog?  What, if anything, do you not like about it?

Well, here we go into year four.  I hope you’ll come long.