Birthday numbers

Sometime today or tomorrow, In The Mists will receive it's two thousandth visitor. This milestone looks set to near-coincide with the blog's first anniversary, which is a happy occurrence. Indeed, I'm pleased that I've been able to come up with enough content that the post count is still going strong, and can see no reason for this to change. Cheers!

As Leonard Slatkin used to say in place of a Last Night speech, some facts:

Traffic to the blog has increased overall, beginning with 149 page-views in the first month of its existence and increasing to 314 in September 2011. The lowest month was December 2010 with just 60 page-views. I (and, judging by forum posts, many other bloggers) seem unable not to include our own page-views in the count, but as this is at best once or twice a week when visiting the blog to log in I hope it is not too statistically significant - and anyway, it still counts as a page-view.


Predictably, the majority of traffic comes from the United Kingdom. Currently, 1454 hits have been from UK domain addresses, which accounts for nearly 90% of visitors. The next (but significantly smaller) country is the United States, again unremarkable due to us being 'divided by a common language'. Below that; Germany, Australia and the Netherlands account for between 20 and 100 total page-views each. Minor players include Italy, Russia, Singapore, Denmark, India, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Finland, Thailand, Brazil, Japan, Pakistan, Bermuda, Latvia and Lithuania. (Ignore the 'Visitors by Country' box as that's only been there a few days).

The single biggest browser used by visitors is Firefox (64%), which is appropriate enough given that every word has been typed in the very same.  11% use Internet Explorer, 9% Google Chrome, 6% Safari and 4% Opera.  Around 5% use various mobile devices or proxies (note that stats do not equal 100% due to rounding).

Similarly, Windows dominates the users by operating system, with a commanding 83% of machines used to access ITM running it.  Macintosh systems are as low as 9%, whilst iPhones, Linux and other Unix are drawn on 2% each. A few hits have been registered as iPad, Samsung or Android, which matches the smartphone browser data in the last paragraph.

Oddly enough the average reader therefore uses exactly the same computer equipment as myself, which could be interpreted as a sign that in some way I am reaching my target audience.

The ten most popular posts, by page-views, are: 
1. What Happened in Hungary: Day One (109)
2. Transportation (68)
3. The River Itchen (Part 1) (51)
4. Neglected Composers #1 (49)
5. What Happened in Hungary: Day Three Part Two (40)
6. My Hovercraft is Full of Eels (39)
7. Neglected Composers #2 (35)
-  Some Cartographic Esoterica (35)
9. On Arrangement (31)
-  Why Violists Rule the World (31)


The number of posts on the site, including this one, is currently 44. This works out at a mean average of 45.45 recurring reads per post. It also means that I'm posting on average almost exactly once a week, as I reckon to have been away from any opportunity to blog for about 7 weeks this year.

By far the most interesting data is on what brought people here in the first place. A sizable number are from the 'adverts' I put on my Facebook page announcing significant posts, but the rest have followed links from other blogs or search engines.  A link from the A History of the World in 100 Objects site listing blogs that mention the programme has delivered a few hits.  The Young Composers forum and Diamond Geezer's blog also generate noteworthy percentages, but in all these cases the content of the link is usually clear. When it isn't, there are some fascinatingly arcane searches that result in a hit. Three people have searched for the Detritus Review, a blog I link to in the sidebar but have never yet mentioned in a post.  'Plane crash intio a27 viaduct near fareham [sic]'; 'sea traffic' and '19th century southhampton oil landscape [also sic]' have no obvious connection to any of the content here, other than that the words appear in disparate places within a year's output.  Some traffic comes from pictures that appear in image search results.  And happily, a few have typed inthemistsblog.blogspot.com into their address bar and come here directly and intentionally.

I never expect In The Mists to become a massively popular and influential blog, and certainly not in its first year, so I'm quite satisfied at having a small but regular stream of visitors reading what is, after all, rather niche content.  Looking toward the next year, I intend to keep the subject matter roughly similar, with perhaps a little more emphasis on revealing the mechanics of writing music.  There will be regular updates on my biggest composition project to date (it involves choirs, and at least two guaranteed performances) following the entire process of creating the piece.  It would be heartening to see another couple of followers join Marius over there on the right sidebar.  Whatever happens, we shall endeavour to continue to provide interesting and enlightening pieces for the world.