Elemental

Well, blogday itself was actually yesterday (11 April), but I figure on a sunny weekend people have better things to do than read my blog.

So here’s what I can now justifiably call my annual round-up of delving into Google Analytics.

Despite another year of best intentions poorly executed, traffic continues to astound me. I’m guessing most of it is due to the age of the existing content and people finding old articles. So the growth in traffic is rising exponentially – 106% growth this year compared to 50% growth last year, up to an amazing 24,710 visits from almost 12,000. So bad news for those who want to get rich quick from blogging – longevity seems to count more than any other factor. This is not a fast game…

Bizarrely, my most popular post was again the same post as last year, with 1,696 views for A Rough Guide to BREEAM 2008, published in June 2008. Since publication, the post has been viewed a ridiculous 3,175 times. Now if only I’d been paid per view. The goal for this year is to find content at least as ‘sticky’ as that!

This year has been characterised by Twitter for me. The synergy (apologies for using management speak) between the twitter and blogging has reignited my enthusiasm for blogging. I find it odd when I meet people on Twitter who don’t have a blog (Mark, Nick and Robin) and conversely when I meet bloggers who haven’t taken to Twitter (Casey, Mark and Brian). The two go together like wine and cheese – ideas germinate and get debated on Twitter and then blogging gives an outlet to consolidate these ideas into an opinion or article.

So, thanks everyone for reading and for keeping coming back to my little corner of the internet – guess I’ll have to keep going till 5 at least…

admin Housekeeping Blogging

So I’m almost totally moved into the new pad in London and can’t quite believe I won’t be trekking up to Leeds every weekend any more. The upside is that all my books, files and clothes are now in one place, if not yet quite organised.

In the spirit of spring cleaning which moving house always kicks off in me, I’ve done some housekeeping around the blog too.

I’ve deleted the blogroll page, as a quick look at the stats told me no-one used it anyway. I’ve reinstated a proper blogroll down the side. Worth having a click through to some of them if you haven’t had a look at blogs for a while – there’s some good new ones on the list. If I’ve missed anyone obvious, let me know.

I’ve also upgraded WordPress (remembering to backup my database). Let me know if anything seems to have broken.

I’ve also hunted out all the links and notes I keep meaning to blog. Slowly working my way through them and scheduling some posts for the New Year. Between Instapaper, Evernote, the draft box of my blog and all my notebooks, I probably have a years worth of material sitting about, and that’s without reviewing the books (which are all still in boxes awaiting bookshelves – task for this weekend).

admin Housekeeping

What can I say? Moving house is not conducive to blogging. It all started with a TV aerial, which had a knock-on effect on the choice of phone and broadband and before I knew it, it’s the end of November, I have only just got a landline installed and still no TV and broadband. Obviously it’s the lack of broadband, rather than lack of TV which impacted on the blogging.

Hoping to get back into a routine in the new year – have a backlog of posts the length of my arm to get through.

admin Housekeeping

It’s that time of year again. Time for me to do a clear out of half drafted posts and round up the scraps of paper I’ve been scribbling on, and attempt to write a blog post every day for the next month. I’m cheating, as no-one ever reads this blog on a weekend (some people have things called ‘lives’ where they don’t feel the need to google ‘breeam 2008′ on a Sunday morning – that makes me happy), and only commit to 21 posts, Monday to Friday. And as I already have a regular Friday round-up post of my links on a Friday, I’m really only adding 17 posts. But that’s a fair number more than I’ve written recently (I’ve been doing exciting domestic things instead, like moving house, as anyone who has been following me on Twitter with be painfully aware of). Topics I intend to cover in the next few weeks:

• critique of Passivhaus
• BREEAM AP
• BREEAM vs. LEED
• window u-values
• energy masterplanning

Anything else you want to see tackled? Drop me a line in the comments and I’ll try my best (I might need inspiration by post 6!)

admin Housekeeping blog, Google, nablowrimo, twitter

I’ve succumbed to the lure of turning the blog into a cash cow (not really). As I’ve been decluttering both physical and digital worlds I’ve noticed piles of books which I want to recommend and review. This clearly hasn’t happened, so as a stop gap, I’ve set up an amazon store with short reviews on some of the books – others will appear as I either remember or read the backlog.

Book categories include:

• Economics, Politics and Sociology
• Management, Psychology and Strategy
• Entrepreneurship and Personal Development
• Environmental & Sustainable Design
• Architecture
• Urban Planning
• Environmentalism, Global Warming and Peak Oil
• Food

Categories are somewhat arbitrary and some books cross borders.

You find the store through the sidebar or a page tab at the top of the page. All comments welcome. If you’re feeling particularly benevolent you can buy me a book from my wishlist at the same time. I get a tiny commission on any books sold – I’ll let you all know if I ever manage to earn enough to have to declare to the tax man!

And it must be that September, back to school feeling, but I’ve done a little more tweaking across the site – my long lost avatar is back, and I’ve added a series button on the sidebar (which currently only has the Part L posts, but I do intend to collate all the BREEAM posts together at some point). The site should also look a lot better from mobile devices, including iPhones.

Oh, and I’ve added some more letters to my name – hello BREEAM-AP (yes, a post will follow on this!).

September and October promise to be busy months, but I’m trying to get through the backlog of posts I’ve got bouncing around inside my head.

admin Housekeeping books

Well, slightly belated as 11 April 2009 was the 3rd birthday of this blog, but I figure people have better things to do with their bank holidays than read this blog.

Last year I jotted down some stats, so for this following along at home, I’ll give some quick updates.

My hits have increased almost 50% from almost 8000 last year to nearly 12,000. Which is incredible, really. I once heard a rule of thumb, that it took 3 years for a blog to become established. Seems that’s held up for me at least. So for anyone else who is struggling, and wondering if it’s worth it, keep going, it all comes together eventually.

By far, my most popular post has been June’s Rough Guide to BREEAM 2008, which to date has been viewed a staggering 1,482 times. I’m stunned.

I’m in the process of clearing up links, categories and tags, reviewing old posts, clearing out old drafts and general spring cleaning. I’m hoping to follow up on some of my old posts and tie up some loose ends in the next few months. But no promises. Looking over old posts, I have a very poor habit of promising to write something and then not following it up, as the next, more exciting, shiny thing comes my way. So, if I do it, I do it. If I don’t, c’est la vie!

Again, thanks to everyone who has read, commented, twittered or sent me emails in the past year, especially those who let me know when when my site was broken (which it was for a considerable chunk during the winter).

admin Housekeeping analytics, birthday, Blogging, statistics

In the grand tradition of the construction industry, I’m hanging up my blogging boots for the festive period and having a Xmas shutdown. See you all in the New Year.

admin Housekeeping

For those not using an RSS feed or email and especially those using Firefox, I must apologise for the state of the site.  I have upgraded to WordPress 2.0.5 and my template has gone very askew.  I shall try to fix or downgrade again in the next 24 hours – hopefully normal service will be resumed…

(edit) The problem appears to be the fact that I have been emailing in entries using WYSIWYG and the html is a bit askew.  I’m going to have to go through every entry and clean it up.  Arghhh!  Bear with me, should all be done soon…

admin Housekeeping

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed my new sidebars.  I am experimenting with all that the new improved Google Reader is offering.  Rather than use ‘static’ blogrolls, I am using Google reader to tag items I hold as newsworthy and post to the sidebar.  Generally, these are snippets of news that have caught my eye, but I have neither time nor inclination to write a post about.  Basically, it’s the news as filtered by Mel.  Click on the ‘read more‘ to see all items and to subscribe via RSS.  I’ve also added a feed for all the BREEAM jobs I find.  Again, a job listings as filtered by Mel, which can be subscribed to by RSS.  It’s similar to del.icio.us feeds which some publish, either in posts or on sidebars, but I think it looks a lot neater.  Any comments anyone?
I’m impressed so far with Google Reader and it may usurp Bloglines as my feed reader of choice.  As I already use Gmail, Documents and Spreadsheets, Picasa and Calendar, the integration is neat.  I do feel slightly uneasy about entrusting my entire digital life to the one beast that is Google. There used to be a part of me that took perverse pleasure in being ‘different’ (I owned a Zen Jukebox for years, eschewing the call of the iPod until earlier this year), so this is slightly out of character but for now, I’m googlised, just like everyone else.  There comes a time when the effort taken to be different outweighs the satisfaction from smugly backing the underdogs.

admin Housekeeping Bloglines, Google, job alerts, News, rss, sidebar