YJL

Yes, I know it's still 2012. When the clock tells me it's 2013, I will be too lazy to summarize it. Besides, Doomsdays is coming, we probably wouldn't have seen the new year. Yeap, I know. Again. Only silly people will believe Doomsdays is true, right? How could they not see the real threat is Juno?

Moving the range one month ahead, so when it's said 2012 in this post, it means from December, 2011 to November, 2012. First, starts with the summary in case you just want to read the numbers.

Summary

• Blog: 331 posts and 85 comments.
• Code: 17,591 additions and 17,874 deletions.
• Gentoo: 1,056 merges and 999 un-merges.
• Emails: 750 mails.
• Last.fm: 4,711 scrobbles ~ 9.8 days (if each track is 3 minute long).
• Television: 1,240 episodes ~ 52 days.
• Film: 29 films ~ 2 days.
• mt: 265.
• gad: 35.47 (yjlv) + 76.18 (brps) = 111.65.

Blog

Basics numbers

331 Posts       378.730 per year   31.561 per month
 85 Comments     97.257 per year    8.105 per months  0.257 per post

First post                     <-  0.9 years ->                      Last post
One-liner text using jQuery... <-  10 months -> Stack Overflow testing revi...
2012-01-16 11:53:00-08:00      <-   319 days ->      2012-11-30 14:34:00-08:00

331 Posts    210 Updated (after 11 days, 3:10:58.704524 in average)

106,338 Words     321.263 per post
541,550 Chars   1,636.103 per post
  1,574 Labels      4.755 per post

With addition 10 spam comments. Most used word is, well, the "I," 3,170 times. I really need to quit that, heck, it's I++.

Only 321 words per post, it's not very long. I wish my posts will reach 1,000 words in average in the future, though I won't keep that in mind when writing. Blogging shouldn't be like that, it should go with the flow of mood, not the word count.

Most commented posts

   25 ( 29.4%): Full referrer URL in Google Analytics reports
    9 ( 10.6%): Sigh, glad I still have Disqus on my side
    5 (  5.9%): Bored? Have some random eats with recipes on ActiveState Code
    5 (  5.9%): Let your readers decide when to load Disqus
    4 (  4.7%): The Reading list in Blogger Dashboard
    3 (  3.5%): GitHub following and watching graph
    3 (  3.5%): Silly retard filename for removal
    3 (  3.5%): Three years with Gentoo
    3 (  3.5%): Custom date time format in Google Docs Spreadsheets
    2 (  2.4%): Fus Ro Dah!

I can't even remember 7 of them which were written in 2012. It's not like I forgot the content, just too many posts that I couldn't recall when I wrote them.

Distribution of posting and comments

. By Year and Month ..........................................................

YYYY-MM  Posts                             |                          Comments
2012-01  16                           #####|                                 0
2012-02  42                   #############|##                               2
2012-03  94 ###############################|#####                            5
2012-04  89   #############################|############################### 27
2012-05  32                      ##########|##                               2
2012-06  24                         #######|####                             4
2012-07  10                             ###|##########################      23
2012-08   0                                |                                 0
2012-09   0                                |#########                        8
2012-10   0                                |#####                            5
2012-11  24                         #######|##########                       9

. By Day of Month ............................................................

Day  Posts                               |                            Comments
 01   9                ##################|####                               1
 02  16 #################################|                                   0
 03  11            ######################|########################           5
 04   6                      ############|########################           5
 05   9                ##################|####                               1
 06  16 #################################|##############                     3
 07  12          ########################|################################## 7
 08  10              ####################|###################                4
 09  12          ########################|################################## 7
 10  10              ####################|################################## 7
 11  12          ########################|#############################      6
 12   5                        ##########|########################           5
 13  15    ##############################|###################                4
 14   8                  ################|                                   0
 15   9                ##################|####                               1
 16  14      ############################|                                   0
 17   6                      ############|#########                          2
 18  12          ########################|##############                     3
 19  11            ######################|#########                          2
 20   8                  ################|#########                          2
 21   9                ##################|#########                          2
 22  15    ##############################|                                   0
 23  14      ############################|########################           5
 24  10              ####################|####                               1
 25  16 #################################|                                   0
 26  10              ####################|#########                          2
 27  12          ########################|####                               1
 28  15    ##############################|##############                     3
 29   5                        ##########|#########                          2
 30   7                    ##############|##############                     3
 31   7                    ##############|####                               1

. By Hour of Day .............................................................

Hour Posts                               |                            Comments
 01   9                ##################|####                               1
 02  16 #################################|                                   0
 03  11            ######################|########################           5
 04   6                      ############|########################           5
 05   9                ##################|####                               1
 06  16 #################################|##############                     3
 07  12          ########################|################################## 7
 08  10              ####################|###################                4
 09  12          ########################|################################## 7
 10  10              ####################|################################## 7
 11  12          ########################|#############################      6
 12   5                        ##########|########################           5
 13  15    ##############################|###################                4
 14   8                  ################|                                   0
 15   9                ##################|####                               1
 16  14      ############################|                                   0
 17   6                      ############|#########                          2
 18  12          ########################|##############                     3
 19  11            ######################|#########                          2
 20   8                  ################|#########                          2
 21   9                ##################|#########                          2
 22  15    ##############################|                                   0
 23  14      ############################|########################           5
 24  10              ####################|####                               1

Labels

29 (  1.8%): Bash
28 (  1.8%): Python
26 (  1.7%): thought
22 (  1.4%): JavaScript
22 (  1.4%): Blogger
17 (  1.1%): shell scripting
13 (  0.8%): Gentoo
12 (  0.8%): Song of the Day
12 (  0.8%): Google
10 (  0.6%): email

Numbers from Google Analytics

Compare to 2011, the numbers are doubled, even four months have no new posts. In Blogger Stats, the pageviews are 172,645, that's 42.7% more than 120,945 in Google Analytics.

Top posts haven't changed much, three posts written in 2012 got into the list.


As for traffic sources, more people from search engine, which is not what I wanted at all.

Television shows and films

In 2012, I watched 1,240 episodes of television shows and 29 films. Just for rough average number 1,240 * 1h + 29 * 2h = 1,240 hours + 58 hours ~= 54 days.

Holy cow, 54 days! I spent two months on watching television shows and films in 2012.

I wish I was wrong but I took very detail records. After I watch an episode, I use VimNotes to take a record with timestamp. One episode per line, so grep and wc can get the correct numbers. I have been keeping record since October, 2010.

If I was able to count my time spent on YouTube, that would definitely contribute a lot.

Code

17,591 additions and 17,874 deletions. Only count towards some of my own repositories.

About a week ago, I resumed blogging and started to revamp this blog. I felt there was too much thing going on unnecessarily.



I removed gadgets at bottom, took down many JavaScript codes and CSS rules, removed theme switching. Now the blog has only dark theme, it used to have switch for color, font, and other style. Fonts have been changed, because I switched to Google Web Fonts, I don't want to serve from Google App Engine. Sooner or later, the bandwidth usage will reach the cap. It actually looks nice with those fonts, though it's quite in different style.

640 pixels, still 640 pixels in width for post content, the same width of most images. Some lines and background color are removed, it looks more seamless when you scroll from top to bottom.

One important benefit from all of these is loading time down to around 5 seconds from 10 seconds. The reduce of loading time is expected since I removed the heck of many things. If I don't use them, then don't put them in. While I was planing the revamp, I checked many blogs which I have subscribed to. 5 to 10 seconds loading time is very common. I've achieved a nice result.

There was one thing I noticed most, other people's blogs don't use footer much. It seems to other people, other than me, they love sidebar. By love, I do mean love. I would say 9 out of 10 blogs have sidebar, and probably half of which don't have footer if you don't count the typical copyright statement line.

I for one who doesn't really like sidebar. I don't have a particular reason, maybe they aren't very useful to me. I always look at top navigation and stuff at bottom of page. Many bloggers stuff too many widgets to their sidebar, it's not a bad behavior, just sort of wasting because visitors don't usually pay much attention to those. At least not after first visit.

During the process, I also tried to find a web service for feedback. At first, I thought GitHub Issues should be good, but not everyone wants to sign up for an account just to post. I didn't want to use very commercial-like service, those have too many buttons and options, I have no idea how to use them.

I then recalled the Google Moderator, that could be a better option, simply because most people have at least one Google account. It's even better when considering the voting, people can rate suggestions or ideas. Most of all, it's simple.

I quite like how my blog looks now, there might still be something I can improve.

Simplicity is a word I like.

As you may have noticed that there are some marks on the right edge, which are the "Right-side navigation" as what I'd call it. They serve as like Table of Contents.

For now, it's three levels:

1. Post title,
2. First heading level in the post, and
3. Second heading level.

Here is a screenshot:


I hope this will encourage people to go through the headings and may be interested in reading more if you don't have to scroll down a page in order to skim over the content, but simply hover their cursors over these marks.

At first, I was planning a list-like at top-right corner as opposite to the settings at top-left corner. It would look like an automatic Table of Content, which I'd wanted for long time, but never started to write it.

However, I got this idea that visualizes the logical position of the heading in the page on the right side.

I wrote first changeset for post titles only, because I was afraid that subheadings might crowd the navigation. Later, subheadings were added in second changeset and the navigation looks fine, not over-crowded at all.

I didn't add a switch for this new navigation yet, I might or not. If you think this navigation doesn't look good, please complain in comment, so I can be motivated to add a switch for it for you to shut it off.

When you click on one mark, the page will scroll to the heading smoothly, not just jump to it directly. This reminds me of my jQuery jk navigation plugin, which also uses smoothing scroll and was installed briefly on this blog long time ago. I seriously want to add it back, so visitors can not only click on the right-side navigation with mouse, but also use keyboard to navigate.

I believe that I am not the first one to implement such navigation style, if you know someone has implemented similar feature for a page, or as a plugin or script, please post the link.

I think this it worth to make it as a jQuery plugin, if you would like to use it, please do let me know. I may create one based on these code and generalize it for broad usages.

I have only tested it on Firefox, so if you see any bugs, I am sure you will, please leave a comment with what browser you are using. Also, any feedback are welcome!

Updated on 2012-05-21T09:40:04Z

It has problem with Google Chrome and since no one even commented about this navigation, I decided to remove this right-side navigation. However, you may still see it in this page.

Of 2012-04-20, pageviews reached a record high of 1,056 views and 671 views according to Blogger Stats and Google Analytics, respectively. One day before, 2012-04-19, they were 722 views and 566 views.

It is coming down, it's just peak because someone listed Three years with Gentoo on some website, then the post got reddit'd and dugg.

Last time this kind of things happened were via StumbleUpon, I don't dislike but nor like. For that kind of submitting websites, I believe submissions with LOL contents suit better. For little deeper reading materials, just not right. The site doesn't actually benefit from it for anything except a burst of pageviews, and that's all about it.

People don't really read these, they just skim over and look for images for a good laughter. The average visit duration is around 1 minute for my blog. However, I did get one nice comment and average visit duration is around 3 minutes for that blog post, but that post has 685 views (in Blogger Stats, as of 2012-04-21T17:54:06Z), so you know how things would pan out from that kind of listing websites.

It's only a short-term like a temporary excitement, a stimulation, which never lasts long. If with luck, you get new subscribers, that is for long-term and good for your blog. From what I see, my subscriber count only increased by one in last few days, I can not conclude that was from that post at all.

Sooner or later, the pageview count will go back to what it used to be and everything become normal again, I bet it would be in just a couple of days.

Every time when I get an email notification from Disqus about new comments, I always feel happy and cheered. However...


I don't get many comments, the truth is the comments-over-post ratio is pretty low. (But I will not trade the commenting quality for quantity) So, this always punches me after I read the first line.

But hey, at least Disqus still does a great job, it does not let any spams slip into my blog. I don't need to worry readers read this spam comment which is written by a poor person who needs to spam others' website in order to get traffic.

As you may have noticed that the posting count has been down for a few days. I've few things to sort out and this probably will last for another week. Not sure how this will go, hopefully I will come back at my full power soon.

This doesn't mean I will stop for this week, only slow down on purpose. The week after next week has some significances to this blog, and I don't want to miss that.

So, whether you care or not, that's probably all for this post.

A recent engage with a reader reminded me of a long existing issue with threaded comments.

I like threaded more than flat. They both have advantages and disadvantages. In threaded comments, as the depth increasing, you can lose in the discussion as you may have in flat comments.

One reason, I prefer threaded is because flat is very easy to get confused when read someones reply to another comment, which could be posted a few ahead. An experienced commenter would include the comment # or the commenters name, but its very problematic.

Another good reason to use threaded comments is some comments are asking for help, with threaded comments, I can reply/answer to the question specifically. The asker can clearly know which comment is my answer to his or her question. This is not something, you can work around with flat comments easily.

Threaded could easy resolve such confusion, but it has own issues. As discussion grows, it can still get complicated as flat comments do.

But another issue has bothered me more than the issue mentioned above, the layout. The comments section is a fixed width design, when there is too many levels of replies, the widths of deeper comments get smaller and smaller. Eventually, it becomes too narrow as you can see the comments in this post.

In Disqus, you can switch to flat or limit the maximal depth of comments. But I dont want to use flat or to have limit of depth.

Right now, there is a new option on top-left corner to switch between variable width and fixed width. It is not meant to resolve, but simply a workaround. I dont really have any good idea for a brilliant layout for threaded comments.

I took the chance to add a notice just before the comments, it says:

Please keep your comments relevant to this post and try not to comment something like only Thanks in entire comment, use the Like button of Disqus, instead. You can use some HTML tags if you like.

This was something I had wanted to do a year ago, finally, I added it. This blog is created with fixed width at 640px, I have to break it, which I dont like, but I dont have better way to deal with.

I always wondered if there is a strong relation between posts count and page views and I believed so, and there is, r=0.9473963054.

This blog was born on 4/16/10, but the first post (after imported on 9/27/10) was written on 9/13/08. So, the data is actually little complicated since a few hundreds of posts got imported in just one day. I set the starting date to 10/28/10, it should be enough.

The page views data is exported from Google Analytics and the post counts is calculated by a script I wrote before with some modifications, little help from command-line tools, then used LibreOffice to do final process and to chart this.

Click trapping is a good thing to prevent you from accidentally clicking on something while you only want to preview the output of your post. But I need to be able to click because I check related posts to see if I can add related internal links for currently writing post.

So, a quick solution:

" get rid of clickTrap of Blogger post writing preview
style blog.yjl.im div.blogger-clickTrap { display: none }

or

" get rid of clickTrap of Blogger post writing preview
style [blog-name].blogspot.com div.blogger-clickTrap { display: none }

for non-custom domain blogs.

No add-on/plugin or whatsoever required, Vimperator/Pentadactyl makes things easier and fixes quick. One-liner, that's all. I used to remove it by using FireBug to delete that element, four clicks, I think.

I do think Blogger should offer an option to disable it, because not everyone is a fan of that. And I do prefer to check links by hovering over link anchors and read the status bar.

Also, on Blogger, you can code JavaScript in your blog post which is awesome for JavaScript topic bloggers, so some UI may be displayed and interaction is needed. Though this is very rare case, 99% people wouldn't code and I don't actually code directly on Blogger but with local file generated with reStructuredText. So this part doesn't cause trouble for me at all.

$ date
Fri Jul  8 21:05:31 UTC 2011
$ YJL rollback
rolling back to revision 665 (undo post)
$ echo Wgasa
Wgasa

The previous post is the 300th post. (This blog actually contains 665 posts, but 365 posts of them are imported from my old blogs) I just found out when I tried to find this blogs first post, I need to find that post because its been almost a year, well in ~40 days.

Is 300 special? Well, not really, but in Blogger Dashboard, 300 is the maximum of the number of posts in one page. Thats still not the real reason why I wanted to post.

Since 2/11, I started to have very strong feeling about blogging. Actually, its way more back than that date, probably last September or even from the beginning. I questioned myself why? Why what? I cant even ask with a complete question. Even I had talked about what I wanted to blog in this blog or in my old blogs, but I now see the doubts in me.

I had been reading and analyzing some numbers.

This is a quick non-update, just to let you know I am still alive but I am in the bad-mood-loop once again. It's amazing how a tiny thing could trigger me into such awful mode.

A quick screenshot to let you know, I have some stuff in my mind and some already in the Markdown files, which not even shown in this screenshot. I like KeepNote but I seem to put notes in and never take them out for organizing or putting them into good posts.

I just couldn't bring up editor and do some writing, I don't consider this post is one if you are asking. It might last for another week, or just a minute? Maybe ∞.

I found myself posting more stuff other than computer topics recently. So, I feel it's necessary to make a correction to the description of this blog.

Just a note.

I have just merged five old blogs of mine into this blog, yes five blogs! See how many I have here.

364 posts merged, that is.

If you are reading this post with a mass of posts in your feed aggregator, that's because I also redirected the feeds to this blog's feed. You should unsubscribe from old feed and subscribe to /feeds/posts/default.

I will write a post about how I merged those post into this blog, I am still doing some task to finish up.

PS. just a side note, it seems that Blogger has a good protection mechanism:



PPS. This post becomes #500.

Many things have been changed in my computer.

• Wrote a script to download Last.fm playcount (scrobbles) and cover arts from Last.fm, showing them in Conky.
• Switched (back) to Firefox 4.0b5pre, sorry Chromium! (Currently using beta6pre)
• Added a masterpiece of ugly Gentoo logo sketch in Conky.
• Styled Firefox's tabs bar.
• Switched to CDM from XDM.
• Switched to HC from SpeedCrunch.
• Switched to Bashrun from BashPad.
• Re-enabled xcompmgr. Love the transparency.
• Updated gcin, nice new stainless-style icon.

Also tried Gnash and OpenCDE. Revived one of my GAE project, next -> word.

And in this blog, 53 posts just in August. Before August, only 31 posts in total. Something must be wrong with me in August! :-D I changed Related Posts gadget to Not So Related Posts and added Blogger's new Popular Posts gadget. (Why are so many interested in Bash + OAuth?)

The following chart is the statistics from Blogger dashboard:



(Someday, it's by day not by month and the Y-axis would be 0, 10000, 2000. Just a dream!)

There are more.

Once again, I started over again. From one blog to blogs with specific topics, then back to one. But this time, I brought a new domain name with me, yjl.im. I think I finally find a domain name I would like to own. Why I suddenly wanted to have a domain name? Two or three days ago, after I saw a .name domain, I began to find one. Somehow, I ended up with .im domain name. I interprets "im" as "I'm," I like that but it has a major drawback, I might be hunt down someday. :)

I also wrote a landing page, a pretty simple one, few links, that's all. I was thinking to use Flavors.me, but it costs money for custom domain, I don't want to use url forwarding to an ugly url. So Google App Engine comes to save my money and it actually could do better if I could design.

I chose to stay with Blogger platform, because I know it better and it has better freedom. I really don't want to pay hosting fee and use less 1% of monthly quota. I had thought about using Blogging software for Google App Engine and even considered writing one of my own, but neither would be easy task. If you know me, I am lazy.

To be honesty, I don't know what I will write or how long I will last until I get bored again. I really like the design I have here, it would be great if I could really write something good articles.

Hope this is a good start!

This is my 7th active blog on Blogger, yeah! lucky 7!

You should already know what this B thing is, which stands for blogging. That means I will post thing about blogging. However, this is not a blog that provides you tips, tricks, or tutorials, at least, not intentionally. It's for storing my notes or experineces of blogging, leaning towards to technical stuff.