The Post Of The Beast

This is the 666th post of this year!

 Have some Maiden!

 

I Think Most Of My Traffic Is Fake

Here's a screenshot of the search words that lead to the blog:

Yes, a person typed in those search terms... 

Mutter Mutter

Posting pics has, once again, become unreliable at Blogger.

If they'd just stop breaking the "Insert Image by URL" feature, I'd be fine.

Copy-pasting the image to the page as a work around started working erratically, and was making hot-links to the URL I wanted to insert anyway rather than actually dropping the image.  Those links die for some reason. 

Uploading the image to Blogger has never failed, but there's reasons to not use that; not least of which is the limited space provided.

I pay flickr for unlimited space, I'm not going to pay someone else too. 

They Keep Breaking This Feature

Blogger keeps breaking the post picture by URL feature and I have now idea what could be the cause.

It's not because the URL is broken, because if you manually enter the html for the hot linked pic, it appears correctly.

It's their interface that's busted and keeps getting busted after they fix it.

Feedback has been sent to whomever keeps track of such things and it will prolly start working again tomorrow for a few weeks. 

Department Of Redundancy Department

I've been posting about things I'm doing and updating and bringing forward old posts that relate to the things I've been doing...

Which puts two very similar posts right next to each other...

For now.

Many of them will be updated again and brought forward, putting distance between the posts later.

I makes me wonder how many of my readers delved into the archive from the beginning.

I look back from time to time and see that my position has changed on a couple things, and not at all on others.

Some things without changes have gotten new posts where I try to better mean what I am saying.  Sometimes I do a better job with successive iterations.  Other times... 

Coincidence

Shooting News Weekly posted an article about shoulder holsters yesterday too.

I didn't find out until after I'd posted and saw a link to the article from Instapundit.

Great minds and all.

Figured Something Out

Flickr adds a lot of extraneous stuff onto the end of the image links.

The full size photo link is:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54825718145_1d2ce9b74d_o.jpg?s=eyJpIjo1NDgyNTcxODE0NSwiZSI6MTc2NDMxNjI1NywicyI6ImEzMWJjY2EwZTE3NmRhMWI0ZGUxZmJhYTk5OGEwOTExMGE4MjJlMTUiLCJ2IjoxfQ

Won't work to insert an image using the URL link with Blogger.  You have to trim it down to: 

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54825718145_1d2ce9b74d_o.jpg

Even that doesn't always work...  But selecting the 1024 image often does...

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54825718145_5ff00e1a42_b.jpg

Manually copying the HMTL code always works!  This is that overlong string.

The links are good, but Blogger refuses to fix their "what you see is what you get" editor.

AI Bots?

Some older posts with no relation are seeing some traffic in the stats.

Some AI building a large language model from this place?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Considering how incoherent I can be, garbage in, garbage out! 

Not So Smart After All

Remember this diatribe?

Turns out that Mr Cantwell wasn't an anarchist or libertarian at all!

He was a full on bigot!

WOW.

I am so glad I am on record disagreeing with him. 

Four Posts I Already Did

I'm not linking to them, but I had ideas for posts, checked to see if I'd covered them before and had...

20 years of blogging means you've said a great deal you set out to say already.

Traffic

I have fewer visitors overall than Silicon Graybeard since I moved to Blogger fifteen years ago, it would seem I'm doing similar traffic lately.

I hit five million views in March this year.

I hit three million in May 2022.

I hit one million in December 2017.

Random and erratic posts about guns and GURPS appears to have a growing audience because I'm on track to break seven million by the end of the year.  Maybe even by Halloween. 

I'll Get Further

I'm going to go teach the neighbor's dog to program a VCR.

It will be simpler.

I am reminded, often, why I did not pursue a career in teaching.

Teachers are not allowed to say, "No, you fucking idiot," when they get frustrated that the student doesn't want to learn.

It's not constructive.

I've never been good at conveying what I know to others.

It's frustrating watching them not understand and being unable to rephrase it so they will.

I fail to communicate.

This makes it harder to spot when the reader is actively refusing to understand.

But when every interaction leads to frustration, over and over, I wonder why they still come here.

I know I will be happier if they stop.

The MO is to be contrarian here in the comments, act like they almost grasp a topic, then run to their own blog and mob of worshipers to bask in the glow of their "OMG you're so right and McThag is SOOOOO wrong!" adoration. 

I watched this pattern repeat a couple times and haven't bothered checking their page for what they're saying for a long time.  Even if they announce in a comment they're taking their ball home.

He's been banned from commenting here before during COVID.

I think that unbanning him was a mistake.  The worshipers coming here to berate me should have been the last straw. 

It's Good To Be The Admin

Something I can do as the admin here that normal commenters cannot do is make multiple tries at my comment without anyone seeing the errors.

I can go, "Shit!" delete the message, after copying it, edit the content and then post it again.

Occasionally, it takes several times to delete my typos and errors.

More than once I've changed my tone in my reply too. 

The Flying Monkeys

I tend to get two modes of operation.

First is when I explain why I'm talking about something then talk about it.

The rationale gets repeated as the subject and I get comments about how wrong I am about what I said.  Ignoring that this is just and explanation about what I went on to talk about...

These are the kind of people who read "Well regulated militia," and say there's no reason to have a personal firearm.

Two blogs in particular send the flying monkeys like this.

They read what they think I said without getting to the conclusion and castigate me in a way that ends up justifying my feelings on any given matter.

They comment with little tests to show how clever they are and how uneducated I am.  Tests that don't have any bearing on the conclusion I've come to.

My second mode of operation is just saying what I thought about something with little to no explanation.

Now the predominate comments demand that I explain.

My position gets posted to one of these blogs and the flying monkeys come here to explain to me why I am wrong and why I feel the way I do.

So far, they've never managed to actually hit my reasons for feeling the way I do.

But it's starting to feel like these two blogs don't do anything but read other folks blogs so they can shit on them for their followers to expand out like flying monkeys and shit in the comments.

Been here before, it dies off after a bit.

I don't even read those blogs, I just have started recognizing the monkeys.

Since I piss them off so much, they should stop reading here too. 

Every Single Time

Every single time I've mentioned the CMP is selling M1911s, someone just has to mention you can buy a new one for what the CMP wants.

It's an odd psychological compulsion.

I should have finished my degree and gotten a job in academia to get a grant to study it.

It happens with cars quite often as well.

Glitching (fixed)

If you have the same glitch I have with Blogger, you will only see one (maybe two) post on the main page.

I have not deleted my blog's content, it's just decided that the most recent post will be the only post shown on the main page.

It's done this before and as I make new posts, they go above the one with the glitch. 

Update: It was something associated with copy-pasting the image I screenshot to the previous post.  All better now and this post will be confusing if you didn't see the glitch. 

New Bots

Guten Abend, meine neuen Leser aus Brasilien!

Bist du wegen der GURPS oder der Waffen hier oder einfach nur wegen der schrillen Beleidigungen für bigotte, rassistische Idioten?

Shit!  That's Argentinian.  Hang on.

Boa noite meus novos leitores do Brasil!

Você está aqui pelos GURPS ou pelas armas ou apenas pelos insultos estridentes aos intolerantes e racistas?

Truth

 

Good Morning Vietnam!

In addition to Singapore pouring on the hits, Vietnam has joined the ranks of readers.

I guess they don't know they play the bad-guys in two of my GURPS campaigns.

Pic Code

 The code that the "Insert Image by URL" button generates is:

Click to embiggen.

That gives this result:

If I just copy-paste the image I right clicked and "copy image" it gives this code:

And this result:

The images look the same, but the html is completely different.

Isn't that odd?