Quarterly Update

Today marks the point at which one quarter of the year has already passed...somewhat. There are 366 days this year, so the quarter-point is the 91.5th day, or at noon on April 1st at the same time. And I published a blogpost yesterday, so today gets the honour of being designated as the quarter-point by me. I'm sure it's proud. So here are three unrelated miniblogs, partially about the blog and partially about some other stuff.

Blog stats

This is the 41st blogpost of the year so far, or in other words, just under a third (30%) of all posts have been published in 2024 to this point. I used to publish nearly every day, then started posting every two days and stuck to it quite well, but coming back to school and having other, somewhat more important responsibilities, mean that the daily average is now down to a post every 2.24 days. The shortest blogpost was fewer than twenty words, whereas the longest was about 1,400. 

My regular trend of publishing book reviews at the start of each month has waned a bit. I've only read five this year, and I need to change that immediately. I've got JD Ballard on my shelf, waiting to be read. Yet my music reviews are at least coming along well - I'm 40% of the way there with the New Order reviews, and I'll never tire of writing about how great Peter Hook's bass is.

Some of my most popular blogposts were about my Bristol and Cambridge trips, and my posts on sugar, ion tests and ideal gases were also popular. Two posts - the 2023 post "Six Miniblogs on Snow" and this year's "Sugar" both got two very lovely comments - more than I expected. And then there's the fact that my St John's College post has been indexed, so All Over 2a is finally on Google!

Music stats

My musical preferences remain shifted firmly in the 70s, 80s and 90s, with artists that would make oldies radio stations blush. Depeche Mode have been my most listened to, but compared to the previous year, I've listened to them less than I did my previous most listened to. Yet I've also been listening to similar amounts of music this year - about 3,000 tracks - suggesting my tastes are becoming more diverse. Yay.

Photo stats

I gave myself the challenge to take one photo every day this year, and so far, I've managed. Some have been much worse than others, purely out of necessity to keep the streak going. But the photo I'm proudest of is probably this one:

Goalposts at Wandsworth Common
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's an unusual pick, I know, and I already featured it in the Wandsworth Common blogpost. But the goalframe nicely contrasts with the green, and the houses at the back makes it look nice, too. Yet that's unfair considering I also took this photo in Egypt:

Egyptian desert

 

 

 

 

 

 

You wouldn't have seen it yet, the only blogpost I wrote about the trip was on the pyramids in Giza. This landscape though is rather striking, and I'm still amazed the sky was such a clear blue.

Epilogue

There isn't all that much to analyse and nitpick from ninety-two days in a year that I'd want to blog about. The more I did, you'd be seeing stats on my breakfast preferences, and there's no point recording that data anyways. But sometimes it's nice to look at a year from a point so far and see how it's going, and for me this year has been alright - these stats (and some others) confirm that.

See you on July 1st (but probably not for another update).


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