Popular search engines like Google (and wannabes like Bing and Yahoo) are such fun.  Even more fun is looking at them "from the other end" - that is, back up the line from the web sites they lead you to.  Here on Jon's Blog our analysis system reveals tons of statistical stuff, but among the most interesting are the search words used which ultimately lead the searcher to this blog.

Here are a few of the more interesting, in order of frequency - along with a comment or two - and yes, they all relate in one way or another to an article I've posted here:
   
richard r vensal dds  (Vensal appears to be a quack on-line doctor with a dental degree who claims to cure cancer.)

don't ask don't tell

deegay stream url  (Deegay is a gay music streaming service.)
   
vensal asparagus cancer cure  (Uh-huh ... sure.)

men fashion
   
younglife speedos

can i build website and blog with nucleuscms  (Nucleus CMS is the software platform which supports this blog.)
   
interesting article: "my mom had been taking the full-stalk canned style asparagus that she pureed and she took 4 tablespoons in the morning and 4 tablespoons later in the day. she did this for over a month. she is on chemo pills for stage 3 lung cancer in the pleural area and her cancer cell count went from 386 down to 125 as of this past week. her oncologist said she does not need to see him for 3 months."  (Yes, really ... this huge text phrase was an actual search term!  And it worked!)

as dumb as a sack of hammers

teabaggers no sense of humor  (Truly!)

gay internet radio

telebouncer robo call

commercial free contemporary gay music

do gay israeli men bunk with straight ones in the military  (Hmmm ... does make ya wonder ...)

slovenia gay

800 927 2291 sears  (That's the phone number of a relentless Sears telemarketer.)

can you imagine having a christian demonstration against islam in downtown baghdad?  (No.)

gracie allen quotes

internet dance radio

truth of fiction did you know andy rooney

gracie allen how to become president full  (Old time radio personality Gracie Allen did indeed once run for president - well, sorta kinda ...)

german hookers  (German?  Hookers?  What a concept.)

boystownlive.com ap iphone  (Boystownlive is another gay music streaming service.)

football faggots  (That one must have returned tons of hits all across the Net.)

I labor under no illusion that Jon's Blog makes even the most miniscule dent in available knowledge here on The Internet.  It was never intended as anything more than an egotistical extention of my own rather eclectic personal interests and pet peeves, and secondarily as a means to share with my friends (and anyone else interested) news articles and views about subjects I find important, amusing, maddening, seriously weird, or just mildly curious.

Those of you who stop by here now and then know what a wide range of subjects I've discussed (and/or ranted about), and now, after some eight months (this blog was born on October 18, 2007) it's interesting to note which articles have drawn the most interest.

As with most blog server software - and in addition to the total number of visitors to this blog so far (and the number of RSS feeds) which you can view any time in the frame to your right - Nucleus, the underlying structure of this one, offers a number of optional tracking tools which can keep a running log of what goes on here.  While it purposely doesn't record anything personal about our visitors, it does log their IP addresses and what they read here.  So, at times like these, we can get a clue about what seems most interesting to most people.

One of the most telling statistics is the number of links on other web sites which "point" to specific articles here, and the below list is based on those.  Obviously Jon's Blog really is very small potatoes, because in the larger Internet picture, these numbers are truly miniscule.  But they're interesting, nevertheless - most especially the diversity of interests they represent.

Because each new article here appears in a number of RSS and blog content tracking sites, most visits to any given article happen immediately after its posted.  Then, as articles rapidly "age off" those lists, few ever visit them again.  Yet, oddly, some seem to continue to grab visitors ... such as "Eye of The Beholder", below.

So here's Jon's Blog "Top Ten" so far.  The number following each article title is the number of times it has been accessed via a hot link within some other web site or e-mail message (not the total number of times it has been read, which is always far greater).  There are of course dozens of articles ranked below 8, so those numbers are relatively meaningless.

If you'd like to actually read (or re-read) any of these articles, just click on them:

1. Tasteless Christmas Lights 35

2. I'm Voting Republican 28

3. Candidates Positions and Views on LGBT Issues 24

4. Why I Choose Hillary Clinton 21

5. Eye Of The Beholder 13

6. Secret Tom Cruise Scientology Indoctrination Video 13

7. The Science of Sleep 10

8. The Paradox of Our Time 10

9. Internet Radio 9

10. Eating Your Bedroom Wall 9

Oh, and just for grins ... these are the five just below those:

11. Pope to purge the Vatican of modern music 9

12. Messiah Sing - Glorious Once Again 9

13. An Imminent Threat - Yet More Media Consolidation 9

14. Veteran Suicides - Shocking Numbers 8

15. Study says Gay men can earn 23% less than married men 8

Please note that when directly accessing articles on Jon's Blog via News Readers (RSS) or other direct access to an individual article via its specific URL, you may not see comments and replies to that article posted by other visitors and by me.

To view comments and replies, always use the main Jon's Blog URL - http://zzapp.com, and if the article in which you're interested is not then immediately visible on the home page, select its category from the category list in the right pane.  All comments and replies will then accompany the article you seek.

Jon

OK ... I admit it.  I really am a techie nerd.  One of the reasons I'm running this blog directly on my own server is not just so I can also run my mouth, but so I can continue to tinker around inside computers and useful real-world applications.

After I shut down my ISP service a couple years ago I honestly thought I might leave all this technology behind and move on to other interesting challenges.  But no ... even though I was suffering a bit of burnout after having dealt with recalcitrant machines and their human subscribers for twenty years, that was not to be.  I suppose if I were marooned on a desert island, the challenges of finding daily sustenance and shelter might sufficiently divert me from this stuff, but under normally civilized circumstances ... the brain simply doesn't easily walk away from it.  The best analogy I can make to it is crossword puzzles.  Some people are addicted to them because they provide serious mental stimulation.  Same here ... it's an addiction.  But a good one.  And I'm hooked.

This blog runs on an open-source blog software server called "Nucleus", and I love it.  It's loaded with tons of sophisticated features (like automatic RSS syndication feeds, a wide range of "skins", and many dozens of optional feature plug-ins).  Its creator, Wouter Demuynck, and his support site are in Belgium.  The OS under which it operates is Windows 2000 Advanced Server (left over from one of my old ISP web servers).  Yeah, I know Win 2000 is essentially obsolete.  But hey ... hanging above it is a little blue sign which says "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", and I've subscribed to that philosophy all my life. 

So yesterday morning I decided (foolishly, it turns out) to change my e-mail address configured into this blog server.  It offers a nice feature which notifies me by e-mail whenever anyone (me or anyone else) posts anything here.  Alas, I failed to remember that when one does that, he's immediately locked out of the Admin features of his account until he receives a confirming message and temporary password sent to the new e-mail address he configured.   The "gotcha" is that if that e-mail address isn't valid (in my case due to a simple typographical error), the blog Administrator has to manually reset the account.  Fine, except for one teeny tiny thing - I am that Administrator, and I was locked out of my own system!  Sigh ... 

But as with most things of this nature, all was not lost.  A quick visit to the support forum for this software revealed that all it would take to get things back to normal was minor brain surgery in the database this blog system uses.  Of course, to do that, I had to install some sort of database administrator application to allow me to muck around in there.  And as luck would have it, the software the Nucleus writers recommended - "phpMyAdmin" - simply could not find my perfectly working and functional MySQL database.  Neither could Windows own database twiddler "odbcad32.exe".

So after fiddling and cursing for a few hours, I downloaded another free database manager called "DB Tools  Manager".  It's designed specifically for Windows, and it worked immediately.  With it, I changed one switch in the Nucleus MySQL database - and I was back in again.

Working with "crossover" open-source software is challenging.  My blog uses three of them - Nucleus, the blog platform itself, its interactive hypertext processor called "PHP", and its database engine - MySQL.  While they're all intended to run under either Linux or Windows, they were largely developed under - and most of their users apparently run them under - one of the many Linux clones.  Thus while they all three offer various discussion forums, FAQ's, etc. for Windows users, none really offer sufficient technical assistance in depth for Windows problems.  One has to really dig deeply to find solutions to problems with them running under Windows, which software developed exclusively for Windows alone usually provides much more transparently.  I'm guessing that's a major reason one often has to pay serious money for Windows-specific software of similar quality and complexity, while this stuff is free.

BTW ... typical of my apparent knack for seeking out lesser-trod paths, methinks I must be the only person in the entire world successfully running Nucleus under Windows 2000 Server.  Since day one there's always been a small glitch in it (which I immediately worked around) apparently unique to the combination of the two.  None of the volunteer support folks on its forums (including a primary Nucleus developer) have been able to nail it - even though I gave him direct access to my server internals, and he remotely mucked around in it for a couple hours.

Oh, and also ... most people seem to be running it under Apache - apparently the web server of choice for most people using non-Windows-specific applications.  What can I say ... I like Windows.  Always have.  Of course, the fact that I "inherited" this Windows server helps ...

Jon

An honorable man stands behind his words.

He's also quick to admit his errors and to consider alternate opinions when presented with newly valid information.

Such is what you'll read here on Jon's Blog - straightforward and sometimes passionate views of subjects at hand, presented through an open mind.

But ... (and here comes the disclaimer) ... please remember that in addition to being an opinionated guy not shy about telling you what I think, I have good friends and associates who may well disagree.  I'm funny that way - I like being around people who don't always share my points of view.  I enjoy civilized debate, and non-hysterical disagreement is a wonderful stimulus to great conversation.

I've also been known to be affiliated with groups and organizations whose officially public stance may not fully square with my own.  How could that possibly be?  Isn't that duplicity?  Not at all, for the simple reason that I believe progressive change can often best be brought about from within - sort of "clandestine education by example", if you will.

So ... to sum up ... unless quoting someone else, any opinion or point of view you read here is mine and mine alone.  If you agree, I'll modestly take the credit.  If you disagree, go for it - you won't be the first, and probably not the last.

Jon

Have an opinion regarding what you read here on Jon's Blog?

Disagree with a point of view?

Say so!

I welcome your comments and opinions.

At the top of each article, you'll find an "Add comment" icon.  And at the bottom of each individual article (click on an article title to read it individually), you'll find a comment form already open.  Feel free to use them at any time.

As I mentioned in an earlier article, during the some twenty years in which I operated a BBS and an Internet service, I felt compelled to try to remain neutral and supportive of differning points of view on just about anything.

Conversely, here in Jon's Blog, while I still respect all points of view, I most definitely may not agree with them, and I'll say so, in no uncertain terms.  Should you choose to offer a differing opinion in an informed and rational manner, I'll be glad to consider it, then reply accordingly.

Generally speaking, I intend this blog to be about you, me, this world in which we live, the respect (or lack thereof) we and other members of mankind show toward each other, technology - especially computer technology - music, the arts, religion, and - last but certainly not least - politics.

But unless you comment, this will be mostly about me, my opinions, and my points of view.  If that's OK with you, it's OK with me.  But usually, a civil and non-hysterical exchange of views tends to be more interesting.

So ... jump in here.  Let me and our many other readers here know what you think.

Jon

This is the category where you'll find info about the software which runs this blog (Nucleus CMS), the server it runs on (Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server), and anything else of interest I think might belong here.

If you're not "into" computer technology, you can safely ignore this section. But if you'd like a "peek behind the curtain", you might find it here.

I've been into computers and on-line communications since 1975, when I built my first Southwest Technical Products "SWTPC 6800" computer from scratch by soldering components onto circuit boards, then wrote its software in machine language and assembler using the "Flex" Operating System (a precursor to DOS and CP/M, not the later Linux software also called "Flex").

I brought up my first BBS ("Bulletin Board System" - something vaguely like a blog, but not quite) called "GLIB - The Gay & Lesbian Information Bureau" in 1986. It used technology called TBBS - The Bread Board System, and over its ten-year lifespan grew to be a world-class BBS.

GLIB operated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit community service, expanded from its original one dial-up phone line to 32, attracted several thousand loyal members, and proudly accepted several international awards.

You'll find GLIB and me featured in a documentary DVD called "BBS: The Documentary", available at: <http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/>.

When we shut GLIB down (a victim of easy and cheap Internet connections), I planned to retire from designing, operating, and administering computer technology to just being a "user". Alas, IT is in my blood, so I then brought up a local ISP - also operated as a non-profit community service, called "ZZAPP! Internet Services", which provided free Internet dial-up access to deserving individuals. ZZAPP! lasted another ten years until widely-available broadband in our area spelled the death of dial-up.

Now, here I am again, back at it ... and as always, it's still fun.

So if you wish, ask a question about this blog's technology or anything else related to computers, and I'll be glad to try to answer. If I don't know the answer, I'll try to point you to it somewhere else here on The Net.

Jon

This is the "default" message the software which runs this blog posted during installation. I've left it here FYI).

Jon

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