Friday, February 12, 2010

You Prepare a Table Before Me in the Presence of My Enemies. (Psalm 23:5)



Aw, yeah, 3 days in a row! I feel bad for all my readers that have stopped checking every day! Punks! Only the lucky, dedicated few are seeing these latest posts! Well, now, don't y'all feel special!?

Actually, I'm rather surprised at the results of Google Analytics, which I installed on this blog back on Jan 12. I'm a stats-hound to begin with, so studying the numbers is fascinating to me. Believe it or not, I get an average of 35 unique visitors a day, and many come more than once a day! Total visitors per day, including repeat visitors, is 55! Average time spent on the blog is 2 minutes, 22 seconds...

Granted, 30% of the people that have visited the blog since Jan 12 have only come once, but 12% have been 26-50 times (since Jan 12!), another 11% have been 51-100 times, and 7% have been here 101-200 times! Dude, what's up with that! In fact, 3% of you have been here over 200 times in the past month... you must check here 6 times a day to see if I've updated, lol...

You love me! I'm feelin' the love!

Google Analytics is pretty cool. If you want it on your blog, so you can crunch the stats, you need to create a "gadget" and paste the Analytics code into it, and drop it into the sidebar somewhere.

OK, Shifting Gears...

I saw a video on Break today that I tried in vain to locate on YouTube as well, so I could embed it here without those ridiculous, occasionally offensive ads that play in front of it, but I couldn't find it. It was a cool video of a rooftop avalanche, where great sheets of snow slide off of a big, sloped rooftop, and it's a cool cascading effect... I did find a couple other similar clips which I will post here...



and



Pretty cool, in a mild way, I think... yeah, not as cool as that little dog flying down the stairs in yesterday's clip, but cool enough! Hey, we don't have snow in San Diego, so I have to make do with weird videos like this, ok!? Sheesh!

Here's a clip of snowboarders triggering (and then trying to escape from) avalanches out in the wild... pretty cool... but the reason I'm posting this clip is the scene at the very end, with the avalanche racing down the hill toward the camera, and then swallowing it up... you gotta see this... skip to the end if you want...



Sorry about the music...

OK, enough videos...

I saw this today, in an email my mom forwarded to me...

Behold, the Smart Car! 

Now available in an Ultra-Compact Model...

Please, if you ever get one of these cars, stay the heck off of the freeway... in all fairness, I don't know how hard that truck in the rear slammed into the car... it could very well have pancaked just about any small sedan, who knows. All I know is, that driver's body is going to be a loooong time being extracted from that wreckage...

Yeah, I know... kind of a gruesome thing to make somewhat-light of... my apologies. It's in the air - I saw the footage of that luge Olympian that died today, flying off the track and slamming into that steel beam. Dang. I was chatting with Logan online at the time, when I saw the footy, and it brought up my usual set of questions about God, and how involved He is in events like that. Does He cause it, or just allow it? Is every detail micro-managed by God for His own reasons, or is this earth more of a sandbox that is a self-perpetuating system where things happen of their own accord? He could have prevented it, but He allowed it... or did He cause it? If the guy had prayed (or prayed harder) before the run, would it have made a difference? Was the guy's day of death set in stone, or is there fudge room there? If he had walked away from that last practice run before it started, would he have still died some other way? Or would he still be alive? How much of it is random, and how much is dictated from above?

Just stuff to think about...

I had more stuff to dump on y'all tonight, but I think I've taxed your patience enough. Gonna go prepare this week's fantasy novel sample for the writer's group meeting next Tuesday. Adios for now.

Dave

PS Hope your Valentine's Day is a good one...

8 comments:

Odhynn said...

Random, infinite possibilities, and butterfly effect ?
Or part of some Divine Plan ?

I think I'll opt for Random.
After all, is there anyone who can draw the line between God's will and God's sense of humour ?

logankstewart said...

Yuck, I saw that smart car clip a few weeks ago. Pretty scary.

I have no answers. Only more questions.

Unknown said...

That snowboarding clip reminded me of the opening of the Olympics last night. That guy was pretty impressive.

I would NEVER have a smart car in SD. We rely on freeways way too much.

Glad to know you're cyber stalking your fans now : )

Paula Titus said...

Google can do all kinds of neat tricks, evidently. Very cool. :)

The first time I saw one of those "smart cars" up close buzzing around town, I thought it looked like a toy being driven by an alarmingly vulnerable driver. Count me out.

David Wagner said...

Dry: Every possible option seems to have something unsettling about it to me... I'll have to keep chewing on it until I come up with an explanation that makes sense...

Logan and Paula: Maybe in a packed city-type environment, like NYC or Boston or something, a smart car would make sense, but man, keep off the freeways! I thought the same for the mini-Coopers when they came out... although I dont have much problem with motorcycles on the freeway, so I don't know why it would bother me so much... the Smart Car is like a covered motorcycle, in a way...

Rebecca: It's only cyber stalking if I knew who was visiting! It's all just data and numbers. No way to know who belongs to what stat... so you're safe!

Kristopher A. Denby said...

Heavy thoughts about God. And I don't have the time to try and address them, but I assure you that I have the same questions.

Where do you get these photos? Do you take them yourself?

Odhynn said...

I guess that no answer will ever make complete sense ...

The only thing we know for sure, is that we can know nothing for sure ( trust Socrates, he knew his stuff ... )

Abbie said...

nice stats dave... and the worst part about smart cars is that usually frail old people are driving them :(