UPDATED 5/15/2013 — We have been visited by Greenland!
WordPress has a new stats widget which tells me not only how many visitors are coming to the website on a daily basis, and what they are reading, but also where they are coming from. This is a relatively new feature, and one which as yet does not allow me to automatically share these interesting statistics. But I have been reading them with increasing interest, not least because I am not used to seeing flags from so many countries. Here’s a list of the flags and hits we have received on a per-country basis in less than 18 months:
It really should be no surprise that the US has by far the largest number of blog readers, followed by the UK, Australia, and Canada. Seeing South Korea tops among non-English-speaking countries suggests that their famously high internet bandwidth has enabled them to read everything else on the Internet already, and thus have the spare time to browse more esoteric sites like this one. Good for them!
As the top two economic powers of Europe, it is no surprise to see Germany and France near the top of the list, nor is it a surprise that economic and musical powerhouse Brazil is also top 10. But I am hard-pressed to find many theories that would explain what happens thereafter, other than the fact that lots of people all over the world share a passion for music, architecture, technology, and beauty.
I do know that since designing Manifold Recording, Wes Lachot Design has seen a marked increase in business from around the world. And I have noticed that when I get a lot of hits from a new country, it may very well be a prospective client either getting ready to talk with Wes or, having talked with him, really trying to wrap their minds about what building a studio is going to be like. (My answer: it is harder than you think, and more satisfying than you can imagine.)
But what I really wonder is whether you, the readers, are in fact part of an as-yet unrealized community. So many of you read this site, yet so few register and comment. Who is to know who might share common interests, or, working together, achieve common goals? I don’t…yet.
But that’s OK. I write these blog posts in part because I am trying to create a record, a history of thoughts and ideas to which I can refer. The world is changing so rapidly, and what we believe true, or what we believe we remember as true, can change, too. These writings, imperfect as they are, represent at least a snapshot of those truths, landmarks we can reference as we change course or adapt to shifting winds.
Please do continue reading the blog, and please do register and comment if you are so inspired. I’m planning to start doing hang-outs on Google+, and perhaps I will have a chance to interact with some of you there. Thanks for reading!
P.S. It took no small effort to capture this image from my web browser to this web posting. You would think it would be a simple matter to just print to PDF, import into an editor, clean it up, and then upload the result to WP, but once forms get really long, Firefox, GIMP, and Adobe all fall apart. The final winning combination: print from Safari and import into Inkscape. Bugs have been reported to Mozilla…hopefully they will fix them.