I've Moved...

...for simple reasons, i.e., it was cheap and my mate John generously offered to host it, I have got myself a dedicated website. It's called www.soggers.com. From now on, it will replace the Blogger site. If you are a visitor to my blog, please update your bookmarks. If you use a feed, please update it to point to here.

I started the blog following a visit from John, not knowing what to write about. It seems to have settled down to 4 major themes:

1. France


2. England


3. Epilepsy


4. Nonsense

I thought this would be a good point to take stock so I asked myself, "Is anyone actually reading this stuff?" and if they are, "Which are the most popular posts?". Luckily, Google Analytics is there to help me, so I am happy to inform you that, yes, much to my surprise, people are visiting the blog - it seems that I have had 1200 visits since I started, and that 250 of you actually come back for more - masochists!

The list of the most popular pages is interesting (to me) - here are the top 5. Note that most of them were stumbled on via search engines:

1. "Three things I dislike about France". This was supposed to be an amusing piece, but has been picked up by search engines from people who really don't like the French. I wrote "Some Things I Love About France" as a response when I saw that Google picked it out as the number one link for the search term "I hate French people".


2. Saturday "Night Fever". A classic film and a classic post :-)


3. "Generic Medication Considered Harmful (By Me, At Least)". Conspiracy theorists unite.


4. "Ca plane pour moi". Lots of people out there still want to know the lyrics to this song!


5. "Epilepsy: it's all in the mind". Worried people wanting to know about their ailment?

I looked back through the posts (43 in 7 months), and decided to pick my own top 5, based on whether I enjoyed writing it and the reaction it provoked:

1. Saturday "Night Fever". Makes me smile and cringe at the same time.
2. "Three things I dislike about France". I just thought it was really funny and it was something I wanted to write well before I had a blog. I toned down the title after discovering that xenophobes loved it.
3. "Mon Pere, ce Héros". Words never to be expressed aloud and one of the reasons I tell very few people about this blog - I'm just a frustrated, mono-syllabic northern lad at heart.
4. "The Brian Robson Experience". A major turning point for me.
5. "Heisenberg's Bicycle". Concocted on a bike ride home from work, this post generated the most comments and seemed to amuse people.

Actually, there are several more that I really like, so the blogging experience has been a positive one. Interestingly, it seems that there is some crossover between the ones I like and the ones that readers most liked too. I guess that this should be no surprise really - birds of a feather flock together and all that.
Anyway, I have a few more posts up my sleeve yet, so stick around. See you in the new world.