The perspective from a cosmic coincidence

In a spirit -- an ongoing trend -- of sharing too much, I've not been taking my medication lately like I should.

For the first few days, I'd barely notice. So I'd forget further. Then I'd notice that things seem, frankly, a bit shit. It brought a sacrastic philosopher in me -- were things shit because I perceived them that way, or was I perceiving them that way because it was true, and I was no longer placated.

Strangely, I've found that doctors have little time for philosophical discussion, or contemplating how it's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

I discovered a detached almost amusement at myself. When I lost my appetite, and really couldn't cope, part of me wondered "just how far can I push this?".

In the end, I found inspiration in a late-night BBC TV programme about space -- with sign language. I was interested to see if there was a sign for "trans-kuiper belt object".

But I discovered that the earth is the only place in the solar system to see a total eclipse of the sun. The sun is exactly 400 times larger than the moon, but by an amazing cosmic coincidence the moon just happens to be exactly 400 times farther away from the sun.

How can you stay depressed knowing something amazing like that?

Damn lies and statistics

I'm contemplating having a lurker amnesty one of these days. Or weeks. Where, for a limited time you can declare yourself as a lurker, make yourself known, before scurrying away again to lurk.

I used to think a lurker was a type of dog. I was probably thinking of a lurcher, and there's not many of those hanging around here. However, statcounter does tell me that there are quite a few lurkers, from various, far-flung destinations.

I don't know if you count as a lurker if you are openly a "follower" on blogger, yet don't comment -- like a heap of people are on my Peru blog -- or if you have to be truly anonymous.

Either way, I heart my traffic widget -- it's like footprints in the snow (or maybe ash, depending how you see this blog), telling me who has passed by, where they came from and where they went to. Even if I won't know who they are. Setting up one on my Peru blog was a real surprise, there were visitors coming from all over -- including Brazil, Croatia and others I'd expect, like the USA, Australia and Indonesia. Traffic here is much quieter, and less cosmopolitan.

I'm a complete nerd and more than a bit obsessive sometimes about my visitor stats, which is why I love statcounter. I adore the "recent visitor" map, I've tried setting up guest maps on blogs in the past, but I never got an accurate picture of who was visiting. The map on statcounter literally just pins people down like butterflies, and helpfully groups multiple visits from the same city. I'm such a geek that I smile as I recognise some IP addresses from previous visits, and occasionally can point to what IP address represents what person.

The most interesting part is the "exit links", it might be fairly self-explanatory how one visitor or another ends up here, but it's where they click to next that really interests me. It's a great way to find new reading, either the blog of your visitor or of someone your visitor likes. Sometimes patterns emerge, and...yeah I have way too much time on my hands.

For now, I am going to hold off on the lurker amnesty. I guess some people have good reason to want to just lurk -- maybe they feel you should speak only if you can improve the silence, or just have nothing to add. Perhaps they like to just be an unobserved watcher. Or it could just be laziness, like it often is with me... Either way, sometimes maybe it's best not to know -- after all, who would want to have a delurker week only to find the lurkers were all in your head?

Technical Difficulties

I am considering making a return to the blogger-hosted comments. I don't know if anyone is having trouble with Haloscan (other than with the comments not appearing if you view single posts), but I've had trouble logging in to Haloscan to validate the comments. Sure, I could take the moderation off, but with Blogger now recognising OpenID it might be time for a change. The only problem will be all the well-thought out and carefully considered comments left on Haloscan becoming invisible -- they won't be lost for good, since they're stored somewhere else. I even have comments from when I was writing on Diary-X, without the posts they correspond to any more.

Other technical difficulties involve the fantastic Mr Firefox. For no discernable reason, Firefox has becoming very tempramental. One day, it worked fine -- the next: nothing. I click my Gmail notifier to open my email, and nothing happens. The busy light clicks and whirrs on my computer, but nothing appears. I click Firefox shortcuts: nothing. I go to the program's folder: and still nothing. Then, when I had resorted to using IE I clicked an external link on one page or another -- and the target opened in Firefox. I have uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't -- yesterday and the day before it was all acting fine, and I was relieved it was behaving. This morning, there's nothing.

The odd thing is, when I hit Ctrl+Alt+Delte the program doesn't appear as running under Applications, but it's right there in Processes, using up memory and making everything else run slowly -- until I end the process. Somewhere, then, in the depths of my computer it's starting -- but nothing is appearing.

In the meantime, I might switch to Opera instead. It does a good enough job of accessing the web on my mobile phone.