500!!!
It’s hard to believe, but this is post number 500 for j2fi.net! I owe so much to the readers who have followed this site for the last little bit as well as all those who have left a comment over the years. If it wasn’t for your readership, I would have stopped doing this a long time ago.
So for the big go-hyaku kiji (500th article) I’d like to share some of my thoughts on the five most popular posts for this site, as well as a few of the biggest disappointments.
Most Popular Articles
1. Japan’s Attempt at Internet Regulation Scares Me
Less than a week after this post was put up, it was Stumbled and resulted in some major traffic. At one point, the number of visits in a 24-hour period had exceeded the total combined traffic for the two weeks prior. It’s popularity was incredible but, oddly enough, only Nick has left a comment.
2. An Open Letter of Apology
Although a work of fiction, this recently rose to the Top 5. Thanks again goes to StumbleUpon and the person that submitted it. Heck, for the amount of traffic that SU can bring to this site, I’m almost afraid to think of what a top spot on Digg, Reddit or even a prominent posting on SlashDot would do. My web server’s okay, but I wouldn’t want to tax it into oblivion … yet.
Well, truth be told, if I did notice some high processor usage, then I’d pay the extra for a better server. Lord knows I’m not too impressed with the MySQL performance on this box, but I can’t justify a higher price tag for my own SQL queries 
3. China Airlines 737 Catches Fire in Okinawa
My first foray into the world of semi-live blogging! Having been home when the story broke, I quickly posted the entry and earned a top spot in the Google and Yahoo! SERPs. This was mainly attributed to the time difference between Japan and the western nations, but who am I to complain? Heck, I had something on Google before CNN or any of the other large news sites. With the initial post, which was originally all text with a few pictures I had snapped with my camera, traffic to this site increased eight-fold in less than six hours. It kind of made me wish I could do this sort of thing more often.
4. How Not To Boost Your Alexa Ranking
It’s funny how some of the most negative articles on this site receive the most attention. Heck, I’m surprised there wasn’t more of a response on my damning op-ed on Palm’s abysmal failure, the Foleo. Five years in development … puh-leez.
Back on topic, though, this article discussed my experience with some of the Alexa-boosting schemes that are out there on the interwebs. Suffice to say, I did some serious damage to some Virtual Machines, thanks to all the less-than-desirable pieces of horrid software that was force-fed to the make-believe computers. If you ever have any doubts about how a piece of software will operate on your machine, or what it might expose to the world, consider running it in a virtual machine. I can’t tell you how often these digital sandboxes have saved me a ton of headache
5. Another Blah Apple Product
My first article to receive attention through StumbleUpon (I’m seeing a trend, here). Written during a critical time last year when I was feeling particularly useless at work and after having several arguments with devout Apple fanatics about nothing worth discussing. Apple users tend to remind me an awful lot of religious people. You have the vast majority that are down to earth and fun to be around, and then you have the fanatics who make us question the entire Apple microcosm — allowing us to paint the whole crowd with the same brush, as it were.
That said, my comments about AppleTV are just the same for the Macbook Air. Both are too underwhelming and blah, and I dare anyone to prove otherwise.
Biggest Disappointments
There are some days when I’m quite fired up over a subject and I can’t wait to get it off my chest. Often these posts are the longest and most controversial, but result in next to no traffic and zero comments. Here are my five largest disappointments.
1. Give a Man a Fish … – Challenging the Homeless
2. Should We Mine the Ocean? – Ripping Up the Ocean Floor for Minerals
3. Defending the Guilty – The Canadian Legal System is a Joke
4. Heroes Shouldn’t Always Come Free – Rescue Services Should Charge Fees
5. Another Ethical Dilemma – What Genetic Material Can We Donate to Our Children?
Oh well. Perhaps one day someone will find my passion and aggressive stance towards these subjects useful or, at the very least, comical.
What Have I Learned?
Writing a successful post is often hit and miss. Occasionally I’ll put something together over a few days that I think is solid work with lots of great information and accompanying links to prove my case only to hear nothing, while other times I’ll write something off the cuff that I think warrants no feedback only to receive 8+ comments (8 is a big number on this site). Does this mean everything should be written in haste with no regards to form or purpose? Heck, no. But it seems that a few articles here and there doesn’t hurt 
What Do the Next 500 Posts Have to Offer?
With a decent amount of success on Japanese politics and upcoming technologies, I’ll continue writing about much of the same. Why change what works? But, that said, I can almost guarantee that I’ll continue discussing topics that either upset or excite me. Heck, I still have a wedding coming up! Gone are the days of paid posts (not links, though), and you can rest assured that I won’t drop the ego or tone of my articles.
Doing so would take all the fun out of writing.
Comments (10)
500 posts in less than two years right? It’s amazing how you keep putting out such lengthy, well written articles so frequently. Mike and I were talking about how you find the time to do it, and I can only assume you do the bulk of it during your daily commute.
How do you measure a popular article? Stumble Upon is awesome for sending traffic but those visitors don’t know what they’ll see until they get here. My favorite articles from j2fi would be different to the top 5 you’ve listed. I guess we all have our own favorites, and that’s what makes blogging so personal!
I look forward to the next 500 articles!
Truth be told, I give up sleep to make the time for blogging. One of the reasons I write the way I do on here is because I don’t have the ability to adequately express myself during the day. It’s quite difficult talking about these subjects with people who are having trouble making sentences with simple present progressive grammar structures. It’s not that I can’t do it, but I can’t properly convey the depth of my passion or frustration with something.
Of course, I also use my commute to some advantage, as that affords me quite a bit of time to make notes and proof-read before returning home to give up sleep and type it all out. I’ll show you my PDA one day and you’ll see. Not too many people have ever wore through three screens on a portable computer before, and I’m in desperate need of a fourth
As for “measuring popularity”, I am a SQL nut. So I often just connect to the MySQL server and run some custom queries from the database that measure how often I get uniques and repeat visitors to the same article. That said, I’ve noticed that StumbleUpon referrals often result in two or three hits from the same user in the span of 30 seconds, so I filter this kind of stuff out to ensure completeness in the data. While a high number of uniques is nice, it’s the repeats that tell me if a post is popular. Here’s the equation I used to determine popularity:
It’s one of those “creative metrics” I created to help solve a problem, and it worked out pretty well, I think. I didn’t really take into account # of comments, though, as it would have been messed up by a few viral pages.
What would your favourite articles be? I’d be interested to know your first or second pics
Ah, you nearly tempted me to wade through those 500 posts to see which I remembered the most, but for now I’ll say my favorite post was the one in which I won $25!
Seriously, though, I’m still waiting for an update on that Google competition to put something on the moon, and what happened to the sprinter who wasn’t allowed to compete with able-bodied athletes because he only had one leg? I think we bashed heads over the fingerprinting issue and bicycle laws, and discussions about controversial blogging all come to mind, too. I’ve been enjoying your latest foray into Japanese news and politics very much, so perhaps all that gives you an idea of my favorite kind of posts. 
Hmm …
1. The Google competition is still open, with no clear winners as of yet.
2. The sprinter with the carbon fibre legs will not be permitted to run at Beijing’s 2008 Summer Olympics, but he’s welcome to run in the Paralympics
3. Fingerprinting is here to stay and I’m hearing about some rumblings about a little bit more to come in 2010 … once I get some confirmation I’ll be sure to put up a pretty long gripe about this next scheme, which goes beyond keeping terrorists and illegal immigrants out.
4. Bicycles laws have their uses, but the bells have even more.
5. Controversial blogging is sometimes the best, as it demands people leave comments
6. With all the politics going on, there’s lots for me to say. The nice think about Japanese politicians is that they “seem” to do quite a bit, unlike their Canadian counterparts. This makes my job so much easier
Thanks for the feedback, Nick. With any luck, I can put my RSS subscriber count back up on the site in no time.
Oh, and guess what? I’m up to 50 readers for the first time ever!
Great stuff! Glad to hear it
Wow. 500 posts! Your short story must have gotten a lot of traffic, because it was only submitted to StumbleUpon 6 days ago. I read your blog everyday, so keep it up!
Yeah, the short story was seeing about 1900 hits per day for three days straight, which was just crazy. It’s had a few hits here and there over the last few months, but nothing quite that pronounced.
I just had a read of “An Open Letter of Apology” and loved it. Thanks for the nudge Thomas.
Well, I’ve only been reading for a couple weeks, but I’ve been impressed enough to continue. You post things that are (mostly) outside of the scope of things i typically think about. I like that. Serendipity has value, and you never know where your next idea is going to come from.
Congrats on 500… as you know, I am far, far, far behind. But i have recently discovered that i LIKE writing this stuff, so i will continue.
Take care. mjl
Thanks, Michael. I’m glad that you can get something out of my random thoughts
I wouldn’t worry about being “behind”, as blogging isn’t really a contest. While some people can treat it as such, the art of writing tends to suffer when we worry about how many articles or visitors we have on our sites. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll build some solid readership and reach post 500, too