Reviews of movies, anime, and the occasional TV show mixed with warnings on Blogger spam. Also to be found are musings on whatever I am thinking about - all from the point of view of being left to watch everything from the sidelines of life.
Yesterday I was sure today was going to be a good day, one where I would get things done and be productive. Reality, however, disagreed with me once today arrived. The crossword puzzle was a warning, taking sixteen minutes despite being painfully easy. But Audiosurf went well so it looked good. Ah well.
No major health issues to report, other than the fatigue was bad from the beginning and even typing this out is difficult due to spacing out. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.
Or how you never know what is really going on around the Web.
For my personal amusement, I have had Google Analytics running on this blog site for some time now with only a brief lapse of a couple of days when I changed over to the newer template. Thanks to things like NoScript and other blockers of content, I can never be sure how accurate the visitor stats are, but it does give me a rough idea of who, what, and where.
Being a tiny fish in a vast blogosphere, From the Sidelines’ stats are nothing to brag about. Still, it is interesting to me what gets looked at since I do not flog the blog in dreams of gaining wealth and fame. This blog has been up for over five years now, something that surprised me when I went back through my posts a little while back.
One thing that fascinates me is how Google Analytics and Blogger’s stats do not quite line up. Let us take a look at the top posts past month, October 16 to November 15, for comparison. Blogger is first, then Google Analytics:
Bleach Season 1: The Substitute, Episodes 1-2
Jul 26, 2011
149 106 Pageviews
CITIZEN KANE (1941)
Jun 22, 2011
132 102 Pageviews
Howl’s Moving Castle
Nov 25, 2009
106 80 Pageviews
Gojira (Godzilla 1954)
Nov 25, 2009
80 26 Pageviews
Godzilla: Tokyo SOS (2003)
Dec 18, 2009, 2 comments
61 30 Pageviews
Battle of Britain (1969)
Jul 22, 2011
56 85 Pageviews
Bleach Season 1: The Substitute, Ep. 2-3
Jul 28, 2011
43 44 Pageviews
Smallville: Absolute Justice Review Part 1
Sep 13, 2010
40 39 Pageviews
Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidora (2001)
Dec 9, 2009
39 36 Pageviews
Only Yesterday (1991)
Dec 3, 2009, 2 comments
34 29 Pageviews
So there are some very large discrepancies between the statistics gathered. One pattern I think I am detecting is the blocking of Google scripts by people concerned about their privacy. All of this makes me wonder how in the world the advertising rates can be calculated for websites.
Note: Blogger doesn’t list the home page for some reason. Google Analytics does and says it was visited 87 times for third place by its stats. It also has a whopping average time of 5:18 spent on it. Yes, that is five minutes and eighteen seconds. In 2009, the average time spent on a web page was 56 seconds. Something is very screwy with that number, methinks!
Now for some fun if probably inaccurate stats for the past year (12 months) from Google Analytics:
2,304 Visits
1,816 Absolute Unique Visitors
3,927 Pageviews
1.70 Pages/Visit
67.45% Bounce Rate
00:01:05 Avg. Time on Site
77.82% % New Visits
Browsers used to visit:
1. Firefox 1,120 48.61%
2. Chrome 511 22.18%
3. Internet Explorer 389 16.88%
4. Safari 205 8.90%
5. Opera 41 1.78%
6. Android Browser 11 0.48%
7. Mozilla Compatible Agent 11 0.48%
8. Playstation 3 5 0.22%
9. IE with Chrome Frame 3 0.13%
10. Opera Mini 3 0.13%
Firefox is still on top after all these years, but Chrome is gaining. Internet Explorer is fading fast.
Visitors came from 78 countries and territories:
I looked at that and I suspect that is a fair representation of Internet penetration across the globe.
What does it all mean? Well, not a lot but one thing that I have confirmed is that pop culture dominates the Net. Also, most of my hits come from people doing image searches, something I rarely do these days. That intrigues me.
I am pleased to report that the Citizen Kane review is one of the most hit pages on the blog. Battle of Britain is slowly climbing up and thanks to the Philippine aviation buffs at timawa.net Thirteen Days got a lot of attention. Bleach becoming hit so often is quite a surprise, since I would have thought reviews of it are done to death and images from it are abundant on the Net.
The biggest surprise is how popular the Smallville: Absolute Justice review has been. There are a lot more Justice Society of America fans out there than I ever suspected. It is nice to see those 1940’s comic book characters still getting some love seventy years after being created.
I had seen rumors of this, but this is the first confirmation I’ve run into. This is a great deal and gives the Marines what they want and need rather than forcing more F/A-18 Hornets on them. Having forward based aircraft is important to close air support due to the benefits of having very fast turnaround.
Since the new used Harriers will be rebuilt with U.S. hardware, I have to wonder if they plan to use the radars from the retiring Hornets to make some of them AV-8B+ configurations in the future. It is probably being considered but we will have to wait and see on that.
This is a wise investment for the Corps and I am pleased to see the U.K.’s folly being salvaged in some way.
UPDATED:
It looks like the Harriers will only be used for spare parts according to this report. If correct, it is a sad end to some still very useful airframes. It is still a smart move by the Marines and protects their AV-8B’s from being taken out of service.
It was true in past decades that you could rely on brand names to guarantee quality, but it was always touch and go in the personal computer world. It has gotten far worse and one product I used to use and highly recommend has gone very bad. Lavasoft’s AdAware used to be a front line weapon against malware. Now it is owned by people who made their money scamming people online. The most galling fact about this purchase is that they used to falsely sell AdAware!
It looks like Malwarebytes and Spybot: Search & Destroy are the go to programs now. I’m waiting for the release of the gold version of Spybot 2.0. These days I do not rely on such programs as much, mainly due to using OpenDNS to filter addresses and Firefox with AdBlock Plus and NoScript to further keep bad links out. While I don’t surf “bad” sites, there has been a growing trend of hacking big websites and ads. So nobody is safe right out of the box.
Thanks to my precautions, I do not get much malware found on my system, if ever. It has been years since I saw anything other than the odd suspicious cookie.
Still, it is sad to see what happened to AdAware. If you do not stay up to date on what is going on, the possibility of being at the mercy of con artists, thieves, and other evil doers increases greatly.
I just arrived home from a gaming session of D&D and while we were goofing off and ignoring the DM, I pretended to auger a fortune from a bowl of left over Halloween candy.
“You will have a short and painful life,” I predicted to one of the players.
He replied, “Did you say a short and painful wife?!”
Best line of the evening, by far.
Helping out on the move cost me three weeks of reduced activity so far. The usual infections are back and I am hoping to beat them down by the beginning of next week, which is probably optimistic.
H2O2 therapy is back at two doses a day and the results are like flipping a switch. More alert, the bowels better behaved, and a little more energy. It looks like this level will have to be maintained for months to come. At least I am getting faster at drinking the stuff.
Finally got my store of contacts laid in and I have to say I love the bifocals. While pricey, they are worth it to be able to breath! I switched back to a smaller font size on my pocket PC’s eBook readers too, so less scrolling needed.
While featuring the duel between Ishida and Ichigo, the real stars of this episode are Chad and Karin when a plague of Hollows attack Karakura Town.
After revealing himself to be a Quincy, an extinct race of supernaturally gifted humans, Uryu Ishida challenged Ichigo to a duel at the end of the previous episode. Insulting the carrot topped team worked like a charm and with his temper rising, he agreed. If there is one thing Kurosaki can be counted on to do, it has to be rushing headlong into things without thinking.
Condescending and acid tongued like a proper villain should be, Ishida explains the rules of the duel. The one who kills the most Hollows in 24 hours is the winner and proves his superiority. Quickly he initiates the summoning of the monsters and makes some pointed remarks about Hollows being drawn to humans with spiritual abilities that set Ichigo off running. But not is all it seems, as Kurosaki has misunderstood what the Quincy was hinting at.
Determined to protect his sisters at any cost, the substitute Soul Reaper has failed to notice that his closest friends have all begun to spiritually awaken too. For instance, poor Tatsuki now sees ghosts the way Ichigo did in the beginning and it is annoying her to distraction. But the boy is clueless to all this going on around him.
It is Karin that Ichigo is most worried about and sure enough she can sense something is wrong while playing soccer with a group of boys. Though it is more accurate to say she is intimidating them more than playing with them. It is clear she will be playing a big part in the episode, which is a welcome thing. Karin is one of the better characters in the series and isn’t seen nearly enough.
Her older brother slaughters Hollows on the way to her regular hangouts. One of the better Hollow battles to this point is a highlight of this episode, with Ichigo taking on three at once in a very fluid piece of choreography. While he is occupied slashing his way through Karakura Town, Rukia is still trying to get more information out of Urahara at his store. But her cellphone/Hollow detector won’t stop going off and its display is starting to look like an old video game…
With methodical precision, Ishida destroys Hollow after Hollow for a count far beyond his rival’s. There is more to his story and it appears that will be revealed soon. While scores of monsters rain down upon the town, Chad finds himself seeing something in the sky. This idling in the street irritates his starving musician companions for a comic break in the action.
But that rift in the sky is all he can focus on and when a Hollow drops from the sky his priorities change. Just one little problem – he cannot fully see the monster! Showing discretion, the large teen leads the creature away from the crowded shopping district.
That would have been brilliant, except he leads the Hollow straight to the playground where Karin is! Surprisingly, the two work well as a team when he tries to protect her, but a mere human can’t expect to take on a Hollow. Even a human as impossibly tough as Chad.
Another glimpse into the half-Mexican’s childhood shows how much he took his grandfather’s lessons to heart and in true shonen style it fuels his resolve to protect his friend’s little sister. A punch, a flash of light, and an explosion of energy follow as the gentle giant finds his own supernatural power. When the smoke clears, his right arm has undertaken a mysterious metamorphosis.
The battle continues and Chad shows how cool he is, though not everyone is positive about him being cool. It is a highly amusing moment and shows why Karin gets some of the best lines in the series.
But the danger continues for Ichigo’s family and friends as the Hollows continue to rampage.
Thoughts
This episode is a deft blend of comedy and action while throwing in some character development for Chad, Karin, and Ishida. Finally all the images from the opening sequence are explained and one would guess that all the main characters have been introduced. That person would be in error.
Things are only just beginning to get rolling, I am pleased to say.
A Gentle Right Arm is a good example of Bleach’s ability to blend action, drama, mystery, and comedy into a satisfying whole.
