" Total Visitors By Country "

That little box, lower left, there? I put that up in the very small hours of this morning. What it reads, as ye look at it, will thus reflect the visitors since about 05:00 on 29-Jun-2009. Don't worry about it. My 'actual' StatCounter shows this place has had Thousands of visitors since I started it. And those visitors come from all over.

That's not the greatest concern, to me. I still have about a dozen regular people a day who come in here. I don't know who they are (IP Numbers are actually quite useless to people like me. About as good as studying Bar Codes in a supermarket) but I do know they've been coming here for ever, and keep coming back.

This is cool. Because, I figure, these must be my 'Friends'. The people who just want to know what I'm up to and how I'm getting along, without having to bug me for reports. The exact reason I set this place up. Many others are just people who look in here, from and why? Who cares. Plenty of those come back too. That's nice.

But, the Real reason(s) I installed that thing are as follows:

1. I saw Pat' Burns has one like it on his site, " Terriermans Daily Dose " and that it remembered all his visitors countries for him. See? Notice how I've made a point of shouting to Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Angola etc? I do that, in part, to remind myself and record who I've spotted, on my 'official' StatCounter site has been through here. I thought it'd be fun to, like Pat, have a permanent record, easily accessible, of what mad countries appear here.

2. Though; I took a damn hard, long look at Pat's stat's last night ..... Heh! Ye fucking kidding me!

Listen; That guy is a Master Blog Smith. One look at what He's coming out with and I'll start losing trade time. I sit here and rant, rave and swear. Pat's a fucking Maestro of proper Blogging. If I was out to create a challenge to His form of work? I'd be heart broken. I wouldn't stand a chance.

But; I sincerely question the figures on His identical little 'Visitors by Country' box. Exact same one as I now have here. I mean; 100 plus hits from Mongolia?! I swear to god, that site is 'taking hits' from places I've genuinely never fucking heard of! In fact, I'd suggest there's not a county on the planet that hasn't had Someone look in on Pat's site ~ According to his little box there.

This isn't sour grapes, obviously. I have a Lot of time for Pat' Burns. I also note how his mega thousands visitors figures are as one would expect; USA, UK, Eire ..... But, how many fucking people in Chad and so forth may we expect to be hitting him? Go see for yeselves. It Just Looks Dodgy!

Pat' can't effect that read out, no more than I can mine. Thus I wonder if it's a 'sales point'. Do these counters rack up weird hits, just so we'll get excited and tell our friends, " Get one of these! Ye'll never believe where visitors are coming from! " ? I wonder .....

So, I'm giving one a try. In tandem with my far more open one, that I use for personal amusement. If Greenland turns up on my new widget? It'd sure as hell better show on my StatCounter map too. Else it's fucking history!

Let's wait and see.