Why Dont You Blog?

A while ago (19 Mar), I made a post here looking at the search terms most people used to get here. At the time we were comfortably getting 400 hits a day and the huge majority of them were people searching for Bodiam Castle.

Well, nothing has changed. We are still hovering around 400-450 hits a day, although there was a spike to 600 when a previous post got Stumbled. These are still around 80% first time hits, so we need to think about why people aren’t coming back. Of the first time hits, 80% (slight increase) are from search engines but still nearly all are from Google searches. Shame really, as I now prefer Yahoo search…

Anyway, the odd part is that the search terms haven’t changed either. Depending on your source (firestats differs from Feedburner and google analytics) the most searched for term is either “Fine Art” or “Bodiam Castle.” This terms are supplemented by such relevant terms as “castle” “castle with moat” “bodiam” “fairytale castle” and “art.” In all 60% of the top ten search terms through which people find our wonderful blog are castle ones. The remaining four are “McCann Blog”, “Obama” and the very odd “wtf” & “there.” I feel sorry for the people who arrive from some of these terms - no wonder we dont get repeat visitors.

I can live with two of them… It is strange, given the well thought out social commentary Heather posts that nearly all the searches people use to find our sites are for castle pictures. Is this a sign that more people search for castles than (say) Surveillance state or that our blog is just better ranked for castles…?

Still beggars cant be choosers, so as you can see I have pandered to the masses once more with another picture of the gorgeous Bodiam Castle, it really is an artistic castle picture (:-) ). If you are in the south west of England, you really should visit.

Popularity: 38% [?]

Popularity: 38% [?]

I have been looking through the website logs to see just what it is that drives people to this site and, while lacking in raw comedy value (unlike some), it has been interesting.

Running a combination of Firestats, Feedburner and Google Analytics it seems this blog is getting around 400 visits a day. From these around 80% are new (which shows just what a non-loyal readership we hold…) and of those around 70% come here from a search engine - nearly all from Google. For the numbers-fans, this translates to about 200 hits a day from Google searches. Given the insanely varied nature of topics here, you would be excused for thinking this was reflected in the search stats. Not so.

Of the top ten search terms used to come here, seven are image searches, and this accounts for about 90 of the incoming hits. Even stranger, of these over a third are all searching for images of Bodiam Castle.

Now, Bodiam Castle is a gorgeous, fourteenth century fairytale castle in East Sussex, run by the National Trust, so I can understand why people are interested in it. In fact, I understand this well enough to have uploaded another photo!

If you have come here searching for Bodiam Castle, I hope you like this, and you can even see more on Flickr. It has been a long time since I have been to Bodiam so please, forgive me for the photos being out of date now. If you have links to other pictures of this gorgeous castle, please let me know and I will be more than happy to link to them from here.

Back onto the search topic, there is the determination issue to consider now. Will my posting of a new Bodiam article increase the amount of hits I get for this? Are people massively disappointed when the Mighty Google sends them here rather than elsewhere? Why dont people use Yahoo to search for Bodiam?

The other common terms people use for an “images search” are:

• Schwarzenegger
• Nice Art
• Fine Houses
• Holy Wafer
• Jesus Toast (around 5 people a day come here using that search term… MADNESS)
• Future Castles

Now, some make more sense than others, but I can only guess at the disappointment people must feel when their searches lead them here.For completeness, the most common search terms that bring people to this site are:

• HDR How To (use Photomatix)
• Cool Viking Names (well all of them)
• Bad Journalist (again, all of them)
• Firefox Memory Hog (it is)
• Pipex Download Speeds (almost non-existent)
• McCanns Blog (wrong place, I didn’t even know they had one)

One last point, a bit of an oddity is a search term Feedburner has identified leading some poor unfortunate here: “blog: I cannot read, feel distracted” - I have no idea what this blog has to offer this poor person.

Popularity: 83% [?]

Popularity: 83% [?]

Well, this blog is very quick to complain when we get bad customer service or encounter jobsworth staff. As a result, it is only fair for us to mention the times when people, for what ever reason, are helpful and encourage return service.

Today, as a “family” day out we went to visit a National Trust site. Now there were four adults and two small children - however we only had three National Trust memberships (kids go free). As we arrived at the site (a fairly low-profile one), the man staffing the entrance would have been fully expected to us for one adult (£3.50). As it turned out, he was a nice and kind enough person that he decided not to charge the almost petty sum today. A trivial task, but this is something which had the knock on effect of encouraging enough good will that the dissenter bought annual membership, we spent a small fortune in the gift shop and will be certain to revisit the site.

I am, actually, a big fan of ruthless capitalism but I also think it has its place. By taking the gamble and risking £3.50 this attendant managed to generate many times that for the National Trust. Add to that, the site was beautiful and the weather surprisingly nice, and I’ve had quite a good start to the day

[tags]National Trust, Society, Capitalism, Raves, Good Deeds[/tags]

Popularity: 19% [?]

Popularity: 19% [?]

Some more pictures uploaded to picasa:

These were taken at a variety of national trust sites, and with the exception of the black and white picture of Bodiam Castle, have not been retouched in any way yet. Over time, I plan to experiment with the effects and filters Picasa provides. These seem entertaining but lack the level of “control” Photoshop has.

[tags]Pictures, National Trust, Photos, Photographs, Picasa, Photoshop, Photo Software, Castles, Landscapes, Bodiam, Castle Ward[/tags]

Popularity: 54% [?]

Popularity: 54% [?]

It has been a while since I posted some photos here for you to, err, enjoy so it is about time the blog got livened up a little. I am planning to run off quite a few photos into real world prints using Snapfish (which is, by the way, excellent), but some of the source photos felt like they could do with the Photoshop Goodness.

I am aware of how often I say this, but it never ceases to amaze me that ten minutes spent in Photoshop can turn average pictures into wonderful creations. Now, I am not arrogant enough to say these examples are wonderful (although I think they are…) but they are certainly more eye catching than the originals.

As with most of my pictures they are taken from either National Trust or English Heritage sites. These have been resized in Advance Batch Converter, which sadly reduces the quality a little. On the off chance you would like a larger original (up to around 2760×1840px) then let me know - they are free . As you can see, I have a tendency to get enamoured with “Lomo-Style” effects - mainly on the pictures of Stonehenge and Lulworth Cove.

Although some people may feel that “retouching” the photo after it has been taken is cheating, I disagree, it is all part of the digital imaging process (IMHO of course). Seriously, although I have neither shares in Adobe, nor do I get advertising kickbacks from them, I honestly think anyone who has a digital camera really should get some form of image processing software and learn to use it. The great thing about photoshop is that even after two years, I am still finding new (and sometimes interesting) things you can do to spruce up a picture.

[tags]Pictures, photos, landscapes, Dorset, Lulworth Cove, Stonehenge, English Heritage, National Trust, Photographs, Photoshop, Photography, Photo Software, Photo Editing, Digital Camera, Digital Photography, Lomo, Photo Effects, Lomography[/tags]

Popularity: 48% [?]

Popularity: 48% [?]

After my last rant, I realised I had been ranting (on and off line) about this topic a bit too much so I have decided to post some nice, pleasant, pictures with a summer feel to try and cheer myself up. I blame the near constant rain and cold for my SAD out look (yes, I need a holiday)

All these pictures were taken at National Trust properties, if you live in the UK and enjoy going round stunning landscapes, houses and castles at the weekend (or mid week), then you really should consider joining the National Trust and / or English Heritage.

The first photo was taken with a Nokia N73 Cameraphone, the rest with a Kodak Z650 digital camera. All were untouched in photoshop (unusual for me now) but resized to 600px wide by Advanced Batch Converter. I have finally given in and gone for Adobe Lightroom so I may end up playing with that a lot more over the weekend.

Obviously, if people feel willing to donate towards my purchase of a real digital SLR (Nikon D80 appeals to me) then, I am never too proud to accept handouts .

[tags]adobe, holiday, national-trust, photographs, photography, photos, photoshop, phone camera, nokia-n73, nokia, n73, lightroom, kodak-z650, technology, SAD, Sunshine, Happy[/tags]

Popularity: 33% [?]

Popularity: 33% [?]

It seems that I cant help but stay up late at night seeing what can (and can’t) be done with photoshop. If you are reading this on Planet Atheism looking for Atheist / free thinking content - sorry nothing to see here. I will keep this short and sweet though.

For those who still resit the wonders of photoshop, this is an example of what it can do to an other wise dreary picture taken in poor weather. The source photo was, it must be said, pretty uninspiring. However after a total of 14 minutes in photo shop (most of that was waiting for the disk thrashings to stop, the source image was massive so the file was about 90mb) it now looks a lot more dramatic and is something people would actually want to look at.

Yes, the effects are a bit over the top, I did get carried away with myself, and the low quality used to resize them into something you can download and view has impacted it a bit, but I am sure you get the gist of the point I am trying to make.

Digital photo editing rocks.

[tags]adobe, digital-photographs, digital-camera, digital-culture, Castles, Bodium, National Trust, Sussex, pictures, photoshop, photos, photography, photographs, photo-software, photo-effects, technology[/tags]

Popularity: 60% [?]

Popularity: 60% [?]

As mentioned previously, I have taken a few photos of Bodiam Castle (National Trust site in Sussex) and have been pushing them through Photoshop.

The wonders of Photoshop filters can never, ever, be overstated. Here you can see the results of a ten second experiment with a single picture. The first image is the basic image which was then passed through the mosaic filter, the texturizer and desaturated. All of these produce some interesting effects which radically change the impact of the original photograph.

All this strikes me as pretty impressive for what took up about 5 minutes of my life. In fact, it took longer to write this post about the effects (and upload the images) than it did to create them. I really do like photoshop

Popularity: 51% [?]

Popularity: 51% [?]

Well, despite the massively predictable bank holiday weekend weather here in the UK, a visit to Bodiam Castle was well worth it.

Bodiam castle is a National Trust property located in Sussex (not far from Hastings). It was built in the late 13th century as a “fortified home” for an English adventurer returning from France. It could well be argued that it isn’t really a castle, as it was more of a “manor house” with a moat and crenelations… This picture shows the front entrance of the castle - if there is interest / time, I will upload more pictures in the future.

One other odd thing, was a strange looking duck. Being a City Dweller, I am not really up to speed on what water fowl look like, so this one caught my eye. Can anyone confirm what it is please?

As always, feedback welcome.

Popularity: 92% [?]

Popularity: 92% [?]

Thanks to the wonders of Global Warming, the rainy, miserable (obviously offset by Chocolate) Easter weekends of my childhood really are a thing of the past. On Saturday I went out to Stourhead (National Trust property) and the weather was fantastic. Just so you don’t think I am lying, here are some photos:

As you can see the weather was brilliant. Shame about the polar bears though.

On a more serious note, it amazes me that anyone can deny climate change. Just goes to show how much people can cling to a belief… One of the other reasons to make this post was to try out a geocode plugin I have recently installed. Let me know what you think.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Popularity: 33% [?]