Web site news

Later today I’ll issue my upfront roundups for Fox and the CW, but I haven’t started on them yet. Checkers who have looked at Da Blog at the posted time of 4:02 each day may have noticed that the roundups generally aren’t actually up until significantly after that, but they’re going to be even later. They were going to be later than others anyway because they’re two networks, but still…

I have made exactly three posts in the month-and-a-half since leaving the residence halls, all on college basketball. Unless I get some ideas on how to proceed on any other topic, I’m going to revive this feature and start moving towards a sports-centric blog. Past posts have offered other ideas as well as first introduced the concept of Sports Watcher. I’m thinking of putting up a poll on potential projects to be featured on Da Blog but most of the time college is probably going to be too much of a pressure on my time. You may still direct Da Blog towards any topic you wish by leaving a comment to this post.

Of the three total responses I’ve received, I received two requests for more information on my “grandiose projects”, one of which actually contrasted it to mere coverage of sports, as though covering projects precluded covering sports.

Getting grandiose projects is a given no matter which topic gets chosen. It isn’t really a topic in itself, and I don’t know that I’m confident enough to simply lay them all on you, not to mention that I wouldn’t know where to start or what to put on or anything. (By September at the latest, you’ll have a very good view on just how grandiose my projects can get, regardless of final topic.)

So what I think I’m going to do is extend this another 24 hours, looking for some clarification as to what projects I would want to post. But I’m also instituting a new poll. Below is a list of just some projects I have and are working on. It’s far from an exhaustive list, but it’s intended to provide a list of options and provide a feel for what I mean. Tell me if you want to see any of these projects or any similar ones you want to suggest in an area of your interest.

• Ranking the presidential candidates (see the post immediately below)
• Whether Sports Watcher should continue
• Ranking America’s professional sports leagues
• A different, maybe insane, method of determining champions in certain team sports, closer to the methods used in combat sports like boxing and wrestling
• Determining the greatest movies of all time from a composite of other similar lists (I can also come up with other “greatest lists” even if they’re limited to my own opinion. Inquire within!)
• Any kind of simulated tournament, or any kind of simulated game.
• Or you can help me iron out the rules for a new sport I’m developing.
• I actually have already written some short poems and stories.
• And the proverbial much, much more!

I’m setting the deadline for this new poll for Friday night at midnight Pacific, with an option to extend if I get another dearth of replies.

I was going to make a final decision on the topic of Da Blog on Friday (today, as most of you read this), but I’m instituting an extension because I just recently advertised my prior posts on the topic in the “About me” section on the right sidebar, which in turn was because 43 visitors to Da Blog have added up to one comment so far. You can now make comments until 9 PM PT (midnight ET, since New York Is The Center Of The Universe) on Sunday. (I might not collect the votes until later, though.)

You can also comment on what you want Da Blog to be about to this post. I will post a preview of what will happen if you don’t comment later on Friday. If it lines up with what you want, comment on it anyway, because I will only institute it if I get 0 acceptable comments, so even a tie only means I’ll probably institute both.

(Note that, as they say on Wikipedia, “this is not a vote”. I am ultimately the final arbiter of what I post on, and I will always dip into fields different from my primary focus. As time passes that sharp focus may fade as Da Blog becomes more general and I begin to dip into a wide variety of fields on a regular basis.)

Also, I’m switching Da Counter to show unique visitors rather than hits (which have reached the 70’s), because hits by now are a given – I’ll probably hit 100 by this time next week. I’ve gotten at least two hits for at least the past seven days and have been stabilizing at 4 a day recently. Unless the counter is misinterpreting people without cookies as separate people, which can’t be the whole truth, most of these people appear to be first timers. Which, you know, is good for a number of reasons, but it is also kinda bad, because now only 40% of my hits over the life of Da Blog are repeat customers. Which makes me worried that people are stopping by but aren’t intrigued enough to come back! Which comes back to my blog topic poll, where you can give them a reason to come back.

I have a few things I’d like to catch up with at this moment.

First, the counter. No, there have not been 34 visitors to Da Blog over the last week. I could set it to display the number of unique users, but I think the number of 13 that would appear is a little low. Take it all with a grain of salt.

Second and more importantly, I’m starting to worry that my lengthy third post is obscuring the first post for all of the people who are discovering Da Blog suddenly. That means missing the backbone of that third post, but it also obscures something else. The posts I have now aren’t really emblematic of me (obviously), or of what I envision Da Blog becoming. While some blogs are little more than diaries and only a few blogs go beyond personal, a lot of blogs comment not only on happenings in life, but in whatever else interests the person who posts them. People often talk about their thoughts on whatever they feel like saving space on their blog for, and sometimes dedicate their entire blog to a single subject.

I want to talk about me, of course, but I also want to talk about more than me. And while I have no shortage of things I’m already interested in, I’d like to hear your suggestions. Is there something out there that’s going unblogged? Something you’d like to hear my thoughts on? Considering the likelihood that I may have something insanely complex that would constitute a radical new idea, maybe you’d like to see that, and gain a new perspective? Or maybe I’m just begging for something that would hook the most people into making Da Blog a destination. Or, since there’s a positive spin for anything, maybe I’m trying to gauge the interests of my audience so I can tailor what I write to them.

What are you interested in? While you’re here, feel free to leave a comment and let me know. If you don’t have a Google/Blogger account and “Other” doesn’t work for you for some reason, post anonymously; you can still identify yourself in the body of the post.

I feel obligated to post that I added a counter to the right side of Da Blog yesterday, since I was unable to find out if anyone other than me has been here. Blogger keeps track of how many people have viewed my profile but not who’s viewed my blog. Strange.

Since I suspect no one was here between the 22nd and now, the below post is far more important than this one, and this one can be safely ignored. Move along, move right along!