Eponymous

When I started this blog (way back in the innocent days of August 2006), I didn't intend to start publishing right away. I visited a couple of sites that came up as the result of a search for "free blog hosting" on Google, and created an account at a few of them just to get an idea of what sorts of features might be on offer.

I named each one The Moon Topples, because each site was asking me for a name, and I was a bit leery of putting my actual name out there. I figured I would change this later. I wrote a quick post about John C. Reilly at the Tom Waits show, published it and told a few people I had started a blog, and where to find it.

Almost immediately I was posting daily, and the name grew on me, and it seemed I was all set. While I don't think I've cancelled any of the test sites from other blogging platforms, I feel pretty confident I'll stick with Blogger until such a time as I decide to host something myself. Which I doubt will be anytime soon. Seems like an awful lot of work.

Earlier this month I installed a Site Meter bug so I could get an idea of who stops by and why. I get some pretty weird data. For most people, the info it gathers is limited to the name of the ISP and the country the hit comes from. For others, it will tell me the city and state, which OS and browser is used, and what page you used to find me. It tracks things like the amount of time spent on the site, how many pages were viewed, etc.

I like the Google searches the best, although they make me feel bad for the poor souls out there who were looking for "how much would it cost to open a Starbucks?" and got my open letter to that company instead. For those of you coming here now as a result of this same search, I'm pretty sure that Starbucks does not do the conventional franchise structure, but I could be wrong. Maybe check their site.

The past week or so, there appears to be a national craze in the Netherlands to find information about "question mark statue London." They stop by so often that I now keep tulips and clogs in my home, next to my bicycle. I have repeated their search and still have no idea what they are looking for. They are stopping in so often that this week they have driven my site traffic from Europe up from its normal 10% to a whopping 26% of total visitors. I think the holiday weekend in America is helping them skew the data.

Recently I got a hit from someone who had searched for "topples british women with a street sign." I hope you found what you needed. I also get some traffic from people looking for "werewolf pictures." Again, hope you were satisfied with what you found.

Site meter tells me that most of you run Windows, and almost half of you use Firefox. Most of the rest are still using IE for some reason, and I have never tested the site in IE, so I have no idea what y'all see when you click in. The site is designed to work in Firefox, which is an excellent browser. Also, it's free. (hint, hint)