Most of my "fans" are in Russia

I run Google Analytics on this blog and while I take them with a huge pinch of salt I do find them interesting.

For example, I can always tell when certain events are coming up, such as the open days at Watergardens on Kingston Hill, as my write ups of those start appearing in the most popular stories list.

The pinch of salt comes from the places that people read my blog from. Some foreign readers are to be expected as I often write things about other countries, especially the Czech and Slovak Republics, and some of my stories are not about any country, e.g. those I write about comics.

However, none of that explains the current high interest that I am getting from Russia. I am pretty sure that they are all spammers, cyber-crooks or members of some other nefarious groups.

If you are from Russia and you are a real fan then please leave a comment to let me know why. I'll understand if you are shy. Or a bot.

A roar for powerful words!

My thanks to swenglishexpat for passing on this award. He said, “Those people I've given this award to are encouraged to post it on their own blogs; list three things they believe are necessary for good, powerful writing; and then pass the award on to the five blogs they want to honour, who in turn pass it on to five others, etc etc. Let's send a roar through the blogosphere! The image above can be copied and pasted onto other blogs. Also, a small size of the award for sidebars can be found over at the writing circle site.”

The approach I take to writing this blog is (sadly) is the same that I use at work as a management consultant adapted to try and recreate a pub conversation feel, so my three rules are:

1. Understand who your audience is and what they want to get from reading your words.
2. Make sure that your piece is well structured, e.g. it as a beginning, middle, and ending (though not necessarily in that order).
3. Entertain! Just because you are writing about a dry subject does not mean that you have to use a dry writing style. Humour and passion and good things!

In passing the baton on to five others I have picked those blogs that I most enjoy reading not just for their content but for their style. I read lots of blogs (using Bloglines) but many of these are fairly technical and while they are informative they are not usually fun to read.

So my chosen few are:

Czech Mate?
Tony started writing about his pending move from the UK to Prague and now writes on his life there. His pieces are quite long but are a complete joy to read. Sadly he is doing far too much teaching these days and his blogging is suffering a bit as a result. I hope this will be a spur to him to be more active!

Shelly's Comic Book Shelf
I read several blogs on comics but I picked this one because it’s like talking to another fan but one who has an interesting different perspective because they tend to read different comics (Shelly favours DC whereas I favour Marvel) and they are female.

E L S U A ~ A KM Blog by Luis Suarez
I was initially tempted not to nominate this as it is quite a famous blog in the KM but then I decided that it was unfair to exclude it on those grounds, so here it is! Luis writes about all aspects of KM technologies with an enthusiasm that is infectious.

Blimey! It's another blog about comics!
I like Lew’s blog because he is a comics professional, fan and historian and so he covers lots of interesting stories in interesting ways.

News Dissector Blog
This is my daily does of news and analysis of American politics and society. It’s often a depressing read (because of the news, not the way it is presented) but I probably learn more from Danny's blog than any other.

How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

70%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?
Update: The application that did the analysis seems to have disappeared and all that is left is the ethereal answer "70%".

Day One

I've worked in the IT industry for 25+ years and written articles for several publications over the years so I felt that it was time to start a blog.

I was partially shamed into this when sharing a few Czech beers in West Hampstead on Thursday evening with, amongst others, Tony who has been blogging for some time, and he's a chemistry teacher!

Now that I've finally got this thing set up I expect that future postings will cover music, education, Czech and Slovak affairs, architecture, politics and local pubs.

I will mostly be writing for my own benefit, to keep a record of what I have done and thought, and if anybody else finds anything I write interesting then that is a bonus.