Year One

Exactly a year and a bit ago, on January 08 2016, I published the first posts on this blog. In the weeks preceding those first posts, I had been warding off the boredom of unemployment by writing answers to various questions posed by friends and family. In the year since then, I have been warding off the boredom of employment by writing answers to questions that make me curious.

One interesting thing has been which posts get viewed and which ones don’t. I am not good at predicting this.  My audience is composed almost entirely of my own Facebook friends and the Facebook friends of my Facebook friends. These people do not always share my taste.

The stats are as follows[1]:

The two most popular posts, Electoral Votes, and Yard Signs both had to do with the 2016 US presidential election. I liked both posts, although I liked the yard sign post better, and both tapped into interest and frustration surrounding the presidential election.

Policy topics tend to do well, the $100 bill post, and my post on Vancouver’s property tax both were frequently viewed.  Perhaps not surprisingly, my aviation related posts do not fare particularly well. It seems that I am more interested in airlines than my readers are.  My post on Ultra Long Haul Flights, took a ton of time to put together (mostly learning Tableau and trying to figure out the dates the world’s longest flights started and ended). I still think that map is super neat.

I am disappointed that more people didn’t read the Olympics related posts. They were fun to write. The one about which nation would be the best to move to in order to qualify for the Winter Olympics presented an extremely pleasing overlap between countries that have few winter Olympic Athletes, and countries that sell their citizenship. Maybe there will be a sudden resurgence of interest before the next Olympics.

Thanks for Reading!

-PARTYSHEEPHATS

[1] These stats are technically for the 2016 calendar year, but close enough.