I just love this, and it explains an awful lot

Were you a regular follower of this small but perfectly formed corner of BlogEstate, you may have had cause to notice that there has been a little more going on of late, and you may come to wonder whether there is any purpose behind it. Well you would be right to wonder, for purpose there is, not that it is a great purpose, or at least not on the scale of say a climate change treaty, or whatever they write around such things. No, quite simply it has been an attempt to see if I could post something every day for a full month, that month being November 2009, the month that's drawing very rapidly towards a close. I did say it wasn't a great purpose didn't I?

Looking back over the month, I can see that I did rather better than one a day, the photo archive mining has been of great help as I've gone along the way. Total posts so far, excluding this one, has reached 49, though I think that includes a few that have not seen light of day for a variety of reasons. In that time, I've also made some changes to the blog skin and this has, to my eyes, cleared out a fair bit of clutter and made the whole thing look a lot cleaner - still not too sure about the overall colour scheme, but it does in many ways reflect the place I'm sitting in.

The other thing I've been looking at closely along the way is the visitor stats. The way they were being captured at the start of the month means that I cannot see back to Day 1 now, but I can at least see that number of visitors have increased as a general trend - a testament to the concept that 'Content is King', or 'Build it and they will come' whichever is your preference. It is though with some irritation, that I can see that not only the genuine visitors have been dropping by, but also the spambots. These I can happily lose even though they contribute to overall visitor numbers. It is a little galling to see that over 23% of the visitor figures are made up of the little buggers. At best they just mask the real activity here and at worst they are consuming bandwidth I'm paying for with no good purpose.

One of the other things that I've done over the month is to spend a little more time reading the blogs of others and commenting on the same. I've read some interesting stuff along the way, not least ways, finding someone else who has made reference to that fine measurement device, the Bristol Stool Scale over here at FormerlyFun's emporium. The other thing I've noticed is how often certain blogs can be found cross-linking to each other and then commenting on happenings as they are reported. After a while you do begin to become convinced that the idea of a virtual village and neighbours I've commented on previously, perhaps has more substance to it than I thought. Not only that, the 'community' doesn't necessarily remain virtual and actual physical (non-biblical (that I know of)) interaction is taking place out there. Quite why this should come as a surprise, to someone who has been involved in something like half a dozen forum related meet-ups, I'm not quite sure. Seems people really do like meeting new people with a common interest.

So it's been an interesting month, even if not quite complete. I'm now wondering whether I can keep this going for more than a month. Would that be good, or would you prefer me to STFU now and leave the airwaves alone? What if I were to attempt a Blog365? What if I had to include a photo a day alongside it all? What if I wake up tomorrow and think "What the hell did I just write?". Oh, and you at the back there, stop trying to sneak out, I haven't finished yet...

It's been an odd kind of a day in the Blogosphere, all kinds of unexpected pieces of news that have rippled throughout the Twitterverse. Hints, claims, denials, counter-claims, accusations, I told you so's, and records set in alignment - it's all happening out there you know. Despite the length of time I've had this blog (though you'd be hard pressed to know it, it's been here for three and a half years now), I'd not really got too much of an insight or engaged in some of the things that go on out there. I'm starting to travel outside my own little Izdihar shaped sphere these days and you begin after a very short time, realising who links to who, who is commenting on who (and vice versa). I'm late on all this and I know it, but at least it's giving me plenty to read. All I need now is my anonymity back, a gift for the salacious, a book deal and I can go full steam ahead and get myself outed properly - I've always said everyone should have an aim in life...

PS. Congratulations to Ellie and The Man on their impending move to Madrid - Duvet Fluffing Spawns Big Idea

There will unfortunately be no blog post this evening, as the proprietor of the site has been much too all consumed with band practice. This has been both a bad thing and a good thing; bad in the sense that I didn't know all my parts, and good in the sense that I wasn't the only one. You may rest assured though that bogging will returning to the place known as Izdihar very shortly, possibly as soon as tomorrow, assuming that I can come up with the semblance of something to amuse and delight you all with.

In the mean time, I will finish by offering my congratulations to Petite Anglaise and family on the arrival of Jack who weighed in at 3.75 Kg, very recently (not a clue exactly when, but I'm sure she'll update us shortly).

To be honest this is much how it feels when trying to blog using an iPhone. It's very early days of course and the whole process is eminently feasible, but I'm not sure I'd want to do it like this all the time. I'm instantly reminded of the early days of me learning my way around a keyboard well enough to navigate with two or more fingers. To be fair, the b2evolution admin skin was never designed for this sort of abuse. Perhaps I should try to remember that it's not a matter of how well it can be done, more that it can be done at all.

It's becoming clearer to me that I need to keep my Moleskine closer to hand these days - normally it sits in my camera bag, which doubles as my air travel carry-on (you can get loads in it, but it weighs a ton). Too often, these days I find myself thinking of the perfect little word confection to tempt you with, only to find that by the time I'm anywhere near the keyboard, other distractions have torn the thought away like a breeze through an autumn branch. Something else I've noticed, is how many of these thoughts I've accumulated recently. Not too sure why, but more things occur that might be fitting matter for these parts.

I wonder, would you have me describe what I see in this part of the world? Would it be too dull for your tastes perhaps, it's generally too dull for mine, but then I may have been here too long. You however are unlikely ever to see what I see. Do you need to know about the highway along which regularly traipse an endless stream of 4x4's and fuel wagons? If the sky were blue, I'd tell you, but as always, it's shrouded in a fine mist of dust particles which smother and ingratiate their way into everything - Johnson's will never go out of business here. It's a little on the breezy side today, which means an extra helping of dust is to be served up to us.

For the most part you know, Saudi Arabia is not a very exciting place. It lacks cinemas (see earlier post regarding my views on film watching), it's often too hot to be outside, did I mention the dust? It hosts a plethora of shopping centres (Mall's for the 'Muricans), but these are usually home to endless numbers of womens and childrens clothing shops, plus the obligatory fast food joints. Book shops, hifi stores, bars, music stores and much else of any interest are absent, at least from MallWorld. You can find stuff of course, but the chances are that it will be out of the way, poorly stocked, or closed for prayer when you get there. This is not a place to inspire passion in your soul, but then again if you were to judge by the exploding population of the country, then perhaps that's about all it does.