Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Statcounter and My Mystery Visitor

You know what? When I look at my recent stats, somebody from London Ontario was visiting the hell out of my site over the past few days in an almost "automated" fashion. In addition, they are using some platform that statcounter (a popular online tool I use to keep web stats) can't figure out. Here's a sample:

Date: Dec 28 20:35:02
Browser: Default Browser 0
OS: unknown
Resolution: unknown
Location: London, Ontario, Canada
ISP: Rogers Cable

Most often they were linking from a google search page but sometimes with no referring link. Rogers Cable is a very popular residential ISP here in London. I left out the IP address of my mystery visitor, because, well, I don't know why but I didn't want to post that kind of info.

Around the same time they were showing up a lot, votes for RTP's Charlie Brown Tree went through the roof. If voting is controlled by a cookie rather than IP address, it could be that the platform they are using can vote as much as it wants... I'm not especially savvy in such things. For the record, I don't think for a second that RTP has anything at all to do with this and I'm not even certain that my mystery visitor is indeed responsible for his tree's outstanding performance anyway.

Hey, mystery visitor, if you read this, tell me if you have been voting many many times for RTP's Charlie Brown tree somehow. I have nothing at all against RTP winning this, but I am becoming curious...



Yer Pal,
R A N T W I C K

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Hey, Spread the News

If you've got a spare minute over the holidays, please take it to send an email encouraging people to come and vote for FARATS trees. I've been doing what I can, but I would like to see more votes determining who wins if possible.

The link for the voting page is


Shameless self promotion if you are an entrant is permitted and expected, but don't be surprised if your friends arrive and are won over by somebody else's tree. Hey, it wouldn't be the first time... it happens, you know?

Speaking of votes, I would like to thank the readers of bikeforums.net who are responding to my thread reply over there... you are helping already.

Signing Off Once More and Wishing You a Merry Christmas and Stellar New Year, I remain Yer Pal,
R A N T W I C K