Archive for September, 2010

It was a Good Weekend. I Promise.

Posted by brittanydyan on September 30, 2010

I am writing to you from the Holiday Inn Express in not-so-sunny central Florida. That’s okay with me, because it’s hot and humid here, and less sun means less direct heat. I’m headed home today after my final interview in the area. I’m tired of working this morning, and I promised Will that I would blog before I got home–not about this trip, but about last weekend’s visit from Cesar the belly himself.

Here he is at the National Book Festival with some unknown-to-us children’s book character. Anybody out there know the name of this friendly (female?) lion?

The festival was a bit of a bust. I claim responsibility for this idea. I greatly admire Laura Bush, had never been before, and thought it would be a nice day. Well, we missed Laura Bush’s talk, there wasn’t really much going on for adult readers besides lectures from authors whom with we weren’t familiar, and it was muggy and hot. We (or maybe it was just me) didn’t last long. Not to mention, I was reminded of why I generally stay away from the mall area during summer/tourist months: crowds.

Because it was so dang hot and we had to park so far away, we stopped for a water break at the Portrait Gallery and pondered our evening plans. I just love this indoor (and air-conditioned) courtyard.

Our evening plans were also ill-conceived. We decided to watch the Dawgs be defeated by the other not-Dawgs from Mississippi State. It was the battle of two bad football teams with Mississippi State making less mistakes and generally wanting the win. Depressing for us “hardcore” fans quickly becoming disenchanted.

Even the Braves couldn’t pull out a win for us on Sunday against the Nationals for crying out loud! At least the Falcons won. On the upside, we finally got to see Heyward in the flesh…too bad no home runs that day. I think I’ve only seen the Braves win at Nationals Park once. We attended a game earlier this year and nearly saw a no hitter pitched against the Braves. We left before such a possibility became an actuality–thank goodness it didn’t.

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A Year in Review: Breaking Down the Numbers

Posted by Will on September 17, 2010

INTRO

I took these numbers from Google Analytics (yes, we are monitoring you). The period of time is one year, September 16th, 2009 to September 16th, 2010. Brittany is a numbers person. It is a pertinent part of her research. Me? I just like trying to figure out who is actually reading this thing.

I believe in levels of transparency (not that this calls for us to be transparent) and I thought it might be interesting to look over a few areas and present them to you, our loyal readership (all twelve of you).

TRAFFIC SOURCES

Traffic sources track how people are accessing the blog and from where they are coming. I’m not really surprised about the percentage breakdown.

The Top 10 Referrers are as follows …

Direct
Facebook
bramandsons.com
images.google.com
G oogle.com (referral)
bramandsons.com
Feedburner
G oogle.com (organic)
themorganmantra.blogspot.com†
heroinc.org†

†Blogging friend

I think the biggest surprise out of the Top 10 is Google’s image search engine. I occasionally tag our photos with alt tags (which is the proper and compliant thing to do) but not always. We rarely post photos, illustrations, and graphics that are not our own original files so I think for it to be so high is a little odd. I know so little about SEO, I can not really make a firm guesstimate, though.

Facebook, the mothership (the root index, bramandsons.com), our sister domain name (bramandsons.com), and Feedburner are all tied into this particular blog in some way or fashion. So, none are unexpected entries on the list.

To our blogging friends, all of you, we thank you for feeling we are worthy to link from your own digital narratives and homes.

INTERNATIONAL TRAFFIC

I don’t take too much stock in visits from other countries.

Honestly, do I really believe someone from Mauritius, Iran, or Bangladesh is interested in our rambling claptrap? More or less, I suppose people across the globe are finding us … by accident. I don’t know … But just for fun …

The Top 10 Referrers are as follows …

United States
United Kingdom
Germany
Canada
Zambia
India
Spain
France
Australia
Netherlands

Also, we have gotten repeat or multiple visits from the likes of Italy, Mexico, Malaysia, Sweden, Poland, Brazil, and so on and so forth. I can think of some type of connection for the Top 10 (i.e. our cousin was in France this year, our friends were in Spain, etc.). The rest? Well, it is all really a mystery. Just like the Loch Ness monster. Or how airplanes fly.

NATIONAL TRAFFIC

States are a different story. I am a tad bit more confident in the national numbers than the international. We had hits in all but North Dakota, Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Alaska, and New Mexico. Is it a coincidence all of these states more or likely would be on my personal Top 10 of “States I Would Rather Never Live In” or is this just confirmation that we simply aren’t compatible?

The Top 10 States / Territories / Districts are as follows …

Georgia*†
Maryland*†
District of Columbia†
Virginia*†
California†
New York†
Pennsylvania*
Texas
Illinois
Florida

*Known family
†Known friends

The top 7 are certainly not eyebrow raisers. We either have lived in the top 3 or have strongholds of family or close friends in 4 – 7.

Personally, I don’t understand 8 – 10. They are heavy in metro areas (Dallas, Chicago, Tampa Bay) and I can scrape around my brain for a person or two who I think might be a consistent reader … Hello, who are you people?

MOST READ POSTS

This, for a variety of reasons, is probably the most unstable list out of the bunch.

First, most people, if you believe the top traffic reference (see above), come straight to the subdomain (blog.bramandsons.com) and read whatever is on the first page. The way Google Analytics keeps track of page views is that you actually have to view the specific post. Meaning, there is a lot of content that is read and not accurately tallied. I can not imagine why someone would actually register an individual post view unless they were either commenting, reading comments, or were subscribed to our RSS feed. Knowing we get few comments and only have roughly 20 subscribers (plus 7 Google Connections) it really is tough to call this hard data.

The Top 10 Posts are as follows …

You know, I made all of these excuses but if you look back at the events or the content within the Top 10, it really is not shocking to see what is there and why it is so. The above were either centered on big events or very photo heavy.

I can explain the number one post, at the very least. You would not believe how many search engine pings I get from “Mark Lemke” and “Jeff Blauser”.

A FEW MORE RANDOM FACTS

About 47% of our viewers are using Firefox. The next highest browser, coming in with 31%, is Internet Explorer. For the love of Moses, everyone who is using Internet Explorer, please upgrade to at least IE8. We even got a hit from someone using Camino.

Most of our viewership is using some variant of cable internet (42%) with DSL (32%) and T1 (31%) bringing in silver and bronze.

In terms of loyalty, those who have returned 26-50 times is at 11% (huzzah for double digits), second only to one-time-only-tourists (33%). That is, for the amount we actually blog, is a pretty good number. So, a big thanks, again, to all of our consistent readers.

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Touring DC with Mal: Count the Boise State Fans

Posted by Bram_Fam on September 11, 2010

What to do right after the Georgia Bulldogs lose to Steve Spurrier’s Gamecocks? Blog about a happier time. This time last week, Georgia handily beat a much weaker team, and I picked up my good friend Mallory from Reagan-Washington Airport. Mallory and I have known each other since the end of 4th grade. We met at the end-of-year year book signing and signed each others’ year books saying that we hoped to get to know each other next year. We were placed in the same fifth grade class, so we did. After middle and high school and years together in college, we share a lot of memories ranging from the sweet to ridiculous.

She lives in Denver now, and after my visit to Colorado last year, it was our turn to play host. On Saturday, I gave her the oh-so-thrilling driving tour of Maryland’s campus and downtown College Park, and in the evening we dined at Ted’s Bulletin near Eastern Market. Really good home-cooking and adult milkshakes (apparently).

We took her to our favorite Busboys and Poets for Sunday Brunch and then headed to the Renwick Gallery and traveled up the Washington Monument after dark. Will and I had never visited the gallery before and were pleasantly surprised. I always have better art museum experiences when I’m with an artist–this time I had two trained artist companions (albeit, with very different specializations). We had fun taking creepy pictures (see below) outside of the Washington Monument, but the tiny, smudgy, crowded viewing spots inside were very disappointing.

On Labor Day, we toured the U.S. Capitol–lots of fun facts but sort of felt like we were being herded around–and saw Madeleine Albright’s brooch collection exhibit at the Smithsonian castle. The display and diplomacy explanations were done really well, and you couldn’t leave without thinking and knowing what a neat, smart lady she is.

Mallory and I spent her last day perusing a hand-crafted jewelry gallery in Georgetown and grabbing Rita’s one last time. Over the course of the weekend, we saw a lot of DC (and a lot of Boise State fans!). I don’t get to see many of my dearest friends nearly enough, so this trip was really nice, quality time. Thanks for visiting Mal!

Here are some pictures from the long weekend. (Photos taken, posted, and captioned by Will).