Hello Svalbard

I recently watched a couple of videos from Svalbard. Things didn’t go according to plan for photographer Thomas Heaton because of the warmer than expected conditions there:

See?

It’s been documented by the Washington Post as well.

The international director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, Kim Holmen, who lives in Longyearbyen, says of climate change here, “This town is certainly the place where it’s happening first and fastest and even the most.”

Holmen notes that Svalbard used to be where students came to observe Arctic conditions. Now it is the place they come to study a climate in transition.

That’s it, Kim. Always look for the positives.

Of course, observing Arctic conditions studying a climate in transition isn’t the only thing to do in Svalbard, as I found out by googling Things to do in Svalbard.

Pyramiden looks like the place to be, not just offering mining and (possibly still?) glacier, but also polar bear and bear.

Ursines. One never can get enough.

And can we just take a moment to acknowledge the names of settlements in Svalbard? Svalbard is great.

The Longyear Town“, “Ice Fjord“, “The Pyramid” and er… “New Ålesund” (less impressive, let’s be fair) in that foursome above alone.

Many beagle-eyed readers will likely see this post as a thinly veiled attempt to get some readers in from the wonderful island of SVALBARD – one of the few places on earth from which 6000 miles… hasn’t been accessed. Maybe it is.

If you’re reading this, Kim Holmen, please give us a shout.

Cheers.

On stats

I reinstated Google Analytics on the blog this week. More out of interest than for any other reason, although it does open the door to potential future advertising and collaboration opportunities at absolutely no cost and very little effort. But it’s mainly just to look at some numbers.

And I do like numbers.

The rudimentary wordpress stats package thing that was automatically active on the blog is ok, but GA does give you so much more information.

And I do like information.

Of course, the numbers and the information mean so much more when you have lots of them to compare with each other. It’s (very) early days and most things that I’ve seen on there have left me completely unsurprised.

Except for one stat, which I had never really considered.

It appears that over the past three days, over 60% of people reading 6000 miles… are doing so on mobile devices. Woah! That’s a lot more than I had thought. I mean, I hadn’t really thought about it a lot, but if I had (and obviously, I have now, retrospectively), I would have thought (and now, as mentioned above, I have thought) it would have been a much smaller percentage than that. Like 10. Or 20.

Fortunately, thanks the genius that is The Guru, this blog is optimised for viewing on whatever size or type of device you choose. Thus, it should be a seamless, fluid, intelligent experience.

It’s just the content that lets it down.

And look, the site looks good to me when I occasionally log in on my mobile device, but if you’re on your phone right now, how is it looking? Please let me know if things aren’t working ok for you (I mean on the blog, not in life generally) (there are professionals who can help you with that kind of thing) (I’m far from professional).

I’m going to review my stats once I’ve got enough data to review, and I might post about it on here if there’s anything worth posting about. In the meantime, in the same sort of vein, I apparently had quite a good day (by my standards) on Flickr yesterday (mainly thanks to this post referencing this post referencing this album, I’d imagine) with almost 7,000 views.

If I could get those sort of numbers on the blog, I could almost retire.

Almost.

Blog update

There’s a bit of chaos in the 6000 miles… Stats Office this morning after yesterday’s post “took off” a little. We’ve even had to rope the beagle in to help with counting, after the family ran out of suitable numbers of hands and feet.

Paws for thought indeed.

It’s a bit of a rush when something you created catches the zeitgeist (albeit in this case, a very localised one). It’s only ever happened occasionally on this blog, but interestingly most often on posts which are observational in nature. There is power in just putting on paper (or in pixels) what everyone is thinking.

Weirdly, those ones are often the easiest ones to write as well.

 

Thanks for reading, everyone.

2017 Blog Stats

This year, you – dear 6000 miles… reader – have been served a total of 420 posts (an average of 1.15 per day) comprising of an incredible 95,957  words (an average of 228.5 per post) from 4 different countries (an average of 1 every three months, dur!) on this site.
I know – the countries bit seems a bit lame with amongst all those other big numbers – but they were actually often the most exciting bits.

November was (for some reason) my most prolific: 11,337 words in 40 posts. (Only one country though.)
What was I thinking?
Mainly stuff about nurdles, apparently.

Join me then next year, when there will be plenty more letters arranged into generally correct and meaningful order.

Have a safe and enjoyable New Year.

6000 out.

Hits

I’m not one of those bloggers who desperately chases hits. Of course, it’s nice to have people read my stuff and I have a daily number that I like to get to (and which is a very modest number, so I usually do), but should I fall short, it’s really not the end of the world.
If I was one of those bloggers who chased hits, I would have given up years ago. It’s simply not working.

I am one of those bloggers who like stats though, and so when I stumbled upon a plugin which offered me my all-time stats, I was never going to say no. So I said yes.

I’m not really sure what “all-time” entails. I know for a fact that it can’t include the early years of ballacorkish.net and 6000 miles… because I wasn’t even using that software back then (also, the numbers really don’t match up). So there’s no indication of how long this is over, which would be helpful. But let’s not get antsy over what is, after all, a free bit of software.

What was most interesting for me was the map. How cool is it that people all over the world have read my blog? Well, I say “all over the world”, but I haven’t reached everyone yet. Because, despite there being absolutely loads of visits to the blog, I am apparently yet to have a documented hit from any of these ten nations, listed in order of population:

North Korea – 25.537m (well, ok)
Niger – 20.671m (infamously mentioned here)
Chad – 14.450m (disappointing from my African brothers)
Turkmenistan – 5.662m (flag with a carpet on; amazing.)
Guinea Bissau – 1.821m (see Chad)
Solomon Islands –0.599m (hey! 600,000 readers can’t be wrong, guys)
Western Sahara – 0.513m (excuse: political upheaval/no internet)
Greenland – 0.056m (2.166 million km² of potential readership)
Falkland Islands – 0.003m (I’m actually surprised at this)
Svalbard – 0.003m (despite constant mentions of Norway on here)

The first visitor from each of these countries/territories will add their homeland to this list of places who have visited 6000 miles… just once:

Iran
Sierra Leone
French Polynesia
Martinique
American Samoa
Tajikistan
Djibouti
Togo
Bhutan
San Marino
Tonga
Benin
St. Martin
Cape Verde

Some impressive French overseas territory representation there. Bonsoir, Rodney. Bonsoir! 

I’m not really sure why I’m sharing this, save to ask that if you are going to any of these places in the near future (North Korea – lol), a quick visit to 6000.co.za would be much appreciated. I’ll also be doing my bit to lever few mentions of outstanding counties into my posts over the next few weeks in a shameless attempt to dominate the globe.