Odd things happening

I knew that something odd was happening when traffic to Former Naval Person blog (NSFW) dropped way off four days ago or so. I guessed, earlier today, that Yahoo must have stopped making referrals. I checked IndexTools referring domains, and sure enough, Yahoo referrals are down to almost nothing. Now, almost all traffic is from the mysterious "Direct access or bookmark". That actually covers everything from browsers where Javascript is disabled. I assume that a concerted move is underway to suppress Emma Watson fakes, or readers' access to them. Alternatively, they don't like the advertising. If I go without advertising, what little revenue I am currently receiving evaporates. So I just do it to see what traffic I can draw, rather than for revenue.

Technical problems?

I have an idea that we would learn a lot if we could understand what is happening with traffic to "Former Naval Person" blog (very NSFW). The blog is hosted with Blogger, a Google subsidiary, as is this blog. The pictures shown most recently are also hosted with a Google facility associated with Blogger. We have reason to believe that Google has blocked traffic to "Former Naval Person" starting late in July 2007. Very occasionally, the block slips and traffic jumps up to as much as 1,100. With the block in, most traffic comes from Yahoo-related search engines. A substantial amount of traffic cannot be tracked by SiteMeter and IndexTools, because they see the browser involved as having Javascript disabled. That is sufficient to hide any information about the visitor, except IP address. The Google ban seems to be related to the nature of the content. For the last year, about, the main topic has been Emma Watson fake racy pics. I believe that not are hardcore, just erotic with nakedness. That killed off using Google AdSense, as they frown on that sort of thing. The main issue would seem to be that Emma is as young as she is (a teenager). Google has also been known to squash female celebrity pics, perhaps when requested. But who knows what the real reason is in this case?

The "Bubble" has air escaping

I consider the economic stimulus package to be totally bogus. This does not solve "anything". It is more a Clintonesque gesture to show that "the government cares". The problem that we are in is just a natural, but nasty feature of the air finally escapting from the "housing bubble". The bubble is not new, as everyone knows. When I went up to Minneapolis to work in 2001, I saw that housing prices there were bubbling. I wondered how long it could last. I would have liked to see some "housing bubble" action in our part of the Dallas area, but it never happened. The bubble obviously has one or more holes and the air is escaping. That causes problems, but long-term, it also fixes them. I only hope that we can survive the fix.

"Where's the beef?"

Everywhere I looked this morning, cartoonists were knocking Barack Obama's lack of substance. He seems to be running on his charisma and nothing more. He also has the problem that if he spoke about what he wants to do, it would turn off too many people!

AT&T on the move

We got knock on door early last night. A man and a woman were canvassing door-to-door for AT&T. The most interesting thing that they offered was fiber optic internet connection with up to 10 mBit service for $30 a month. Supposedly, it would never go up in price. My service provider, who has a fixed wireless system is vulnerable, I am sure, but Time-Warner would seem to be the big target. They went through in the last year or two and did a similar door-to-door canvas. AT&T is offering an AT&T-branded version of Dish Network, along with the fiber optic internet connection. Time Warner cable is higher than the sort of numbers that were casually tossed out to me, so I imagine that they will lose customers. I am not switching. My wife keeps the AT&T wireline service, but that is all we have. We have our own Dish Network arrangement that we have had for about ten years, gradually upgrading along the way. We are going with the very high speed version of the fixed wireless internet connection, upgrading on Friday with the required radio. I can't see using AT&T-filtered and logged internet when I get internet without AT&T intrusion.

Web traffic

One striking aspect of trying to monitor and study web traffic is that the main tools that I use (and Google Analytics, as well) are blocked by using IE7 with Javascript disabled. That means that I can tell that traffic is coming from some unknown source, but can't tell what it is.

From sometime on Thursday until Midnight, Pacific Standard Time, Friday night, there was a large amount of traffic coming to the Former Naval Person blog (very NSFW). At 2am, CST, the influx ceased and dropped back to what has become the usual, normal level. The only thing that I can figure is that at Google HQ on the west coast, occasionally, their block is removed and traffic flows to the blog and then someone wakes up to the fact and turns it off again, at midnight, the next day. Tell me that something like that is not what is happening.

What now?

If Mitt Romney has given up his quest for the presidency, we are left with the slugfest in the Democratic pary. You almost have to wonder, with Romney still doing relatively well, if someone had something so damaging against him that he bailed. Also, will spoiled baby conservatives go into their corners and pout? Are they ready to elect an unacceptable Democrat? I suspect that they so want their way and won't play ball, that they will. They will live to regret that attitude. These are the same people who pitched a fit over Harriet Miers, a decent women, and insisted on having their way.

The Super Bowl

In my opinion, New England needs to be beat in the Super Bowl. I have happy that the Giants are doing as well as they have. To go into the half just down 7-3 says that the Giants have a shot. The knock on New England is that they play dirty and cheat. We have already seen them do that sort of thing. They seem to get a away with dirty play when someone else would not.