2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 26,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

 

In 2010, there were 49 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 299 posts. There were 7 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 8mb.

The busiest day of the year was March 16th with 293 views. The most popular post that day was Manjushri Mantra Remix.

 

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, google.co.th, en.wordpress.com, thousand-stars.org, and search.conduit.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for พระโพธิสัตว์, buddha, ฝันเห็นเสือ, human skeleton, and amitabha.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Manjushri Mantra Remix March 2008

2

พระโพธิสัตว์กับพระอรหันต์ July 2008
1 comment

3

ฝันเห็นเสือ March 2009

4

Meditating on Bones September 2008

5

Laughter and Buddhism April 2008
6 comments

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A New Friend

Here is a neighboring blog which is fully (not partially like this one) about Buddhism. Please have a look:

http://buddhismnow.wordpress.com/

Go Beyond Words

I just found out on my blog dashboard that the blog of the Wisdom Publications is the top fastest growing blog. Congratulations. The blog is full of good stuffs for Buddhists, one of which is a post about the most outstanding women in Buddhism award, which was given out last March here in Bangkok. Krisadawan also got the award as is perhaps well known to many of us.

If you are interested, go to http://gobeyondwords.wordpress.com/

Twitter

Finally I am a member of the Twitter community. For those who don’t know this, Twitter is like WordPress, only that it is much shorter. You are allowed only 140 characters of posting in your “blog.” No more. This is like sending short messages from the cell phone. In fact Twitter and the cell phone fit each other like hand and glove.

WordPress has receognized the power of Twitter by putting a new widget so that blog readers can have access to the Twitter microblog right inside the WordPress blog. But Twitter has charms of its own. I have been thinking how the limits posed by the 140 characters has some significance. I am reminded of short aphorisms that some philosophers like Nietzsche or perhaps Schopenhauer were doing. Nietzsche has a book consisting of short messages which are not entirely connected. You can read one aphorism and then skip many others and come back and forth.

The purpose of Twitter is originally to let your friends know what you are “up to.” But then one can think up many other applications. One can put up interesting thoughts, short texts which fit with the way of life of people who do not have time to read anything longer than a sentence. See, this post is now more than 200 words long, but Twitter would limit that to 140 characters! No doubt it can hold much more members since it severely limits the length of the post.

So if you would like to know what I am up to, then take a look at the Twitter widget on your right. Or click this link. So there are both ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ blogs. The internet is really amazing.

New Blog

I have moved the blog of the Center for Ethics of Science and Technology, Chulalongkorn University to its new home here at WordPress. Please go and have a look at http://cestchula.wordpress.com/

Thanks.

Fellow Bloggers

I just had a look at the dashboard of my blog and found that it is linked to by another blog. This blog (Enlightenment Ward) put my blog here under the category of a Buddhist blog by a male practitioner. Some classification indeed. There are also categories of blogs by women practitioners, blogs by monks, nuns and others I didn’t remember.

It is indeed an honor to be linked to by a fellow blogger. And somehow I found it rather odd that this blog is put under the category of a ‘Buddhist blog by a practitioner.’ For one thing, this blog is “mostly” about Buddhism, but not “exclusively.” So I talk about other things, such as tennis, Thai politics, the internet, and right now in this blog I’m talking about other blogs. But thanks any way for linking to me. I am sure to link back.

Another thing is that this blog is even not always in English. So Thai readers find it rather difficult to follow it because about 80% of the time this blog is in English, but perhaps English readers might wonder what is going on in some of the posts in Thai. So you can pick and choose.

Maybe I’ll wait until somebody else picks this blog up for other things than Buddhism. Perhaps blogs about “all sorts of topics”. Sometimes there is a classification like this, you know. No, but seriously, this blog is for the most part about Buddhism, and I intend it to be that way.

Enlightenment Ward put me under the category of a “practitioner.” This kind of gave me goose bumps, because the word seems to conjure an image of someone who’s serious, with shaven head, sits cross-legged all the time, etc. But I think I am everything else but that. I do meditate from time to time, but perhaps that is not enough to dampen any surprise that will happen once someone sees me who has heard about me being listed as a practitioner.

But in any case, I am certain that I take at least this part of my Bodhisattva vow seriously — I would like this blog to contribute to sentient beings’s eventual realization of Buddhahood. But there are so many ways to Buddhahood….

Visitors’ Location

I have found a nifty website where you can download a code that shows you the location of the visitor’s location on this website. It’s IPligence. If you have a website you might want to give this a look. The map generated looks better than the other visitor’s map site that I have encountered.