Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Blogosphere

Eleven

ElevenToday marks the eleventh anniversary of Cap’n Bob & the Damsel blog. We are still here although our posting has become sporadic and our commenting on politics has become almost painful in these days of the most berserk political landscape ever.

I was planning on a more elaborate post for this anniversary, but we are still on the road with our relatives and interfacing with them is very important. Our travels will resume later today as we begin to head back toward the southern branch of relatives and then on home to Arizona.

I found the image of dice on-line and thought it would be appropriate to post since our daily blogging has become somewhat of a crapshoot. Thanks to our regulars for hanging in there with us.

22 Sep 2016 by Blogosphere Wanderlust

CB&D Website Changes Underway

Smartphone on WeblogNow that I have upgraded to a smartphone, it has become obvious to me that our websites are definitely not handheld mobile friendly. Shortcomings we have noted include small text size and flaky mobile application plug-in support for our various Flash® animations.

I have already taken the first step toward compatibility by replacing our animated banner with a static image. Next steps will be (as we get to it) replacing the little animated doodads with static images, or removing those that do not have a static equivalent, including the Never Forget animated tribute.

It troubles me to do away with this animation which has been a memorial to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on this site for over ten years, but the traffic count on the hit indicator at the right under the animation has been diminishing steadily. When the hit counter passed sixty million in February of 2010, the hits per hour were nearly 1300; when the counter passed ninety million, the hits per hour had diminished to 529. The current hits per hour is under 200, so it is time to phase the tribute out.

Image: How this site looks on my new Samsung Galaxy mobile

I will clean up the incompatible items on all of our sites over a period of time (read when I get around to it) and begin looking at ways to detect device type and to issue a compatible format. This latter effort may take a while since I use a very old version of WordPress and I will have to customize things in the old code rather than upgrading to a new version incompatible with the current database structure.

It might just be too much work to convert the whole site, so I might incorporate a mobile only splash page that directs the mobile user to switch to a larger tablet or a full-size computer screen. I have only begun to research the changeover, so stay tuned.

29 Aug 2016 by Blogosphere Technobabble

Throwback Thursday – Blogger Rendezvous

Blogger Rendezvous

This goes back to January of 2010 when Damsel and I were vacationing in Arizona just about a year before we moved here. We were towing a trailer that we rented in Mesa, AZ and parked it at a campground in Apache Junction. Glenn B who blogs at Ballseye’s Boomers happened to be in the area and we arranged an eating meeting there in Apache Junction. My little trusty Canon A710IS (on autopilot) took this photo of Me, Damsel and Glenn just after we finished eating. We enjoyed the visit with Glenn and continue to read his blog to this day.

I found this old photo in an archive I had on a memory card that had been languishing in a box in the desk drawer for some time. Click on the image to enlarge. Our original post of the encounter with Glenn is here.

04 Aug 2016 by Arizona Blogosphere Retirement

States Visited Meme

my-states.jpg

I saw this meme on the FecesBook™ thing and didn’t do anything about it. Then, I started seeing it show up on the blogs I read, most notably Every Blade of Grass, so I decided to participate.

I have been lucky to have visited a lot of places, domestically and internationally, because of Military Service, occupational deployment, personal vacation and travel, plus my secondary occupation as a pilot and flight instructor. My count of states visited in this country is up to forty-eight of them, only missing Iowa and North Dakota. I assure you, those two are on the bucket list.

We may visit the missing two this summer, depending on how things work out, but in any event, we will extend our 2017 Eclipse Vacation to include the two missing states. There are a lot of interesting things to see and do in that region of the country and we look forward to the trip.

I made this map using the link to MapLoco to Create your own states map. Click on the image to enlarge.

08 Jan 2016 by Blogosphere Travel Wanderlust

California Cacti Acquisition

Cactus Number One Cactus Number Two Cactus Number Three

On our recent excursion to the California Desert, we were honored to meet up with long-time reader and commenter Crotalus, who was kind enough to present us with these three beautiful examples of cacti from his collection. We transported them to the Arizona desert where they seem to be doing quite well.

In our hasty meeting (we were packing up to head home) I was not able to record their proper binomial names, so I will (for the time being) just refer to them as our California Cacti number one, two and three. You can click on any one of the three images above to enlarge to full size.

We are already planning our next visit to the Palm Desert area to meet with our kids and the other set of Grandparents to the new little grandson. By then, we may be able to meet up with Crotalus again to properly identify the varieties of these cacti.

26 Sep 2015 by Blogosphere California Home & Garden Photography

Tenth Blogiversary

ten.pngWell, it’s been a decade since we first hung out our banner and started this cyber-diary called a weblog. It’s been mostly fun for us and we have enjoyed coming into contact with like-minded readers and fellow bloggers.

The content subject matter of this blog has evolved over the years and all of the pro-second amendment posts are now posted on The Wandering Minstrel after starting that blog, now in its eighth year. Going forward. we always have and will continue to post items pointing out the farce known by many names which is now called by the absurd name “climate change.” By any other name, still one of the many lies promoted by progressives. We will keep an eye on their lies and point them out whenever we can.

Whatever technology changes might affect blogging in the future, we will try to adapt. Here’s to the next ten years!

22 Sep 2015 by Blogosphere Whacko Politics

Ninety Million “Never Forget” Tribute Hits

ninetymillion.jpgThis morning, the hit counter for the Never Forget Tribute rolled past ninety million. The hit counter displays an approximation of the number of times that the Tribute has been accessed since August of 2005, the date when it was made available to other websites. Knowing the exact count is virtually impossible, since we only began tracking it after it had been deployed for a couple of years. We used an extrapolation algorithm to establish the approximate count back then, and have incorporated a real-time hit counter since.

The Hits per hour and Hits per day readouts are also approximations. One thing for sure, though, is that the HPD and HPH have diminished from their peak values from about 2009; at that time there were more than 1000 hits per hour. I suppose that a lot of bloggers who previously displayed the Tribute have dropped out of the game. I also suspect that the paradigm shift towards social media had an effect of reducing hits to blogging sites.

At the current rate of hit accumulation, the counter would pass the One Hundred Million mark sometime in the spring of 2017. That is optimistic, however, given the trend toward fewer hits per day.

We thank those sites that continue to display the Never Forget Tribute. Given the current continued Islamic terrorist movements in the World, none of us will ever be able to forget.

UPDATE: (12/09/2014) I revised the hits per hour and hits per day algorithm to estimate the current rates. With the fall-off since the last benchmark of 75 Million hits, the new estimates are closer to reality and seem to be less than half of those reported prior (compare the graphic above to the sidebar counter). The algorithm I use is faulty in that it averages over the longer term rather than doing a running average. I will think about ways to implement a better algorithm if I have the inclination. 😉

05 Dec 2014 by Blogosphere Never Forget

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