LJ anniversary

[liv]

So I started my journal exactly two years ago today. Since then I have posted 343 entries, making a total of 157,073 words. (For comparison, my entire PhD thesis is somewhat under 40,000 words!) My most overused word is anyway with 202 instances.

I have received 3,307 comments, 300 of them from rysmiel. The comments add up to 316,905 words. 138 different LJ users have commented at least once, and 86 of those more than once. (None of these stats include this current post!)

Exactly one hundred people at least theoretically watch my journal. I get about 1000 hits a month for the files on my server that are called when people look at my journal. I don't bug individual posts so I don't know how many people are reading on their friends pages only. Rather annoyingly, the Portland stats counter is partly broken so I can't actually tell how many of these hits are from me, how many from automated web-spiders and how many from real people.

I have reviewed 69 books. I have also read, but not got round to reviewing, a further 15 books. So not quite 50 books a year, but not too far off that.

An automated psychological analysis toy concludes from my journal that my most frequent emotional states relate to affection (more affectionate than 70% of LJers) and glory (more admiring than 61%). My most frequent self-reported moods are content (16), pleased (14), relaxed (13), cheerful (11) and thoughtful(11). Well, I guess that justifies listing being easily pleased as an interest!

Part of the process of collecting these stats, particularly the word counts, involved making my entire journal into a single XML file, with help from a wonderful tool called LJArchive as well as exor674's programming skills. I suspect there are other things I could probably do with this file now I've got it, if I knew what I was doing.

So all these words, and all the time I've spent on LJ (perhaps luckily, there is no automatic way of measuring how many hours this site has absorbed!) have done me more good than the statistics can ever reveal. I've made really good friends on LJ, and met several people who are on the way to being friends. And it's let me stay involved in the lives of people who are very important to me in ways that would have been completely impossible without LJ. It's let me get to know people who would otherwise have stayed casual acquaintances, and keep in touch with far more people from various stages of my life than I'd ever have managed by email. I've learnt a whole lot about all kinds of topics, and it's been a source of instant entertainment when I'm bored, and instant comfort when I'm down. Plus, it was a major, major factor in preserving my sanity while I was writing up. Much love and gratitude to all you guys.

Conclusion: I love LJ more than I could ever have imagined. I'm extremely grateful to darcydodo who talked me into getting an account. In fact, while we're on the subject of anniversaries and darcydodo, today is also her 25^th birthday, so many happy returns to her!

Today is the 28^th day, making four complete weeks of the Omer.

Comments

[791-43.livejournal.com]

Happy LJ-versary! You're totally instrumental in my LJ experience, as you know, so this is another opportunity to say, yey you! Also, those are some impressively nerdy stats. :-)

By the way, I guess you're the person to ask - I'm thinking of getting more into Tindersticks, I have the first album, which other ones would you recommend?

[liv]

Happy LJ-versary!
Thank you! I was trying to think of a portmanteau word between anniversary and LJ and wasn't coming up with anything.

You're totally instrumental in my LJ experience, as you know
*bounce* I just adore how good LJ is at connecting people; 10 times better than any specialist alumni or networking website I've ever used!

Also, those are some impressively nerdy stats. :-)
I'm not sure if I should be flattered or insulted...

I'm thinking of getting more into Tindersticks, I have the first album, which other ones would you recommend?
I have Tindersticks I, Tindersticks II and a weird compilation called Donkeys. Tindersticks II has Tiny Tears which is my absolute favourite Tindersticks song and one of my favourite songs ever. It's generally a good album if you like Tindersticks; much along the same lines as Tindersticks I, really. Some of the tracks on it are kind of depressing, though, I should warn you. OK, if you like Tindersticks you're probably not looking for happy-joy-bounce type music anyway, but I'm talking really depressing.

I don't think there actually is much more in the way of albums; the soundtrack to a film, Nénette et Boni, which I don't know anything about. They have actually done some stuff recently; I've heard rumours of an album released this year, but I really don't know any of their recent stuff at all. I should go looking for it. You should ask doseybat; she's the one who introduced me to Tindersticks in the first place and probably knows more than I do.

They do have a bit of tendency to release several versions of the same tracks, so you can get all excited about a new Tindersticks album and find it has a lot of rereleases. The rereleases are kind of interesting, they do actually change the orchestration and stuff, but there's a lot of overlap between the albums nonetheless.

[791-43.livejournal.com]

I was trying to think of a portmanteau word between anniversary and LJ and wasn't coming up with anything.
LJ-versaries are an essential part of the LJ-verse. :-p

I'm not sure if I should be flattered or insulted...
Flattered! Always flattered!

Thanks for the info on the 'sticks - will investigate further. I have a feeling I heard Tiny Tears and really liked it, but that was a looooong time ago.

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

tindersticks 'curtains' is one of my favorite albums ever. i recommend.

[liv]

Ooh, didn't know you were another Tindersticks fan. Cool!

[liv]

LJ-versaries are an essential part of the LJ-verse. :-p
Makes perfect sense; I'm glad to have you around to clue me in on the correct jargon!

[hatam-soferet.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness, you're so super-endearingly nerdy! Awwwww!

[liv]

Well, thanks for being endeared. I'm awfully fond of you too, along with being nerdy.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Exactly 100 hundred people at least theoretically watch my journal.

I'm impressed -- ten thousand people! That's a whole lot more than watch my journal.

I don't bug individual posts so I don't know how many people are reading on their friends pages only.

The easiest way is with a custom mood theme hosted on your servers.

I do, though the tracking-who-reads me didn't figure into that decision (I think I started off well before ScrapBook became available).

[liv]

I'm impressed -- ten thousand people!
Well caught indeed, pne! That's what I get for writing a post consisting mainly of numbers. *blush*

The easiest way is with a custom mood theme hosted on your servers.
The thing is, I used to host my custom mood theme before Scrapbook, and it was great because I was getting pretty comprehensive stats about who was reading me. (Not entirely comprehensive, as some people force their own mood theme on their friends page, plus the general limitations of any sort of hit counting.)

But I was pushing close to the bandwidth limits for my free hosting service, and just as I was considering paying, the stats counter my web host uses broke. As a result, instead of getting proper logs, I get numerical IP addresses, which would be manageable except that they're truncated so I only see the last two numbers – totally useless! The hosting service have said they have no plans to fix the bug, so the benefits of getting near-meaningless stats don't outweigh the bandwidth costs. As a result, I moved my custom theme to Scrapbook and I'm just waiting for LJ to implement the long-promised stats counting.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Congrats. And here's to the next two, and plenty after that. :)

(That's one of the interesting things about LJ to me; it's the first online forum I've been really involved in that doesn't have a natural end to its lifespan.)

[liv]

Congrats. And here's to the next two, and plenty after that. :)
Thank you!

it's the first online forum I've been really involved in that doesn't have a natural end to its lifespan
I think this is probably true, but with some caveats. I'm extremely unlikely to get bored with LJ, and I don't think most of my friends will either, because once you're established here it's hard to leave! And even if a few did start using other systems or stop blogging altogether it would take a huge exodus to tip the balance. So all these things are true of LJ and not true of something like a discussion list, MUD, bulletin board, IRC channel etc, which do tend to have more of a lifespan.

But, what if the spammers start winning the arms race and LJ becomes effectively unusable if you're not prepared to spend several hours each day clearing out spam? Moveable Type is getting to that point; I'm seeing a lot of people in the wider blogosphere turning off commenting (which means you're just left with vanity publishing, no real discussion or social interaction), or stopping blogging altogether. Or what if LJ moves away from its commitment to usability and starts adding more and more features that only work in the latest version of IE on a brand-new machine? How bad would it have to get before a critical mass of people get pissed off?

I think my worst worry is that it might get to the point where there's no business that sees LJ as a worthwhile investment, so the site simply closes, no matter how many people want it to continue. Or it changes its nature so much in order to keep up with the market that it's no longer LJ? Or of course, in a less doomy scenario, some new technology may come along that's so vastly better that LJ becomes obsolete. I guess the conclusion is that nothing is eternal, especially not online.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Well, sure, if you want to be all pessimistic about things. ;-) Everything you say is true--it could all fall to pieces, though it would take a lot to get me personally to move, I think[1]. But I don't think any of them would be a natural end in the way that (say) a TV newsgroup ends when the show ends. And I hope any of them would be a way off yet...

[1] Though at some point, probably the start of next year, I'm likely to bifurcate my content and get a 'proper' blog for sf content and keep this for more personal-life stuff.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I know I talk a lot, but am I your top commenter ? I'd not have thought I posted that much more overall to your journal than blackherring or darcydodo or lethargic_man.

I'm very much in agreement with you about the general coolness of lj as a means of getting and staying in touch with people - I count my friendship with you as a prime example of this, while I can envision us having got into contact through lethargic_man in some form, I do not think I could have come to know you so well in that timescale without the existence of our journals.

*hug* looking forward to many more years of co-existence in this medium.

[liv]

I know I talk a lot, but am I your top commenter ?
Oh, by quite a long way, actually. I think I have mentioned this before, but it was buried in a post about something else.

I'd not have thought I posted that much more overall to your journal than blackherring or darcydodo or lethargic_man.
Well, you've guessed the next three correctly. But actually, your comment total is more than twice anyone else's except lethargic_man. To be fair, the counter I have can only count total comments, and there was a chunk of time when lethargic_man didn't have a journal and didn't read much, so it's possible that he comments at a higher rate than you. Also, pseudomonas comments about as much as blackherring and darcydodo, FWIW.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I'd not have thought I posted that much more overall to your journal than blackherring or darcydodo or lethargic_man.

Well, you've guessed the next three correctly.

That's more accurate than I thought my pattern-sense was. Gosh.