Hit Counter

I've noticed a lot of comments from people who I would not ordinarily have thought read the blog. I think that's great, and I enjoy the wide readership. But it's got me curious about how many hits the blog gets and how wide the Loyal Readership really is. So with minimal difficulty (as as a means to procrastinate a tedious assignment), I've added a hit counter to the blog.

The hit counter is provided free from a company called Statcounter, and as they are providing a free service to me I include a link to their site here, so I figure they deserve at least a plug.

[UPDATE -- three hours later] I noticed that I had the site counter set for number of loads, so every time I opened my own browser, the hit counter increased by one. The number of times I access my own blog is not very useful, since it is my home page and all this was telling me was the number of times I tried to open a new browser window. So I switched it to number of URL's opening the page, which means that hits from different computers will count. Now, only one of the hits you see on the counter page is me; the number reflects the unique users who access the site -- a more useful piece of information. It's not perfect, though. The counter places a cookie on your computer that self-deletes after one hour unless renewed by re-visiting the website within that hour. So I'm probably good for 2-3 hits myself on any given day. If you have all cookies blocked on your browser, you will not be registered as a user. Still, this should help show exactly how popular the blog is after more than 200 posts.

I've also added a few new links to the left, mostly just for fun or reference purposes.