Posts Tagged ‘ollyfayers.com’

Coming soon…

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

Nobody reads people’s personal blogs. As I often point out, the main readership of this blog consists of my mum. I don’t mind this – I write for my own amusement above all else, and if I were writing to attract an audience, I would probably have given up despairingly some time ago.

Personal blogs remain justifiably low down on most people’s “to read” list. After all, few want to hear a stranger, or even someone you know, prattle on about the minutiae of their life in a nauseatingly self-important tone. Many blogs tend to adopt this approach, and I’d probably stop writing mine were I to cast that same critical glance in its direction. (You may be vomiting at the irony as we speak).

Another reason that people find personal blogs annoying is because the writers often air their opinions on subjects about which their knowledge level ranges from “miniscule” to “non-existent”.

I shall cut to the point. Writing on www.ollyfayers.com the whole time makes me look like I’m my own biggest fan. It would be nice to write a blog which sticks to one subject about which I am (at least to some extent) an expert. I therefore intend to set up a primary education blog soon, which tracks developments in government policy about that very area.

We’ll see how it goes, but blogs which do specialise can sometimes get a small following of those who find themselves with similar professional specialities. It would be nice to put another opinion of UK primary education onto the web, even if it is not heard or listened to.

Fear not, I shan’t cease blogging about the self-important guff which I normally put up here. I don’t intend to do it less, but I do intend to create another blog elsewhere for that aforementioned topic. I’ll put the posts here as well, but they’ll look more professional in their own space.

More details to follow.

They still haven’t owned up

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

On March 27th, I reported that somebody had searched for “olly fayers fit cambridge news attractive” and gotten to my site, and attributed this to a prankster whose identity is presumably well known to me.

There was a follow up visit over a fortnight later, following a search for “olly fayers fit cambridge pgce”, which I thought displayed a certain dedication to the prank.

But alas, still nobody has owned up, and seeing as this mystery ‘admirer’ has not got in touch, the odds remain in favour of it being a prankster’s work. What I do know is this: twas somebody on a computer in Cambridge somewhere. I found out how to get this info from the clever little thingy which tells me these stats.

Come on, own up.

Okay, very funny, now own up

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

From time to time, I go to Google Analytics to look at the data generated from visits to my site. In fact, I blogged about this some months ago. One of the most enlightening things you can use Google Analytics for is to display the search terms which have been used to access your result.

Hence, if you google “Olly Fayers”, I come up first. If you click through to this website, the stats will show me that a search for “Olly Fayers” got the user to the site.

However, someone has now used this to play a joke on me, and quite an amusing one at that. Recently a photo of me amongst other Green Party campaigners in Cambridge found itself to page 5 of the Cambridge News. I would imagine that the person who searched for, wait for it, “olly fayers fit cambridge news attractive”, would not seriously give those attributes to me. Nonetheless, good joke. I did chuckle.

In related news, people are still searching for Alexsandr Meerkat and “don’t even sound same” and finding their way here. Quite a few people actually, which is weird. I only really wrote the one post about it, and twas not even that good.

Meanwhile, a old friend of mine from uni (who goes by the name ‘Andy’) appears to have searched for “andy olly fayers powerhouse”, to hark back to the time we used the word “powerhouse” with liberal frequency to describe people with significant intellectual clout, or to wind other people up by calling ourselves powerhouses and denying others that status. Good work.

People are also searching for “lobster card”, which is what I call my Oyster card. One person searched for “who is Simon Fayers”, and I’m afraid I do not know.

A nice compliment, and the dangerous nature of blogging

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Today I was complimented on the quality of my writing, incidentally by someone who is probably the most amusing provider of Twitter tweets who I follow.

This is always a really pleasant thing, because nothing can feel quite so egocentric as running a website called www.myname.com with a big picture of my face on the homepage and a blog containing my thoughts. I just do it because I enjoy it for myself, but it’s lovely to receive words of encouragement. It must mean that it doesn’t always come across like the gaseous emissions of an overactive ego.

Writing, most often through blogging, is my release. I sometimes worry that, heading in to my profession as a primary school teacher, it could come back to haunt me before long. After all, employers are likely to Google their prospective employees, and this website will be first up. As are parents who want to find out who this Fayers chap is.

You always worry that the wrong end of the stick, or the wrong stick entirely, will be got. After all, nothing matches my devotion to being a brilliant teacher who encourages children to value their own thoughts and being. Neither my strong political views or my dubious sense of humour stand in the way of this, but by posting a blog, you run the risk that people can interpret your words in a different way to that intended.

Or, worse still, should a grammatical or typographical error slip through the net, I may be judged to be unable to teach literacy to the youngsters. As Robert Sharp pointed out in a post published today, the dreaded feeling that you may have to expunge your own blog forever is held by many others besides me.

What’s more, judgements about the blog can be made without me ever knowing about them; I cannot defend myself from criticisms I have not heard.

The blog means too much to me for me to dispose of, but I must confess to a mild unease about how it might be interpreted.

Hello to my mysterious website visitor in Leeds

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Someone in Leeds looks at my website from time to time. I was told this by a little dwarf who sits inside the Internet itself and reports back to me the particulars of my website traffic. I thought I would offer a hello to my visitor from Leeds. Hello.

New Research Indicates Link Between Manflu and Poor Grammar

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Having looked back upon my blog post about manflu last night, I realised that it was littered with sloppy grammatical errors. I have endeavoured to correct them, but I am unfortunately still suffering the affliction which seems to be the root cause of my temporary loss of proper English. Whilst my body remains under siege from said manflu particle-thingies, please kindly overlook any missing apostrophes and whatnot.

Blogular bombardment

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

I think this is my sixth blog post so far today, and Big Ben is comfortably half an hour from chiming for midday. Most priviliged have my readership-of-three been on this cloudiest of Thursdays. Or cursed depending on how you view this blog.

I am clearly procrastinating the more important tasks I am meant to be undertaking. I did intend to give up procrastinating, but I haven’t quite got round to it yet. It’s on my To-Do list. I’m now getting to that state of mind which Facebook-users often enter, whereby they share their most inane of thoughts via a status update. Here I am, sat in my desk chair (which is actually a rock hard chair I stole from the dining area of the dwelling), actually contemplating sharing with you my increasingly strong conviction that McVities digestives taste overwhelmingly of salt.

(There, I snuck it in without you actually noticing. Via blogular stealth. I’m glad I got that thought out of my head. It was beginning to trouble me. Shouldn’t the milk chocolate ones taste more of chocolate than salt? I think they should. But ’salt chocolate digestives’ does not sound like such an alluring form of sustenance).

This particular blog post is now zipping about all over the place like a domestic housefly who has been feeding on Relentless Energy Drink. Somebody from New York went on this blog the other day, although only for five seconds according to my complicated techy analysis thingy which works these things out. They must be an exceptionally quick reader. I have also had repeat visits from Leeds. Even someone from Wolverhampton checked out the site. It’s going global.

Now I shall take my leave, under the fear that I have revealed myself to be more of a buffoon within the last six blog posts than you already suspected I was, which I would estime is a difficult feat to have achieved. Must dash. Toodlepip.

Breaking news! Two person readership grows by 50%

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Exciting developments here at www.ollyfayers.com headquarters. My readership, which has long been limited solely to my mum and my friend Toby, appears to have a new member. It turns out that mum’s own mum, or ‘Nana’ to me, is also a reader. Welcome in.

Now a test for you Nana. As you know, Grandad has been attending a computer course at the library, but you should be more than proficient in this field already. Your task is to leave a comment on this post. Good luck.

No-one reads this blog, but…

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Yes, nobody save my own mother and Toby actually ventures to read my blog – and if your friends ain’t gonna read it then who is? – but I do get some interesting statistics from the little thingimyjig which analyses who is visiting the site. Someone from a place called Cheadle Hulme did apparently. It’s in Cheshire, near a place called Cheadle, which is near that place called Stockport, which is near Manchester.

I don’t know anyone from Cheadle Hulme, but my stats indicated they only stuck around for one minute and eighteen seconds. That’s enough time for them to decide they don’t like me.

In further uninteresting techy news, I shared a story on Google Reader the other day, and found that I had two ‘followers’, who theoretically follow the news stories or links I decide to share. This was the first time I had shared a story in months. I knew my trusted friend Toby was a ‘follower’, but the other person I was clueless about. Then I saw it was my ex-girlfriend. To cut an uninteresting short story into an even shorter one, I mysteriously only have one follower today. No prizes for guessing who stuck around.

High up on Google, but for some pretty weird things

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

I didn’t think I had anything much to say this evening. In fact, I was about to turn in. Until I decided to check a little techy thing called “Google Analytics”. Basically, it monitors the traffic heading to my website. It tells me roughly where the computers viewing my site are viewing it from (to the city), what kind of browser they’re using, and how they got to the site.

Quite a few people get to a site via a Google search of some kind, and naturally if you search “Olly Fayers” then this site is right up top. In fact, if you type my name into Google and hit the dangerous button labelled “I’m Feeling Lucky” then I’ll appear almost right away. However, little did I know that the same would work for the query “don’t even sound same” – this being my impression of Alexsandr the meerkat from Compare the Meerkat. Better still, I am the fourth best Google result for “can tea towels spread swine flu”. This is a curious boast.

I also happen to know that either an old friend of mine searched for himself and found his name on my site, or someone else searched for him and found my site. How strange is that? You just gotta love Google.