Two years of blogging

It has been more or less two years that I started to regularly write on this blog. High time to look back and take a short review. Including the posts moved over from the old page, these two years amounted to 316 posts, about one every other day.

Two years ago, in January 2013, I started to use WordPress and regularly write blogs. The first year saw a steady increase in views and visitors, reaching a level of about 6-7000 views a month. The second year didn’t see any considerable increase, just small spikes to 9000+ views, but on average the same numbers like at the end of the first year.

Personal favorites from 2014

My personal favorites are to be found far away from the most popular, because they are not about technical things.

First there a three concerned with music. For me the two artists, Tomokawa Kazuki and Fabrizio de André are very similar: long running singer-songwriter, critical of the current society, similar style of appearance, strong texts. If only more people would enjoy Tomokawa (everywhere), and de André (outside of Italy, in Italy he is very famous!).

• Tomokawa Kazuki – Within the Country of Falling Cherry Blossoms (友川かずき・桜の国の散る中を), where I try a translation of one of the deeply moving songs of Tomokawa
• Tomokawa Kazuki – Runaway Lad (友川かずき・家出青年), another translation about another strong Tomokawa song, and the perils of atomic desasters
• ファブリツィオ・デ・アンドレ　ー　盲愛のバラード (google translation), where I try to translate one of my favorite songs of Fabrizio de André into Japanese

Then there is the post

• 3 Year After – Memories from the Earthquake

which recounts our trip to Ishinomaki right after the desaster. It remains one of the strongest experiences I have ever had in my life.

Last year I also had the chance to visit my old living place, the Tuscany again.

• トスカーナの小旅 (google translation)

Even after nearly 7 years, I am still very much attached to this corner of the world. Having seen many places, I count the Tuscany, in particular the southern Tuscany, to the most, if not the most beautiful place in the world. It remains one of my true homes.

The last year also saw me involved in several fierce discussions (fights?) on Debian mailing lists, mostly concerning the new Code of Conduct and systemd.

• Trigger warnings, Debian’s CoC, and all that

A consequence of all these discussions, and the flames and personal attacks and power harassment I received, I have unsubscribed from all Debian mailing lists but the one where I am working on, in particular debian-devel and debian-private. The social climate has changed, and is not anymore what I enjoy.

The series of tutorials on writing Japanese with LaTeX, which I started recently, is not finished, but is something which I hope might be helpful.

• Writing Japanese in LaTeX : Part 1 – Introduction
• Writing Japanese in LaTeX : Part 2 – Characters and Encodings
• Writing Japanese in LaTeX : Part 3 – Simple documents

This series of tutorials is far from finished, and I promise to continue in the new year.

And finally, two posts that are currently at the core of my reading and re-thinking of the place I am living.

• Norma Field – In the Realm of a Dying Emperor, Part 1 – Chibana Shoichi – Burning the Hinomaru
• Chibana Shoichi – Burning the Rising Sun

These posts discuss the recent history of Japan, and the unclear legal and social foundation the society here is founded. It makes me scared to read what has happened so short time ago, because it also previsioned the current development, which is more than unsettling.

Tags

My posts can be categorized in a few classes:

• eBook related (Kobo, Kindle)
• TeX related (TeX Live, Debian)
• Travel and Mountaineering related
• Literature
• Miscellaneous

A bit surprising was that over the year in the top twenty visited posts, there were 12 related to eBooks, 4 related to TeX, and 4 related to Debian/Computing. On the other hand, the number of posts to tags gives a different image: 120 posts in Japan, 57 in TeX, 48 in Mountain, 48 in Society, 47 in Debian, 46 in TeX Live, 43 in Travel, 28 in Literature, and only then 28 in eBook.

So by far the most readers were attracted to a small amount of posts. What does that mean? Well, that I am writing more or less for my own diary 😉

Languages

Looking at the languages in which I have posted, I see English leading with 201 posts, followed by Japanese with 94, Italian with 15, and German with only 3. Considering that I came here 5 years ago, I am surprised how much I write in my personal interpretation of Japanese (as I was often told, it is not Japanese, it only looks like Japanese ;-).

Countries

Looking at the countries of the visitors, it is not surprising that Japan wins in both years (2013: 13344 view, 2014: 21500 views). The other countries in the top five are USA, Germany, France, and Canada. While in 2014 USA was last between this five, it gained and is now second.

What did I write that made Americans suddenly so keen in reading it ;-)?

Conclusion

None. I just continue writing what I find interesting, or what moves me, or what might help some others in fixing problems.

Thanks to all the readers, those who left comments and suggestions, and I hope one time or the other you could smile or enjoy a short minute with me.