…and a bit of a milestone, as Visitor #208,000 (Sitemeter) to “The Suite” arrived an hour ago from somewhere in the USA looking for my “salt mine” category; probably not what he/she really wanted.

On New Lines from a Floating Life: Sorry about that, Chief…

• Oops, as they might say:

THE Pentagon’s former chief prosecutor has admitted he never wanted to pursue charges against the Australian terrorism suspect David Hicks.

Then a wide-ranging set of ideas from Other blogs.

Later I put up a few thoughts on Overdue catchup for Aussie gays and lesbians.

Over on Ninglun’s Specials there has been a fair bit of tidying and polishing after the recent overhaul. See the About page, for example.

Yesterday — in WordPress time — has proved to be the best ever for New Lines from a Floating Life: Best Day Ever: 229 — Monday, April 28, 2008. This has been partly the result of a new WP feature, possibly related posts. My post Successful bloggers has been listed as such a post on this WordPress Blog item. Certainly has driven a bit of traffic my way.

Today’s posts on New Lines are Sir Gustav Nossal on Talking Heads last night and That de facto English test: scrap it, or admit what it really is! Later: a short note about My Vodpod(s).

True to its magpie-like mission statement (”COMMONPLACE BOOK (noun): a personal journal containing ideas, reflections and quoted extracts. It’s just a blog…”) New Lines from a Floating Life delivers Awe and wonder, but definitely not science this morning.

Having just been to the doctor in Redfern for my flu shot, I put Redfern visions 1 on Ninglun’s Specials. A “sans words” post. I have also reset the About page set in Garamond and the Family Stories set in Century, both being more compatible, in my view, with the current template. Did this with Live Writer, which adds so much flexibility to the basic WordPress offering.

Later on New Lines from a Floating Life I had a short spray at that silly game that’s happening somewhere or other: I have taken no (zero, zilch, nada) interest in the IPL competition…

After being so busy on Ninglun’s Specials, I have just one today, but it is quite long thanks to some judicious cutting and pasting: I like Norman Davies, a book review, on New Lines from a Floating Life. Then I caught up, rather late, on Lisa’s news: Aluminium is a mum. We are old Diary-Xers, and she is also an English teacher living in the Hunter Valley.

I added the first of a new set of posts, not pages, to Ninglun’s Specials: Towns I’ve stayed in 1 — Dorrigo.

I have been doing major overhauls on Ninglun’s Specials. Every page has been looked at, and quite a few changes have been made, particularly in typography, which with Windows Live Writer I am free to adjust. Each page set has its distinctive type face: Bookman Old Style, for example, in the Family History pages. I have also tried several templates in the past 24 hours before settling on:

My criteria included clarity, flexible rendering of fonts compatible with Live Writer, sufficient width for the “sans words” picture posts, page navigation tabs if possible — and this template has all those. However, having used it before, I know it has one drawback. On some computers, especially older ones, the right side bar column drops to the bottom of the screen. I have made sure that most of the important stuff is in the left column. What it should look like you see above.

But then I changed my mind later…

Back to two columns, and no top tabs, but a good hierarchical page guide on the side and the typographical changes still work…

And then after all that…

I reverted to a variant of one that has been here before, the plainest of the lot! Much the same in its advantages as the previous one, but just slightly narrower, setting the pics in less white. Better?

My “default” template — the one you see here — is great, but isn’t wide enough for the Specials.

Don’t forget there’s a string of new pages:

• More tales from my mother 1 — Spencer 1906-1913 [NEW]
• More tales from my mother 2 — Felled Timber Creek [NEW]
• More tales from my mother 3 — Braefield NSW 1916-1923 [NEW]
• More tales from my mother 4 — Dunolly NSW — and conclusions [NEW]

These have been quite well visited in the past few days:

The Bard, a Rabbit, and Ninglun 39
More tales from my mother 1 — Spencer, 38 reads
More tales from my mother 3 — Braefield 34
Family stories 1 — My mother in her own words 31
Family stories 3 — About the Whitfields 27
Surry Hills 19
More tales from my mother 2 — Felled Timber Creek 19
Family stories 4 — A Guringai Family Story 13
Writings 1 — A story 12
More tales from my mother 4 — Dunolly NSW 11

In fact Ninglun’s Specials scored well yesterday with 217 views, second top so far, the best ever being 276 on 7 April 2008. None of these stats include my own visits.

Yes, that time again. Sitemeter says the Floating Life suite is averaging 300+ visits (not page views, which is a higher figure) per day at the moment, while English/ESL is around 190 and the late but still existing Ninglun on Blogspot has 4. I guess we can take the latter as evidence of the average for a blog with no updates in a month or two…

WordPress counts show New Lines at 3,322 page views so far this month, the best yet. This blog has 574 so far, which is down on last month; Ninglun’s Specials — which has been subject of much change over the past few weeks — has 3,327, also down on last month, but daily visits seem to be building; Old Lines is down on last month too, but at 5,085 still attracts a lot of interest, despite nothing new there for some time. Floating Life Sans Words is now also sans posts, these having been absorbed into Ninglun’s Specials, but redirects have carefully been placed where the posts were — a lesson I learned from my earlier grand moves from one blog to another. It has had 207 views this month so far, but that should decline.

English/ESL has a healthy 6,654 page views so far, but that is well below last month’s record of 12,000 +!

I have noticed Google is increasingly sending people to the correct blog when they are searching for things that used to be on Ninglun’s Specials but are now on New Lines.

A few top entries from this week, according to WordPress:

Ninglun’s Specials

The Bard, a Rabbit, and Ninglun 31 page views
More tales from my mother 1 — Spencer  29
Family stories 1 — My mother in her own words 20
Family stories 3 — About the Whitfields 17
More tales from my mother 3 — Braefield 17
Family stories 4 — A Guringai Family Story 16
Surry Hills 16

New Lines from a Floating Life

Quick note on the 2020 Summit 19
Australian poem 2008 series #10: Peter S 18
John Cargher 16
Last night on ABC: “East of Everything” 16
Dispatches from another America 16
Australia 2020 Summit 14
Rampant: How a City Stopped a Plague 13
Australian poem 2008 series #12 — Judith Wright recycled 12

Those being active blogs, most people read generically without hitting individual entries, except to comment or read comments.

Old Lines from a Floating Life, on the other hand, is mostly individual post reads following cross-links or searches.

Late Anzac Day thoughts 59
About 57
On the awkwardness (and fatuity?) of discussing religion 55
Assimilation/Integration/Multiculturalism 45
Two Australian poems of World War II 42
4 — Homophobia 37
John Howard: bullying expert extraordinaire 34
Ian McKellen and Judi Dench in Macbeth 32
Friday Australian poem #4: Judith Wright 29
Friday Australian poem #17: Bruce Dawe, 25