On the quirks of referrers

[pecunium]

No small part of why I bought a "Pro" account at Flickr was the stats feature, which has been improved a couple of times in the past year (the most recent being a close to real-time feature. This is balanced by "today" seeming to start earlier than it used to, or being somehow linked to when one logs in, but I don't care enough to try and suss it out).

I can sort my photos by comments, favorites, "interestingness" and hits. (for those who aren't squicked by strange looking creatures, Camel Spider Cricket is the hands down winner. I get 5-20 hits a day from Google/Google Images/Yahoo Images. In the time it's been up more than a thousand people have looked at it. Camel spiders seem to be a big search term).

This week I had an anomaly, 1,500 hits in a couple of hours, about 1/3rd of my images got looked at twice, from, "unknown" sources.

But mostly it's the usual. I'll post a shot to a group, and see a cluster of hits to related images. Or someone will fave a photo of mine, and other people will follow it. That, and links from here (here being Lj in the generic) pretty much account for my count.

It's gone up. From a background of about 20, to 60 to the present about 120 (with spikes when I make a post).

But sometimes there are strange ones, like this one from, of all places, youtube. I got two hits from that. From the video (how to use a Nokia phone, of some sort). It doesn't help the hits weren't to the same image (I tracked one down, to a photo I put up today [even though it's listed in yesterday's stats, see above about the strange timing of, "today"]. With 511 images, I'm not going to scan all the ones which only got one hit).

And the charming ones. A seem to be the beneficiary of people mistyping things: losanges windows as a google string gets to a picture I too, as the first hit under, "did you mean lozenge windows"?

So, the image which youtube directed a hit my way:

Mourning Cloak


Which I took today, when we released her. She'd been brought to Marcia by another teacher, who found the branch outside her classroom. It's a good thing she was with us, as the school sprayed the bushes last week.

Comments

[starwatcher]

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Lovely picture. But it made me stop and think; mourning cloaks used to be quite common in my area. Now, not so much. I miss them.

On campus one year, a willow tree had been damaged; in the spring the sap oozed out of the cut and fermented in the sun. Butterflies came by the dozens to enjoy... and get drunk. (And the preying mantises hung around for an easy meal. I tell this story to my students, reminding them that, even if you're a butterfly, you shouldn't drink and drive.) I'd stop on my way to class, slip a finger under a butterfly, and get a close look as it flapped its wings lazily, unable to fly away. Unfortunately, I didn't own a camera back then, or know anyone who did, so no pictures, but it's an indelible memory. Many of them were mourning cloaks.
.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

That's sad (the lack of the mourning cloaks).

I don't think that's the best of the series, for the best I think



or



Are the ones to look at.

I was about three inches from her when she took off, and I could hear the wings tearing through the air. It sounded a bit like ripping silk.

[starwatcher]

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for the best I think ... Are the ones to look at.

Technically, perhaps so. But aesthetics is partly in the eye of the beholder. I spent 50 years of my life severely near-sighted (got Lasik last summer, yay!), and I'm predisposed to prefer sharper detail, and side-to-side (or top-to-bottom) balance.

I could hear the wings tearing through the air.

Cool!
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[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

I'm charmed by the colors you captured, particularly the incandescant purple-blue peacock spots.

[flipping-hades.livejournal.com]

I think that the days in flickr stats are always in GMT; somewhere deep inside Yahoo some coder forgot to translate GMT to local time for rendering the stats page.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

According to the stats the day is supposed to start at Midnight, PST (which is consonant with the location of flickr's corportate headquarters).

In practice it used to be between 8-9 p.m.. Now it seems to be about ten minutes after I log in, whenever I log in.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid in Los Angeles, there used to be so many of those butterflies in the garden. Until I looked at that picture I'm forgotten about them.

The picture is beautiful by the way. :)

[soul-diaspora.livejournal.com]

I photographed that exact type of butterfly yesterday at Fletcher Wildlife Garden. (Didn't come out well, I'm afraid. The background was too dull--nothing's blooming here yet.) Thanks to you I know the name of it now!