Blog tidbits...

In slightly more than two weeks we will be moving back to the States and I doubt that I will add new posts to the blog. I might keep the blog going for awhile since most of my hits are on older posts (like the one post I did on Jane Mansfield which still gets a lot of hits). I will probably start another blog on another topic, but if I do I will do it anonymously and it won't deal my family.

Even as I approach the mothballing of the blog, though, there are some significant milestones to savor. As I write this the original hit counter (the small one at the bottom of the left hand side of the blog), which was up and running within a few days of when the blog began in April of 2007, is at 9,997 and I expect it to hit 10,000 by the end of the day. 10,000 hits. If you had asked me when I started if I would reach 10,000 I would have said sure, in 2012. Of course, the daily traffic started quite small and grew over time as there was more content to found by Google searches. So while I have reached 10,000 hits 14 months, I am currently averaging about 1,000 hits a month and about 75% of these hits are first timers, not returning friends and family.

This post is also number 396 and I will hit 400 in the next few days. That's an average of just under one per day (about 93% of the days I add a post), and many of the posts were pretty lame, but at least there was a wide variety of lameness.

I have now had visitors from 96 individual countries or territories (e.g. Puerto Rico and the Palestinian territories) and just yesterday had my first visitor from Iran (also brought to the blog thanks to the post on Jane Mansfield). It proves what a wonderful tool Google is that so many people can find my little blog about this and that. But I never in a million years thought I could reach countries of more than half the planet.

My plan is to convert many of my posts into a book via blurb.com. This is a self-publishing web site that is linkable to some blogs (fortunately, blogger is one of them) so I can create a publisher quality coffee table book of our time in Prague as keepsake.

I have really enjoyed writing the blog and hope that when you stopped by you found something interesting. It was a great learning experience for me and I now feel I could start a blog about anything that interests me and be able to make the blog look good and have interesting features. Thanks for your support.

First anniversary of the blog...

Tomorrow, April 9th, is the first anniversary of my first blog post here at www.tischlersinprague.blogspot.com. It was a riveting account of our Easter festivities. You can reminisce here.

In that one year I have posted 347 times, or about 95% of the days. I don't think that's too bad. If someone bothers to visit I feel that I should at least have something recent to offer. That's not to say that they were all quality posts - I am painfully aware that there were some clunkers and others that qualified merely as space fillers. Still, in the end the readers get what they pay for.

In the beginning I experimented with widgets, being generally fascinated with the variety available. I added headlines in the Czech republic and a basic hit counter. Later, I added pictures showing progress on the new Radio Free Europe building here in Prague.

What really got me excited, though, was when I added the capabilities of web-stat.com. After that I could not only see how many people were visiting, but where they were, what time and for how long they were at the blog, and how they found it, even down to the words they put into the Google search. That has made checking the blog much more interesting.


I am now up to over 1,000 hits per month, which is extremely modest as things go, but still much more than I ever thought I would reach with my little blog on our life in Prague. There are a few topics that I blogged on that keep bringing readers. Starbucks always generates a lot of interest. The Palladium mall fire, while not very interesting to my friends and family back home, brought (and still brings) a lot of English speakers to the blog since information on the fire and resulting shutdown of the mall was hard to come by. The same is true of the reporting on the murder of American Mike Murray in Prague by a drunk off-duty Prague policeman. If you are a friend of Mike's you know that there was very little information to be had (that is still the case) and all I did was accumulate it into a single spot.

Other posts that get a lot of continuing hits relate to places we have visited. The Colliseum in Rome and Terezin here in the Czech Republic have continued to draw readers over time. And, of course, my multiple posts on the fall of the US dollar seem to be of interest (despite how awful I have been at predicting where the dollar will go).

I will continue to post as long as the name - Tischlers in Prague - still applies. We don't know yet how long that will be, but while we are here we are enjoying the experience.

Grant's Prague Bike Blog...

An American co-worker here at RFE/RL has a blog dedicated to biking. He is a journalist by profession so it's not too surprising that his blog is very well written. Here's the link to it. It also has the benefit of being focused pretty much on a single topic (unlike mine, which flits around to and fro like the feather in Forest Gump). Amyway, Grant's blog is often linked in the Prague Daily Monoitor, as it was today.

Grant has a very interesting story about a bike ride to Okor, where he stumbled upon a childrens' fair with a small old merry-go-round and a shooting gallery from 1895. Here's the video of the shooting gallery:



Look at the whole post and the rest of Grant's blog. I'm adding it to my ever growing list of blogs on the left side of the page.

Blog facts and figures...

Here are some tidbits regarding the blog:

1) I have decided to pay the $5 per month to see where the visitors to this site come from. In less than 30 days I have racked up visits from 50 countries and I love to check each day and see if there are new countries to add to the list. Who knows how many other countries would be on the list if I had access to this service from the time I started the blog last April.

2) Yesterday I had first time visits from Lebanon, Yemen and Brunei! If you had asked me to list the order in which countries would visit, I am pretty sure that I would have put Brunei last (with Yemen second from the bottom and Lebanon third from the bottom).

3) Still no hits from places like Russia and much of eastern Europe.

4) Traffic has increased greatly over the past few weeks. The site averaged 20 hits per day the first week of January, 30 per day the second week, and is at 36 per day so far this week.

5) Most traffic comes from within blogger.com, which means that other bloggers are checking out this site.

6) Google brings about 30% of the blog traffic. I can see what words were used to search Google that led them here. I can also check that search and see where my blog is listed in the search - sometimes it is the number one site listed.

7) Repeat visitors represent only about 25-30% of the hits to the blog. That surprises me as I thought most of the traffic would be repeats from family and friends with only a few others who would stumble upon it occassionally.

8) There are a few posts that are driving traffic to the blog. Here are some of the most referred:
* Our visit to the Vatican at Christmas caused a lot of people to find and visit this site. I assume that they would like to also visit the Vatican at Christmas and are looking for information.
* Posts on the falling dollar are a big generator of visitors.
* The recent posts on Starbucks coming to Prague have generated quite a few hits, mostly from Europe.
* My post on the bombing of my former office in Saudi Arabia in 1995 has brought several people to this site.
* The post on St. Mukulas, a Christmas tradition here in the Czech Republic, brought in quite a bit of traffic.

Thanks to all who visit. It's fun for me to do and is giving me some practice at writing. My new year's resolution was to start that book that I have been putting off for years. We'll see.

New blog feature...

I like playing around with new features for the blog. Some are 3rd party widgets like the dollar exchange rate and some are developed and offered by blogspot. Blogspot has just allowed access to Flickr, which is Yahoo's photosharing feature. I am supposed to be able to link to the photos that are in my Flickr account but I am having probelms doing that. What I have been able to do, though, is offer a slideshow of all pictures at Flickr with the subject of "Prague". So while I did not take these pictures they give you some great views of Prague. I am in the process of transferring my photos to Flickr and will continue to try to get them linked so you can see all of our photos and not just the ones that get used in my posts.

The 100th post...

I can't believe that I've had 100 posts already. I try to do one every day, and don't always make it (but most times I do).




I spent half the day going to doctor appointments (dentist and eye doctor - both exams said I was fine. Yea!!). Tomorrow I have appointments with the dermatologist and an orthopedic specialist to look at my knee. For a few months my right knee would hurt like hell when I kneeled. It felt like I had a small pebble just under the skin. I only noticed it when I would kneel to tie me left shoe, or at mass in Prague. They use the old fashioned kneelers without padding, just wood. My guess is it has to do with playing boot hockey for years as a kid without using any kneepads. That was ill-advised and I my knees would always be black and blue from playing goalie. So there's probably chips of something floating around in there.

I must be getting old since I am spending a good deal of time explaining about all of my infirmities.

I also had lunch with my cousin, Rick. We ended up pursuing the same off-beat career - contract management - quite independently. What a coincidence. He moved back up to Minnesota from Iowa 5 years ago and works for General Dynamics in Bloomington. There is not much family resemblance since he is probably 6"2" tall and lanky while I am 5'6" and what is charitably called "stocky". But we have similar senses of humor (for better or worse) and it is always a pleasure to see him.

Arghhhhhh...

I have had great success with blogspot from the first day I started the blog. For someone as technically mediocre as I am, the fact that I could start a blog and make it reasonably appealing says more about blogspot than me. Last night I spent about 90 minutes researching and drafting a few posts since I like to get a few drafted and "in the bank" so I can post about one a day even when I'm busy or don't feel like blogging. I saved them but when I went later to post one of them they weren't there. They had vanished. Arghhhhhh...

I guess I'll try again, but not today.

Fellow Minnesotans, welcome to Prague...

I was wondering why the hits on the blog took a jump this week, and then realized that it was due to my having registered it at twincities.com, the web site of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. It's a fairly new feature so there are probably a limited number of blogs registered yet. To those of you visiting the blog via twincities.com, welcome! I, my wife Kathy, and our 9-year old son, Noah, moved to Prague last summer. I work for Radio Free Europe.

I started the blog in April, and like most blogs, mine has a general theme - our experiences in Prague and elswhere in Europe - but I also digress often into other areas that interest me (from music videos to Stewie from Family Guy). I hope you like what you see and come back from time to time to see what's up. Feel free to send me an email or leave a comment. I'll be heading back to St. Paul on June 30 for a two week vacation, but will continue to blog from MN.

Again, thanks for stopping by.

What I don't do...

I have working on the blog for over six weeks now, and I haven't yet dealved in any detail about what I do, or even very much about the company I work for - Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. I will get to all of that eventually, but for now let me tell you what I don't do.

I'm not a spy! There are many of you who have - quite independently - come to the conclusion that I work for the CIA. Well, I'm not a spy. I'm not one now and I never have been one. That being said, I guess I understand how some of you could get that impression. I did take Russian and political Science in college. I have worked in the general area of "defense" either with the U.S. Government or on the private side, for over 25 years. And it's also true that I have been to many places in the world just before or after a significant event. Saudi Arabia in 1991 after the Gulf War and back again in 1996 after the bombing of the U.S. Army installation where I had worked. Moscow in 1993 just after the failed coup attempt against Boris Yeltsin. Israel in 2000 just before the start of the first Palestinian intafada. Egypt in 2003 just a couple of days after the Iraq War started. And, to be fair, I did interview with the CIA back in 1985. I didn't get the job [them: "Have you ever used marijuana?" me: "You mean 'ever'?"] and never tried again to work there (or the NSA or the FBI or Homeland Security). And it's also another coincidence that the company I work for now, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, was clandestinely funded by the CIA for more than 20 years.

From Wikipedia: "RFE received its funds from the Congress of the United States and until 1971 they were passed to RFE through the CIA. During the earliest years of Radio Free Europe's existence, the CIA and the U.S. State Department issued broad policy directives, and a system evolved where broadcast policy was determined through negotiation between the CIA, the U.S. State Department, and RFE staff. This system continued until the controversy surrounding Radio Free Europe's broadcasts to Hungary during the 1956 revolt. There is some evidence, however, that the CIA did involve itself in RFE projects at least through the mid-1950's.[6] The CIA funding of RFE was not publicly acknowledged until 1971 at which point the organization was rechartered in Newton as a non-profit corporation, oversight was moved to the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB), and the budget was moved to open appropriations."

After re-reading what I have written, I've almost convinced myself that I must be a spy (but I'm not - but that's what you would expect me to say, isn't it?). Next time I'll go into what I do do...

You can now email a post..

If you see a post on the blog that you think someone else would enjoy, now all you have to do is click the little envelope icon at the end of the post and you can email it to them. Very easy. And I'll do my best to post interesting stuff.

Feel free to comment...

I've changed the settings to make it easier to leave comments. Before you had to register to blogspot to leave comments, but now anyone can leave a comment even without registering.

More Embedded Video...

I've gone back through the blog and embedded the other videos that were originally linked. These are the two Radio Free Europe PSAs and the eToys commercial. Going forward all video will be embedded (as long as I have the Html code).

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing...

I have added a couple more widgets. One just gives the current time in Prague. I specifically chose one that designates "AM" or "PM" since the time difference between here and the US is confusing. The other is a feature showing current news headlines for the Czech Republic.
I know I have gone a little crazy with the widgets. I considered adding a widget to show the scores from the current World Cup of cricket and that's when I realized I needed to step back. I will hold off adding anything else for a while and see how it goes.

The Wonders of Technology - II

I just stumbled upon a new feature for the blog. It's called Finetune and it allows me to insert a playlist of 45 of my favorite songs. By stumbled upon, I mean I found it referenced in James Lileks blog "The Bleat" which I read over lunch every day. You can visit The Bleat using the attached link. It is a very entertaining and worthwhile blog.
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/index.html
So feel free to give Finetune a click and listen to a few of my songs. Many you will expect (at least those of you who know me well will expect them), but there are many that will come as a complete surprise. (Have you ever heard of a group called the Squirrel Nut Zippers? Well, they are represented here). Enjoy!

Kicking off the new blog

Monday, April 9th, 2007

If you are reading this then you have made your way to our new blog - Tischlers in Prague! It took us eight months to get a decent digital camera (we couldn't spend any money until we sold our house in Minnesota - and that happened in February).



Easter was a lot of fun - as you can see by the picture. A couple we know from ISP (that's the International School of Prague) hosted an Easter egg hunt on Sunday for the kids. That's Noah in the back giving the bunny ear treatment to two of the girls.

Kathy's son, Danny, is visiting from the US. He leaves tomorrow, but we all had a wonderful five days. His visit was a surprise early birthday present to Kathy. It ended up only being a pseudo-surprise since she found out about his arrival a week and a half before he got here. No one spilled the beans, she saw my credit card statement with the charge for his air fare. I wasn't aware of this, but the credit card statement had his name and full itinerary - I couldn't think of a plausible aliby. But we've had a great time and it will be sad to see him leave tomorrow.