Shuarian’s Weblog

The New Year is looming around the corner. Looking back, last year has brought along many changes. Some of them were good, some were not. I don’t really care about Christmas, or New Year’s Eve, but I care about myself, my friends and my family.

It’s said the only certainty in life is uncertainty, and this certainly holds true for 2006. I’m very grateful for all the highlights I’ve experienced, and still battered and grieving about the utterly sad parts of this passing year. Yet I haven’t abandoned myself to despair, in part due to the support of all the good people around me. I owe them a lot.

Coming to think about last year, and my past in general, I realise I’ve changed a lot. Maybe not always to the better, but I’m hopeful to make good for my mistakes, and continue on the right path.

Now, I don’t want to torment you with big words about life. Nor do I intend to speak some trivial New Year’s greetings to you. Instead, I’d like to remind everyone that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. It is my sincere belief that the world would be a better place if more people were to act on this premise.

To my dear friends, I’m looking forward to sharing all that is to come with you.

Stefan

[Updated 27.12.2006 / 21.51]

Looking back at 2006

Well well, the year 2006 is soon over. Since this is neither a special interest/professional blog, nor a public site about my hidden secrets, there’s not that much to review. Other media, like newspapers, websites and blogs, will hopefully do a fine enough job on the former, while the latter remains private (that is, until someone hires a private investigator, hehe).

So my review of the last years remains limited to my blog and the usual stuff I put on here:

* This blog is now ten months old. During this time, I’ve made 43 posts (including this one). This makes for 0.93 posts per week, which isn’t that bad.

* The average blog entry (not counting this one) had 501.38 words. 15 posts are above this average, and six of them have more than a thousand words. On the other side of the spectrum, there are also six entries which have less than a hundred words.

* During these first ten months, this blog had 8685 hits, and 826 unique visits (not counting my own visits). This makes for 2.95 unique visitors a day. I suddenly feel lonely =:->

* Not surprisingly, 55 % of all hits are from Switzerland, with the United States and Germany coming next. Interestingly enough, after all hits from these three countries and indeterminable locations, Malaysia and Kiribati are next on the list. Either I have some avid readers there, or I now know where all the deleted spam on my blog originates :-)

* There were only 16 refers from search engines, most of them due to sensible queries. However, I wonder if my blog really is the right place when “looking for backup singers in zurich“…

* According to my blog, I’ve read 12 books this year. Which is way below my usual average, but the current workload at work and my education at school take their tolls.

* I haven’t released an Adrift game in 2006.

 
Looking forward to 2007

A short outlook into the new year, with some notes on changes to my blog:

* As I’d like to change the title of my blog every year, I now use Crazy Like A Fox instead of the old Neutralität, Chuchichästli & Rösti. More information about this term is available on the ‘About This Blog’ page.

* I’ve added a best of tag (on the right side, directly below the display of the current time) to some particularly well written and/or interesting posts of mine. And no, this one certainly doesn’t qualify. I’d also like to mention that I’m still experimenting, so the entries therein may change, or the tag might disappear completely again.

* I’ve added about 20 new links to the random link section.

* I’ve added one new site to the website column (Gulf Research Center). I’ve also added four more blogs (DeFocused, DailyKos, Art Nudes, as well as Pasta & Vinegar) to my linklist of other blogs. One of them (Art Nudes) may contain nudity, so visit at your own discretion.

* I’m still thinking about adding some bi-weekly columns to my blog, probably one about photography and one about interesting facts & figures, or maybe one including only a collection of links.

On Tuesday, 12 December 2006, the team behind the pendlerblog announced the end of their blog. For those of you who don’t know them, the pendlerblog is was a so called watchblog, examining and monitoring the popular news outlet 20 Minuten. And believe me, there was always much to criticise (see my recent blog post on Coincidence in the Age of Infotainment). While I generally make an effort to not read 20 Minuten, and thus wasn’t overly interested in the penderblog, I still applaud them for their honest, funny and revealing effort. They will be missed.

One day after the pendlerblog was shut down, a colleague of mine was reading 20 Minuten and brought a clear mistake to my eyes. As a homage to the pendlerblog, I’d like to share it with you:

In case you’re not familiar with terms from the financial markets, here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

A bull market is a prolonged period of time when prices are rising in a financial market faster than their historical average, in contrast to a bear market which is a prolonged period of time when prices are falling.

Investors can be described as having bullish or bearish sentiments. Market trends are witnessed when bulls (buyers) outnumber bears (sellers), or vice versa, consistently over time.

Conculding, contrary to the headline from the article, Credit Suisse (CS) is actually predicting a bullish market, while Pictet has a slightly more bearish outlook.

I don’t have much time to write down anything interesting. Which is a shame, as I have two quite long articles in the making. But maybe I’ll manage to finish them before New Year’s Eve? I dunno.

Anyway, I really shouldn’t be writing this, so I’ll just leave you with the following law article I’ve recently stumbled upon:

Eigentumsverlust bei Bienenschwärmen

Zieht ein Bienenschwarm aus, so wird er herrenlos, wenn nicht der Eigentümer ihn unverzüglich verfolgt oder wenn der Eigentümer die Verfolgung aufgibt.
Source: Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, § 961

And now I’m back to learning.