Gamification

WordPress informed me yesterday that I have managed to post for 183 consecutive days. That’s half a year, and quite a streak — for me, at least.

I would like to claim that this is just a lucky coincidence but I have, for the past couple of weeks, been deliberately trying to maintain the streak in order to hit the half year mark. You may have noticed that some of my recent posts have been a bit short.

It’s weird, though. Normally, I post as and when I feel like but when I reached 170 posts (or thereabouts) and realised I was close to six months, I started trying to reach this utterly arbitary target. If nothing else, it goes to show how easily manipulated I can be by a target such as this, and I doubt that I’m alone in this.

Also, interestingly, looking back at my stats for the past year (I can pick a year or a quarter, not half a year) my most popular posts are technical posts that are much older than this.

Of the posts I wrote in the last six months, the most popular (in terms of page views) was Life’s too short for bad books, in which I complained about my habit of aquiring free eBooks and then not reading the books I actually want to read. I’m getting better and am currently reading C.J. Cherryh’s Inheritor, which really is a most excellent novel.

My second most popular post was Aeropress, in which I raved about my new Aeropress.

And when Belgium became Record Breakers back in August, a lot of people read that.

Also in August, my photo of a Speckled Wood butterfly attracted a fair bit of attention.

And finally, we can’t avoid the Coronavirus, and in July I mentioned that Belgium’s emergence from lockdown was starting to go a bit wrong and discussed the government’s attempts to dodge the second wave.

I doubt that any of this proves anything and will, therefore, conclude that I should drink more coffee.