And… That's All Folks

I started blogging about 5 years ago, and over the years I've published 653 posts. This will be the last one. I had some specific personal goals in mind when I started blogging, and I've gotten everything I've wanted out of it, and more. I learned a lot, and I'm happy with a lot of the feedback I've gotten over the years. But the time has come to move on. I want to get back to writing more code instead of writing about writing code. I've mostly enjoyed writing blog posts, but in the past year it has felt more like a chore than a hobby, so it's probably a good idea to just call it quits.

I'm not entirely sure yet what I'm going to do with the content on this blog. There's quite a few posts I surely want to keep around, but certainly not all of them. For now, I'm going to keep the blog up so everything stays available but after a while, I'm gonna shut it down. I might keep up some kind of static archive of my favorite posts, or I might just put them on GitHub in MarkDown format. If you have any suggestions on what I should do with it, I'd be happy to hear them.

I will remain active on Twitter and I plan to be more active on GitHub from now on. But the blogging thing ends here and now. I'd like to thank everyone for reading, especially the ones who've been around since the beginning. It's been an interesting ride for me, but it's time for something else :)

Written by Davy Brion, published on 5/14/2012 11:08:36 PM
Categories: about-the-blog


What's Up With These Belgians?

Don't worry, this post isn't about the ongoing political problems that Belgium has been suffering from for the past 3 years. It's about something far more interesting (ahem): the way they read my blog. I was going over the blog's stats for last month:

As you can see, the numbers for the Belgians are far different than they are for each other country in that list. The number of pages they read each visit is way above the average. The average time they spend on this site is also much higher than most countries. And the percentage of new visitors and the bounce rate is a lot lower than what we see from other countries. That means that almost 4 out of 5 Belgians that visit this site have been here before, and keeping the total number of visits in mind and the fact that it has a much smaller population than the other countries in the top 7, they seem to keep coming back as well. And this isn't just an anomaly because the all-time stats for this blog show pretty much the same picture:

So that makes me wonder: what's up with these Belgians? And yes, I know that some of you are probably thinking: "well duh, it's because you're Belgian too!". But there are a couple of reasons why I don't think that me being from Belgium explains it:

  • The Google Analytics plugin that I'm using does not count my own visits :)
  • I do very, very little networking so it's not like I'm often in contact with a lot of Belgian developers to plug my blog
  • I don't go to developer events to evangelize my ideas, in fact, I generally don't go to developer events
  • I don't give talks or presentations, except for one that I did on NHibernate a year ago. And I don't see myself doing a lot of talks in the future either since I have no idea what I'd talk about.

So, it can't be because I've been pushing this blog among the Belgian developers. So what is it then? Is it because we Belgians are generally quite thorough when it comes to learning about stuff we like? Or are we just lazy and do we love to waste a lot of time online? Both are true to some degree. Either way, it's nice to see Belgium among the top of a list (even if it doesn't mean shit) that isn't related to female tennis, chocolate, beer, organized crime or fraud.

Seriously though, I do find this kind of stuff interesting so if you are Belgian (or are familiar with how Belgians are) and have some ideas on why those numbers are so different from other countries, please do share :)

Written by Davy Brion, published on 9/5/2010 11:29:38 AM
Categories: about-the-blog