Geography blogwanking again

On By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking

Screen Shot 2014-02-15 at 2.43.39 PMGuys, I am wasting my several hours of relative solitude and time-to-get-work-done at OtherJob in an epic fashion today; the most active I’ve gotten has been to go outside and hack at the ice in the parking lot, since I managed to wipe out on the way in the door (I’m fine) and now I have a vendetta against it.  But holy hell there is just nothing else happening around here right now.  So let’s give you some information you don’t care about at all, and provide everyone with an update on how my ongoing project to have every country on Earth view my blog is going.  It’s a lot better than last time!  But there are still some holdouts and dangit world get off your duffs and come look at my blog.

North America:  Done, technically, or at least the parts that I recognize as “North” America as opposed to “Central” America.  I’m not sure exactly where the continental divide is; I think technically all of Central America belongs to North America?  This is not impressive, though, because there are only three countries in what I’m calling North America and I live in one of them.

Central America:  Still missing: El Salvador and Nicaragua.  Plus Cuba and probably some tiny islands.  Belize showed up yesterday.  I just got my first hit from Puerto Rico a couple of days ago, too, which was startling; I’d have figured they’d have shown up earlier.  This makes me wonder how many of the fifty states I’ve actually gotten traffic from but I don’t know of a way to find that information.  I figure of the three Cuba is probably the biggest longshot, although I don’t actually know if they heavily filter the Internet down there the way other Communist nations do.

South America:  Missing three: Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.  I can’t find the link right now but I had an entertaining conversation a couple of weeks ago with a guy who was also chasing hits from French Guiana for forever to the point where his blog was showing up in Google searches for the country.  This makes me think that that will probably be the last of the three, but as I know nothing about any of them other than Jim Jones’ people killed themselves in Guyana, I don’t have a good idea about what’ll be last.

Australia:  Done!  Also New Zealand and most of the nearby island nations, not counting most of the super-duper teeny-tiny ones.

Europe:  Mostly done.  Liechtenstein and Vatican City haven’t shown up, but they probably shouldn’t count, and it turns out that WordPress lands on the Kosovars’ side on whether Kosovo is part of Serbia or not.  I actually thought Europe was done until I figured that out.  I was missing Albania for a long time but I finally got a spate of hits from them a couple of weeks ago.  Pretty much once I get a hit from Kosovo I’m gonna call Europe done.

Middle East:  Missing Yemen, Syria, and Iran.  Yemen seems like it ought to show up sooner or later, particularly given the number of hits I get from neighboring countries; I suspect the ongoing civil war in Syria and totalitarian government in Iran will keep me from getting traffic from there for a while, as those folks seem to have other things to worry about other than visiting my blog.

Africa:  Currently a mess, which is unsurprising.  Hard to say which country will be last; I’d have thought Ethiopia but I’ve already gotten half-a-dozen hits from there.  Somalia, maybe?  South Sudan?  Who knows.

Asia:  Mostly done; missing some of the breakaway Soviet republics (Tajikistan; Turkmenistan, a couple of others) as well as Mongolia, Nepal, and North Korea.  Obviously North Korea is on the “probably never” list.  I was gratified to see a hit from China about a month ago, as I’d figured I’d need to write them off forever.

Miscellaneous:  The Svalbard Islands, which are those islands east of Greenland and north of Russia.  Not nearly as big as they look due to the way the map works and technically part of Norway.  That said, searching for posts tagged “Svalbard” produces a surprising number of posts so I figure I’ll catch them sooner or later.

Please tell me I’m not the only person who cares about this.  Anybody else out there have a geographic white elephant they want to share?

29 thoughts on “Geography blogwanking again”

  1. winterbayne

    Man, I am content that anyone actually A) comes to my blog, B) finishes an entire post, C) comes back for more.

    I can’t shoot for the stars like you do. I only request my visitors are breathing.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. pursuitofimprovement

    Dude, I’ve got a few friend in Guyana. I’ll see about throwing some links to your blog to them. How’s that for a deal?

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  6. I’m sure I speak for almost everyone here when I request more trash talking from Giant Ape and Robot Boy. We want a smackdown! 1st prize = blog follows by North Korea, Lichtenstein AND French Guiana. There is no 2nd place. Begin.

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      1. I am still here; I needed additional nuclear fuel rods because fighting with a giant ape is energy intensive. I have no shortage of uranium, but how will giant ape refuel after my giant nematodes destroy all of his giant banana plants?

        Note to self: remember to update randomization routines before engaging in games of ape-biplane-surfacetoairmissile.

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    1. And, in much the same spirit, I’m not trying to be an asshole, but in all honesty they’re grouped in “too small to notice.” Don’t get me wrong, I’d be excited to see traffic, but I’d react much the same way as I did when I got hits from, say, Guernsey, or the Isle of Man– that is, I’d probably hit Google real quick to find out exactly where they were and have a brief woohoo moment and move on with my life. Places that small don’t help to fill in the map. 🙂

      That said, why do you ask? That’s an awful specific place to be curious about– if you know anyone who lives there, you should send them links. 🙂

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      1. I asked because I know they are in the Indian Ocean and off coastal Africa (I think) and I love how the name feels in my mouth when I say it…sort of like the “she sells sseashells” ditty…so I was just pondering it. But “Wait! There’s More!” to quote the dearly departed infomercial king, Billy Mays. I can’t give you Guernsey, but we recently spent a week with our niece who lives on the Channel Island of Jeresy very close to Guernsey. Would that be good?

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        1. That would rock. It’s always interesting to see how WordPress defines “countries;” obviously places like Guernsey or the Isle of Man shouldn’t count; it’ll be interesting to see if Jersey shows up or if they just roll it into the UK.

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  10. I had never looked at that part of my stats until I read your obsession about it. I now am feeling geographically ignorant and will be unable to teach refraction properly today because I do not have sufficient readership in Africa or Southern Asia…and why the freak can’t WordPress actually tell me the names of the countries with ZEROES? That’s what I want to know…(or maybe they do, and my incredible ignorance of this section of the stats is currently showing).

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  12. I too obsess over the countries that have visited rantingchef.com. I even reached out to WordPress to see if I could get a list of all the possibles and they pointed me to a list on wikipedia (Internet country names). I am currently at 190 with 61 to go. I find that in rare spare time I will look for blog tags with those country names and visit, hoping they will find their way back. My current “hit list” is:

    Afghanistan , Aland Islands !Åland Islands , Antarctica , Benin , Bonaire Sint Eustatius and Saba , Bouvet Island , British Indian Ocean Territory , Central African Republic , Christmas Island , Cocos (Keeling) Islands , Comoros , Congo , Congo- the Democratic Republic of the , Cuba , Curaçao , Djibouti , Equatorial Guinea , Eritrea , Falkland Islands (Malvinas) , Faroe Islands , French Guiana , French Southern Territories , Guadeloupe , Guinea-Bissau , Heard Island and McDonald Islands , Holy See (Vatican City State) , Iran, Islamic Republic of , Kiribati , Korea -Democratic People’s Republic of , Marshall Islands , Martinique , Mayotte , Micronesia -Federated States of , Montserrat , Nauru , Niue , Norfolk Island , Pitcairn , previously represented British Antarctic Territory, Saint Barthélemy , Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha , Saint Pierre and Miquelon , San Marino , Sao Tome and Principe , Sierra Leone , Sint Maarten (Dutch part) , Solomon Islands , Somalia , South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands , South Sudan , Svalbard and Jan Mayen , Swaziland , Togo , Tokelau , Turkmenistan , Tuvalu , , United States Minor Outlying Islands , Uzbekistan , Wallis and Futuna , Western Sahara ,

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