Having struggled with my own mental health this year (see Finally…in Recovery and getting Back to Life), it’s unsurprising that two of my charitable donations have been to mental health charities:
Mind is a UK mental health charity that states that it won’t give up until everyone experiencing a mental health problem gets support and respect.
I gave another donation to JDRF who are an international charity that fund research into a cure for type 1 diabetes. Currently one of the things they’re funding is smart insulin, which could be life-changing for diabetics.
They have great Christmas cards and wrapping paper in their shop, all the proceeds of which go to them. So I stocked up.
My final donation was to The Brick Project, which supports homeless people in the Wigan borough (my hometown). Through circumstances and life events anyone could end up homeless. I’d never want to be homeless and like to support any charities that help people to rebuild their lives.
The numbers are in and according to my WordPress Jetpack Annual Report in 2014 I had 20,000 views of my blog. Not bad for a little personal blog! Click the image left to see the screenshot. Any image in this post can be clicked for full size.
My hosting provider Vidahost (who you can learn more about here) provide AWStats software. According to AWStats I’ve had (see image below):
58, 101 unique visitors to my blog in 2014.
Who have visited 149,103 times in 2014.
And have resulted in over a million hits in 2014.
AWStats from Hosting Provider Vidahost.
The WordPress Jetpack Annual Report reports that my biggest referrers in 2014 were from social media sites Facebook and Twitter:
Jetpack Annual Report 2014 – How did they find you?
Jetpack Annual Report 2014 – Attractions
The WordPress Jetpack Annual Report indicate that my five most popular posts in 2014 were:
I’ve really grown my blog in the last few years, with Reviews of books, films and technology seeming to make the big difference to increasing the number of visitors. But what keeps my visitors returning seems to be blogging about my personal life. Below is the result of a readers survey undertaken in 2014. It that shows that readers enjoy the current content I create and would like more of everything. It shows that 80% of readers surveyed said that they would like more personal blog posts:
Readers were asked: What sort of blog posts would you like to see more of?
I think these statistics are great. In the next year and beyond I hope to continue to grow my loyal blog readership.
The blog costs money to host and takes up a considerable chunk of my time. So if you have a product or service that you’d like to advertise on the blog, please don’t hesitate to Contact me. Your advert could reach 20,000+ unique visitors a year.
Talk Talk are incompetent and terrible at Customer Service. This is a summary of what I’ve learned from trying to place a new order with them.
My switch over date was supposed to be Monday 27th October 2014, with the router to arrive before and the Engineer to come on the day. No router arrived. No Engineer arrived. I complained to Talk Talk on their premium phone number, by email and by Twitter. I spoke to a Talk Talk Manager on the phone whose English I could barely understand and who could barely understand me. After 72 hours she still couldn’t tell me what the issue was with my order or what had happened with it. I called my old provider to arrange a further month of broadband and they told me that Talk Talk hadn’t even contacted them to let them know that they would be taking over the line.
Feeling irritated at this point, I told the Talk Talk Manager to cancel my order but apparently she couldn’t. I canceled my direct debit and told her this. I told her that I had emailed Talk Talk to confirm in writing my demand that they cancel the order. I informed her that I have a legal right to cancel the order, as the cooling off period is 14 days from commencement of the service being provided. And I still haven’t received any service from Talk Talk.
The whole point of switching to Talk Talk was to save money. Talk Talk’s incompetency and frankly terrible customer service has cost me £150. This £150 comes from: time off work speaking/emailing/tweeting them, time off work for the engineer visit, many phone calls to their premium line phone number and an extra two months broadband with my old provider (which has cost more as is a rolling contract).
I have now signed up to Plus Net for the same monthly price. So far, so good. They have done everything they said they would and have kept me informed throughout the process. The switch over date is today and all has gone well.
I love this Comic Strip, which turns life and death into a love story. Sorry I can’t accredit it, as where it was shared on Facebook didn’t accredit the author/artist.
Unable to Credit Author/Artist.
3. Three The Pony #DancePonyDance Advert
This advert is great. To see a Pony dancing and Moon walking made my day:
4. Guardian Article – Pandering to the crowd: panda accused of faking pregnancy in bun fraud case
Ai Hin showed all the signs she was expecting but only wanted extra food and the trappings of celebrity, say keepers
Giant panda Ai Hin put on a ‘phantom pregnancy’, possibly because she wanted special treatment, her Chinese keepers say. Photograph: STR/AFP/Getty Images
Hopes that tiny panda paws would be seen in the world’s first live-broadcast cub delivery have been dashed after Chinese experts suggested the “mother” may have been focusing more on extra bun rations than giving birth.
The slated star of the show, giant panda Ai Hin, had shown signs of pregnancy at the Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Centre, according to state news agency Xinhua.
A live broadcast of the event was planned but Xinhua said her “behaviours and physiological indexes returned to normal”, citing experts saying she experienced a “phantom pregnancy”.
The breeding centre, in China’s south-western province of Sichuan, commonly moves pandas that are thought to be pregnant into single rooms with air conditioning and around-the-clock care.
“They also receive more buns, fruits and bamboo, so some clever pandas have used this to their advantage to improve their quality of life,” Wu Kongju, an expert at the base told Xinhua.
Phantom pregnancy is said to be common among the endangered animals. Many continued to display pregnant behaviour after noticing the difference in treatment they received, Xinhua said.
Six-year-old Ai Hin showed reduced appetite, less mobility and a surge in hormones when her “pregnancy” was first detected, the news agency said, before further observations concluded it was fake.
The giant panda’s natural habitat is in the mountainous south-west of China. But they have a notoriously low reproductive rate and are under pressure from factors such as habitat loss.
China has about 1,600 pandas living in the wild and another 300 held in captivity.
“Only 24% of females in captivity give birth, posing a serious threat to the survival of the species,” Xinhua said.
(From: The Guardian, Last Accessed: Tuesday 28th October 2014.)
I laughed aloud when I read this, thinking: That’s exactually what I would do. Anything to get special treatment and an extra bun. Gawd, aren’t animals clever?
5. A Beautiful Tree Home by Pagan Artist Annika Worth
I probably wouldn’t have discovered this beautiful drawing, which was was so alluring that I wanted to go and live there if it wasn’t for Facebook:
Image Credit: Annika Worth.
6. My Video: When Trying To Be Funny Goes Wrong
This is my video I created entitled: When Trying To Be Funny Goes Wrong. I think it’s quite funny for a number of reasons, mainly because it’s so bad and everything doesn’t go according to plan.
I got new glasses and a work colleague found my look-a-like:
Blog soon,
Antony
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Tuesday 28 October 2014
About
Antony Simpson - Author, Blogger, Nurse & Witch.
Author of nine books.
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Antony Simpson is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.
