June's done, so it's time again to look at the server logs. There were no surprises this week. Everything on the list had made it before, and the order of the rankings wasn't really a big mix-up, either. I still have to admit that I'm glad to see the entry Ray Comfort - Still Ignorant on Evolution making the list. That's one of my favorite blog posts.

As far as overall traffic, everthing's pretty similar to last month. Up a bit on some measures, down a bit on others, but not by a huge amount in any of them except for one - bandwidth. Bandwidth was up more than 20% from last month, which had already been my most bandwidth ever. I may need to take a look into that or upgrade my hosting account, as I'm getting pretty close to my monthly bandwidth allowance.

Anyway, here's the top 10 list for last month.

Top 10 for June 2013

1. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
2. Autogyro History & Theory
3. Blog - Texas Board of Education - Bad Results for Science Standards
4. Blog - Obamacare Lives (A Discussion of the Individual Mandate)
5. Blog - Origin of Arabic Numerals - Was It Really for Counting Angles?
6. Blog - Creation Museum/2nd Law of Thermodynamics
7. Blog - Book Review - The Tangled Bank
8. Blog - Ray Comfort - Still Ignorant on Evolution
9. Blog - Response to Rabbi Steven Pruzansky - Why Romney Didn't Get Enough Votes to Win
10. Blog - Running AutoCAD R14 in XP Pro 64

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Jul 8 | Permalink | Comments (30) | TrackBacks (0)

It seems I've been apologizing a lot recently for not keeping up with the blog, and this particular apology is nearly identical to one I made before, but it's time to do it again. I just got back from a week's worth of vacation. And as much as I like writing for this blog, it just can't compete with strolling the sand dunes in Assateague looking for wild ponies, or spending time catching up with family I haven't seen in years. And since I was busy wrapping up projects here at work right before I left, I fell behind (again) on the Friday Bible Blogging.

Anyway, I'm back now, with no big projects on the horizon, and no big trips planned, so expect blogging to be back to normal. Really.

P.S. I'll post pictures of my trip as soon as I can. It was a combination family reunion/normal vacation. We spent a few days with my parents, then drove around Virginia, stopping by a friend's house before going on to Virginia Beach and then up to Assateague. Then it was on up through Delaware toward my aunt and uncle's house in Pennsylvania for a family reunion on my mom's side (they do it every year, but with me being down in Texas, I don't make it up very often). Then it was one more night with my parents before getting on the plane and back to Texas.

Posted by Jeff on Monday, Jul 8 | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBacks (0)

I've published a second edition to my book, Leaving Christianity: A Collection of Essays ($4.99 from LuLu). To paraphrase from my own review* of the book, this book is a collection of essays I wrote during and after my 'deconversion' from Christianity. I kept it to a length that should be informative without being overwhelming (~100 pages), so it could be a good primer on non-belief. I've given copies of the first edition to several friends, all of whom have said it was interesting. Obviously, you wouldn't expect friends to tell you your book was horrible, but one of them even went out and bought 10 copies of it so that he could give it away to other people.

This second edition adds two new essays that I thought filled some holes. The first of those additions is actually a review of the book, More Than a Carpenter. It was a nice way to address many of the arguments that Christian apologists actually use. The second addition was an essay on Standards of Evidence for Religion. Since I had the opportunity, I also fixed typos and made several small revisions throughout the book, but nothing that would have merited a new edition on its own.

In all honesty, I think this is a decent book to introduce people to atheism, and I think everybody should rush out and buy a dozen copies. (Well, metaphorically rush out. You can only buy the book online from Lulu or Apple's iBooks.)

Just in case you missed the other links to purchase this book, here's one you can't miss:
Buy the Book - Leaving Christianity: A Collection of Essays

All of the essays in this book are available for free on this site, in my Religious Essays section, incorporating all the changes made for the second print edition. So, you can read it all for free if you want to. I just think a print copy is nice (not to mention a great gift).

*That's not as pretentious as it sounds. I was reviewing all of the books I'd read that year, and threw that one in among many.

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Jun 27 | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBacks (0)

Whew. I just finished up with a hugely busy few weeks at work. I worked 85 hours last week, just to give an idea of how busy (I even took off Memorial Day since we had family visiting). If I wasn't working through my lunches, I was spending them mindlessly relaxing. So, I managed to get a few blog posts done in that time, but not as many as normal, and I certainly fell behind in my Friday Bible Blogging series. But the project is over, and there are no similar projects on the immediate horizon, so for now it's back to blogging as usual (though it still might take me a week to catch up on the Bible posts).

With the month over, I took a look at the server logs. There were a few surprises. A couple blog entries made the list for the first time, Book Review - The Tangled Bank and Obamacare Lives (A Discussion of the Individual Mandate). My entry on Texas Board of Education - Bad Results for Science Standards maintained a spot on the list, actually moving up to number two. And one of my favorite entries finally made it back to the top ten list after a year long hiatus - Ray Comfort - Still Ignorant on Evolution.

Despite the decrease in fresh content, my traffic numbers continued to increase a bit from the previous month, but it still all depends on what metric you're using to measure it. For example, last month had my highest ever number of 'Unique Visitors', 'Pages', and 'Total Bandwidth', but lagged some of my best months on 'Number of Visits' and 'Hits' (those aren't scare quotes, I'm just quoting the exact terms from AW Stats).

Anyway, here are the top 10 pages for this site from last month.

Top 10 for May 2013

1. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
2. Blog - Texas Board of Education - Bad Results for Science Standards
3. Autogyro History & Theory
4. Blog - Origin of Arabic Numerals - Was It Really for Counting Angles?
5. Blog - Book Review - The Tangled Bank
6. Blog - Obamacare Lives (A Discussion of the Individual Mandate)
7. Blog - Response to an Editorial by Ken Huber
8. Blog - Response to Rabbi Steven Pruzansky - Why Romney Didn't Get Enough Votes to Win
9. Blog - VW XL1 + E-mail Debunking - China's New "Little Car"
10. Blog - Ray Comfort - Still Ignorant on Evolution

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, Jun 6 | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBacks (0)

With the end of another month, it's that time again when I look at the server logs to see what 10 pages were most popular on this site in the last month. This month, there was a bit of a shake up. While the top few spots were no surprise, several of the pages had never made the list before - VW XL1 + E-mail Debunking - China's New "Little Car", Response to Rabbi Steven Pruzansky - Why Romney Didn't Get Enough Votes to Win, and Friday Bible Blogging - Joshua 1 to Joshua 10, and one of the pages had only made the list once before - Email Debunking - 1895 8th Grade Final Exam. Five of the top ten were from 2012 or 2013 - the four listed above plus Response to an Editorial by Ken Huber. Not just that, but the next two most popular pages that just barely missed the top 10 were also from 2013, Response to E-mail: One Nation Under Wal-Mart? and The Bible on The History Channel - A Disappointing Adaptation. In fact, many of the next most popular ages are from 2013 - they just weren't quite so close to making the top 10 list.

As far as overall traffic, like I mentioned last month, it depends on what stats I look at. With AWStat's Unique Visitors value, I'm on par with what I've been for a while, now, which is just a bit lower than a short term peak I had a couple years ago. But the number of pages viewed is the second highest count I've ever had, and the bandwidth is the highest I've ever had.

Here were the top 10 most popular pages on this site last month.

Top 10 for April 2013

1. Blog - A Skeptical Look at MBT Shoes
2. Autogyro History & Theory
3. Blog - Texas Board of Education - Bad Results for Science Standards
4. Blog - Origin of Arabic Numerals - Was It Really for Counting Angles?
5. Blog - Response to an Editorial by Ken Huber
6. Blog - VW XL1 + E-mail Debunking - China's New "Little Car"
7. Blog - Email Debunking - 1895 8th Grade Final Exam
8. Blog - Response to Rabbi Steven Pruzansky - Why Romney Didn't Get Enough Votes to Win
9. Blog - Email Debunking - Tips on Pumping Gas
10. Blog - Friday Bible Blogging - Joshua 1 to Joshua 10

Posted by Jeff on Thursday, May 2 | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBacks (0)