Benchmark

Once again it's time to offer my annual "Thank You" to readers of this IPSC blog.

I started on December 14, 2004, with the firm intention to provide IPSC-competition news and perspective to the folks who are interested in such stuff.

Somewhere around January 1, 2006, my statistics counter registered the 60,000th hit.

This is small change to Big Blogs, which may count that many hits in a single day, and Medium Size blogs, which get that many hits in an occasional single week.

But for a 'niche blog' such as this, I'm encouraged to believe that there are plenty of people who are sufficiently interested in IPSC-related information to stop by every now and then to see what is to be said on the subject.

Of course, I don't stick to a single theme exclusively. We find lots of interesting things to talk about. I do try to relate most posts to firearms ownership and usage, including RKBA and cultural acceptance (or non-acceptance) of guns.

I find it interesting that one of the most enduring 'most viewed' articles was Travis Tomasie's "The Perfect Reload" video. This in addition to my copy of that video on YouTube, where there are several other copies available as submitted by other people.

Recent frequently viewed articles include those about zero-tolerance in schools, newspapers publishing the names of CCL holders, The Castle Doctrine, field-stripping various handguns, pistol-caliber carbines (especially the MechTech), and various shooting videos.

Not particularly surprising, articles which prominently feature videos of IPSC matches are often represented when readers do Google-searches on keywords "IPSC VIDEO", or movies, or some other argument which is intended to provide access to views of people shooting pistols for fun and competition.

This is beyond the folks who access the videos on Jerry The Geek's Video Shooting Gallery, where full-length hi-res videos can be downloaded. (All videos available through YouTube directly on this blog are available here, but the image density is much better on the Gallery.)

While I appreciate this traffic, this remains a 'vanity blog' in that I write because I have a lot of things to say, and I established the website as an outlet for my own personal need to write. If it serves as a reference for IPSC competitors, it serves a purpose by encouraging continued contributions.

On the other hand, I also sometimes write articles for Michael Bane's Shooting Gallery. My output there is sporatic at best. Why? Because my goal is different here. I want to present more appropriate content, and my standards are such that even when I do contribute an article, I sometimes remove it because upon further consideration I don't consider it appropriate to the venue or because the article doesn't meet my higher standards.

I need to work on that; the result is that some of my best articles are presented on the personal blog and not on the Bane Blog. But you see, I don't always know what articles are good until long after I have written them, and go back to review what I have done 'recently'.

In fact, the articles of which I am most proud are often not IPSC related.

People in over 60 nations have read these articles. Sometimes they even comment on the articles, which provides me with valuable feed-back. How else am I to know what you want to read about, what you find interesting, except for the number of people who read each article and the comments I receive?

So for those of you who are regular readers, those of you who just stop by once in a while, and those of you who only read these articles because they show up when you search for specific material .... and most especially for those of you who write your own blogs and link either to this website or to specific articles ... thank you.