Moving Day

The other day I mentioned that I was thinking about some changes to this blog. Well, I guess I got carried away.

This is the last post at mister anchovy's

I hope you all come on over and visit me at my new digs, 27th Street. It's not far, and there's some comfy chairs over there, and I've brought my accordions, and the dog and my fly rods. I might even pour you a little dram of scotch. We're having wild mushroom soup for dinner. Will you stay?

Please take a minute and update your links. See you over there.

Mister Anchovy's isn't going anywhere, so if you need to check out any of the old posts, you know where to find them.

I feel a change coming on...

...with this blog I mean. I'm not quite sure just what's going to change, though. I know some people have trouble with Blogger comments, and I'd like to fix whatever that problem is. I see my friend WC has converted to a WordPress format and I must say it looks pretty spiffy. Along the way, I've enjoyed changing up the look of this place from time to time, so maybe I'll try a new format or a new host. We'll see.

A while ago, I had an idea of turning my blog into a neighbourhood with a number of posters, but that didn't really spark the way I had hoped. Maybe one day I'll try that again, when the time is right (whatever that means).

I'm thinking about doing more writing here, but it isn't clear in my imagination yet just what I mean by that. I've often thought about my blog as being similar to a painting or a piece of music. It has texture, rhythm or cadence, colour, it can have narrative or not, be fact or fiction. Over the years, it seems to have developed a feel I'm comfortable with. Maybe I don't want it to be quite so comfortable. I've even considered changing the name of the joint. Har!

Anyway, before I go and mess with things, let me know if you have any requests (yes I know you want more accordion videos, stop asking), complaints, suggestions and so on. I'm not promising I'll listen to you, but then again I just might.

Shameless Self-Promotion

I realized this morning that I rarely mention that I post over at Squeezemylemon, a blog that features all varieties of blues music. You'll see some excellent posts over there from Fitz and Ron, and the usual junk posted by yours truly.

Sailor Anchovy

Somebody found this place today by searching Sailor Anchovy. Har!

SqueezeMyLemon

For years now I've been following an excellent blues blog called SqueezeMyLemon, run by a fellow named Fitzgerald. More recently, he's also featured posts from Ron Moorby, who posts from England.

I've been commenting off and on for some time on SqueezeMyLemon but was pleasantly surprised when Fitzgerald contacted me today and asked me to contribute to his blog. How could I refuse?

I made my first post this afternoon. I hope the music enthusiasts in the crowd will pop over and enjoy what SqueezeMyLemon has to offer.

A sure sign of spring...

As the weather gets nicer, the hit count at this little island in the sun tanks until only a small circle of friends (die-hards and accordion freaks) are still hanging out. Well, spring is after all in the air, isn't it?

I wonder if the good folks at Google would help me attract more readers if I planted a few key words like "Brad and Anjolina" or "Obama" or "Paris Hilton", or "Oprah" or.....

80k

Sometime yesterday, the 80,000th visitor staggered into Mister Anchovy's, tripped over an accordion on the floor, and staggered out again.

Thanks for coming by, everybody.

Cleaning up some labeling

I'm taking some time to clean up the labeling on this blog. It seems I have dozens of labels I've only used once, so I'm revisiting those posts and choosing other labels I use more often. I don't know if this is causing havoc for those of you using RSS readers...maybe it looks like I'm publishing loads and loads of posts, I don't know. Anyway, I hope you can adjust.

In general, I'm trying to clean up the blog a little. I've taken a few things off the sidebar that don't seem to be of much interest to you all. Housekeeping. While I was at it, I adjusted the colours again. I like to change up the look of the place from time-to-time.

You know who you are...

When I visited Az this morning, I discovered this was delurking week. Who knew? That means it's time for all you lurkers out there to stop that silliness, leave a comment and say hi. Think of it as amnesty for lurkers.

3,000

I happened to notice that this will be my 3,000th post. I don't know the exact date I started this blog, but I know I put a tracker on it very soon after starting and the tracker started November 15, 2004. That's about 1500 days ago.

After four years and all those posts, there is still no plan. When I figure out what I'm doing here, I'll let you know.

I did make a name change this year, turning the place into mister anchovy's rather than mister anchovy. That came about to acknowledge the fact that I invited some other folks to post here. I had this idea that adding in some more points of view would enhance the place, create some new dialogues, and generally mix things up a little. My little experiment didn't really catch on, and so I finally discontinued it, at least for now. I'd consider it again if the situation were right-for instance if I had a regular commenter who became so engaged in this blog that offering up a posting voice made sense, or if somebody talked me into it (I enjoy single malt scotch). Meanwhile, I'm not changing the name back. Mister Anchovy's sounds like the name of a pub, and I'm all for readers having a brew when they visit here.

Mister Anchovy's doesn't get a lot of comments compared to many of the blogs I visit. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing really. I just assume it means I'm posting just the right amount of accordion videos. I do appreciate your comments though. I also really appreciate those of you who, for some strange reason continue to come back for more.

Blog Traffic

Blog traffic is a mystery to me. It goes up; it goes down. Occasionally, there is an explanation, like I've posted something about an issue which is getting a lot of play in the news. Other times, I don't understand what drives it.

In fact, outside of a small circle of friends, I'm not sure why anyone comes here at all, unless it's for the accordion videos (everyone loves accordion videos, right?). Anyway, my hit count has been inexplicably going up over the past two or three weeks.

Let's take a look how people stumbled here, looking for more interesting places:

accordion hero - how did they know?
Patychky - are so tasty
stan of green gables - Har!
lupe rodriguez - RIP
cajun riviera music - Holly Beach...and there are songs about it too
. Here's another one to the tune of Under the Boardwalk.

scrubby and the dynatones - make good polka
saskatoon crumble - I've made this, with saskatoons from the former Anchovy World Headquarters
st. annes reel - good tune
ben shahn drawings - an excellent painter
dennis weaver's earthship - who knew?
lyrics j'ai passe devant la porte - a Cajun lament
dead carp - a problem on the Kawarthas last year
mister anchovy - that's me!
vibrandoneon - I did one little vibrandoneon post and people find it all the time. You go figure.
papamo recipe dish - hey, wrong blog...try here

For those you who stumbled on over here by accident, stay awhile, I hardly ever bite.

New Banner

For my new banner, I've dug deep into the past and used a photo of a painting I did in the mid-1980s, called The Architect. This painting hung in an old friend's kitchen for a long time, but finally found it's way home.

Away tomorrow....

I'll be out of town until Thursday evening. See you then.....

Comments

A short while ago, I changed my settings to the new Blogger comments setting, "embedded below post". It turns out that may not have been a great idea, as some people have been having trouble making comments. And I thought it was something I said. Thanks Captain for pointing this out. I've switched back to the previous setting and all seems well. I liked the new setting. Perhaps I'll try it again after giving the folks at Blogger some time to work out the kinks.

69991

I looked at my tracker a few minutes ago, and I see that this blog has had 69,991 hits. I would say by sometime in the morning, the 70,000th visitor will have wandered by for a visit. Go figure, eh? I started the tracker on November 15, 2004, shortly after I started up mister anchovy's. It turns out I've made 2908 posts here, including this one.

There is no plan. I started this up with no idea what I was doing. I thought I'd check out the blogosphere and see if there was a little place for me there. I haven't gone back to look at the early posts to see what they were like. I do recall it looked quite a bit different back then. I still don't much know what I'm doing. Maybe in another couple years, I'll figure it out.

As mister anchovy's sneaks up on 70,000 hits, I'd just like to say thanks everyone for stopping by.

It seemed like a good idea at the time....

Some time ago, I had this idea that mister anchovy should be mister anchovy's. I wanted to make it less about my posts and instead build a little community of contributors. I put out a call for contributors and found a few volunteers.

I really appreciate the posts which came in from Archie, WC, Stagg, and VOX. Thanks very much to all of you for joining in this little experiment.

Looking back over the past couple months of posts, I have to conclude that the idea has run its course. I'm going to keep calling this place mister anchovy's rather than the original mister anchovy, but I've decided to go solo again, at least for now. I liked the idea of taking some risks with the direction of the blog, and I still like the idea of creating a community in this space, so I'm willing to consider proposals for future experiments.

Meanwhile, you're stuck with me.

Delia

I thought it was about time to feature Delia on my banner. Since we've moved we've had piles of boxes around, mostly filled with books. Those boxes will stay there until we build some bookshelves. Delia likes to climb up to the highest box and rule the house from her little crowsnest. We call it "Mount Dee". She's up there right now.

Delia was named after the old folk song about poor Delia, who was murdered by her admirer Cutty (or Kenny...it varies depending on the performer), who couldn't bear the fact that Delia ran with those rounders but ignored him. In the Johnny Cash version, the telling line is, "If I hadn't shot poor Delia, I'd a had her for my wife - Delia's gone, one more round, Delia's gone.

Here's Martin Grosswendt. I first heard him backing up Utah Phillips on his album Good Though (highly recommended here at Anchovy World Headquarters). I love his version of Delia.



Jailer, Jailer, how can I sleep? When all I hear at night is the patter of Delia's little feet.

Who reads your blog?

I'm occasionally surprised when I run into a relative, for instance, who says, "I read that on your blog". Most people I know, even if they know it exists, are not so concerned with the antics of Mister Anchovy that they take the trouble to tune in to see what's there. A number of people I work with are aware of this blog's existence, and one or two check it out from time to time, but I suspect the rest just think I'm a little eccentric. After all, they also know I'm a painter and worse yet, a squeezebox player.

Today I met my boss' boss for the first time (is that like boss squared?). She asked about our activities outside of work, and in a fit of madness, I revealed Mister Anchovy's. Now regular readers will know that I rarely write anything about my job (except that I have to do one to keep the creditors at bay), and those who know what I do will know that I avoid commenting on any topics which might even have the faintest odour of a conflict. Still, anyone who knows my alter ego can always google his name and will find this place soon enough. It isn't as if I keep this little island hidden. I do value the separation between church and state (so to speak) though, and later I thought perhaps I should have avoided advertising Mister Anchovy's. After all, the very best readers are the ones who find it all by themselves.

But then there is always the remote possibility that boss squared actually digs blogs and will become a reader. If so, I say this...please feel free to create an identity and comment at will. (meanwhile, the rest of you out there, make nice please....)

Here are some searches which found this island in the sun:

Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Boogie-Woogie String Along For Real Kirk was awesome!
sweedish accordians squeeze it
gardenia bread images love making bread
vibrandoneon one post ages ago, and this search term keeps coming back
john howlin he was an old friend and a great painter
50's poetry I don't actually read a lot of 50s poetry
weird musical instruments weird is in the eye of the beholder
jack the tree guy does a good job
the saddest folk songs why do sad songs sometimes make us happy?
stripper anchovy setup huh?


So who in your life reads your blog?

Check out the Lazy Blogger's Post Generator

You can find it here at The Presurfer.

I confess there have been days in which this might have come in handy.

New modem has arrived...

Wahooooo, back in business! On the run now, but will post later....