Thoughts On Almost Three Years Of Blogging

The "country source of blog hits" map from today.

This blog needs more posters--that was my original idea, and the reason for the plural title.  More voices!  Any regular reader who wants to give it a whirl can be set up as a poster.  My only request as Moderator is that the subject matter stay near the subtitle's... title... : sports cars, road racing, and the Tail of the Dragon.  Leave a comment on any post if you want to contact me.

I'm running out of useful things to say, at least on a regular and frequent basis.  A couple of regular readers have taken a pass on posting.  And I'll be the first to admit that it can be time-consuming.  The more you care about your writing, and finding good pictures to go with it, the longer it takes.

About a year and a half ago, I had what turned out to be a minor problem with my iMac.  It was quickly and satisfactorily solved by Apple's help people (in a store).  I mentioned that I thought the source of my problem might be a worm/bug/bot attack from overseas, probably Russia.  My Apple helper pooh-poohed this idea (and it was not the cause of my problem).  No functionality problems since.  I keep my software enhancements and antivirus rigorously up-to-date.

But I remain convinced that blogs are a primary target of hackers.  How else to explain the map above? Aside from the usual suspects like the U.S., France, Germany, and Britain, by far the largest number of hits are from Russia, the Ukraine, and Bulgaria.  None of those places strike me as passionate about this blog's topics.

Interestingly, Russia appears sporadically but with huge numbers of hits.  The Ukraine is slow but steady, punching far above its presumed weight.  China isn't really on the radar.  This is consistent with what I've read about worm/bug/bot attacks.  The Russians tend to be state-sponsored and heavy-handed, leaving a strong evidence trail behind them.  Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans tend to be freelancers, like those Nigerian Princes who want us to send them money.  The Chinese are also state-sponsored, but very sophisticated about who and what they target, leaving little evidence of their activity.  China has bigger fish to fry than "sports cars, road racing, and the Tail of the Dragon."