Welcome Canadian Viewers

First time Canada has topped my stats on daily views... Welcome Canadians!

Bon Jour

I had a spike of viewers over the previous week, and they put a certain country on the map of my analytics for the first time.... France!

Mother Russia....

Добрый вечер

Dobriy vyecher

Good evening

I have so many viewers from Russia at the moment, I thought I'd say a big hello to you all... How are you all navigating here folks?  Do let me know.

I see some served in from Yandex, some from pages on Reddit, however the vast majority of Russian based viewer stats are just direct references, so somewhere my pages are clearly syndicating...

BTW, I'm pushing 11,000 viewers a month now folks!  Combined with passing the 1000 post mark this is a glorious place for me to be in! THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!

Ukrainian Viewers

I just took a look at my blog statistics and for the first time in year a new country is the number 1 source of viewers.  The usual top 3 have been:

United States, United Kingdom and then France, followed by Canada, Australia and then Russia.

Over the last week however one country has not only appeared on the list, but rocketed to the top spot above the United States... And that country is...

The Ukraine...

I like the Ukraine; I'm not making a political statement about the current strange activity and rhetoric coming from Russia; but I do like the Ukraine, I remember watching the celebrations in Kiev as they won independence in the 90's.  An old man crying like a baby, it struck me as quite a deep moment, almost like the fall of the Berlin wall.

I also remember the Ukraine for the coverage of Chernobyl when I was very young.

But quite what's bringing Ukrainian viewers I'm not sure... Would any of them like to tell me?  I don't know which post you're being directed to, and no post shows a sudden peak in interest... So I'm just in the dark.

WoT - Pre-posting

I'm writing this Friday afternoon, whilst waiting to go out for a curry with the wife and in-laws.  And I'm thinking about World of Tanks, I've been watching the results of Jingle's replay contest and wishing I had a few more games like that.

I've also been looking at my noobmeter score, I'm not sure I understand how they calculate efficiency, as in the last round of bullshit teams and insulting idiots - whom I blogged about earlier in the week - every stat on my score went down, mainly because I was loosing in teams, but my efficiency went up... Now, I'm starting not to trust, or enjoy these state metering sites at all, because they seem to have their own agenda, and they incite players to just insult you, whilst not actually being very representative of what's going on.

For example, on one of the Cromwell games I was on the new map - I don't know its name - with the rail road tracks and water surrounded path on the flank... whatever... anyway, in the middle of that map is a dip, and I sat my Cromwell in that dip, owned a T28, lit up the enemy ELC AMX trying to spot, and then I kept lighting up - over and over for 6 minutes - a hellcat, an M4 and a Tiger... And not one artillery shot, not one friendly, not a single member of my team helped kill them and release me from my pinned position.

Indeed, I got to that position in the Cromwell in the first 20 seconds of the game, and I was the second to last friendly to die at just before the 7 minute mark... that's half a match count... I survived jinxing and ducking, but I got no help... The other stats also have that ring about it, I know I was helping cap, and helping damage dozens of enemies, but driving my now heavy classed German ex-Medium tank (hate it can't even bring myself to say its name) and I was nerfed and could feel it... Then the cromwell, I was pecking at heavier higher tier tanks rather than getting good equal match ups, or even getting in as highest tier.  Hey ho, none of that reflected in the stats, I just clearly suck.

So, my reason for pre-posting?... My reason is I'm going to play WoT tonight and over the weekend, but I'm going to do something simple... I'm going to play my tank destroyers, this is the JagdPanzer IV and Stug III.  And then my Churchill I only, this is because, of all the tanks I have in the garage, those few seem to get into decently balanced games, and I'm going to play them this weekend.

Now, from the JagdPanzer you have the JagdPanther, and I have that unlocked with XP, I just need the cash to buy it... and from the Churchill I you have the Churchill VIII, and I also have that unlocked.  Therefore, my TD and limited heavy action will be all about getting cash.  I'm going to avoid tanks which are costly to run, like the Tiger II.

I can run a profit in my Tiger I, but not at weekends, the match making and quality of teams drops until well after mid-night and so its not worth trying to earn cash on them.  And I can earn cash in my Panzer III/IV and the Panzer IV, but I don't enjoy them any longer... The Panzer IV of course I had when it was actually the Panzer IVS, with the sturm turret and donk cannon.