Saturday, December 11, 2010

on web statistics

I visited my blog from my Blackberry during my commute to work on Friday. Here's what the stats say:
Domain Name adelphia.net ? (Network)
IP Address 68.171.234.96 ? (Unknown Organization)
ISP Unknown ISP
Location
Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
State : Massachusetts
City : Medford
Lat/Long : 42.4247, -71.1112 (Map)
Distance : 186 miles
Language unknown
Operating System Unknown Unknown
Browser Default 4.1.0
BlackBerry7130e/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105
Javascript disabled
Time of Visit Dec 10 2010 8:29:51 am
Last Page View Dec 10 2010 8:29:51 am
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL unknown
Visit Entry Page http://mcclernan.blogspot.com/
Visit Exit Page http://mcclernan.blogspot.com/
Out Click

Please note - I take the N train downtown through Manhattan and the NYC subway system does not go anywhere near Medford Massachusetts.

The location listed isn't always the physical location of the user, and other factors can influence how the web statistics application read the data. For instance, although one web stats program thinks that someone is visiting from South Richmond Hill, another program says Kew Gardens.

In the case of Andrew Bellware visiting my site - the same IP addresses show up again and again with the nasty search-string messages, but more importantly, as I've said, he's used many of the same IPs to edit his blog, so it's not a stunning act of deductive reasoning to make the connection.

And unlike his friend, who stopped with the search string messages by the end of March, Bellware has continued right up to today. Sometimes the messages are just random, as I've blogged about here before - "wankle rotary engine" but many times they are personal, insulting and/or obscene. I have said I don't like his movies, and I have disapproved of his asking actors to get naked but not offering to pay them. So he feels that he has every right to harass me - and libel me - as much as he wishes. But he is wrong.