Maps & WordPress Statistics

While dropping off to sleep last night, I was thinking about how much work it might be to add a world map to the WordPress Statistics for Emacs thing. Not because it’s useful, but because Jetpack has one, and I have to have feature parity!!!

So that’s what the Jetpack one looks like… Yeah, yeah, Mercator, but it does look kinda nice?

But then it occurred to me: Surely somebody has made an SVG world map with nice markup? And yes!

So I just have to read it in with libxml-parse-xml-region, adjust the colours to reflect view numbers with some dom-by-id and then let Emacs render it:

Easy peasy.

The one complication is that not all countries are contiguous, and you can’t have the same ID on several elements, so how do they solve that?

*sigh*

So non-contiguous countries don’t have IDs at all, but have a class grouping them… using the country name! So you have to have not only country codes, but a mapping to country names, and hope you’re using the same mapping that they’re using (i.e., “United States” and not “United States of America”, etc (and can class names even have spaces?)).

I should demand a refund! For that free map! The nerve of some people!

Anyway.

Comics Daze

I missed some comics I wanted to read in 2024! *gasp* My methodology for US comics is to go through the solicitations on my web site here, and then semiautomatically order the books… I’ve used Mile High Comics since I was 12, but they are horrible about actually reacting to subscription changes, especially when ordering one-off books, so then I switched to DCBS two years ago, and that worked fine until they started just not carrying books from certain publishers (like Silver Sprocket), so then I switched to TFAW this autumn. Hopefully that’ll fix the problem once and for all…

I hear you sensibly say “but why don’t you just wait until the comics are in the bookstores?” And I have to reply “my memory is a sieve, and not even a steel one. It’s 50/50 whether something that looks unknown to me in a bookstore is something I already have, but the solicitations helpfully are marked as “offered again” etc, so I know which ones are brand new, and I can buy them with certainty”.

Anyway, I perused the TCJ best of list and the Hipinion people’s and ordered a couple dozen books.

Some of which have arrived! And also a whole bunch of comics from Domino. Let’s get readin’.

(And today’s music is all either Arto Lindsay albums or albums he’s been involved with as a producer or something.)

Arto Lindsay: Mundo Civilizado

08:12: Blurry by Dash Shaw (New York Review Comics)

This is a book that I was really excited to read — Dash Shaw is great.

And I love the storytelling here — it’s hypnotic.

The Lounge Lizards: The Lounge Lizards

This book reminds me a lot of Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy, but instead of having a serial “listen to a new person’s tale” structure, it’s perhaps more like If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino? Unfortunately, this has the unfortunate whiff of Inception: We get stories within stories within stories, and then pop back out in the opposite order.

That’s all fun and kinda amazing, and while the ending doesn’t make much sense logically, it’s emotionally overwhelmingly joyous. Fantastic.

But what isn’t fantastic are many of the stories themselves, I’m sorry to say. Cusk is a master of having each story told being intensively interesting, but about half the stories here were just tedious. I’m sorry for using hate speech! Especially the art teacher thing, and that’s probably the central thing here (if you can call it that, what with the structure of the book).

So it’s frustrating: They way it’s constructed and some of the sections make you feel like it’s a masterpiece, put then the feeling passes.

The Golden Palominos: The Golden Palominos

09:45: Mineshaft #43 & 45 edited by Everett Rand

Noah van Sciver takes on the bête noire of comics artists — fine art! And that’s not a joke that’s ever been done before…

Aww. Aline Kominsky and Sophie Crumb. *sniff* (I’ve read this piece before, though.)

#45 is extremely strong.

Fantastic stuff.

And harrowing stuff.

I love Mineshaft, the last underground anthology. And #45 is amazing — best issue ever, I think.

Ambitious Lovers: Envy

10:26: Lapis Lazuli by Arbor

This is a little book that mixes pictures of graffiti…

… with sketches and drawings. It’s not narrative, but it somehow seems to build to something anyway. Nice.

10:34: The Beasts Inside by Nicole Rodrigues

Ooh, nice — it’s a vellumey plastickey page.

I like the artwork here.

The narrative is a bit on the vague side, but it’s got a nice flow.

Seigen Ono: Comme des Garçons

10:40: Crepusculine 1 by Conor Stechschulte

This is very intriguing…

… but so brief! It’s the start of a long story, I’m guessing? If it’s being serialised this way, there’ll be dozens and dozens of issues, perhaps.

Caetano Veloso: Estrangeiro

10:44: My Favorite Thing is Monsters Book Two by Emil Ferris (Fantagraphics)

OK, back to the “best of 2024”-listed books again. This one wasn’t on so many lists as the first volume, I guess, but it was on plenty.

I haven’t re-read the first book, and that was back in 2016? Or something? So I remember nothing. Except that I wasn’t overly enthused by it. I mean, I liked it, but…

This doesn’t start out very reader friendly — with a dream sequence.

Marisa Monte: Mais

But then it smooths out considerably.

Laurie Anderson: Bright Red – Tightrope

Ferris’ artwork is impressive — she especially puts a lot of effort into the faces, so just looking at these pages is enjoyable.

[I took a nap here.]

Vinicius Cantuária: Sol Na Cara

The story, though… Well, it’s an enjoyable read. It’s got all the structure of porridge. It just flows strangely from one thing to another, and the reader is being asked to puzzle out what the mystery is. But Ferris cheats a lot: She has the protagonist forgetting things at points, or blanking out, and that just reeks of TV series storytelling. And there’s so many over-the-top dramatic moments, what with the speakeasy accessible from a secret basement, and the deranged cop dad, and…

And this doesn’t really seem like it’s the final volume of the story? Is there going to be a third book? If not the book is like… a kinda “fuck you” to the reader, really. Or perhaps not; perhaps it’s more like “well, things are mysterious and you never get to know what happened when you were a child” kind of thing? Because the book is a lot about withholding information from children, and how that affects them, so I guess that could make sense.

I guess I’m saying that I liked reading it, but I’m annoyed? Yeah.

Arto Lindsay: O Corpo Sutil

16:07: Round World Thinking by Ana Woulfe

OK, back to the Domino shipment.

I really like Woulfe’s artwork.

Heh heh, I think we have a Cocteau Twins fan here.

Anyway, this is funny and oddly sweet book.

And speaking of sweet, I’ve fetched some Kinder Eggs.

16:15: No, Thanks! by S. Höppner (Cram Books)

Such stylish artwork!

The story is both really funny and very intriguing. Excellent stuff.

Arto Lindsay: Reentry

16:20: Still Making Your Diary Comics? by Fran López

This comes with a nice little print.

Hey! This isn’t a diary comic after all! The nerve!

It’s a cute little story — really cool.

Vinicius Cantuária: Tucumã

16:27: Peepshow #15 by Joe Matt (Fantagraphics)

I missed this when it was published, so I had to buy if from ebay now for $$$. Man, why didn’t Fantagraphics just print enough copies instead? All the stores were sold.

It’s like no time has passed since the previous issue (which is two decades ago, I guess).

For better or for worse. So this is a nostalgic read, but it makes you want to strangle Matt even more than usual, even knowing that this is the final issue ever.

Arto Lindsay: Noon Chill

16:56: Vera Bushwack by Sig Burwash (Drawn & Quarterly)

This is a compelling book.

It’s very grounded…

… and at the same time it’s got these wonderful flights of fancy. It’s a solid book.

My one complaint is that the characters have a tendency to look the same (build, height, stance, facial feature), so you have to distinguish them by hairdo only, and that gets old.

Arto Lindsay: Prize

17:39: True-Man The Maximortal #1 by Rick Veitch

This was also on somebody’s Best Of list, and it’s print-on-demand available from Amazon only (phooey).

Oh yeah, I’d forgotten that Veitch draws digitally now. And it’s printed kinda low rez? It gives it a very stark look, but quite attractive, really.

Heh heh.

Oh right — this is a prequel! Or rather the first part of the King Hell Heroica thing, but published last. I was getting kinda confused about the storyline until the very end…

And as usual, in addition to 50 pages of Maximortal stuff, there’s also 50 pages of reprints of old stuff. These books are very attractive packages, really. You feel like you’re getting a good chunk of interesting stuff.

And stuff.

18:23: Absolute Simultaneity by Lily Thu Fierro/Generoso Fierro

Wow, this is something else.

It’s mesmerising. It’s kinda narrative, but kinda abstract, too, and it’s somehow very emotional. Fantastic.

18:29: Szns #1 by Chaia Startz (Deadcrow)

This is a short, but good book.

It’s only the first chapter of what I’m guessing is going to be a long narrative? I’m aboard; I’m already invested in these characters.

18:34: The End

And now I think I’m going to make dinner, so I think I’ll just call it a day with the comics reading. I guess I didn’t read that many of the “missed” comics as I’d planned today, but instead went with small press stuff instead a lot, so I’ve got a lot more “missed” books to read. Er… perhaps tomorrow? Probably not, but this weekend, perhaps.

WordPress Statistics for Emacs

A few days ago, I posted about writing a new WordPress stats thing because the Jetpack stats layout annoyed me too much.

I’ve continued to tinker with it, and I think it should now basically be usable. I renamed it to wse (WordPress Statistics for Emacs), and it’s on Microsoft Github if anybody’s interested in trying it out.

The Emacs portion updates asynchronously in the background now.

I added one thing that doesn’t have anything to do with statistics per se — it now also displays recent comments, because that’s something one has to keep track of (if for no other reason than to delete any spam that slips through the (very good, but not perfect) Akismet anti-spam filter).

One thing that I’ve totally missed is that in 2020, Chrome changed how they do inter-site Referrers: They only send over the domain name, but leave off the path part. I thought I had a bug in my code, or that almost all domains had installed “referrer scrubbers” (like Google has always had). But nope: All you get is the domain name.

This is, of course, good for privacy. And I’m totally sure that Google did this Chrome change out of the goodness of their hearts, and not because this forces marketers to sign up for Google-based user tracking even harder than before. Good on ’em!

Speaking of browsers… I couldn’t help adding this little table. It’s not that it’s useful, but I was just kinda sorta curious about what people use these days. And the audience for this blog is just 50% Chrome users, which is unusual, of course. Such a discerning audience!

The desktop to mobile ratio surprises me, though — I thought that would be more 50/50, but nope. And, of course, tablets have stopped being a thing, but that’s not really surprising.

The sample is very small (one day), though, so drawing any conclusions here wouldn’t be a good idea.

Total Eclipse Moves

My old blog about Eclipse Comics used to be hosted by WordPress.com, but after the recent Jetpack Stats changes, I’ve moved it to self-hosting so that I can get nice stats again.

So this is just a heads up that if you used to go to totaleclipse.blog, it’s now hosted on total-eclipse.kwakk.info. All the old URLs are still valid, but redirect to the new domain for the time being (and probably for several years to come), but will go away eventually, I guess. Let me know if there are any problems.