Today is 10 years of posting to my blog! Thank you to my readers!

I just love to photograph the Headquarters branch of the Collier County Public Library near our home here in Naples, Fla. I’ve taken shots during the day; during the evening; and at night. Well, on Jan. 16, 2020, I got this shot of a hallway leading from west parking lot to the entrance. I hadn’t realized that this scene is reminiscent of a Stephen King movie, but now I do!

Today, May 22, 2024, at 8:09 p.m. is the 10^th anniversary of the first post to my blog here on WordPress. It has been an interesting decade and I celebrate it because the blog has allowed me to express myself without entering into any controversy. I find it therapeutic to post photos and the amateur entertainment reviews that I write for fun.

Let’s start with some key numbers (as of 5 a.m. on May 22, 2024) …

• Total page views: 147,194
• Best single day of page views: 2,109
• Total posts on blog: 8,126 (this will be 8,127)
• Total number of photos posted: 10,176
• Total number of posts about or from Disney: 2,680
• Total number of countries coming to the blog: 187
• Total number of movie reviews: 390
• Total number of other reviews: 35

Today’s post is to celebrate the anniversary and explain what I believe is the most interesting aspects of the blog as I see it. From the number of page views to the number of countries from which I’ve enjoyed getting page views, these numbers represent to me more than just a dry look at the accounting of my blog.

Here’s a somewhat close-up view of a gondola on the Disney Skyliner system. I got the shot on Sept. 8, 2023, as we returned to Walt Disney World for a five-day stay.

I have to say that at 147,194 page views as of the morning of May 22, 2024, my blog isn’t “popular.” Mostly, folks find movie reviews and photos from Walt Disney World via online searches. So, I consider 40 page views a “regular” day and get some spikes when a “spider” program goes in and steals photos that I’ve posted.

The single thing on my blog of which I’m most proud are the movie reviews. I’m obviously an amateur reviewer and I started reviewing films from the 1970s and 1980s to let folks remember what the movie offerings were like in that period.

My favorite review that I’ve written is about the underrated comedy “Big Trouble” from the novel by former Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry and it stars Tim Allen and Rene Russo and has a simply marvelous supporting turn from Zooey Deschanel. My most critical review is about the “reboot” of “CHIPS” as one big stinker and it is the third most-popular page on my blog.

I began the blog as a way to learn the WordPress system. I was looking for a job in the late spring of 2014 and one to which I applied (but didn’t get), needed someone familiar with WordPress. So, I created the blog to learn and … voila! I got excited about posting movie reviews and photos and I had some time and began churning out the posts.

I saw an idiot driver cause a crash that sent another vehicle into a water-filled ditch this evening (Tuesday, April 12, 2022) here in North Naples, Fla. However, it was the work of a Collier County Sheriff’s Office deputy that deserves the most praise. The vehicle was front-bumper-first into the ditch and the driver appeared to be trying to salvage personal items from the water. The deputy waded in and spoke reassuringly to the driver and worked to make sure the driver didn’t panic any further. The idiot driver tried to cross three lanes of traffic by putting on a turn signal, slowing down to a crawl on one of the busiest highways in the area and then just pulling across the lanes. The result was hitting the vehicle that was then knocked sideways and it crossed the median and plunged into the creek. Sadly, I didn’t have my dashcam in my car at the time.

Many photos on the blog are taken from my travels around our hometown of Naples, Fla., and I posted one of my all-time favorites: It shows a hallway one evening at a nearby public library branch that appears to come from a Stephen King story. Also, I on occasion post a “news” photo as you can see from the photo of law enforcement helping a driver whose car wound up in a water-filled ditch after a crash.

My first post at 8:09 p.m. on May 22, 2014, was a movie review (“The Warriors”) and next at 9:57 p.m. was a photo of a hibiscus bloom on our patio.

Well, that turned into a total of 8,126 posts over the past decade.

Oh, and I do “expand” or update my reviews of films. I have only changed my opinion about a film once (for “Dirty Grandpa” with Robert De Niro and Zac Efron), but have updated reviews, usually because of the death of an actor or director or to update links within the review. Each review has a note if it has been updated.

So, let’s get to some numbers/details (all as of May 22, 2024) …

• Of course, the home page is the most-popular by far with 16,166 views against the No. 2 page at 4,542. Oh, the No. 2 most-popular page is my movie review of the crappy “CHIPS” movie, but my review of the Raquel Welch western “Hannie Caulder” has moved up quickly and is now fourth with 1,514 (my review of the TV mini-series “Noble House” is third with 1,685.
• The United States is the country giving me the most page views followed by the UK, Canada and Australia. Coming in fifth is India and the top 10 is rounded out with Germany, France, Spain, the Philippines and Brazil.
• Countries with only one page view over the decade include Iran, Cuba, Kyrgyzstan, Gabon, Madagascar, St. Lucia and South Sudan.
• There have been 41 comments made by folks who visited the blog with the majority being comments about movies.

Well, I’m not going to bore you any longer if you read this far. Thank you for being a reader of this blog and I hope you return in the future.

(CLICK here … for links to all my movie reviews)
(CLICK here … for a chronological list of my reviews)
(CLICK here … for all my reviews of horror movies)
(CLICK here … for all my reviews of ‘007’ movies)
(CLICK here … for all my reviews of war movies)
CLICK here … for all my reviews of Christmas movies)
(CLICK here … for all my reviews of sports movies)

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