My shaggy blog story.

                                     My Shaggy Blog Story.

Of course my daughters owe their beautiful looks to me. I married their beautiful mother, Lesley.            
This picture was taken at Hillarys Marina in 2017.

On Fathers’ Day, 2012, my three beautiful daughters, Jane, Sarah and Emily presented me with an iPad. It was suggested that maybe I could use it to start writing a Blog.

The next day Jane set up my Blogsite. She even provided a name for it, The Font of Noelage.      Quite catchy, I think. If you are reading this blog I expect that you know what a blog is. If you do not, then read on and all will be revealed, eventually.

Fathers’ Day, 2012 must have been Sunday September 1^st , because I wrote my first blog, “The Lost Childhood Generation” on September 3^rd. Since then I have written 155 blog stories, including this one. That is an average of 1.83 stories each month. I started with a flourish, writing 9 stories in that first September and 25 in the four months up to December, 2012.

I kept up a pretty good pace for a few years but only managed 11 stories in 2015. My output that year was reduced as I had a quadruple heart  by-pass in January which slowed my output for a while.

Some of my blog stories appeared in The West Australian, The Australian, The Western  Teacher, The WA Primary Principals' quarterly magazine,WORDS and 50 Something, the National Seniors magazine.

One of my stories, A Teacher's 2020 Vision, was first printed in Inside Cover in TheWeekend West Australian and then subsequently in the British Columbia Teachers' Newsletter and even in French in a Swiss education magazine. After I received my copy of this Swiss magzine I showed it to a French teacher at Churchlands High School. He read the French and English versions of my story and told me, "It read much better in French." But, of course!

FONT OF NOELAGE STORIES                        YEARLY TOTALS
2012	25	(4 mths)	2016	23
2013	31		2017	21
2014	25		2018	10
2015	11		2019	10	(9mths)

In December 2016, Lesley and I downsized to the Ocean Reef Country Club and in September, 2017, I began publishing a monthly community newsletter. This accounts for the reduced output in 2018 and 2019.

Since September 3^rd, 2012, up to today, my blogsite has been visited 227,564 times, an average of 2675 visits per month.  I think blog visits are actually called hits.                                                           227,564 hits seems quite a good number and makes me sad that I do not get a dollar for each visit or hit. Although the number appears to be quite pleasing, there is an anomaly which I will come to shortly.

My blog has been visited by people in Australia, New Zealand, UK, USA, Ireland, Canada, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Vietnam, Hong Kong, South Africa, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Thailand. I have also had 2345 visitors to About Noel, which is linked to the home page of my blog.

My ten most popular blog stories( highest number of hits) since September, 2012 are:                                                                                                   

1.NAPLAN, Education Systems and Professor Deming. 2/6/13. 160,430 hits                                   2.The Recitation 1/6/2013. 3167 hits                                                                                                      3.Merit pay for dentists  6/01.2013. 1519 hits                                                                                     4.Cristopher Pyne: A disruptive nuisance in education 11/01/2014. 989 hits.                                    5.The Denis Belliveau Story. 26/8/2014. 896 hits                                                                                  6.Jungle training for a graduate teacher  24/3/2013. 768hits

7.The Lost Childhood Generation. 3/9/2012.  456 hits                                                                          8.Too Much, Too Soon. 19/02/2016 398 hits                                                                                           9.Millions of federal dollars for testing year ones.  18/9/2017. 368 hits                                               10.The sport of Eagles bashing . 4/7/2013. 365 hits.

The BIG anomaly is the 160, 430 hits for NAPLAN, Education Systems and Professor Deming.         I cannot explain it except to say I think that particular story, somehow or other, attracted automated and spam responses. Some of the comments received were stilted and many were absolute gibberish.

So my grand total of 227, 564 hits is not so grand after all. Still, NAPLAN, Education Systems and Professor Deming is an interesting story. I thank my late friend, Sean Walsh, for making me aware of the remarkable Professor Deming.

 If The Recitation has achieved  3167 hits so far, I believe the NAPLAN and Professor Deming story would have scored around 5000 genuine hits, which makes an amended total at about 72 000 hits on my blogsite since September, 2012. That is an average of about 850 a month. I’m happy with that.

So far this month my blog has had 423 visits. Yesterday, September 21 it had 78. Today, September 22 is quiet at present, only  21 visits…but half the world is still asleep so that number should rise in the next 12 hours.

According to the 2011 Macquarie Dictionary, a Blog is a record of items found on the internet, edited and published on a website with comments and links (to other articles or websites. NB).                The 1981 Macquarie Dictionary does not mention the word Blog at all. Neither does the Pocket Macquarie, published in 1982. Hardly surprising, as the internet was in its embryonic stages in the 1980s and large numbers of people did not start using the internet until the mid 1990s. Macquarie explains that the word BLOG is a derivative of WEB LOG. If you say it fast a few times you will understand why.

I started using the Internet in February 1995 and, as already stated, commenced my Blog in September 2012. I am very far from being what Macquarie calls a Blogebrity, a blogger whose blog attracts great attention and interest. However, I do frequent the Blogosphere, which is a place that bloggers inhabit and I operate in a Blogspace, which is a public website where blogs may be viewed.

As it turned out I do not use my iPad for writing  my Blog. I use my iPad for a great many things but not for writing blogs. I create my blog stories on my old stream driven, throw through ball valve clutch,  computer.

I am pleased that the very first story I wrote, The Lost Childhood Generation, is still in the Top Ten. But you will notice most of the Top Ten were written in 2012-14. Of course, this means they have had time to attract readers. The most recent blog in the top ten is Millions of Federal Dollars for Testing Year Ones, which was written in 2017. Hopefully some of the more recent blogs will eventually build up their numbers.

I enjoy writing my Blog but I do have one regret, I thought I would get a lot more comments to some of my stories. I have had some very nice comments from friends and complete strangers but most blogs, apart from the sainted NAPLAN, Education Systems and Professor Deming, which I had to put a comment blocker on, go  unremarked. That could be because they are quite unremarkable, however, even then, you would think someone would get some pleasure in telling me so.


What are my favourite blogs? Well, naturally, I like them all. I think NAPLAN, Education Systems and Professor Deming is worthy of being at Number One. The Recitation at Number Two is very pleasing to me because it is really a short story and a little different from my usual blogs.

So far I have written 27 blogs about Education, 22 about Politics and 19 about sports. The rest have generally been about the intriguing variety of Life; music, wine drinking, coffee drinking, show business, travel,  fitness fads and the fun and sadness of human frailty and foibles.                                                                                                                                                            

My favourites at the present time are listed below.

MY FAVOURITES…at the moment.

      1.How Gough whitlam lead me to the principalship. 6/9/2012 149 hits.                                             2.The misleading power of PISA . 12/9/2012. 159                                                                             3.Ian Fleming has a lot to answer for. 22/9/2012 131hits.                                                                    4.Education reform or teacher bashing. 15/3/2013. 86 hits.                                                                 5.My School versus Your School. 17/4/2013. 212 hits.                                                                         6.A teacher's 2020 vision of the future. . 5/2/2014. 112 hits.                                                                 7.Malice in Blunderland. 7/2/2014. 87 hits.                                                                                            8.It's the poor wot gets the blame!  18/11/2014. 257 hits.                                                                      9.Don Bradman, me...and Stephanie. 6/3/2017. 181 hits.                                                                    10.Hear the barrackers' a'shouting. . 18/6/2019. 10 hits.

The list could change in a month or so. I am pleased to place Hear the Barrackers a’Shouting on this list, as it was only written three months ago. I must admit it contains a modified excerpt from my book, LEON, A backward glance at boyhood, which I wrote in 1995.

Not sure why, but so far only 12 people have visited this "Barrackers" story. Once upon a time people could provide their e-mail address and become a follower of my blog. At one time I had about 30 followers. They would receive a copy of my blog as soon as it was published.

But something went wrong. The system changed. Now, I only have one follower. I think his nmae is Robinson Crusoe. I really thought that more and more people would be attracted to my turgid prose, one sided and heavily biased political views, corny puns and convoluted humour.

Oh, well to each his own. Or, perhaps I should say “To each his, her, lesbian, gay, bi, trans and whatever they think of next.

Anyway, I'll post this blog and await your comments.