2012 was another record-setting year for both The Drudge Report and yours truly here at the Hallandale Beach Blog! December 2012 was the third record-breaking month in a row for Hallandale Beach Blog's monthly average with a monthly total of 62,898 individual pageviews, or an average of 2,029 views per day

Above, looking south on U.S.-1/S. Federal Highway, in front of Hallandale Beach City Hall. At the bottom of the FDOT sign you'll notice the grafitti that I mentioned two years ago at a HB City Commission meeting, where I noted with disgust how most of U.S.-1, one of the three main roads in and out of the city, had grafitti on nearly every sign and pole -and had for years- due to the city and FDOT doing such a piss-poor job of keeping it under control, thus creating a bad first-impression for visitors. Typically, then-City Mgr. Mark A. Antonio's response to my recitation with specificity was that he'd never noticed any of that before. This from the same person who had worked in that same building since it'd opened over ten years years prior. I then retorted that one didn't need to go far to see it, only walk out the door of the commission chambers we were all in and walk to the sidewalk in front of City Hall. There was no missing it, since it's all been there for years, along with the gang tags on other signs and light poles. As of today, it's all STILL there, as responsible parties continue ignoring the problem, the perfect metaphor for the city's myopia, something I said to conclude my remarks that night. April 17, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved.

2012 was another record-setting year for both The Drudge Report and yours truly here at the Hallandale Beach Blog! December 2012 was the third record-breaking month in a row for Hallandale Beach Blog's monthly average with a monthly total of 62,898 individual pageviews, or an average of 2,029 views per day

Matt Drudge's 17-year old news and information website, the invaluable 24/7 tool in a sea of increasingly incurious, biased and not-so-bright American news media, set a new record in 2012, besting his 2011 total by over a BILLION pageviews. 
Or to be specific, 1,007,231,416. 
http://www.drudgereport.com/

Meanwhile, farther north in South Florida from the Drudge HQ, but much closer to home for your purposes, 2012 was another record-breaking year at the Hallandale Beach Blog, with a total of 343,830 pageviews.

December 2012 was another record-breaker, not only setting a record for THE busiest month EVER in the now six years of the blog, with a monthly total of 62,898 individual pageviews, or a daily average of 2,029 views, but with a new daily record set the Sunday before last, two days before Christmas, December 23, 2012 with a total of 5,324. 

It was the third record-breaking month in a row!
Yes, thanks to readers from South Florida and around the world who let their fingers do the walking, December 2012 was, indeed, awesome!

Just to give you an idea of how things have looked this year -and the last two weeks- here's some numbers to crunch and wrap your head around:

January 2012             Pageviews: 26,636
February 2012           Pageviews: 22,584
March 2012                Pageviews: 19,167
April 2012                   Pageviews: 20,626
May 2012                    Pageviews: 23,979
June 2012                   Pageviews: 21,971
July 2012                     Pageviews: 23,036
August 2012               Pageviews: 22,312
September 2012        Pageviews: 23,290
October 2012             Pageviews: 35,433
November 2012         Pageviews: 41,898
December 2012 Pageviews: 62,898

Total: 343,830

Individual daily pageviews at HBB for the second half of the month:

Dec 14, 2012 Pageviews:  1,226, 
Dec 15, 2012 Pageviews:  4,455, 
Dec 16, 2012 Pageviews:  4,651, 
Dec 17, 2012 Pageviews:  1,834, 
Dec 18, 2012 Pageviews:  2,906, 
Dec 19, 2012 Pageviews:  4,156,
Dec 20, 2012 Pageviews:  2,289
Dec 21, 2012 Pageviews:  2,476
Dec 22, 2012 Pageviews:  4,519
Dec 23, 2012 Pageviews:  5,324
Dec 24, 2012 Pageviews:  2,229
Dec 25, 2012 Pageviews:  1,464
Dec 26, 2012 Pageviews:  1,230
Dec 27, 2012 Pageviews:  1,054
Dec 28, 2012 Pageviews:  1,155
Dec 29, 2012 Pageviews:  1,059
Dec 30, 2012  Pageviews: 1,214
Dec 31, 2012  Pageviews:  970

Is 2012 the year you finally become a blogger?; New monthly record for eyeballs coming to Hallandale Beach Blog: November 2011 Pageviews: 22,430

Late Fall evening in 2002, looking south at The White House from Lafayette Park, with statue of Gen. Andrew Jackson in the foreground. Photo by South Beach Hoosier. If only I'd started a blog back then -or earlier!!!

I've been meaning to post this bit of positive news for a while now, but kept shunting it aside because of other matters, including what has been a LOT MORE time this past month dealing with family health concerns, and then coming home exhausted, only to run head-long into longstanding problems with AT&T's U-Verse service.

Thanks to you readers out there in the blogosphere, especially a very loyal core of large-volume readers in certain cities, including some in Europe, which the Feedjit widget never fails to disclose in the right-side column, last month set a new record for eyeballs coming to your humble blog: November 2011 Pageviews: 22,430.

Hallandale Beach Blog also set a new daily record on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, November 22nd, with approximately 2,863 individual pageviews of something on the blog, for whatever rhyme or reason. (More than 119 an hour.)

That's more than one-tenth of the month's total!

Who says that people who work in offices aren't hard at work the week of Thanksgiving?

Uh... the actual evidence.

Doing simple math, that monthly total means that there was a daily average for the 30 days of November of 747.66 pageviews.

Before the end of the year, I'll disclose some of the positive changes that will be coming to the blog in the new year, as well as some of the new tools I'll have that will play an important  role in what you can expect to see here.

I'll also probably have some practical suggestions for those of you who have written and asked what sorts of common sense things they should consider or have before starting a blog, since a new year always gives people the chance to do lots of things they've heretofore put off doing, learning or experiencing, including reinventing themselves as bloggers, after putting it off for years, so they can finally share some insight, curiosity and experience they have with the wider world.

That's especially true when they want their newly-christened blog to have at least an occasional oversight element that involves informing the public about local, county or state government chicanery, skullduggery and crony capitalism.

What do you know, Florida is not only the Sunshine State, it's the home of both Old Style and New School govt. chicanery, given the number of Floridians I've heard from who say that when reading the posts here, their favorites are not necessarily the ones about pop culture or sports or the news media -MSM and local- but rather the ones where they can really sense the delicious satisfaction (and occasional glee) I feel in helping to expose elected officials and highly-paid govt. staffers to a degree of scrutiny they hadn't counted on.


Of showing them becoming so blase about riding the gravy train in the Pay-to-Play culture hereabouts, that they forget the public duty they have to those they they are supposed to serve, not become affluent off of.


Of simply taking the time and energy to do some of the investigatory research and field work that the local and state news media should be doing -but isn't- to show the public thru both self-evident photos and hidden records what the genuine reality of their actions, words and policies are.


I can't deny that when you have the goods on one of them, and they can't explain away the facts they find so uncomfortable because you have stolen their crutch or wrath, it's a good feeling.

Given what we already know about the caliber and competency of many elected officials and government employees at the city, county and state level here in Florida -and probably where you live, too- this is a particularly target-rich environment for would-be bloggers who want to hold them accountable thru old-fashioned reason and common sense, regardless of whether you are conservative, liberal or just plain angry at the intersection of political culture of self-enrichment and ego-tripping.


My experience is to let the facts tell the story, along with some informed commentary that you can back up with hard evidence.


There are clearly a lot of people in South Florida who possess the intelligence, common sense and tools to make a positive, tangible difference in their own community, they just need some positive encouragement.


So whether you know someone like this who has talked to you in the past about their desire to start a blog, and you didn't take it upon yourself to encourage them, or you yourself are that would-be blogger who has let things get in the way, DON'T procrastinate this year like last year.


Get organized and get started on giving your community the added oversight and accountability that only serious concerned citizens can give.


I know from personal experience how procrastination is the creative blogger's worst friend
-or even the would-be blogger- since while I was living and working up in Washington, D.C., many of my in-the-know, tech-forward friends on Capitol Hill, in the myriad federal agencies, think tanks and news media, encouraged me to start a blog right at the point in the late 1990's when when blogging was becoming easier to do for non-techs like myself.


A blog that would incorporate many of the interesting and delicious tidbits of information and insight that my friends and I knew first-hand, whether thru discovery or, sometimes, literally, stumbling into it, which we mentioned whenever we got together.


But lacking a blog or website of my own to tell the tale, I shared it with people who already had a news media perch, many whose names you'd recognize, who eventually got the word  out, via print or TV.
Me, I always had an excuse not to do it, usually, involving lack of time.

This was back when I was averaging going to about 25 Baltimore Oriole home games a year at Camden Yards, despite living in Arlington County, so I really didn't have a lot of free-time during the baseball season, since I'd usually not get back home from those long American League ballgames until about 1 a.m., and had to leave the house by 7:15 to walk to work via the Ballston Metro station.

Even after returning here to South Florida, it took me a few years to finally bite the bullet.

Every day that I stare at my computer screen now, I think, "If only I had started this
blog earlier!" 


When I think about all the crazy, amazing and useful things things you readers would already know by now -but don't!- about many nationally well-known pols, pundits, reporters and Washington-area institutions, to give you a sense of why they are the way they are, both good and bad, but don't because I hesitated, it's frustrating beyond words.
(And perhaps best explains why my posts on Washington tend to be so lengthy?)


In the hands of a serious and dedicated blogger, truth, fairness, context and facts are king.
But they're meaningless if you don't jump at the opportunity that presents itself.
Don't repeat my mistake by procrastinating too long!


Like I have with Twitter, which will change in the new year!