Big Brother

Wait…. WAIT!! Don’t go stampeding for the ‘close’ button - this is not about that ‘Big Brother’.
For those of you who were hoping to read what I think of that, once vaguely innovative, but now desperately tired show, I am sorry to report that I couldn’t give the tiniest toss about whether Chantelle will get back with her ordinary boy, whether Coolio actually pays his hair stylist for that, or whether John McCririck has a single molecule of modesty in his whole wobbling white body.

My youngest brother Chris…… I am digging myself a hole here. No, the title of this post is not a reference to Chris’s physicality either…… Anyway, as I was saying…. My youngest brother Chris called recently for a chat and to invite himself and his family up to visit Jane and me next month. Great. Looking forward to seeing him, Matthew and Amy, and especially looking forward to meeting Sondra, his girlfriend, for the first time. He has not been up since we moved from Glen Urquhart a few years ago and he stunned me by complimenting us (well, Jane more than me) on our garden, describing some of the features.
“How did you know that?!”
“I was looking you up on Google Earth.”
I have Google Earth in my desktop, but had never really explored it. I quickly clicked on the program and typed in my postcode.
“But all I get when I zoom in is a blocky overhead picture of what our garden used to look like.”
“Click on the cameras and you can see everything.” Chris explained.
“What cameras?”
A few moments later, after a bit of clicking and tinkering, I was staring at a 360° photo of our humble home. Wow! I had no idea that such a feature was available. Yes, yes, I know many of you probably knew about this decades ago. Good for you. I don’t proclaim to be at the vanguard of the computer age. I had a new toy! Jane was on the phone to Anna, her youngest daughter, and I freaked her out by describing her house from the photos on Google Earth. I didn’t think it necessary to reassure her that these are still old photos and we can’t check up on her (without driving the two miles to her house).

Although I write this mainly for my own benefit, as my online personal diary, I am sometimes surprised by the response I get to it. Hence, I have just installed a counter gadget thing to record the number of people visiting. I was then pleasantly surprised to find that, not only did this gadget keep track of the number of visitors, but it also gathers all sorts of other information. It tells me whether people have come to this site as a result of looking for something on a search engine or whether they have gone straight to the site, it tells me how long they spent looking at the page, how many times they have visited this blog, and even boring stuff such as what web browser they use. The page I like best is the map showing where viewers are. I only set this up a few days ago, and nowhere too exotic yet (sorry, I don’t count Bexleyheath as exotic), but it is interesting to see that people in Italy, Hong Kong and California have been taking a look (so no more posts referring to American tourists).

Who knows, perhaps if I play around with this a bit more, I will be able to find out who you are and where you are. Then I can use Google Earth to zoom in and click on photos of you reading this blog about me watching you reading about me watching you reading about me watching you reading about me watching you until I get dizzy and have to have a lie-down.