Category: Blogs

I found a nice way to calculate my readership from RSS feeds here.  It nailed both my bloglines feeds, so I have good confidence it’s accurate.  Apparently 310 or so people are reading via RSS.  That’s 310 people who don’t give a crap whether my site is blue, red, green, black or brown.  I want to thank them for reading, and for doing their part to make the blogosphere truly color blind.

UPDATE: Someone asks about readership number in total.  It’s hard to say, but based on my understanding of the data google analytics gives, it’s somewhere along the lines of 25,000 readers, a reader being defined as someone who shows up at least one or twice a week.  I should really do some research on how these numbers are calculated though, and get a number I feel more confident in.

As much as I would love to be able to attend this year’s Gun Blogger Rendezvous, I will not be able to.  I went last year, and had a great time, and was hoping to get to go again this year.  But it’s just not in the cards for a few reasons:

• I’m short on vacation time with work, and I will need to take some more because of election activities.
• Flights to Reno are expensive, and that whole baggage fee thing really pisses me off.  I got hit with a $5000 house repair I wasn’t expecting.
• The election in Pennsylvania has come down to the wire.  Close enough that getting a few hundred extra votes could make a difference.  In October I’ll only be a few weeks out from election day.
• The Association and New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs has their annual banquet on the same weekend, and it would be beneficial for me to go to that, considering my district shares a lengthy border with The Garden State.

EVC doesn’t have to be a lot of work, but I took this job pretty late in the game, when it looked like Pennsylvania was tried and blue for the Democrats, but now that it’s narrowing up, I want to make sure if we lose, it won’t be because I didn’t do everything I could.  I do hope to make GBR-IV.

This is a really fascinating blog featuring strange maps.  Start looking, and you won’t be able to stop.

Not many new gun owners start a gun blog, but this one did.  This is a useful thing to get out onto Al Gore’s interwebs.

Crimson Trace are co-sponsoring the Gun Blogger Rendezvous this year with more free stuff.  That’s being held Oct 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th this year in Reno, NV.  Get more details here.  This is good news, and more signs that the shooting community are taking blogs seriously.

Apparently they dropped the ball.  RNC could actually learn a lot from NRA in this regard, who had a more successful blogger outreach effort.  In fact, they probably have a lot to learn from NRA in terms of their ground game too, which I don’t think is very strong in my area.  Hell, I don’t think it’s very strong in my state.  That’s kind of sad, because I think NRA could do better too.

Hat Tip Instapundit

I thought the show last night was pretty good.  Both Breda and Chris Byrne had useful things to say about the Appleseed Project.  Give it a listen, it’s worthwhile.

Congratulations to Breda for making that fateful step two years ago.  She’s a lot more than a cook in my book.

I will be appearing on Bonnie and Caleb’s show tonight to talk about the ParaUSA Blackwater experience.  Tune in at 11:00PM, or you can download the show tomorrow.

Oh no!

Rusty has had a little fun at the expense of all of the bloggers training with Todd Jarrett this weekend. Go check out his handy work.

UPDATE: More: