A large part of The Black Sheep’s daily grind is monitoring and analysing metrics (ie. web traffic stats).
One helpful thing about the web these days is that there’s tonnes of free tools available to help Web Lords like myself when attempting to make sense of lots of figures.
This one in particular is a handy little chartlet which plots up to five sites by page views, reach and rank on the same graph:
A cheesy festive feature - a flock of real-life singing sheep from the Lake District are releasing their version of Jingle Bells for the second Christmas running due to popular demand.
The Baarmy Sheep's version is available for download from the Cumbria Tourism website.
Fpor the hardcore fans - there's also a video to go with it.
Enjoy.
As you've probably noticed the Black Sheep has changed appearance some what.
The deal is that after God knows how long we've finally got a proper blogging platform to support our efforts.
The advantages are easier search and navigation, ability to easily leave comments, and it's much easier from an author's point of view so there should be an increase in postings!
Down points - not too many - just that there are some teething issues. It will take a little while to get the archive of Black Sheep postings over on to this new platform, and we've not had the design work done yet so it doesn't really look like part of FWi at the moment. That will change though.
If you've got any comments then let us know ...
Have been doing a bit more investigation into this naked calendar phenomenon.
There's this website devoted to listing nude calendars.
Besides the content, there's some great titles:
Beauty and the Bass (fishing based nudity)
Men of Mortuaries
Bare Because We Care
Apparently, there's even a calendar called Highway 32 Pothole Calendar where townspeople from Western Canada wereso fed up with the rotten state of their main road that they posing nude in the potholes as a form of protest.
Even more calendar japery with the Essex Young Farmers annual effort to scare the locals:
The guys and girls from the EYFC do this on a habitual basis apparently - don't panic - the local constabulary are well aware ...
If you fancy purchasing a copy to enhance the look of your abode then visit this site ...
As promised the Black Sheep now returns to the fold with a look more appropriate to the FW brand.
Well, it seems that getting this new blogging platform in place has metophorically uncorked farming's blog bottle.
All of a sudden we've got blog interest from all directions.
For example we have fledgling blogs from Mr Farmilife and Miss Livestock Reporter, we've got biofuels from veteran RBI blogger Simon Robinson, and we've got external interest from such bloggers as:
Also this from Jake Freestone's blog - a cereal farmer from Tewkesbury - who's just been on a tour of the John Deere factories over in America
As we go on I'll add a "Blogroll" to the right-hand sidebar with a permanent link to any blog I feel is worthy of a mention.
Happy New Year and all that jazz.
Our festive question of the week reveals that cider is the farming tipple of choice, narrowly beating beer.
I'm quite suprised by that given the extent of lagers, ales, bitters, stouts and porters available for our enjoyment.
My suspicions are that the snakebite (aka diesel) drinking student massive have something to do with the the figures.
One of the most popular gripes of FWi users is that the site is so slow over a dial-up modem.
Granted the site is not the fastest out there - but then again we don't have the server resources of the BBC.
The usual suspects are the News pages and the Forums - which I concede are painfully slow - but are being replaced!
However, on Broadband FWi, like many other sites, performs fairly consistently so my arguement is that in this day and age why isn't everyone on broadband?
In the past that comment has farmers compaining bitterly about the lack of rural broadband access. But the Telegraph today tells us that BT have made broadband available to 99.8% of the UK.
Compare this statistic to our current browser metrics which have only 59% of users connecting via broadband or quicker and it shows that availability is no longer the reason for a slow broadband take up among our readership.
Tim has discovered a lovely little site courtesy of West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers called www.cheddarvision.tv.
Basically a cheese being filmed.
More interestingly, also mentions being hooked on Celeb BB. For my sins I too find it compulsive viewing.
I can't help but think that I'm reliving my childhood in being addicted to watching-from-behind-the-sofa-TV.
Only this time it's reality TV instead of Doctor Who.
In case you've not heard of Crazy Dave here's his claim to fame.
His video shows him overtaking his father as they both drive their tractors and trailers home.
Crazy Dave gives a hilarious commentary as he eases past his Dad as if he were a Grand Prix driver.
It is slightly questionable from a safety point of view (just how has he filmed it?) but very funny!
Watch out for a bit of dodgy language if you're a sensitive soul.
Field Day
Farmers Weekly's Tim Relf takes an alternative look at rural 'goings on'
Food for Thought
Farmers Weekly's news blog, bringing you daily our journalists' take on key farming stories from around the UK...and beyond
Taking Stock
Our livestock show and sales blog reveals the real stories from the UK's key auctions
Interesting web 2.0 tool that Jim Muttram picked up on:
It's a news aggregator which pulls stories together into pages to give the complete view.
At last! Someone involved in agriculture has mentioned this Big Brother thing.
David Miliband maintains he doesn't watch BB (yeah right!) but he's still backing Shilpa over Jade. Bit of a no brainer - especially for a politician.
A braver post would've been his opinion whether this is indicative of what is considered acceptable behavior from the great white working class, and more specifically women from that background.
For what it's worth, I've watched with a sense of horror as Jade Goody was rewarded with celebrity-hood for her ignorance and lack of social graces. I'll be cheering at the TV when she exits and realises the worm has turned.
This page contains an archive of all entries posted to Black Sheep Blog in the Farming websites category. They are listed from oldest to newest.
Farmers Weekly Awards is the previous category.
Machinery is the next category.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.