Statcounter and My Mystery Visitor

You know what? When I look at my recent stats, somebody from London Ontario was visiting the hell out of my site over the past few days in an almost "automated" fashion. In addition, they are using some platform that statcounter (a popular online tool I use to keep web stats) can't figure out. Here's a sample:

Date: Dec 28 20:35:02

Browser: Default Browser 0

OS: unknown

Resolution: unknown

Location: London, Ontario, Canada

ISP: Rogers Cable

Most often they were linking from a google search page but sometimes with no referring link. Rogers Cable is a very popular residential ISP here in London. I left out the IP address of my mystery visitor, because, well, I don't know why but I didn't want to post that kind of info.

Around the same time they were showing up a lot, votes for RTP's Charlie Brown Tree went through the roof. If voting is controlled by a cookie rather than IP address, it could be that the platform they are using can vote as much as it wants... I'm not especially savvy in such things. For the record, I don't think for a second that RTP has anything at all to do with this and I'm not even certain that my mystery visitor is indeed responsible for his tree's outstanding performance anyway.

Hey, mystery visitor, if you read this, tell me if you have been voting many many times for RTP's Charlie Brown tree somehow. I have nothing at all against RTP winning this, but I am becoming curious...

Yer Pal,

R A N T W I C K

CAPTCHA Contest: Cast Your Vote!

As promised, I have collected and assembled the CAPTCHAs received from the entrants in my first (and last, I think) CAPTCHA contest. I have put them in alphabetical order, and left out who they belong to in the hopes that we will all vote for the CAPTCHA, not the person. Of course, if you must know who owns what, you can check the comments on the entry page.

Please vote only once, whether you are an entrant or not. Please also note that voting will conclude in about 8 days, so get your vote in now!

Here are the contenders. Vote for one!

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The entrant with the winning CAPTCHA will receive $5 in Canadian Tire money! In the event of a tie, I will have to split up the jackpot! There are two entrants that got the same CAPTCHA. If it win, they will each receive $5 in Canadian Tire money. FYI, Canadian Tire is a long established store chain in Canada. It is much like a Wal Mart, without the evil. I will post on who won when the poll has closed, even though you'll be able to tell by visiting this page.

Have a fun week. I'll be back on Wednesday, barring incident or laziness or incident of laziness!

R A N T W I C K