Alphecca

A Few Emails

It's a rainy morning (with promise of Sun later in the day) and I'm off from work. Because it's all about me... Well, not really, but during the past week I've received a few emails with interesting questions or comments I thought I'd address here. I have a lot of new readers and I should probably explain this strange web site. I presume the writers want anonymity so I'll just quote their emails to me. Remember that my "... ... ..." indicates that I've snipped something out.

Here's the first:

I came here because of a mention of you in Outdoor Life Magazine. I appreciate your commentaries on media bias against us gun owners but I wish you would just stick to that. I can find political commentary elsewhere... ...

I'm rather lucky; there are some terrific bloggers (personal webBLOGs) out there who have kindly given me mentions, or mentions of my posts. So have several Pro-2A scholars. And in the Summer issue of Outdoor Life magazine (with a paid circulation of almost a million) I was also mentioned.

The most "famous" of my posts is my almost weekly "Weekly Check on the Bias" report on how the media is treating gun owners and Second Amendment issues.

Since beginning Alphecca over 21 months ago, I have tried to write about what interests me but also (as I alluded to a couple posts ago) provide some balance with other issues, not the least of which is that I'm interested in many things including politics, and also because I would like to have a wide readership -- this blog thing doesn't make money, it's strictly an ego thing taking advantage of the fact that the internet has leveled the playing field between media and its recipients.

Regarding the content of Alphecca, I've tried to maintain a balance of about 1/2 of the posts being about media bias against firearm ownership (my "niche" if you will) and about 25% politics and the rest being "whatever..."

As an election nears, and as I did a couple years ago, I do think -- as a political junkie -- about politics a bit more than usual.

I don't (or at least no longer) accept financial donations or advertising on Alphecca. This frees me to write about what I want, when I want. If I want to pull the plug tomorrow (I don't) I can without owing anyone anything.

I appreciate every visitor and I often say so. But I have a lot of interests and I like to chat about them here. I do provide quick links on my "sidebar" to the most recent posts and especially my "Weekly Reports" for folks who want to skip my other commentary.

Here's another from a blogger (who doesn't blogroll me and therefore doesn't appear on my blogroll):

Why don't you have the guts to put up a site meter?

For those of you new to blogs, a site meter shows how many visitors such as yourself have stopped by. Think of it as similar to the circulation statistics that magazines have to publish once every year, or as the ratings of a TV station.

The short answer is that I no longer worry about how many folks are reading my web site. When I first started out, I did.

The longer answer is that as someone (me) who works and maintains a commercial web site for a living, I know that 65% of internet users are on dial-up. That is, they are using a simple modem and are at the mercy of a slow connection. So I believe that a web site needs to load as quickly as possible.

I have -- having surfed a heck of a lot of blogs over the past two years -- noticed that some of them take several minutes to "load" on a dial-up (which is what I have at home) connection. One of the usual sticking points on many blogs is SiteMeter, which often hangs for 20-60 seconds. I don't want Alphecca to "hang" and discourage you nice folks who visit. So I don't have one. And every single thing -- every text, photo, anything -- comes from my space at Hosting Matters.

If, as the letter writer suggests, I am not actually very popular, well, I would agree. My current stats indicate that I receive about 2100 visitors every day. This pales in comparison to a lot of bloggers who have more visitors every hour! The mention in Outdoor Life nearly doubled my daily visits.

Here's another:

I love your support of gun rights but I have a hard time with your being gay...

Join the crowd! Do what I do and seperate each issue. You read me because of my absolute support of an unfettered Second Amendment. So just do that. You don't like (or at least approve of) gays. I can live with that. Think of me as a political candidate: You'll never find one who you can agree with 100%. Find one who out-weighs, who you agree with more of the time, than the others. I (as I state on my bio page) rarely speak of gay issues because they don't interest me. But occasionally I do. Alphecca is mostly about gun rights. That is the mantra around here. Try appreciating me for that and forget the rest...

One last email that came in last night:

I'm new to your site and I've been reading your archives and I notice there is some foul language. I agree with your opinions but I can't let my kids read them.

Great comment! Really! When I first started out here, I had few readers, I was just "another" blogger. I wrote what I felt in the lanquage I was feeling. This past Winter, realizing that I now had a LOT of readers, I made a conscious decision to curb or contain my curses and control my "rants." I will continue to try to write more reasonably as my readership grows. Actually, I have read some of my "old Alphecca" posts and even I am embarrassed by the occasional crudeness of some of them. All I can say is that I am trying much harder to write properly and to rant-and-rave far less. Please let your children read Alphecca -- our Second Amendment rights are so important that even if I slip and they read a curse (that they hear everyday of the week on their school grounds) I think they will GET what Alphecca is about and forgive me. But -- to address your concerns -- I am trying to write better. I owe it to my larger audience.

Okay, one last letter:

How did you choose the name Alphecca?

I'm glad you asked... Originally, I envisioned my new blog as being about space and science-fiction. So... I wanted a "spacy" astronautical type name. Most of the really "cool" star names were already taken in the internet name registration sites. I have a star-chart in front of my computer and I patiently went through typing in every star name (especially with early alphabet names) until Alphecca came up as an available domain name. I scoffed-it-up! Now, some visitors come here probably hoping that Alphecca is a terrorist web site. Sorry, I'm just a freedom-loving American who picked a star name for his web site so he could write about democracy, America, gun ownership rights, and anything else that piques my interest.

So... I hope this answers some questions you new-comers have. Please visit again. In fact, I hope all of you visit again. I'm not perfect but I am trying really hard to provide some sense to our world, our country, and our Constitution and Bill of Rights. I charge no fees to be read. There are no pop-up ads. Alphecca is simply a publication of my opinions on various subjects and hopefully I'll attract a crowd of readers who agree with me.

Thanks for stopping by!

Posted by Jeff Soyer at July 6, 2004 11:23 AM