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The post below, which uses an image created by an anonymous source and probably seen by almost every one with Internet access in the last couple of days has had a phenomenal impact on my normally barely visible webstats. Once upon a time I had hoped to increase visitor numbers by researching and writing brilliant, eloquent and fascinating blog posts that would demand to be read by any one interested in anything ever. But then I realized how difficult that was.

The story with the below image is that Jim sent me it in a mail late Monday afternoon. Recklessly, I put it up on the site straight away. But then, later that evening Jim added a comment below the Guardian’s News Blog piece about Steve Irwin’s passing with a link back to Dublin Opinion. His comment was enigmatic enough to get people to click it. He simply said: ‘All is not what it seems…’

When I checked my stats at Statcounter.com on Tuesday morning I was shocked by the sudden surge in numbers. But then when I checked the site it was down. ‘My God, I screamed, forcing eyes normally fixed on PC screens to scan curiously in my direction ‘they’ve keeled over the server’. A little investigation revealed that it was a coincidence. It just so happened that my hosting service was upgrading their Web servers at the time and many of their sites were down.

Once it was back up traffic increased and I felt a bit embarrassed that this little link, which I had so little personal involvement in producing, was getting me this excited. A couple of other blogs linked to it later in the day (one inadvertently very funny one, which I’ll talk about later) and then this evening TV Tattle added a link producing even more traffic than the Guardian news blog.

So there you have it, a much less significant Tsunami of hits than Damian Mulley’s how-to-use-google-to-get-a-girl-and-get-laid post generated but a lot for this little blog. In the meantime I really should get back to that post I was writing about Globalization and the Irish economy, or maybe I should concentrate on the one that asks why the left is so weak in Israeli politics. That’ll bring them all back I know it will.