Signpost 2.1

It strikes me that Signpost 2, as it stands, does not do what Signpost 2 set out to do, which is to give a thorough summary of the current state of my blogging. Here are two necessary additions.

First, visitors. Clearly my blog is not sagging with comments, and unless there are hundreds of avid but deeply shy readers out there, it follows that my blog is not overflowing with readers. I said at the start that I hoped to be able to justify the continued existence of this blog irrespective of the size of its readership. This remains true, but it is also true that a few more readers would be a pleasant addition. I realise now that I have been thinking of a new blog as if it is a new shop, and with a shop you can be guaranteed a certain amount of custom just be being physically placed in an area with people in it. But of course a new blog is more like a new phone-number, or any other new site in the electronic world. In the electronic world you cannot attract people through sheer physical proximity because physical proximity has no meaning in that world.

From now on I hope to attract readers through electronic proximity, by commenting, linking, etc. I should also update my blogroll, which at the moment stands as an insult to all the blogs that I read and consider as worthwhile but which are not Defect Perfection.

I should mention, however, that this blog has received more than zero comments. The first comment came from a person called Scarlet PervyGirl, and here is a poem to celebrate the occasion.

Second, travel. Here and here I have posted introductions to my travel writing in general. But I should also say where I am travelling at the moment. I am travelling around New Zealand, a country that swirls around the ankles of the globe and is generally regarded, by those who know, as an all-right place to travel. I travel by thumb and I sleep in Backpacker hostels (these hostels, by the way, are of quite a high standard in New Zealand, and almost match the method of hitch-hiking for friendliness, comprehensiveness, and ease of use). Here is a map of New Zealand. Here are the places I have visited and written about:

Kaikoura (on the way from Christchurch to Wellington)
Wellington (and again. The capital city, located at the foot of the North Island)
Paraparaumu Beach (on the West Coast of the North Island)
Otaki Gorge (inland from Paraparaumu beach)
Wanganui (on the Western armpit of the island)
Mt. Taranaki (on the rounded piece of land that juts out of the mainland half-way up the west coast of the North Island)
Tongariro National Park (and again. In the middle of the North Island, just below the big lake)

I hope to update this list as I go along.