As you probably know, I ran a competition from Tuesday 29th January at 00:00 GMT until Monday 11th February at 23:59 GMT. That competition closed at 00:00 hours this morning. I’ve had a small army of trained monkeys counting up the hits since 00:02 this morning, and they’re all very tired. I’m sure you’re all waiting with baited breath to find out who the winner is, so without any further ado, in reverse order, here are the top three:

In third place, with 10 hits from her site, is GA Farm Woman.

In second place, with 19 hits from her site, is Amanda of Shamelessly Sassy.

[cue drum roll...]

In first place, with a whopping 39 hits, is GolfWidow. She’s currently writing guest blog posts at $2 each (well worth the money - she’s a fantastic writer!), which is where she came across my site.

As I stated in the T&C, acceptance of the prize isn’t necessary. I fully understand if you don’t want to give your postal address out to strangers of the internet. If the winner doesn’t want the prize, it will go to the first runner up, and so on. If you didn’t win this time, I’ll be having another similar competition at the end of March, so watch this space.

In a rather blatant attempt to generate some traffic to the site, I’m running a contest on the site. To the person who sends me the most traffic from their website, I will post, free of charge, 1x Derwent Graphic fine art pencil set, worth £10.99 (about $20 USD). It’s very similar to these. It contains 6x graphic pencils, 3x sketching pencils, 2x solid graphite sticks & 1x eraser, enclosed in a plastic “pod” case & 1x 2008 diary and phone book with a blue plastic cover.
The rules of the contest are as follows:

• The contest opens on Tuesday 29th January at 00:00 GMT and closes on Monday 4th February at 23:59 GMT Monday 11th February at 23:59 GMT.
• I’ll be using my Statcounter account to track where the clicks are coming from.
• I’ll make a list at the end of the contest of how many clicks came from each blog.
• I’ll be tracking the amount of unique visitors, not how many times the same visitor visits the blog from your site. For example, John visits the blog 3 times during the week = 1 visitor. Jane visits 1 time during the week, as does Jack = 2 visitors. Judy visits from Blog A and Blog B = 1 visit from each blog. Someone clicks on a comment I’ve made on your blog = 1 visitor from your blog.
• If the winner doesn’t want the set, it will go to the first runner up, and so on. If nobody at all wants it, I’ll send it to charity.
• You are welcome to use any kind of encouragement on your blog to get people to visit. Go nuts.
• A 20% bonus is awarded if one of your visitors accepts the Kiva certificate I’ve been offering way back when. To get this, the person must mention that they came from your blog. The 20% is awarded thus: someone visits from your blog 10 times, and claims the certificate. You get an extra 2 “visits”. This has now been claimed.
• In the occasion of a tie, I will post that this is the case, and flip a coin. The set goes to the first person who guesses heads or tails correctly, who is also one of the tied contestants.
• The results will be posted some time on Tuesday evening, GMT.
• My decision is final.
• The rules are subject to change at any time.

If you have any questions, please ask.

Update 28/1/07 - Apparently, I can make the stats from my Statcounter account public, so you guys can verify I’m telling the truth.

Update 29/1/07 - I’ve added a 2008 diary to the list of prizes.

Update 31/1/07 - The public site stats are located here. The important bit is “Recent Visitor Activity” on the left. Click on that, and it will give you the lowdown on everyone who has visited, including where they came from. Remember, you only have until midnight GMT on Monday to drive the traffic.
Update 3/2/08 @ 4:20 GMT - Amanda of ShamelesslySassy is in the lead right now with 12 visitors. You still have a day and a bit to drive the traffic if you want the prize.
Update 4/2/08 - I’ve decided to keep this going for another week to give people more of a chance to participate. You don’t need to do anything to win, but if you’re going to post about this, do it sooner rather than later to increase your chances of winning.

I got given the “You Made My Day” award by Jessie on 20th Jan, and again today, by Eve. Which was nice. According to the rules of the award, I’m to pas it on to up to 10 bloggers who make my day. So, without any further ado, here are the blogs who make my day. In no particular order, they are:

• Eve @ AdamsWife.
• Jessie @ IAmDavidsDoll.
• Lotus @ SarcasticMom.
• Amanda @ ShamelesslySassy.
• GA. Farmgirl @ Life On A Southern Farm.
• Jessica @ Life In Elgin.
• Andy @ Older, But No Wiser.
• Ree @ Hotfessional.
• Sandy @ Momisodes.
• Joana @ Nanashi-Inc.
• Alynda @ Alyndabear.
• Mariposa @ MariposaTells.

Is that 10? Probably more, but who cares. Not me, and it’s my blog so I hope you all find something interesting among that list, like I have.

To those of you who followed me here from my Blogspot blog, thank you for coming here. To those of who who are new to the site, welcome. I started this blog because I wanted 2 things - security and control. Security for my blog - it’s now on my own hosting, and I have access to everything, up to and including the SQL tables. I also have complete control over the blogging software, and I’m able to add lots of plugins to extend the functionality. So, what’s going on?

• The colour scheme. I quite like the new grey, green and cream scheme. I think it looks mature and sophisticated.
• The Blogroll. I’m trying to split it up into various categories to make it at bit easier to read. I hate visiting someone’s blog and seeing a blogroll that’s not in any kind of order.
• Comments. I’ve tried hard to make commenting more user friendly here, by adding several plugins. You can now quote a comment (useful for replying to someone when yours isn’t the next comment), automatically add a link to your own site, add some HTML codes to enhance your comment, etc. You can also subscribe to all comments on a thread by selecting the option and adding your email address.
• The RSS feed. The new feed address is http://feeds.feedburner.com/thingsimgratefulfor/stfb.
• Emoticons can now be added to your comments very easily. Type them in the way you normally would. For example, to get type : ) without the spaces.
• In the coming weeks, I’ll be throwing the blog open to Guest Posters. I’m still finalising the details, but if you’re interested in posting an article here, watch this space.
• I’ve started reciprocal linking. If you have a permanent link on your main page to my blog, and I don’t currently link to you, please let me know, and I’ll add a link.
• BlogCatalog & Mybloglog. These are mainly for my amusement, and they show the recent visitors to the blog.
• Kiva. On the right of the page, you’ll notice a Kiva.org widget. Kiva is a website that allows you to loan money to people in developing nations, to help them make their lives better, with the intention of getting paid back. I’ve been using Kiva for a good while now, and I’m happy to recommend it to you. If you’d like to give Kiva.org a try, but don’t have the money to spare, or don’t want to take the risk, I’m offering a free Gift Certificate, so you can try Kiva out without any risk.
• A plugins list. I now have a list of plugins that I use on this blog, in case someone sees some functionality they like.

So, what do you think? Do you have any problems with the layout? Any features you’d like to see added? Anything you’d like to see removed? Changed? leave a comment below and let me know.

Solomon.