And, now he's (or she's) gone....

So I have been fascinated by a regular visitor to this blog for the last three or so weeks.  The visits stopped early on 7/20.  The visitor had a unique signature.  He (or she) was careful to always visit the home page then another obscure page from 2013.  Almost always two page views per visit.   The visits were  an hour or so apart.  He or she was shown to be in Russia.   He or she used mostly the Chrome browser but occasionally Firefox.  That is all I know.

So, was there a message in these clicks?  I don't know.  I couldn't see one, but maybe I am not thinking of all the possibilities.   I considered earlier the click code.  There are not enough characters used.  I considered Morse code because there was some variation in the timing of the visits.  I recently read about Columbian hostage rescue in which the Morse code message was embedded in a popular song.  This was a really cool idea and it worked.  But, in this case, I could not see any way that an ending dot of a character could be distinguished from an ending dash.  Because the blogger analytics are reported hourly, the sender would have to time his visits hourly for dots, two hours for dashes and several hours for end of character.   This would be a miserably tedious way to send a message.  Because the visits were sustained for several weeks, I am certain that it was intentional.  Not sure about whether it was a bot or not.

My current theory is that the clicks were in response to my web surfing.  I am aware but do not own or use software that tracks individuals who visit a page.  I think my Russian visitor does.  I think my surfing attracted someone's attention and they figured out where my blogspot was located and clicked on it in response to my visits to their blog page or Twitter account.  Just a theory.

I enjoyed the game while it lasted and wish you well my Russian friend.  If you happen to be Vladimir Putin, please go easy on Donald.  He is not very bright and has a nasty temper.

Here is the last of the logged visits.  The three clicks since 7/20 seem random and unconnected to the visitor.  One was from UK, one from France, and one was me mistakenly clicking on my own page.  They did not match the Russian visitor's signature.

Enjoying the love from Russia

This poor orphan post from a poor orphan blog has been getting some views from Russia.  The views seem to correspond to starts of World Cup games.   So, in response, "Hi Black Jack.  I hope your team wins."  Not much of a clue from Google analytics of where the futbol fan is from.  Maybe Switzerland or The Netherlands.  I have enjoyed the tournament too, but my team, Brazil, exited yesterday.  I am hoping now for an England-France final.  It would be epic.

Thanks for the views guys and gals.  I hope someone is fan of the Tour de France and that I get a lot of views from France next week.  You don't know how amused I am by the attention.

On the wheel truing app, I have a workroom now in my new condo.  I hope to get the truing workstation set up in there and rebuild a couple of wheels in the next view weeks.  I will post some pictures of it soon.  I added some electric outlets and need to paint the resulting wallboard repairs first.

Take care out there.  I hope all your teams win and your wheels roll very true (better than 0.15 mm).

A New Problem!?

So this blog has turned into an textbook example of a failed blog.  It is a boring topic.  It is poorly executed for the lack of a way to include a lot of equations.   It is intended for like-minded math hobbyists who wish to tackle challenging, useful math problem that seem solvable a little below the level of Fermat's last theorem or the Poincare conjecture. The problem is such a person is extremely rare and unlikely to find this place.  I stopped adding anything over a year ago.

Nonetheless, I continue to check the stats.  This is last week.



Twenty-one views from UAE and twenty-one from Russia.  The single view from United States is mine.

While the visitor is likely a bot crawling the internet that just stops at 21 views if it has not found anything interesting, it is curious.  Could it be a world traveler killing time in an airport?  Why 21?  Coincidence? I typically see three or four views a month.  A spike really stands out as something different.

So, my conjecture based on an abundance of time and endless optimism is that it is a message and is a mathematical puzzle for me to solve from some like-minded individual who travels to exotic places.  I shall call this person Black Jack.  I shall further conjecture that it is a code, like the tap code, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tap_code

"21" in tap code would be "f".  So far the message is "ff".  That is not a recognizable message.  Either I missed the first part of the message or there is more to the puzzle.   I shall continue to monitor the stats and await more clues.  Carry on Black Jack.  I am listening.