Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Almost a year ago, we asked you to leave some basic information about yourself - just to get a better idea of what sort of people stumble upon Sticks of Fire.  We learned just a bit about the average visitor here, and were surprised at some of the results.

We think we picked up three or four more readers since then, and would like to see how they effect those statistics.  Of course, prospective advertisers are curious about you too.  (I know - many of us hate advertising, but if we are going have ads here, I’d much prefer that you see things you might actually be interested in, rather than offers for a weekend resort stay in, say, Iowa.)

Take the survey now!

Now, we don’t send ad cookies, we’ll never have popups, and your answers will not be tied to any of your personal information.  And the questionairre can be completed in less than four minutes.  Plus in a lame attempt to be entertaining, there are some goofy answers available instead of “none of the above.”

Whether you got here by accident, and it’s your first visit, or if you check in several times a day, it really would help us out if you go click a couple buttons.  This also goes for those of you who read but don’t comment.  Please - no matter how you got here or why, we sure would appreciate if you took a few seconds to answer the questions.

Feel free to use the comments below to tell us anything else you would like to see on Sticks of Fire, too!

On to the questions!

You may recall that at the beginning of 2006, the Tampa Bay History Center daily note was dropped by the Tribune.  Rodney Kite-Powell and Travis Puterbaugh had already written three months of entries for “on this day in Tampa Bay history,” when the local paper went in a different direction.  We here in the sticks were happy to publish those items, and began on January 27 with an entry about the Jose Gaspar catching fire.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and so it is with the history center’s daily items of note.  But it is not the last you will see of history here in the Sticks.  Travis and Rodney have agreed to let us know of any new interesting information they dig up.  Plus we’ll have the inside scoop about their new building.  And Sticks of Fire has been invited to participate in the 2007 Florida History Fair.  You can see that history will remain part of the diet here.

Of course, we will finish out the year with entries, and we still have the first 26 days of January that were never published in 2006, so we’ll use those for the beginning of 2007.  We look forward to new exciting stuff from your friends at the history center.

Thanks a bunch, Travis! 

Sticks of Fire’s creator, head honcho and all around rockin’ dude is celebrating his birthday today… Lets give it up for Tommy Duncan!

New post up at Trenton Duckett discussion number six.

People are still talking about little Trenton Duckett. The latest post has over 500 comments. I expect we’ll keep allowing the conversation to continue as long as necessary.

I would like to remind the commenters that this website does not monitor nor delete comments (other than the spam filter). However, I expect everyone to act like adults. Here are some basic guidelines for commenters:

• No personal attacks on other commenters. Again - I don’t want to monitor nor delete comments, but if the attacks get out of hand, I will close the post.
• Keep the conversation directly related to the Duckett story. There’s no room for a comment that just says “Hi Everyone, just got back.”

To read the discussion so far, check our previous posts:

• Amber Alert Leesburg Trenton Duckett
• Melinda Duckett dead, son still missing
• Trenton Duckett Discussion Continued
• Trenton Duckett Discussion Open Thread 4

Update 8 October 2006: Because of comment length, this blog entry has closed. Please continue discussions here.

People are still talking about little Trenton Duckett. The latest post has over 500 comments. I expect we’ll keep allowing the conversation to continue as long as necessary.

I would like to remind the commenters that this website does not monitor nor delete comments (other than the spam filter). However, I expect everyone to act like adults. Here are some basic guidelines for commenters:

• No personal attacks on other commenters. Again - I don’t want to monitor nor delete comments, but if the attacks get out of hand, I will close the post.
• Keep the conversation directly related to the Duckett story. There’s no room for a comment that just says “Hi Everyone, just got back.”

To read the discussion so far, check our previous posts:

• Amber Alert Leesburg Trenton Duckett
• Melinda Duckett dead, son still missing
• Trenton Duckett Discussion Continued

Just giving a quick technical message regarding Sticks –

You probably have noticed recently (since earlier this summer) Sticks of Fire hasn’t always been accessible. This has nothing to do with Sticks alliance with Tampa Gold or anything like that. It’s the hosting company that hosts Sticks of Fire on the web. They have been having a lot of trouble over the last several weeks.

This is why Sticks has been down since later this morning. It’s beyond our control and we apologize for the pain-in-the-butt this happens to be. Hopefully issues are resolve now and Sticks shouldn’t be experiencing downtime as often.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

TAMPA, FL – August 23, 2006 – Bill Sharpe, president of Tampa Marketing Company and Tommy Duncan, owner of Tampa-based Web site sticksoffire.com  recently announced the implementation of a strategic alliance.

The marketing and content relationship between sticksoffire.com and Tampa Marketing Company’s TAMPAGOLD.COM will allow the two Web sites to provide additional information about Tampa area events and people, and allow each greater use of the internet’s capabilities.

This arrangement brings together Tampa’s two best locally-focused independent Web sites and expands the capacity for both. Current and future visitors to both sites will find additional news and information about the Tampa Bay area that is not currently available on the other site.

“STICKSOFFIRE.COM provides the day to day information about what is happening in the Tampa Bay area that we just have not had the resources to cover as the people of Tampa deserve,” said Sharpe. “Tommy and his team do a superior job of pointing out stories and events important to every Tampa neighborhood, and offer those neighbors an area to facilitate intelligent conversation regarding these events.”

“Through TAMPAGOLD.COM, SOHOTAMPA.COM and their other Web sites, Tampa Marketing Company has shown the ability to put together a plan that can generate additional traffic with a viable advertising and marketing strategy that has been unmatched by any independent Web site in the Tampa area.” said Duncan. “This agreement will enable the promotional support that Sticks of Fire has needed.”

“In addition, the Tampa Marketing Company team has found unique ways to make greater use of the capabilities of the internet,” said Duncan. “This is a big win for those folks who want to know what is going on right in their neighborhood.”

Tampa Marketing Company will be directly responsible for advertising sales and production for STICKSOFFIRE.COM. Additional marketing and traffic generation of STICKSOFFIRE.COM will be accomplished through TAMPAGOLD.COM.

TAMPAGOLD.COM will feature STICKSOFFIRE.COM as “THE” Source for Tampa area news and information in order to provide more complete news coverage in addition to TAMPAGOLD.COM’s current news, event and information coverage.

STICKSOFFIRE.COM was recognized by the Weekly Planet as the best local website in 2005. STICKSOFFIRE.COM has been called “Tampa’s premier blog,” the “one [website] that is essential to have on your… list,” and “a must-read for Tampans.” STICKSOFFIRE.COM averages over 18,000 page views per month.

TAMPAGOLD.COM has welcomed more than 1,300,000 page views in the last 12 calendar months and more than 600,000 page views at SOHOTAMPA.COM in the last 12 calendar months.

Tampa Marketing Company is a member of the West Tampa Chamber of Commerce, the Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau, the North Tampa Chamber of Commerce, the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce, and the Davis Island Chamber of Commerce.

For more information, contact Bill Sharpe bill [at] tampagold.com or Tommy Duncan tommyduncn [at] yahoo.com.

HarmonTampa PR 
4100 W. Kennedy Blvd., Ste. 206
Tampa, FL 33609
813-288-6909
www.harmontampa.com

July saw a decrease in traffic in the sticks.  StatCounter.com reports that just under 11,000 unique visitors clicked through 17,234 Sticks of Fire pages. There were five weekends in July, but even with consistently more readers during the week than on the weekend, the numbers have dropped.

Hey - Please tell all of your friends about us. Hopefully some will like what they see here and come back now and again. Sure would like to get back over the 20K mark.

July 1-31, 2006:

• 10,914 unique visitors
• 17,234 page views

Averages for July:

• 556/day
• 621/weekday
• 3988/week (last four weeks)

3 month averages:

• 19,391/month
• 4285/wk
• 632/day

Previous Sticks traffic information:

• june 2006 20,481 page views
• may 2006 20,459 page views
• april 2006 17,623 page views
• march 2006 19,860 page views
• february 2006 16,953 page views
• january 2006 18,266 page views

If writing on Sticks of Fire is light this weekend, no need to worry.

We’re going on vacation! Wifey and I are taking the FirstGrader (theDriver had her own vacation with us last spring), to that great vacation destination where we’ll watch all manner of sea creatures perform humiliating acts. Oh, and I’ll finally ride that Kracken thingy. But, in order to mix it up a bit, we’ve decided to make use of Florida’s current high-speed rail solution – Amtrak.

A bit silly for sure, but the FirstGrader will think it’s a grand adventure. And it only costs $7 per person per trip ($45 round trip for the three of us).

We’ll zoom out of Union Station in downtown Tampa, and we even get our choice of ONE departure time.  Only two hours later we’ll be in downtown Orlando.  Looking at the Downtown Tampa Partnership’s maps, it looks like neither the streetcar nor either of the two “in-town trolleys” go anywhere near the train station. The closest stop via bus/trolley is about 8 blocks away. The closest streetcar stop is about 8 blocks away. The phone number for Union Station gives a recording of hours, address, and security concerns, but no instruction on parking or public transportation. I don’t even know if there is “long-term parking” available on-site.

Hmmm. It’s beginning to sound like a grand adventure to me, too.

A quick call to HARTline lets me know that bus numbers 1, 2, and 8 all go right past Union Station from/to the Marion Street Transit Center. There is a public parking garage about 2 blocks from the station – think my car will be alright there over the weekend?  Bah…  It’s only two bags, I think we’ll walk from the streetcar stop.

Once in Orlando, no I-drive hotel shuttle busses will pick up or drop off at the train station (in either Orlando or Kissimmee). The choices are a city bus (another grand adventure!) or call for a taxi – Tim will like that option!  Of course, we have the same selection to get back to the train station, and its ONE departure time from O-town.

I wonder why more people don’t use the train.