A few weeks ago I added a cluster map to my blog - it's down below in the right hand column. Some of you may not have noticed, particularly if you are reading this on a news feed. It plots out the locations of all the IP addresses that visit my blog onto a map of the world, and I'm finding it very entertaining. It counts actual hits, so each repeat hit by the same visitor is also counted, but it still gives a pretty accurate picture of how many new and how many repeat visitors I'm getting. My blog doesn't get an impressive number of hits, but still, I'm quite pleased with the distribution of my dots.

There is a large dot in Portland, which presumably represents me, but there are quite a few other smaller dots in my area as well. Somewhat predictably, the largest clusters are in the eastern US and Europe, but there are quite a few somewhat surprising countries showing up. Although, it shouldn't be too surprising given the ubiquity of the internet; my surprise probably has more to do with my own lack of knowledge of said countries and my general tendency to not think about them on a regular basis. In particular, from South America we've had visitors from Venezuela and Uruguay or Argentina (the dot is on the border). In Africa, Cote d'Ivoire is represented, along with Nigeria and South Africa, with an extra dot on the border of South Africa and Botswana. In the Middle East we have Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, and another dot on the border of Turkey and Syria.

There are quite a few dots in Asia, with large dots (10-99 hits) in Bangladesh (or India's Mizoram State), Bangkok, and what I'm guessing is Singapore (rather than Malaysia). The remaining countries of Asia are fairly well represented actually, although the dots seem to be mainly distributed around the coasts. There's at least one dot in mainland China, but there's nothing from Nepal, Laos, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, or North Korea. As if we could have expected anything from North Korea, right?

At first, I was a little disappointed to see no dots in the north of Thailand - have none of my friends visited my blog? What about all the Burmese activists there? But then I remembered that they all use pre-paid internet service, so their IP's may be showing up in Bangkok. At least, that's what I'm telling myself.

Perhaps most surprising is that I have two dots inside Burma. One in the southeast and one in the northeast. Since the dots are small, there's no way to know if they are repeat readers, or just happened by once. But I am intrigued - who are these people? Are they travelers from other countries perhaps, just browsing in a net cafe? Are they well -off civilians? Military personnel in charge of monitoring news on Burma? The second dot appears to be in Shan State, perhaps its a member of one of the media groups in the area? I honestly don't know. My initial reaction is that internet is so expensive there that the most likely option is that they are tourists or military. But I know how often realities there defy normal expectations. At least we know Civiblog sites have not been banned there.

So, this message is to all the people behind my dots, if you're a repeat visitor, show yourself! Who are you? Do you have a blog? Are you secret military personnel trying to monitor my site? Say hello, and claim your dot!

And, if you happen to read my posts on a news feeder without clicking through to the blog, you are unrepresented. Click through so you can get your own dot on my map.