Back last week, I mentioned that, by using an anonymous cookie hooked up to a counter, I was going to try and get a sense of how many people were reading this website on a daily basis.

People as opposed to Google robots and other automated traffic.

The counter has been counting away for the last six days, and what it has found is that this site has approximately 260 real people readers on weekdays and 170 real people readers on the weekend.

This is still a rough measurement: I’m probably not counting some people (for example, people with cookies turned off), and I’m probably double-counting some people (like people who read from home and from work both).

I’m also not counting people who only read the site through an RSS reader, which is an increasing number of you.

And because of the nature of the cookie — I hand it out on one visit, and don’t count it until your next visit, or at least your next page view — I’m not counting people who come and read the front page and never come back.

And so, at the very least, there are 260 of you out there. Hello, and welcome to my world.