As the title shows, today is the first anniversary of this blog and I'm really happy and pleased with the progress and response I received from all of you. It really took a lot of effort and time to create and post articles inside this blog, especially when I am working full time as a process engineer and at the same time a father and husband. Time is not always on my side. I always hope I can publish daily post and socialize/share with my readers, but the time is very limited. Then I set myself to at least posting three times a week. I hope I can still maintain that.
This will be a relatively longer post as I will share my experience on developing and maintaining this one year old blog. Maybe a little bit of my plan for this blog too. I hope it's not going to make anyone of you sleep.
Exactly one year ago, I started this blog. That time, unlike now, the template of this blog was black in colour. Those of you who have been following my blog earlier definitely have noticed it. I just recently renovated and improved the look of this blog to introduced some element of professionalism. Now, I'm happy using this template and I'm going to progressively improve it from time to time.
If you noticed the feedburner chicklet on the top right column of this blog, I must say, I'm surprised with the number of subscribers this blog is having. I never thought the number can reach as high as that for a technical niche blog like this. As the year 2007 entered, I set a target to get 100 numbers of subscribers by the end of the year. However, thanked God, I managed to
reached 100 subscribers by the 4th of June this year. Thanks very much for the support from all of you.
I think I should share some statistic and facts about this blog as well. As engineers, going through numbers/facts would be more interesting and appealing....do you?
No of posts including today's post = 255 (per year)
No of categories in the blog = 45
No of contributor excluding me = 1 (my wife, who's a chemical engineering lecturer)
p/s: I welcome contributorGoogle PageRank = 5
>>> that's good for a blog like this....Technorati Authority: Rank = 211,232
(Authority 30)
Alexa Traffic Rank = 1,696,403 (
425,105)
No of time spent on this blog = Gosh....I never measure it....but I can say, too much...
Highest daily unique visitors = 226 unique IPs/day (different people)
Don't bother if you don't know about the rank stuff, it's just a number. It's just how I evaluate and check my blog performance throughout time.
Earlier, I set up a forum for this blog. Well, some of you may notice the forum is not properly maintained. It's my intention to re-invent re-introduce the forum for this blog. I'll made an announcement/post about it pretty soon. I hope it can be a place to actively discuss issues related to chemical engineering stuff...
I would also like to announce that Chemical Engineering World blog accepts advertisement that is relevant to chemical engineering stuffs. Advertisements do not necessarily represent my views, but will supplement my monthly income. For any local or international company interested in sponsoring or advertising your products/services in this blog, please email/contact me.
While maintaining this educational chemical engineering blog, I did receive various interesting comments from my readers. Some of them prefer sending me direct emails, which I don't mind. I must confess that I'm truly happy receiving comments and emails from my readers. Keep on sending those comments and emails as long as they are related to the post or blog niche. I would like to share with you some of those comments which made me smile....(I have to translate/edit some of them which were written in Malay Language).
The first comment from my virgin post
"Chemical Engineering Career",
Sam (my friend who is presently working in Egypt) said...
"He is my old good friend.. very nice guy.. all the best to you my bro.. hope this blog will benefit our young Chemical Engineer..."
From
"Some Maintenance Job During a Very short shut down",
DR Bubble (my chemical engineering classmate who turned to become a professional clown) said...
"Good bang (bro), language simple. senang nak faham (easy to understand) even for non-engineers alike..keep it up! ..." From
"Early Chapter As A Chemical Engineering Student Part II", (Suzie - my chemical engineering classmate currently working as a design engineer with Graham Heat Exchanger in UK )
said... "zaki
yes i remember that engineering maths subject and that whatsisname encik??$%^&, used to love maths until that point in my life, that man really put me off maths big time! My grade was cukup2x makan (just marginally enough) haha...on the other hand, loved unit op, very interesting subject plus that UM lecturer was hmmm lovely. Also i think that 1st year design project was actually called professional study something? It was a group task, one of my groupmates was your now-other-half. Overall NCUK was all good fun...very tough but aren't we glad we went through that all...suzie"
From "My Intention", said...
"Very Helpful articles. good stuff.
We are facing lot of trouble with the performance of cooling tower during the summer season here in UAE. Can u suggest any alterations to improve the cooling effect."
Saravanan
Plant and Maintenance Engineer
ponsaravananm@gmail.com"(Mr Saravanan, I'll come back to you later about your cooling tower, sorry for the delay...)
From "
My First Heat Exchanger Encounter",
Joe-Anybody (from USA) said...
"Hello There,
It's Oct 15 20o6. Just was reading my similar feelings about my first "Heat Exchanger" as well.
I seen a picture of a heat exchanger on one of your pages and I think it is like the same style we have in both buildings. Almost exactly!
I have to say I have never seen them work much (if at all) and I think they are a small head-ache to get torn apart cleaned and put together.......thats just from watching a few times when they were being "messed with" by past engineers..
Maybe our need for them to be running is not necessary? ...one is brand spank-in new in the remodeled building....it just sits there......?
The older one may of been running at one time... but seems to be a project waiting for someone to deal with with they are bored.
I kinda understand the principle... just never have had anything to do with them.
Thanks for the interesting blog!"
From "
Terrifying Moment At Boiler House",
Joe-Anybody said...
"You were lucky
I am curious what happened
I work around a few boilers
I mainly am just testing the chemicals and either adding more by adjusting the feed pumps or blowing down the boiler to dilute.
I am new to all this and just came across your website. I will be back to your site to see what all is concluded or how the explosion was cause. I am glad you are OK
Thanks"
From "
Design of Experiment For Chemical Engineering Research",
curiouscat (the son of Mr
Hunter who introduced Box Hunter DOE) said...
"Here are some good sites with more information on design of experiments and articles on design of experiments including many from the Center of Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin that was founded by William Hunter, my father and George Box (leaders in the field, in my biased opinion, but others opinions as well)."
I also received comment which really looks like an advertisement in "
Dismantling Plate Heat Exchanger", said...
WE PRODUCE ALL GASKET FOR ALL TYPE AND BRAND OF PLATE HEAT EXCHANGERS LIKE ALFA LAVAL, APV, GEA, TRANTER-HISAKA, VICARB, SONDEX, SCHMIDT,FISCHER.
WE ARE:
THORNHILL ITALIA S.R.L. (ITALY)
PHONE +39 (0) 321 877 541
FAX +39 (0) 321 879 259
E-MAIL INFO@THORNHILLITALIA.IT
WEB WWW.THORNHILLITALIA.IT
During my plant shutdown early 2007, "
Accident and Injury",
Joe-Anybody said...
"Sorry to hear you will be getting stitched up for the new year.Sounds like it could of been worse. It seems like there was a faulty drain cover that was responsible for your mishap? Or a nice urban-boobie-trap was set.Best of Wishes - Joe Anybody"
From "
Overall Heat Transfer Coefficient (U-Value)",
Manal (my chemical engineering classmate presently working in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia as a lecturer) said...
"U doing ok now, mate. All that reminded me of oscizik and hewitt's heat transfer books...."
From "
Pipeline Corrosion",
Mark C Reid (from UK) said...
"I never cease to be impressed by chemical engineer's ingenuity and skill... this post is a good example of the extreme environments they can be working in!"
From "
Fixing Plate Heat Exchanger Gasket", said...
"A very interesting, informative and nice chemical engineering blog. Keep it up!"
From
"Chemical Engineering Post #200", and Webworm said...
"Certainly it took lot to maintain such type of knowledge based blog"- "I have been reading your blog for quite sometime...keep up...If you are interested, you may visit my stuff...
- http://webwormcpt.blogspot.com/Webworm"
From "
Chemical Engineering eBook", said...
"It has been Very good source of information for me from the day i join this blog, And this e book is what i was looking for since quite some time. Just curious how to take printout of any page".
From "
Chemical Engineers Come and Go", said...
"I love your blogs, keep it up. I'm a chemical engineer undergraduate. You inspire with every blog I read. :)"
From "
Some Update From An Engineer", said...
"Hi Mr Zaki. I am a third year chemical engineer student studying at the University of Melbourne (I am Malaysian). I have been reading your blog for quite a while and I found that it is interesting and informative. Really appreciate your effort to maintain the chemical engineering blog even though you are busy with your work. Hope that there will be more interesting experience and information to be shared with your readers."
From "
Spiral Heat Exchanger",
maer wan said...
"Zaki dude, thanks for your info about this. surely, it changes my view of HEX (Heat Exchanger) from just co-current and counter-current.
anyway, just wondering, did your company do something like Pinch analysis stuff for the HEN (Heat Exchanger Network)?"
Well, those are just some of the comments that I highlighted here. Hmm about the direct emails, I prefer not to reveal it here. Let me just keep them in my mailbox. Furthermore, the sender must have personally sent the emails to me for their own reasons.
For those of you who enjoyed my post or blog, who want to continuously learn from practicing engineers like me, feel free to subscribe to my blog by filling up the form on the top right hand column. I hope you'll gain substantial benefit from this blog and I pray for you career success...
Thanks....Thanks for your continuous support....