Counting Noses

In Blog Trapping++, I wrote, 'I'll have to compare the BCC blogroll with my database of [chess] blogs'. I did this, adding nine blogs to my master list. All but one had posts in the month of December. My database now has 120 blogs active between 1 July 2006 and 1 January 2007. Of those 120 blogs, 92 had at least one post in December. These are all English language blogs.

There are a total of 256 blog domain names (like chessforallages.blogspot.com) on the database. About a dozen of these are non-English language blogs, a few are duplicate names, and the rest have either disappeared or have not been updated in the last six months.

How do I know when an inactive blog is reactivated? I don't. I trust that someone maintaining an active blog will post a welcome back message or refer to one of the newest posts in a dialog. No blog is an island.