This is a follow up post to an earlier post titled Counting Countries.

In the previous post I wrote about how I like to check the stats to find out where the visitors to my blog come from.

As I continue to watch the country stats I am getting better at recognizing the flags for each country. When I think about the flags it is hard for me not to think about The Big Bang Theory episode where Sheldon has his webcast of Sheldon Cooper Presents Fun with Flags. The study of flags is called vexillology, and I can assure you that I do not qualify as a vexillologist. Try to say that word fast. It is a tongue twister for sure.

I can almost always identify the flags that go with the countries from which I get the most visitors.

As you can see from the list, English is the dominant language in the top countries on my visitor list.

This morning I passed the 12,345 visit mark on my blog. The next time the numbers will all be in sequence (123,456) will be quite some time from now.

The United States is way out ahead of the pack with about 9,000 visits and Canada is just a few shy of the 1,000 mark.

The United Kingdom has a bit more than 500 visits and then there is a drop down to India with a little more than 200.

Italy in the number 20 spot has had 26 visits to my blog.

Since I like to play with numbers I am always watching for interesting number combinations. I see that I have had 22 countries with more than 22 visits. Country number 23 is at 22, so one more visit and I will have 23 countries with more than 23 visits :-).

On the right are the flags of the countries that have only one visit to my blog. They are not as easy to identify, but as I see them more often I am slowly learning them.

One of the interesting things about flags is that there are a lot of similarities between flags of countries with similar backgrounds.

We can easily identify some countries that have ties to the UK. In the examples on the right you can see British Virgin Islands and the Falkland Islands both have similar flags. Compare them with Australia which is number five on the left side. Similar flags because of their history.

You find similar flags in different regions of the world as well. When I see an unfamiliar flag I sometimes know what region of the world it is in just because of the way it looks. For instance when I had a visitor from Bahrain this week I saw that their flag was similar to the flag from Qatar.

When I wrote my Counting Countries post, I had only had visitors from 76 countries. Now the total is up to 106.

September

If you compare the map from September to the map from November you can see that it is starting to fill in a little bit more.

November

There are still a log of countries left who have not had visitors to my blog. Central Asia and Africa are lagging behind along with Greenland and Iceland.

I am sure that the rest of the countries will eventually fill in on the map, it will only be a matter of time :-).

What is your favorite country flag?

Steven