The community is advised that I've changed my stat counter. As of today it counts page views, not unique visitors, bringing the blog into line with the approach used by most other blogs. The counter itself, however, will remain at the bottom of the page and not up at the top where the insecure bloggers keep it. ;)
Glossary
Unique Visitor Count
A unique visitor is determined by cookies. If someone visits your website and does not have a cookie, or their cookie is older than an hour they count as being a unique visitor and a pageload.
Page Load Count
If someone visits your website and they have a cookie that is less than an hour old, their cookie is updated and they are only counted as a pageload. A pageload is simply the total number of times your page has been accessed, ignoring the unique aspect altogether. This naturally means your pageloads will always be greater than or equal to your unique visitors.