THIS BLOG: Happy 10 Year Anniversary

Celebrating 10 years of this blog existing. Well, technically it started over at http://ohhhh.blogspot.com/, but I moved to http://ClintJCL.wordpress.com/ within the first 2 years, because WordPress is soooooo much better than blogspot — and doesn’t make people with 10 year old google accounts have to fill out CAPTCHAs to comment, like some kind of common criminal.

Anyway, I thought I’d share some stats on this blog. More for me than anyone else.

In 10 years, I have created 4,138 posts. 3

3,775 are published, 9 are drafts, and 354 are still unpublished — dated in the future. Including a post that won’t appear until my 100th birthday, regardless of whether I am dead or alive. (That post quotes a letter my grandad wrote to me the day I was born, so it will end up being a blog post with a contributor born a good 150 years prior.)

There have been 14,427 comments (though thousands have been removed)… so about 3.8 per post on average. It feels like 0, though, as alot of those are old, or concentrated amongst controvertial posts. The average post really gets 0 comments, despite this 3.8 average. Of course, 515 of these were left by me on my own posts. I only get 4 comments per month according to recent stats.
Meanwhile, **340,555** spam comments have been stopped by the akismet service. FUCK blog spammers. 1 in every 25 comments is real.

I’ve had 1,122,615 views in all time, so well over 100,000 a year, well over 9000 a month, well over 300 a day (a record of 3146 in a day). But the problem is, it’s misleading, as my blog was much more popular when it was almost all politics instead of almost all movie reviews. These averages are declining. I’m actually only getting over 1000 a month, not 9000 a month. Damn google for lowering my pagerank!

I do have 158 followers on wordpress (and 50 on my tumblr export), but how many actually use that?

Most people get to my blog via google search or google image search or bing or yahoo or ask.com (mostly fecalphiliacs) or… AOL. Also a lot from Flickr, Reddit, and even 3900 coming straight to my blog from Wikipedia, 1000 from tvtropes.com.

The 2 best pranks I’ve pulled:

1) Capturing the result for “drunk teens shitting”, negating each word into “sober grannies eating”, and posting pictures of old ladies eating soup on the page that all the fecalphiliacs looking for drunk teens shitting kept landing on. Eventually, someone commented: “Your petulance is duly noted”. Greatness.

2) Finding out someone was hotlinking one of my images on a french article, and replacing it with an image of a beret-wearing frog with a french-style musctache smoking a cigar in front of a bottle of wine, with an eiffel tower in the background. Basically, the most offensive anti-french image ever, and we tricked a french blog into using it on an article. They discovered this, thought it was funny, and left it. Good sports. Glad they notice.

The site to receive the most outgoing clicks from me? Flickr, for a variety of various links over the year. The one single largest outgling link? http:://tenthdimension.com/flash.php — I’ve flat out made that author money by linking to his excellent video explaining how there are 10 dimensions. He sells a book about it, and you can bet one of the 10,000 people I sent his way bought it. My link to the rdos.net asperger’s test is also used a lot.

Indeed, the top search terms of all time to lead people to my blog over the last 10 years is kind of weird:
12,157: shitting
11,262: garfield
9,770: james hetfield
8,922: celtic frost
7,174: nuclear bomb
6,860: disgusting
6,005: gun
4,496: raccoon
4,363: cartoon porn
4,260: family guy sex
4,116: v for vendetta
3,992: frost
3,876: tumor
3,253: router
3,095: celtic
2,950: angela garbarino
2,785: pubic hair
2,694: salvatore rivieri
2,668: teens shitting
2,479: drunk teens
2,467: vlc post processing
2,444: futurama season 7
2,344: smoking pot
2,306: pics of 911 plane hitting pentagon
1,948: shitting teens
1,883: jessica rabbit
1,869: real peter griffin
1,831: tara charendoff
1,814: carnivore
1,792: mcdouble vs double cheeseburger
1,792: fiona loewi
1,788: guy fawkes mask
1,720: safari vs firefox
1,663: 10 dimensions
1,638: linda carter
1,620: self bondage
1,606: party
1,600: carnivore band
1,594: dumb and dumber cartoon
1,550: family guy
1,546: teen shitting
1,533: firefox vs safari
1,526: h bomb
1,466: family guy porn
1,329: v for vendetta mask
1,321: the motherfucking flash
1,319: drunk driving permits
1,283: racism in alabama
1,259: executions
1,186: zlad
1,173: valerie mahaffey
1,170: type o negative
1,153: alabama racism
1,074: untooned
1,056: goliath gargoyles
1,030: assateague island
1,023: judge willie adams
1,011: pimp your pictures
1,006: abscess
1,004: chatty cathy
{other results snipped}
646: clint

So that’s about all I can think of. Thanks for reading.

 

THIS BLOG: Reaches 1,100,000 hits on 10/21/2013.

I hit 1,100,000 views on 10/21/2013. (7.5 months past my predicted 30-day window).
I hit 1,000,000 on 04/07/2012. (8 days past my predicted 30-day window).
I hit 0,900,000 on ~5/13/2011. (last day of my predicted 30-day window–victory! barely!).
I hit 0,800,000 on 08/28/2010. (23 days after my predicted 30-day window).
I hit 0,700,000 on 01/21/2010. (17 days before my predicted 30-day window).
I hit 0,600,000 on 07/07/2009. (within 1 week of vague “June” prediction–victory!).
I hit 0,500,000 on 12/04/2008. (no prediction).
I hit 0,400,000 on 05/24/2008. (27 days past prediction).
I hit 0,300,000 on 02/13/2008. (1 day before prediction–victory!).

So:
300K-400K (2008) took 03.5 months.
400K-500K (2008) took 06.0 months.
500K-600K (2009) took 07.0 months.
600K-700K (2010) took 06.0 months.
700K-800K (2010) took 07.5 months.
800K-900K (2011) took 07.5 months.
900K-1.0M (2012) took 11.0 months.
1.0M-1.1M (2013) took 18.5 months.

This last 100,000 was the slowest one ever… Man do people hate movie reviews, compared to political rants. This 2nd-to-last last 100,000 was  slower than the previous two as well. That would put my prediction for hit #1,200,000 at around 6/20/2015 plus or minus 15 days. At this rate, 2014 will be the only year to not see a 100,000 milestone since 2004-2007. We’ll see what happens. I’ve been playing this game for awhile, but it’s getting harder to predict the future.

^older snapshot of monthly blog stats – 15,836 is for Jan, 2009
8/2010 snapshot below:

 

THIS BLOG: Reaches 1,000,000 hits on 4/7/2012.

I hit 1,000,000 views on 4/7/2012 (8 days past my predicted 30-day window).
I hit 900,000 views around 5/13/2011 (last day of my predicted 30-day window–victory! barely!).
I hit 800,000 on 8/28/2010. (23 days after my predicted 30-day window).
I hit 700,000 on 1/21/2010. (17 days before my predicted 30-day window).
I hit 600,000 on 7/7/2009. (within 1 week of vague “June” prediction–victory!).
I hit 500,000 on 12/4/2008. (no prediction)
I hit 400,000 on 5/24/2008. (27 days past prediction)
I hit 300,000 on 2/13/2008. (1 day before prediction–victory!)

So:
300K-400K took 3.5 months,
400K-500K took 6 months,
500K-600K took 7 months,
600K-700K took 6 months.
700K-800K took 7.5 months.
800K-900K took 7.5 months.
900K-1M took 11 months.

This last 100,000 was  slower than the previous two. This blog has changed focus slightly, which usually makes readership decline, but the biggest decline started around when I started reviewing every movie I watched, which was likely also around the time that Google lowered my rank, possibly penalizing me for crossposting my blog into other social networks. At this rate 1M-1.1M will take another 11.5 months or so. That would put my prediction for hit #1,100,000 at around 2/28/2013 plus or minus 15 days. We’ll see what happens. I’ve been playing this game for awhile, but it’s getting harder to predict the future!

^older snapshot of monthly blog stats – 15,836 is for Jan, 2009
8/2010 snapshot below:

 

COMEDY: FORMSPRING: The Ultimate Answer To “How Much Wood Would A Woodchuck Chuck?”

Fun with FormSpring! Here are my 2 favorite answers to this question I posed to all my friends on FormSpring:

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could only chuck wood in a very inefficient, bureaucratic way?

 

JOURNAL: POINTLESSNESS: REVIEW: Eating southwestern soup out of a spaghetti sauce jar

I’ve been recycling my spaghetti/pickle/etc jars by ripping the label off and dishwashing them, then using them to store leftovers, nuts & bolts, medicine, etc. etc. Tons of uses for these things. So I decided to try eating some soup out of it, instead of a bowl, or the jar-dimensioned, square-topped tupperware that I often use [it’s not looking as nice as 5 years ago].

* It was kind of hard to get the last solid bits, as it’s a bit hard to spoon to the bottom of a tall jar. (2 points) WINNER: BOWL, TUPPERWARE.

* Soup bowls may be low with a wide open top so that you can lick the food. I like to get ALL my food, I almost always lick clean anything I eat off of. This was not possible with the spaghetti sauce jar. (2 points) WINNER: BOWL.

* Drinking it was easier and could be done with a single hand. (2 points) WINNER: JAR, TUPPERWARE.

* My spoon afterward sits in it and won’t fall out. Since I eat upstairs and dishwash downstairs, spoons falling around is a consideration. (1 point) WINNER: JAR, TUPPERWARE.

* Looks nice. Glass rules. (1 point) WINNER: JAR.

*** I’ve analyzed this about as much as I can. The jar may be more suited to a brothy soup that you can drink, one that doesn’t have beans and bits in ’em. Then you don’t really need the spoon at all. But I don’t really drink broth, so nevermind.

*** POINTS: ***
BOWL: 4
TUPPERWARE: 7
JAR: 4

Looks like I should just stick to the tupperware container. Shit. Plastic just beat glass. So much for being green

 

POINTLESSNESS: Blogging from bed, yard sale flappy thing, cell-phone painting

Hmm… Tried using Carolyn’s wordpress app on her cellphone in the middle of the night…  So uh, we ran into one of those crazy flappy things at a yard sale last weekend:

so on flickr i saw someone with “iphone paintings”  on their photostream… i thought that was a neat idea, even if it’s a bit like childish fingerpainting. i played around in bed with this one. it looked sooooooooooooooooooooo much brighter in the dark… i spent like 10 minutes on it, by lowering the thickness and using spray mode, which meant you could barely see what you were painting, thus allowing very subtle color variations blah blah it looks like shit on my hdtv, gotta fix it in photoshop once i catch up:

brightness on a cellphone and on an hdtv are 2 totally different things! YOU SUCK

 

Eve-inspired lyric post – Tiamat: Brighter Than The Sun

“we could wander in the garden of Eden baby
we could do anything tonight, maybe
we could even touch the sky
if we just get up on our feet and try
we could wander in the garden of Eden baby”

I like how it’s a reference to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida… [Iron Butterfly’s singer was so intoxicated at the recording session that he was supposed to say “in the garden of eden”, but all anyone could hear was In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.]

Oh look.. there’s a video!

This song comes from Tiamat‘s post-death metal, post-black metal, Gothic rock, Sisters Of Mercy-sounding phase. From one of my 2 or 3 favorite Tiamat albums.

 

THIS BLOG: New theme. What do you think?

I kind of got sick of having a max picture width of 500 pixels, so I switched my blog’s theme to this one. It has variable width, so depending on your browser size, the article space can get very wide. Way more than 500 pixels.

Do you like it?

I don’t.

I dislike change. And while this may be technically superior, I just don’t like it. I can’t stand looking at it.

 

AWESOME THING #1001 – explosions on speakers that spill into reality

I think it’s particularly awesome (and annoying) when you’re watching some action movie that has lots of explosions… And then right after the explosions stop, something near the speaker falls down on the ground (sometimes/preferably  smashing into bits). It’s amazing that an explosion can be so faithfully reproduced that it actually hurts real objects in your house, even though the movie isn’t real.

…AWESOME!!!

(I used to knock pictures off the walls of adjacent dorm rooms in Pritchard Hall at Virginia Tech by playing Ministry‘s “So What?” as loud as I could… haha)

 

THIS BLOG reaches 666,666 views.

Sometime in the past day, this blog hit 666,666 views. How metal.

 

JOURNAL: COMPUTER: My 1998 configuration

Pointlessness warning! I found an old file stating in way too much detail what my computer configuration was in 1998. Figured I’d post it here as a backup/old-school-computing memory, so that I could delete the file without a feeling of loss.  I’m gonna add some comments in red (11 yrs later!) to make fun of the past.

 

CLINT’S DEEP THOUGHTS: On Holy Shit

in India they use cow dung to fuel their fires, since there’s not necessarily lots of trees shedding good wood to cook with in the shantytowns and urban areas suitable for begging in……. the poor bake their bread in it…

and since they revere cows as holy, i’ve always said they should market their bread as “holy shit-smoked bread”

 

TEST – future date for JS

It is now 7:02PM on March 4, 2009, GMT-5.

I will choose a date of 5PM March 5th (tomorrow). But in my experience, I will have to set my submit time to 10PM, which will be mistaken as GMT time, subtracted by 5, resulting in a displayed post time of 5PM March 5th (tomrrow). But I predict it wont ACTUALLY post until 10PM. [Just to further confuse the issue]

 

TEST 3/4

DATE: 03/04/2009 04:19:20 AM

 

ARGH

DATE: 03/03/2009 11:59:00 PM

 

TESTING TIMEZONES

test with 11:06:00PM which is 1 minute from now GMT

 

QUESTIONS: For the body mod community… lipo-holes?

Since everyone loves piercings and modifying their body so much… Couldn’t people just get closeable metal studs installed straight into their fatty tissue? “Lipo-holes.”

Then, you could just go up to a liposuction vending machine, open up your whole, plug in, and get instant lipo whenever you want. And the fat could be harvested for cancer preventing stem cells (a new development — our guts may very well save us). Or it could go to Taco Bell.

Food for thought?

 

JOURNAL: it’s always different

It’s always different when Carolyn goes on a ski trip. I think the cats know something is up.

 

COMEDY?: An idea for feline assisted suicide from Dr. Katvorkian.

So a friend was talking about this guy he knows who has a REALLY old cat, that is just constantly suffering and really should be put to sleep. I tend to agree, except that it irritates my sense of freedom a bit. Maybe the animal would prefer to live anyway? Or maybe it’s wishing for death? (Of course, there are other options…)

So my idea for feline assisted suicide is:

A slide. A slow slide with a Y-adapter in the middle, going to two different destinations. A slow slide; Slow enough that a cat could almost run back up it. Slow enough to decide which way to go.

One side leads to a cozy cat bed. The other side leads to flames. Let the cat decide.

 

COMEDY: The Horror Of Mark I – webcam play from 6.5 years ago – “That’s a good… STRING!”

No, the camera wasn’t broadcasting to anyone other than to our own room.

We had been hanging out, and definitely were not sober at this point.

Mark I had a lot of fun playing with our webcam + microphone, which were hooked up to our 36-inch TV + 100W stereo. So this was blaring through the room at the time.

It was running through some software that lowered the pitch (among other things).

This could be described as “painful through the first half, annoying through the 3rd quarter, and just plain strange through the 4th quarter”. It gets more interesting at 50% and at 80%.

The first half is just him making really long noises. At around 50%, he has to stop and go “Whoo”, cause he tired himself out. Then he starts repeating “Satan” and “My name is Satan” over and over. Around the 80% mark, we get the the very end.

The very end is why we all remember this 6 years later. Mark started singing randomly. I was in the background messing around with a guitar and had commented about how a particular guitar string was a good string. Mark heard this and incorporated it into his song. He started singing, “That’s a good string”, over and over, reaching the final climax of, “Don’t you knowwwwww that’s a good ….. STRIIIINNNNNNNG!”

Um, yeah. You probably had to be there. In my basement. In 2002.

But it’s still nice to have moments preserved.

UPDATE!!! I found another old video that couldn’t be decoded. After aggressively trying with various tools, ffmpeg managed to convert this “cjpeg” video to mpg4, sans color and sound. It’s from even earlier – 2000. Here it is: