{"id":369,"date":"2007-04-10T20:30:31","date_gmt":"2007-04-10T10:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2007\/04\/10\/happy-second-anniversary-oddthinking\/"},"modified":"2008-04-11T00:31:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-10T14:31:00","slug":"happy-second-anniversary-oddthinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2007\/04\/10\/happy-second-anniversary-oddthinking\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Second Anniversary, OddThinking!"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 10 is OddThinking’s second anniversary, and time for another recap<\/a> of the year.<\/p>\n

In the 12 months, there have been a total of 110 posts (down 40% on last year), 662 comments (up 2%) and over 28,000 spams (up 990%).<\/p>\n

Highlights by Month<\/h3>\n

April<\/h4>\n

Celebrated paper<\/a> and china<\/a> geek anniversaries.<\/p>\n

Solved a couple<\/a> of dilemmas<\/a> that had been plaguing me, with the kind help of some commenters.<\/p>\n

May<\/h4>\n

I noticed a spike in spam<\/a>, and wondered “will the numbers ever drop again?” Check out the statistics below for the answer.<\/p>\n

June<\/h4>\n

I took a second dig<\/a> at Samsung.<\/p>\n

I also worked a surprising hidden cost to some so-called free software: Google Desktop search was costing me over a dollar per quarter<\/a>!<\/p>\n

July<\/h4>\n

Quiet month.<\/p>\n

August<\/h4>\n

Quiet month<\/p>\n

September<\/h4>\n

Another software solution for a puzzle? Solitaire Battleships<\/a><\/p>\n

I discovered that I used to look like Catherine Deneuve<\/a>!<\/p>\n

EmailShroud 2.0<\/a> is released.<\/p>\n

October<\/h4>\n

I advanced social science by proving gaydar<\/a> was scientifically unreliable.<\/p>\n

November<\/h4>\n

I advanced economic science by proving free porn sites reduce spam<\/a>.<\/p>\n

December<\/h4>\n

Quiet month, due to travelling.<\/p>\n

January<\/h4>\n

I advanced folkloric studies by revealing the truth behind Little Red Riding Hood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I made up a puzzle to choose the best wine-gum<\/a>, and it became my white whale.<\/p>\n

February<\/h4>\n

Another quiet month, due to travelling.<\/p>\n

March<\/h4>\n

With the help of some readers, I proved that astrology is bunk, and so is my memory<\/a>. I also got a lot of help with the alpha testing of a potential new widget plugin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

April<\/h4>\n

It’s still early, but already there’s been another release of EmailShroud<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Statistics<\/h3>\n

Here are some of the statistics I pulled from this year’s logs.<\/p>\n

Most Read Pages<\/h5>\n
    \n
  1. Samsung PC Studio 3 vs Microsoft Outlook<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. EmailShroud<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. A Kakuro Solver<\/a>*<\/li>\n
  4. A New Owner’s Review of the Samsung D600 Mobile Phone<\/a>*<\/li>\n
  5. Pursuing Sudoku with Pseudo-code<\/a>*<\/li>\n
  6. Browser Comparison: Password Management<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. CRCRLF WordPress plugin<\/a>*<\/li>\n
  8. Comparing Strings: An Analysis of Diff Algorithms<\/a>*<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    * = Originally published over a year ago, but still popular.<\/p>\n

    Most of those articles above are geeky articles. What’s popular when people aren’t in the mood for geek, and just want a story?<\/p>\n

    Most Read (Non-Geek) Stories<\/h5>\n
      \n
    1. Being Fair to BetFair<\/a>*<\/li>\n
    2. False Positives and the Self-Healing AIDS case<\/a>*<\/li>\n
    3. Seeing the Man in the Moon<\/a>*<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Overall, my geekiness factor (% posts that were rated geeky) dropped from 48% to 34%. However, I reckon even these three officially non-geeky articles are still pretty geeky, which makes me question my impartiality!<\/p>\n

      The long-term trend of geekier articles getting more interest continues: more comments continues – geeky articles get an average of 34% more comments.<\/p>\n

      Talking of comments, let’s look at the statistics there.<\/p>\n

      Note: As before, all discussion of comments includes (a) pingbacks and (b) comments made by me.<\/div>\n
      Most Commented Posts<\/h5>\n
        \n
      1. Assumption is the Mother of All Instincts<\/a> – wherein the commenters feasted on my argument like piranhas.<\/li>\n
      2. More Theme Changes <\/a> – wherein the commenters gave me great feedback on the usability of the site.<\/li>\n
      3. Samsung PC Studio 3 versus Microsoft Outlook<\/a><\/li>\n
      4. Wine-gum Selection Puzzle<\/a><\/li>\n
      5. Font matters<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Who is making all those comments?<\/p>\n

        Most Prolific Commenters<\/h5>\n
          \n
        1. Me!<\/li>\n
        2. Alastair from Girtby.net<\/a><\/li>\n
        3. Aristotle Pagaltzis from Plasmasturm<\/a><\/li>\n
        4. Sunny Kalsi from The USS Quad Damage<\/a><\/li>\n
        5. Cassie<\/li>\n
        6. Alan Green from Cardboard.nu<\/a><\/li>\n
        7. Chris from Brainsnorkel<\/a><\/li>\n
        8. Richard<\/li>\n
        9. Casey Whitelaw from CaseyPorn<\/a><\/li>\n
        10. Andrew<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Thanks again to each of you.<\/p>\n

          Bots Statistics<\/h3>\n

          Searchiest Search Engines<\/h5>\n

          (i.e. whose bots crawl the most)<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Yahoo!<\/li>\n
          2. MSN<\/li>\n
          3. Google<\/li>\n
          4. Bloglines<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            While not visiting me as often as Yahoo!, Google referred 50 times as many people to my site.<\/p>\n

            Search Results<\/h3>\n

            A fair number of visitors come to OddThinking straight from a search engine. A record is kept of what they were looking for when they got here.<\/p>\n

            The most popular search terms change each month… slightly…<\/p>\n

            Most Popular Search Terms, by Month<\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
            Month<\/th>\nTop Search Term<\/th>\nRunner-Up Search Term<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
            Apr 06<\/td>\nkakuro solver<\/td>\nsudoku code<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
            May 06<\/td>\nkakuro solver<\/td>\nsudoku code<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
            Jun 06<\/td>\nkakuro solver<\/td>\nsamsung pc studio<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
            Jul 06<\/td>\nkakuro solver<\/td>\nsamsung pc studio<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
            Aug 06<\/td>\nkakuro solver<\/td>\nsamsung pc studio<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
            Sep 06<\/td>\nsamsung pc studio<\/td>\nkakuro solver<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
            Oct 06<\/td>\nkakuro solver<\/td>\nsamsung pc studio<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
            Nov 06<\/td>\nkakuro solver<\/td>\nsamsung pc studio<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
            Dec 06<\/td>\nsamsung pc studio<\/td>\nkakuro solver<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
            Jan 07<\/td>\nkakuro solver<\/td>\nsamsung pc studio<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
            Feb 07<\/td>\nkakuro solver<\/td>\nsamsung pc studio<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
            Mar 07<\/td>\ntrick questions<\/td>\nkakuro solver<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

             <\/p>\n

            Most Misguided Search-Engine Referrals<\/h4>\n

            Last year I presented this by month. This year, I am abandoning that because there is a clear overall winner for the year: If you search Google for “where do babies come from”, this article<\/a> appears on the first or second page. That’s enough for a silly number of hits every month.<\/p>\n

            Spam Levels<\/h4>\n

            In May, I wondered if the recent spike in comment spam<\/a> was going to be a permanent change. The answer was, of course, yes, but worse.<\/p>\n

            The chart below shows in blue the spam-levels as they were before my plaintive post in May, and, in green, the spam-levels since then.<\/p>\n

            Spam Chart<\/a><\/p>\n

            Posting\/Commenting Frequency<\/h3>\n

            Here comes the big ugly graph which I find so comforting.<\/p>\n

            Blog statistics<\/a><\/p>\n

            The tops of the vertical bars show how many posts I made per day. They should be measured against the scale on the left.<\/p>\n

            With the exception of September, I was less prolific this year compared to last year. <\/p>\n

            The green and blue boxes show how the posts are split between the posts that never received a response and those that did receive comments.<\/p>\n

            One metric I am trying to minimise is the percentage of green. The improvement here is only slight, but the old posts have had longer to gather comments, so I am claiming that as a small success.<\/p>\n

            The light blue line (using the scale on the right-hand axis) shows how many comments I receive per day. Unsurprisingly, it is strongly correlated to the number of posts I made. There’s definitely been a drop off in comments, in line with the drop in posts.<\/p>\n

            I am using a slightly improved algorithm this year, which uses date the comment was submitted, rather than the date the associated post was published.<\/div>\n

            The dotted yellow line has no scale shown. It compares how many page hits I have had each month, since I started measuring at the end of September 05. I am quite happy with that increase!<\/p>\n

            Profits<\/h3>\n

            Q: Ignoring inflation, how long before Google Adsense will pay enough money to buy my own weight in chocolate bars?<\/p>\n

            A: Inflation and the strong Australian dollar have offset some of the benefits of an increased Adsense revenue and a reduction in my own weight. Nonetheless, OddThinking has made a huge leap towards its goal, bringing the expected purchase date back from 2131 to 2056! Leave the date free for a chocolate party at my place!<\/p>\n

            Summing Up<\/h3>\n

            Thanks again to all my regulars. It’s been another great year.<\/p>\n

            For the lurkers (you know who you are, even if I don’t!), don’t be afraid to make a comment, even send me a private email<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            I summarise the second year of operations of OddThinking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[271,84],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-oddthinking","tag-anniversary","tag-oddthinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}