Monday, December 12, 2005
Milestones Part I
It's 2am as I start to write this. I woke up at first thinking maybe it was time for my pain med, but now I have an hour and a half to go. I'm having a little trouble getting back to sleep however as some thoughts are swirling around in my head and I wanted to start to write them down while they were fresh. Already the ties the bind them together are starting to become ragged in my mind.
First is a comment about my about BNL coming up on its 5000th page view after close to two years of operation, though really only 10 months of consistent posting. I set foot on the web sometime around 1997 I think and while BNL may not have had consistent posting until the last ten months there was always something somewhere getting tweaked for viewing. Originally it was my music collection as a DJ, and then it was a small collection of jokes that I called Larry's Original Humor Page(s). Eventually that expanded to include my writing projects as well. I started a Journal on Slashdot.org for more serious entries in November 1999 and called it a blog, jumping on the blog bandwagon a bit earlier than most, but a year later than really early starters, though my humor pages could in some sense be considered a blog as they grew pretty continuously over time. My journalling on Slashdot.org has slowed as I have ramped up on BNL, but there are over 40 journal entries and 481 comments I have posted to Slashdot.org. Over 500 jokes in the humor pages and over 500 top ten entries (50 lists) between my old Larry's Top Tens and my new Larry's Top Tens. In 2000 I become webmaster for the Canopy Club and created the layout and automatic update for the upcoming calendar it shows. It's not very clean Perl code, but it's still in use almost 5 full years latter, and the look hasn't changed all the much, which while it isn't the greatest on the planet, wasn't bad for a first attempt. I don't get paid for the webwork at the Canopy Club, or at least not much as compensation is in a pretty convoluted form in payment for equipment maintenance and band filming which really is way, way below the rate it should be for what I do. All this is to rationalize not overhauling the look in the last five years, which BTW this blog draws heavily from.
OK maybe I've lost what few readers I have today before getting this far with all my patting myself on the back and such, but when you look at my BlogHop.com ratings you will see 87 people have taken the time to rate my site and it is at a 60% popularity rating. My original goal for BNL was to be in the top 10% popularity wise, but I see I will never achieve that. More importantly I no longer want to because I noticed something far more important from my stats.
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Most people either LOVE ME or HATE ME! And that's a pretty nice place to be and I'll explain. All the interesting people I have ever known have been polarizing. I seem to like most people, but the people I tend to like most are liked and disliked by many and there doesn't seem to be a pattern as to what the overlap is. The point is if you have anything interesting enough to say then some are going to really like what you say and some are really going to hate what you say. Trying to sanitize what you have to say in order to gain popularity will just make the whole thing pabulum, so you might as well stay the course and that is what I intend to do here at BNL
There will be a part II to this post, with a shout out to some of my friends out there and a tribute to my wife and what this all means in terms of diversity and difference. For now good night BNL viewers, thanks for stopping by. Now if you'll forgive me it's time for my pain med and a date with unconsciousness as I recover from lung surgery.
First is a comment about my about BNL coming up on its 5000th page view after close to two years of operation, though really only 10 months of consistent posting. I set foot on the web sometime around 1997 I think and while BNL may not have had consistent posting until the last ten months there was always something somewhere getting tweaked for viewing. Originally it was my music collection as a DJ, and then it was a small collection of jokes that I called Larry's Original Humor Page(s). Eventually that expanded to include my writing projects as well. I started a Journal on Slashdot.org for more serious entries in November 1999 and called it a blog, jumping on the blog bandwagon a bit earlier than most, but a year later than really early starters, though my humor pages could in some sense be considered a blog as they grew pretty continuously over time. My journalling on Slashdot.org has slowed as I have ramped up on BNL, but there are over 40 journal entries and 481 comments I have posted to Slashdot.org. Over 500 jokes in the humor pages and over 500 top ten entries (50 lists) between my old Larry's Top Tens and my new Larry's Top Tens. In 2000 I become webmaster for the Canopy Club and created the layout and automatic update for the upcoming calendar it shows. It's not very clean Perl code, but it's still in use almost 5 full years latter, and the look hasn't changed all the much, which while it isn't the greatest on the planet, wasn't bad for a first attempt. I don't get paid for the webwork at the Canopy Club, or at least not much as compensation is in a pretty convoluted form in payment for equipment maintenance and band filming which really is way, way below the rate it should be for what I do. All this is to rationalize not overhauling the look in the last five years, which BTW this blog draws heavily from.
OK maybe I've lost what few readers I have today before getting this far with all my patting myself on the back and such, but when you look at my BlogHop.com ratings you will see 87 people have taken the time to rate my site and it is at a 60% popularity rating. My original goal for BNL was to be in the top 10% popularity wise, but I see I will never achieve that. More importantly I no longer want to because I noticed something far more important from my stats.
[rating:60%:87:||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||]
22: |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 13: |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 18: |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 12: ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 22: |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Most people either LOVE ME or HATE ME! And that's a pretty nice place to be and I'll explain. All the interesting people I have ever known have been polarizing. I seem to like most people, but the people I tend to like most are liked and disliked by many and there doesn't seem to be a pattern as to what the overlap is. The point is if you have anything interesting enough to say then some are going to really like what you say and some are really going to hate what you say. Trying to sanitize what you have to say in order to gain popularity will just make the whole thing pabulum, so you might as well stay the course and that is what I intend to do here at BNL
There will be a part II to this post, with a shout out to some of my friends out there and a tribute to my wife and what this all means in terms of diversity and difference. For now good night BNL viewers, thanks for stopping by. Now if you'll forgive me it's time for my pain med and a date with unconsciousness as I recover from lung surgery.
