Category: Referrer Logs

December 13, 2004 /

Mr. Burns, referral-log ninja, writes in with corrections:

“My point about writing vs. art is that good

writing can excuse bad art — and I won’t trash art in a webcomic,

typically. Just not my thing. The exception is when the art fails to

execute the strip properly (in other words, if you can’t tell what’s

happened or the viewer gets the wrong impression). That would get the

same critical response as bad writing would.

The theoretical reverse is also true — if a strip has bad writing but

gorgeous art, I might well read and snark on it too, and if I did, it’d

likely be to extol the art, not slam the writing.”

I stand corrected. By those corrections.

One thing I should have mentioned in that post was that it is a typical failing of critics to respond badly, even childishly, to criticism of their own work. That’s a trait wholly absent in Mr. Burns, who always responds (and I do mean “always responds”) to discussion of Websnark with equanimity and grace.

And I pretend I don’t care about having an audience

November 29, 2004 /

The NFD LJ feed and the Anacrusis LJ feed each have exactly 32 subscribers. Of those, 23 of the NFD subscribers are on my LJ friends list, whereas 12 of the Anacrusis subscribers are. Only 10 people on said friends list subscribe to both.

Interesting, but probably only to me.

I would like to have similar statistics for the regular RSS feeds, but of course there’s no big site organizing and tracking who hits those. Does anybody know a way to parse Apache log files and see who’s hitting a given location? My current (weak) webstats software won’t do it.

September 17, 2004 /

Dammit, Chad Burbidge, I know you read this at least sometimes, because your name is on my search referrer list every month. Quit hiding and write me already!

While I’m talking about referrer logs, I apparently got like 1500 hits in the last week from an unassigned IP address in a block that belongs to Microsoft. Eh? I guess it could be some forwarded Hotmail email; I don’t think it’s MSN search, because my logs notice that. Or maybe I have a whole bunch of fans who all use the same MSN ISP account.

Oh, and Leigh-Anna Donithan, do you still exist? You are not in my referrer logs, but if you ever egosurf and find this, you should write me too.

May 10, 2004 /

Colin Goggin! I have seen your egosurf referral and I know you saw this site! Now write me or I’ll make a veiled threat I can’t back up!

December 22, 2003 /

Confessional Search Request: xorph I met a girl

The latter part of that, of course, is the chorus from a wonderful Wheat song, which appears to be catching on quickly, and also to have its complete lyrics posted nowhere on the entire interweb. I guess that’s how my LJ feed somehow got to be the first Google result for “I met a girl I’d like to know better.”

I’d post the lyrics here myself, but I don’t have the liner notes and I don’t really want to do them by ear.

October 25, 2003 /

I found this thread about messing up your child’s vocabulary a while ago, but I guess I never posted it. I think it’s great, because a) it uses the word “xorph” and b) I plan to do that stuff to my kids all the time.

Well, actually I plan to do that stuff to Jon and Amanda’s kids first. If necessary, I will create props.

Small Brasfield: Mommy, can we go to the store and get some more Super Snot? We used it all.
Amanda: Get some more what?
Small Brasfield: Super Snot! The stuff you use to stick things together.
Jon: You mean glue?
Small Brasfield: Uncle Brendan told me it’s really called Super Snot! He showed me in a book.
Amanda: Okay, listen carefully. From now on you can’t trust books Uncle Brendan gives you. Okay?
Small Brasfield: I can’t trust the Bible?
Amanda: (begins smoking from her ears)
Jon: Wait. How did you use up all your Sup–your glue?
Small Brasfield: Uncle Brendan showed me how to make Smaller Brasfield’s hair look really cool!

After that, Jon and Amanda should have the messing-up-my-kids part well in hand.

October 21, 2003 /

I’m glad I have a reason to talk about NewsBruiser again, because I’m on the front page! No, actually I want to talk about NewsBruiser because Leonard’s had version 2.0 (“Master Planarian”) out for weeks and I need to install it. Except I don’t want to install it, because a) NewsBruiser installations have traditionally been nightmarish for me (this is due to my hosts and my own incompetence, not NewsBruiser), and b) it has comments. NewsBruiser with comments! It’ll be anarchy!

Sumana and I had a conversation this morning about said comments, and about Leonard’s implementation of Bayesian heuristics in NewsBruiser. We agree that it’s capable of preventing comment spam, but I argued that it can’t entirely prevent tar pit syndrome, because it can’t filter out stupid. Sumana argued that it can. And then we jousted. No, actually we exchanged spam jokes.

(Yes, I know you can just turn off comments, I’m just whining. And yes, I do have a forum and am thus technically already sinking into a tar pit. However, you’ll note that the definition of the tar pit theory clearly states that “as long as no one actually uses the discussion forum, you are safe.” The only people who actually post there came from AZWP anyway, so I’m totally slopy.)

I do need to install 2.0, actually, so I can do trackbacks. I really don’t understand trackbacks, but they sound like they have something to do with RSS feeds or referrer logs, so I must consume them! Speaking of RSS feeds, I’m turning into an RSS evangelist like all the RSS early adopters, and I should be shot. And speaking of referrer logs, Cody Powell responded just as I planned to my goulash bait, and proceeded to write an entry about Cracked vs. MAD, which is a topic I was thinking about just this morning, during my pseudobreakfast. CODY POWELL CAN SEE INTO MY BRAIN.

August 26, 2003 /

Sumana recommended weeks ago that I read “In the Beginning was the Command Line,” a very long essay by Neal Stephenson about operating systems and Disney World and nuclear weapons. I’d heard of it before, and I like Stephenson a lot, although his direct-address form is so clear and dry that I spend a lot of time wondering if he’s making fun of me.

Anyway, today I got bored at work, and I read it (213k of plain text; I was very bored), and it got me all excited and I went home and dug out my reject iMac and now, a few hours of downloading later, I’m watching it brainwash itself with Yellow Dog Linux. This is way too easy. I want it to hit a snag now, so I won’t be won over.

You hear me? I won’t be won over!

I don’t know why I have such a grudge against Linux. Maybe it’s because my first experience with it was being thrown into the cold water of a bad implementation of Debian–a hacker’s imp, done by my hacker of a first professor, running chill and unfriendly in the basement that was the old Centre CS lab. (The new lab was still in the basement, it just ran Red Hat instead. I was shocked to realize Linux could do 24-bit color.)

Or maybe it’s just because I’ve been using Windows for such a long time, and I hate admitting I was wrong. Bleagh. Oh well.

The install’s 18% done, and I think I’m going to crash soon and let it run while I sleep. In the morning I should just about have a Linux box, as is only fitting for my first day of CS grad school.

The only problem now, really, is figuring out what I’m going to use it for. I’ve got my desktop publishing and image processing pretty well taken care of on this old warhorse (my PII), so I didn’t install any of that, but do I try to set up a friendly ftp server? Learn to write Xwindows apps? Run a MUD? Suggestions are welcome.

Pork-barrel entry-end tagalongs: I baked my first batch of chocolate chip cookies from scratch this evening, waiting for Yellow Dog to download. And they’re GOOD! I’ve been strutting around all night thanks to that. Also, The Devil’s Dictionary does in fact have an RSS feed, and its author, a Mr. Kn____, is apparently some kind of referral-log ninja. And I owe Maria big for letting me download and burn like a gig and a half of computer-geek stuff on her shiny new laptop, since my CD burner is still dead. Thanks, Maria! Get a blog!

August 13, 2003 /

Weirdly, googling for sites related to the Tuesday comic gets this site as the top result (under Tuesday itself), and my favorite band as the next one. Maybe it just daisy-chains through links? But that can’t be right. Or maybe somebody posted about it on their message boards.

Either way, though, seeing those two sites bracketing mine is really kind of cool. Google’s generally pretty nice to me, which I like to think of as a measure of karma. I do kind of wish, though, that I weren’t the “feeling lucky” result for people trying to find lyrics to some Mudvayne song.