Linkfest

Top Ten Posts on Man vs. Bear in 2013

PETERMBALL Journal ,

Last year, when accurate visitor data was still a shiny new concept around these parts, I went and looked at the posts that had achieved the most visitors over 2012. It proved to be an interesting exercise, so this year I’m expanding it to look at the top ten.

In order of visits, the most popular parts of the archive were:

1. Why I Have Problems with the Big Bang Theory

2. 13 Things Learned About Superhero Games After Running 30 Sessions of Mutants and Masterminds

3. Why Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ Can Be Dangerous to New Writers

4. What Writers Ought to Know About Die Hard, Part Two

5. What Writers Oughtt to Know About Die Hard, Part One

6. Seven Notes on a Lover’s Discourse While Halfway Through the Book

7. Sri Lankan Love Cake FTW

8. 10 Thoughts on Shame and Writing

9. Running a Villain Audit

10. GenreCon 2013: The Aftermath

It’s interesting to note that both the first two spots are consistent with last year, but not a huge surprise. For one thing, a crazy amount of traffic comes to this site following searches for Big Bang Theory and related terms. For another thing, the post about superhero gaming got a lot of eyeballs when it first got posted, and people still link to it occasionally (we’re coming up on the 60th session of our Mutants and Masterminds campaign in a few weeks, which probably means I’ll do another post in this line to celebrate it).

The weird part about doing this is seeing exactly what it is that gains traction. The Die Hard posts I pretty much expected to get a bunch of links, and they did, even though I ended up getting distracted by other things halfway through the series (part three is still waiting for me to go and re-watch the film so I can enter time codes); the response to the Steven King rant wasn’t entirely unexpected either, but seeing the Writing and Shame post on the list is a pleasant surprise given that I went back-and-forth on both writing and posting that one.

Number 7 is just a reminder that I owe the internet a long overdue dance video. I’ve got no excuse for this one, beyond 2013 being way busier than expected and my original plan for recording things wasn’t altogether feasible. I think my coworkers have set up plans to ensure that it happens over the coming weeks, which will mean we can get a slightly better quality video of my embarrassment due to their superior equipment.

And with that, it’s time to start looking forward, and thinking about what I’ll be blogging about in 2014.

Top Five of 2012

PETERMBALL News & Upcoming Events

So I was checking out some of the site stats last night – something I rarely do here on my personal site – and spent some quality time looking at the data. Since I’m off at write-club today, trying to catch up after a slow weekend of writing, I’m going to take advantage of the data and the changing-of-the-year feel to showcase the most visited posts here on Petermball.com in 2012.

Number One: 13 Things Learned About Superhero Games After Running 30 Sessions of Mutants and Masterminds

Number Two: Why I Have Problems With the Big Bang Theory

I have to admit, the order of these two surprises me. I know a lot of people found their way here when I posted about my M&M campaign for the first time, largely courtesy of the link showing up on a bunch of gaming message boards. It represented probably the single-biggest spike in traffic I’ve ever had, and under any normal circumstances, I probably should have assumed it’d have a lock on the most-visited spot.

And yet…

I posted my concerns about the BBT back in March of 2011, and there isn’t a day goes by when *someone* doesn’t find their way here after searching for Big Bang Theory information (usually, for whatever reason, about the sexuality of the actors or some combination of are character X and character Y fucking; I imagine both sets of searchers are disappointed by the blog post they find). Had I been a bit more aware of the data tracking ’round these parts prior to this, I could probably tell you with some certainty that it’s the most popular blog post I’ve ever written and back it up with stats. Instead I just have to assume it.

In the number three slot: Pledging My Allegiance to the Fake Geek Army

Honestly, not a huge surprise. I don’t blog about gender issues all that often, but when I do, it generally accumulates some links and a spike in traffic.

Number four: Things I would do if I were planning on becoming an indie publisher…

For the record: I’m still not planning on becoming an indie publisher. Although I’ll let you in on a secret – I actually would have put all this into action, had I suddenly found myself unemployed at the end of 2012. There was a lot of turmoil at the day-job in 2012 and I put this together as a just-in-case, should the worse case scenario eventuate. I figured I could live on saving for about six months while I found my groove, then I’d look for some shitty part-time job while I looked at the data and worked out what needed to happen next.

Weird part is, I don’t really remember that many people linking to this one. It just seems to have crept up into the forth-place spot, all ninja-like.

And tied in the fifth-place spot

5 Short Story Recommendations in 1,012 Words or Less

Everything I know About Plot in 1,069 Words or Less

Seems I went through a phase with that words or less approach to a  title. Trust me when I say it’s coming back in 2013.

Trust me, also, that you’ve all just encouraged me to post about writing and things worth reading a lot more this year as well.

 

Makin’ a Racket

PETERMBALL Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption , , , , , , ,

I’ve been worrying my flatmate recently, ’cause I seem to have developed a jaunty whistle of late. This is not, as a general rule, the sort of thing that happens around our house, least of all to me.

‘Course, historically speaking, this isn’t actually true. I spend a great deal of my day with little fragments of music running through my head. I always have, one way or another, and I’ve always been fond of having music on while I work. What’s really happened is that I’ve inherited my sister’s stereo with it’s five-CD turntable and I’ve moved it out of my bedroom and into the study where I write, surf the internet, and occasionally play computer games.

Up until this point, all my music had to run on either Fritz the Laptop (which meant he couldn’t do anything else) or play on the DVD player attached to my TV. Neither of these have been particularly optimal, so my music listening gradually whittled down to playing things in my car and listening to the same Dresden Doll’s live DVD while I cleaned the old apartment. Even upgrading laptops to Shifty Silas didn’t help much – he could play audio at the same time as word-processing, but his speakers were…well, lets just say they weren’t designed with audio in mind.

So, there’s suddenly a stereo I can pack with music that floats around the space I spend most of my non-day-job waking hours. Net result: I’ve listened to a lot more music in the last two weeks than I have in the previous two years.

And it’s been freakin’ GLORIOUS.

I’ve largely celebrated this by listening to a stream of classics from the eighties and nineties. If you’re wondering what the interior of my head sounds like this week, it can be captured by the following three youtube clips:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-AYAv0IoWI]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4GZFbCqx18]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1tj2zJ2Wvg]

It must be said, all three of these songs benefit greatly from volume. It’s eleven-thirty as I type this, which means I don’t have the freedom to crank the stereo the levels all three songs demand, but you can be sure I’ll rectify that the moment I’m left in the house alone.

It must also be said that I’m a man singularly lacking in musical taste and class, but I’ve had years to get used to that.