celebrating 20 years of blogging, pt 2

Here’s part two of our look back at 20 years of Buffet o’ Blog.

Part one listed the top posts according to pageviews. Another way of measuring popularity is by how many comments a post gets. There used to be a lot more community engagement here. I don’t know if the regulars are all too busy with life now or if internet culture has just changed in that regard, but there just aren’t as many comments as there used to be. But I digress… Here’s some of the posts with the most comments:

king of the blog — I hesitate to bring attention to this post, knowing what it might start, but it has the most comments, with 140 at the time of writing. Ironically, it’s one of the dumbest posts here, yet the comments are a lot of fun. It shows how community can make it better.

caption contest: guy on moped with ducks — This one also has over 100 comments. I suspect it’s because AFLAC made ducks more popular for a while, but there are plenty of pun opportunities here too.

a man who likes flowers — This is a recurring theme here. A certain regular here was accused of liking flowers a little too much, and he protested rather too much. He’s also named after a flowering fruit tree, which may or may not be a coincidence. We report, you decide.

pickles are evil — The title says it all… for the post, which is quite pithy. However, the comments went off the rails immediately, with the PETP (People for the Ethical Treatment of Pickles) making a stink, then being put in their place. Then the two mad scientists who often comment here started arguing about “time-honored traditions” like whether their inator should include a big red self-destruct button. This is one of my favorite posts because of the discussion.

new story #1: Burford’s Weekend — This is the first free-for-all story on the blog, and it’s fun. These stories are so unpredictable and random. If you like randomness, I highly recommend reading them all. Here, Thomas Wayne and Burford go on an adventure, which leads them to some very unexpected encounters. Somehow the Important Evil Genius got into this one, so part of his story is here.

get your super-powers here — I’ll admit this isn’t one of the best posts or discussions, but the idea is fascinating. What superpowers would you want if you could be granted one? Some say we all have superpowers, and while that depends on how you define superpowers, we definitely all have innate powers that we should use to make the world a better place and to fulfill our destiny. (So discover yours and use them!)

new story #2: Explorers Extraordinaire — Our second free-for-all story made the list. Three guys got a budget for a TV show about exploring nature’s mysteries, so they decide to hunt for the Loch Ness Monster. What they find is even more elusive and sought-after, and they solve one of history’s greatest mysteries. Whether or not this counts as fine literature depends on how discerning your tastes are, but it is funny and random, so I think it’s worth reading.

dangerous secret lair discovered — Here’s a news release about the Important Evil Genius, which is both satire and parody. In the comments, we learn more of his backstory, we witness a power struggle between truth and paid-off news reporters (in a funny way), and we meet the alien Xangrilah race. I doubt there’s another post like this on the internet.

The next several posts on the list are caption contests, which are like memes (before they were popular). I’ll list them here, since the ones with the most participation are often the most fun to read: man with fire behind him, two people with phones on head, weird robot costumes, superhero with phone car, people on porch watching wildfire, man with holograms at old computers, golfers with bear, two fat guys.

Remember, you’re welcome to add comments to any of these. People still find these posts via search engines, so you’re contributing to the awesomeness of the internet.

I have one more metric of measuring memories to share, and it may be the best one, since I’ll be choosing some of my favorite posts. Look for it in the next post.

celebrating 20 years of blogging, pt 1

I recently realized that Buffet o’ Blog has now reached 20 years of blogging. That’s a long time in internet years, about the same age as YouTube. We’ve had almost 1.2 million pageviews, with over 194,300 unique visitors. That’s a lot of people to see my ramblings! That’s hard to grasp. Hopefully some of them were amused.

There have been over 1200 posts. That’s hard to believe, too. And I still haven’t run out of ideas. I can’t guarantee they’re all great ideas, but there are ideas.

There might be the slightest bit of embellishment here, but you get the idea. I don’t always dress like a ninja, but I must conceal my superhero identity.

If someone has read all 1200+ posts, there should be some type of award or certification for that. There isn’t, but there should be. 🙂 Although there may not be anyone that qualifies other than me, and I shouldn’t count since I wrote most of them.

As far as I know, there’s no award for a website reaching 20 years, although it is probably a rare occurrence. But we should celebrate anyway. Although there’s no budget for a party in real life with all subscribers, and there’s not even enough budget to send all subscribers a box of cookies. So I suppose the best option is to have a look back at the highlights. (It’s even better if you eat cookies while perusing the links below.)

There’s several ways to measure highlights. Let’s start with some of top posts in terms of pageviews:

random Monday quotes: 104,442 views — Monday is the most popular topic here, because Mondays are the least popular day. (Wait, does that make sense? People are interested in reading about things they aren’t interested in? Just kidding. I get the allure of quotes about Mondays.)

funny pictures, episode 5: 49,915 views — There are many posts here with funny pictures, and I’m not sure why this one is ahead of the rest.

Man vs Food — Carnivore Pizza Challenge: 29,645 views — I understand why pizza is popular.

funny quotes about Mondays, part 2: 27,956 views — More Monday content.

caption contest, unfair sumo wrestling match: 21,803 views — I enjoy the caption contests. FYI, you can still comment on old ones — your comments will show up in the sidebar (on desktop anyway), so they will still be noticed.

Dr. Bunsen Honeydew & Beaker – top boffins: 21,531 views — It’s humorous that a serious science event choose the Muppets scientists to represent them. Their experiments fail rather often, but that makes them more funny.

I want a tank to drive around town: 20,571 views — This is both a great idea and a terrible idea, which makes it fun to think about.

new Pizza Hut crusts, plus our ideas: 15,021 views — More pizza in the top list. But I still haven’t heard of anyone using our idea of putting bacon in the edges of the crust. Why not make it more awesome?

some random quotes for your Monday morning: 13,414 views — These aren’t about Mondays, but apparently including Monday in the title was enough to make it popular. Hmm…

Are dinosaurs extinct because of their farting?: 12,212 views — I don’t know how many people care about this hypothesis, but dinosaurs are popular and farting is popular, so maybe combining them adds to more popularity.

I’m going to split this look back up into several posts, because this has become rather time-consuming — partly because I’m enjoying looking back at the highlights. So I’m going to continue the celebration in the next post.

the best humor blog

Are you looking for the best humor blog on the internet? Then congratulations, because you found it! Hooray! Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah! Huzzah!

Now, are you looking for some quantitative or qualitative data to prove this? Is this verified? As far as you know… 🙂 Well, you’re reading it on the internet, so it must be true! </sarcasm> There’s no time for that kind of debate, and besides, it’s not needed today. See, it’s April Fools Day, where you can say anything you want, and if it’s not true, then it’s a joke. However, I’m not saying that I’m joking here. This could be, by some reasonable account, the best humor blog. It has been described as “the best content EVER” by an actual reader who is not a family member. So there’s proof! Do you believe? If you are have doubts, then you should read more to become convinced. Subscribe to get emails of new posts so you may experience the awesomeness for yourself, and/or browse the archives at every available convenience.

Will everyone find this blog awesome? Sadly, no. There hasn’t been much research on why that is, but perhaps people need to attain a certain level of awesomeness to grasp and fathom the awesomeness herein. If you aren’t that awesome yet (and you can know you’re awesome yet be humble about it), could you become more awesome by reading this blog regularly? It sure wouldn’t hurt! It might help. I mean, being around awesome people tends to improve your awesomeness, so it stands to reason. And if you can’t be with us in person, then joining us in our corner of the internet is the next best thing I reckon. So pull up a chair (that means subscribe BTW), and join the fun. Leave comments when you have something amusing to add. (Community does make it better. Some of the best posts are the ones with the most discussion from interesting characters. I’ll share some in the next post for an example.)

That concludes today’s daily rambling. Thank you for being here. It takes people like you to make people like us. Enjoy the rest of your day (and remember to make it awesome).

making diamonds from peanut butter

That subject sounds like something I might just make up and write about to be silly and random. But it’s actual science! Someone has actually done this!

The article explaining this starts out in a really interesting way:

Every so often, Dan Frost hears a dull thud and his office floor vibrates. It can only mean one thing: one of his experiments has exploded again. Making his way downstairs to his lab, he finds the shock is written on the faces of his colleagues still in the lab. … The odd explosion is part of the job.

Sounds like fun! Well, until it isn’t. Explosions are interesting, until they destroy things, which they are apt to do. But sometimes that’s the cost of figuring things out.

The reason for the explosions is that his team is trying to mimic the forces of Earth’s lower mantle thousands of miles underground. That is where diamonds are formed naturally. Their machine uses a piston to squeeze crystals at up to 280,000 times atmospheric pressure. To put that in perspective, your body wouldn’t do well at anything above 30 atmospheric pressures (atm). You would need a special suit and a special source of air to survive above that, because the air density changes and weird things happen. But I digress…

The second part of the process is using an anvil made of diamonds to squeeze the crystals with 1.3 million times atmospheric pressure. It uses sound waves traveling through the crystal to determine whether it is similar to the composition of the mantle, by comparing it to known seismic waves travelling through the Earth.

His experiments have led to some unexpected data about the composition of the Earth’s mantle and that there may be “oceans” of water hidden deep in the mantle. He has also learned how to make diamonds. It won’t make him rich — it takes a lot of time and energy for this process, more cost than the diamonds are worth. But it does have real-world applications in other fields.

As for converting peanut butter to diamonds, he has tried various sources for ingredients. A German TV station asked him about using peanut butter, so he tried it and it actually worked, but then “a lot of hydrogen was released that destroyed the experiment”. The article doesn’t explain what that means. Were the diamond destroyed? If so, that’s some explosion!

You could say that he made peanut butter explode. 🙂 Isn’t science interesting?