Warren (a lead developer on the IE team) asked me the other day what posts on my blog have been the most popular, so I thought I'd check the stats.

The list has been reasonably stable for a while now. Here are the top ten articles as measured by page views since Jan 1, 2007.

1. Pokemon Rocks Seattle! (by a long shot and with a huge, huge lead in comments.)
2. The Best Rum in the World
3. The Best Way to Cook Bacon
4. Amazing video of octopus attacking a shark
5. Cub Scout Hell
6. Big Butts (I think people come to this page looking for something else...)
7. Bud Lite Ads
8. Changing the Default Source Editor in IE
9. Call CPS!
10. World's Best Flashlight

The most popular category searches are

1. Random Cool Stuff
2. Travel
3. Kids
4. Food and Drink
5. Random Junk

37% of the traffic on my site is the comments page; given the relatively low number of legitimate comments, I suspect most of this is blog spammers trying to get it (I get hundreds of spam comments per day). 20% of the traffic is my RSS feed, so I'm guessing most people read the site via an aggregator (hopefully IE7!) The tonychor.com home page is the single page with the most traffic at 2.66%.

Google domains from various countries are by far the largest referrers, accounting for a whopping 85% of all my page views. Yahoo domains are a distant second at 6%. Live and MSN total 4.3%. I know my site is just one data point, but it highlights a few things to me. First, Google is completely dominant in the search space; the lead they have is huge. Second, the big three (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft) really own all the traffic. These three account for over 95% of all my referrals. The others don't even show up.

Anyway, there's your daily dose of trivia.

Wow, this is incredible. Who knew how much influence this silly blog has? The love of bacon transcends all. (Here's the oven-baked bacon recipe.)

Thanks, Chooky, for the link.

[Fixed typo 2/9/2007]

Well, obviously, since I did the superhero test, I had to do the super villain test for completeness. But, I really will stop doing these surveys (for a while anyway).

 

You are Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor 73% Dr. Doom 73% Apocalypse 63% Magneto 60% The Joker 56% Venom 55% Mr. Freeze 54% Kingpin 54% Juggernaut 53% Mystique 53% Dark Phoenix 46% Poison Ivy 38% Riddler 37% Green Goblin 37% Catwoman 32% Two-Face 17%

A brilliant businessman on a quest for world domination and the self-proclaimed greatest criminal mind of our time!

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Um, I suppose some might think it funny that the IE guy from Microsoft would get Lex "businessman on a quest for world domination..." Luthor. I think it's just an unfortunate coincidence. Dr. Doom is really no better here, I guess. Maybe I'd prefer to be Magneto; at least he's a little principled about his world domination efforts.

Can't...stop...doing...web...surveys. [gasp]

 

You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 85% Iron Man 85% The Flash 60% Superman 55% Robin 53% Green Lantern 50% Hulk 45% Catwoman 45% Supergirl 38% Batman 35% Wonder Woman 28%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

I've always liked Spiderman. I also have always liked Ironman because he's a rich, good looking geeky, ladies man - something to aspire to. (Besides Tony Stark and I share the same first name).

OK, what are you?

[Apologies to anyone who got this post twice. The HTML from the survey results was interacting badly with the Moveable Type, so I had to take down this post and repost with Windows Live Writer.]

Must stop doing these stupid surveys.

I post this one without comment, but if you're thirsty for rum now, try this one.

You Are Rum

You're the life of the party, and a total flirt You are also pretty picky about what you drink Only the finest labels and best mixed cocktails will do Except if you're dieting - then it's Diet Coke and Bicardi all the way

Well, it seems that Veshengri (whoever she is) is a fan of random web surveys (regular readers will recall that I have been known to indulge in these from time to time as well...). Here's a fun one for you Firefly lovers out there.

I'm not sure I consider myself a "nice kinda crazy", but there you go. These web surveys never lie. :) If you're bored, here and here are piles of other surveys.

OK, Browncoats, what are you? (BTW, I can't believe that Wikipedia has an article dedicated to the Browncoats from Firefly.)

You scored as Kaylee (Kaywinnet Lee) Frye. The Mechanic. You are a natural mechanic, and you are far too sweet and cheerful to live out here. How you can see the good in everyone around you boggles the mind occasionally. Still you don't seem to be any crazier than that, and it is a nice kinda crazy. Kaylee (Kaywinnet Lee) Frye 75% The Operative 69% Capt. Mal Reynolds 69% Jayne Cobb 63% Inara Serra 63% Zoe Alleyne Washburne 50% Hoban 'Wash' Washburne 44% Shepherd Derrial Book 44% Simon Tam 44% River Tam 38% Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

[Fixed a bunch of errors on this page 12/28/2006]

I found this fun survey on Veshengri. I'm not sure who this woman is, but she linked to me, so I figured it would be courteous to link back. Besides, she lives in Minnesota; we Minnesotans need to stick together.

The results below seem about right. I've lived in Minnesota, California, and Washington State, worked with and gone to school with people from around the country, and am married to a woman from Florida. My English is probably a big mashup of dialect. Not sure where the 10% Yankee came from; must be the snob in me...

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

10% Upper Midwestern

10% Yankee

5% Dixie

5% Midwestern

What are you?

[Fixed a typo that resulted from the sticky G key on our kitchen computer 12/28/2006]

This is a fun test to see if you can recognize several popular web company logos. I failed miserably.

http://www.guessthelogo.com/

Congrats to the Windows Media Player team for shipping a great WMP 11. As I mentioned before, I really like it a lot.

You can get here -- check it out!

Michelle and I have been watching the TEDTalks for a while now. These are videos of talks given at TED2006, the Technology Entertainment, and Design conference held in Monterey, CA. So far the speakers have been incredibly interesting. I've especially enjoyed a few:

• Al Gore: He's life-like and even charming here. If he'd shown half this much humanity during the campaign, he would have won.
• Tony Robbins: The talk is too short for him to provide any real content, but he's simply a fantastic speaker. His talk a great demonstration of public speaking technique.
• Hans Rosling: This professor of international health does an incredible job of bringing global health data to life. It's worth watching the video just to see the data presentation alone; it really sets a new bar for me on how to present tons of data.
• Jeff Han: He demonstrates a pretty cool multi-touch user interface here. Fun stuff.
• Jennifer Lin: This fourteen year old concert pianist is amazing. The coolest part is that she improvs a concerto at the end from a randomly chosen five note theme (actually picked by Goldie Hawn, who was in the audience.) In aome ways, hers was the most mind-blowing talk to me because her talent is the furthest from mine.
• Joshua Prince-Ramus: He's the architect of the spectacular Seattle Central Library. I love the way he functionally breaks down the tasks and roles the buildings play, consider the limitations, and then recombines the solutions into functional art.

There are a bunch more talks I need to watch. I'm particularly interested to see Jimmy Wales' talk (he's the founder of Wikipedia, my new fascination) and Mena Trott's talk (she's the founder of Six Apart, the company that makes Moveable Type, my blog software.) Steven Levitt (Freakonomics), Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point and Blink), and Nicholas Negroponte (One Laptop Per Child and former Director of the MIT Media Lab) are on my list too.

It's worth checking out. You can get the podcasts through iTunes and the site too.