K-Squared Ramblings

Tracing the Premio Dardo

The “Premio Dardo” award has been sweeping through comics blogs over the last week or two, and Groovy Superhero bestowed it upon my comics blog, Speed Force. The idea is that someone gives you the award, then you pass it along to other bloggers you appreciate.

It’s basically a chain letter or tagging meme, in the form of an award.

I was curious as to where the meme actually came from, and did some digging. I didn’t find much of anything conclusive, but I did find some interesting things:

• “Premio Dardo” means “Dart Award” in Spanish, which fits with the “I Entrega de Premios Dardo 2008″ text. (This means that “Premio Dardo Award” is kind of like “La Brea Tar Pits” in that it literally means “Dart Award Award.”)
• The oldest post I could find in English was October 29, 2008
• Looking up the Spanish phrase from the image, I was able to trace it as far back as February 2008 on Spanish-language blogs.
• There are at least two versions of the image: One large, with text in the empty space at the lower left. The other small, with a black border and text in the border like the much-parodied motivational posters, and labeled as “Premio Dardos.”
• There are at least two different descriptions of the award in English:
  

  This award acknowledges the values that every blogger shows in his or her effort to transmit cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values every day.

  and

  The PREMIO DARDO is designed to recognize unique voices and visions on the Web as well as to promote fraternization amongst bloggers of all sorts.

• The number of blogs you’re expected to pass along the award to is variously given as 5, 10, 12, and 15.
• Blogspot’s search doesn’t seem to work.

The text on the oldest version I could find reads:

La I Entrega de Premios Dardo 2008 se abre paso entre un gran elenco de Premios de reconocido prestigio en el mundo de la literatura, y con el reconoce los valores que cada blogger muestra cada día en su empeño por transmitir valores culturales, éticos, literarios, personal, etc.., que en suma, demuestra su creatividad a través su pensamiento vivo que está y permanece, innato entre sus letras, entre sus palabras rotas”. El premio debe acoger en su interior a un mínimo de 15 bloggers

Roughly translated:

The Dart Awards Ceremony I 2008 appears among a large list of prestigious awards in the world of literature, and recognizes the values that each blogger shows each day in their efforts to convey cultural ethical, literary, personal, etc. values… in short, it demonstrates his creativity through his vibrant thoughts, which remain innate within the letters, torn between his words. ” The prize must encompass at least 15 bloggers

I surmise that:

• Somewhere late last year, the meme jumped from Spanish to English, with only a partial translation of the description.
• Somewhere along the line, the description fell off, and someone wrote a new one.
• Many recipients found it hard to choose 15 blogs, and shortened the list. The shorter number got passed along.

I do have to wonder about the branching factor.  Each recipient passes the meme along to 5–15 new recipients, which means that if they react quickly, the number of Premio Dardo recipients will increase dramatically (think Tribbles).  If it started out more than a year ago, it’s had plenty of time to overrun the blogosphere.  I can only assume that a significant fraction of people who receive it just ignore it, producing dead ends on its path.

Or maybe there are just a lot more blogs out there than I think there are.

Personality “Type”

I tried out the Typealizer, which purports to analyze the text of a blog and determine the author’s personality type. Interestingly enough, it came up with different results depending on which of my blogs I pointed it to.

LiveJournal: ESTP – The Doers
K-Squared Ramblings: ESTJ – The Guardians (technically this one’s a group blog, but it looks like the tool only grabs the front page.)
Speed Force: ENTJ – The Executives
Opera Community blog: ISTP – The Mechanics

I seem to recall coming out as INTJ the last time I took the Myers-Briggs personality profile. The funny thing is that 3 of 4 classified me as extroverted. If you’ve ever met me in person, you know I’m not an extrovert.

(via Laughing at the Pieces)

There’s a convention for everything

Here’s a weird one. it turns out that ROFLCon, dedicated to all those Internet fads, was held at MIT this past weekend. Found via the Mozilla blog: Firefox Spotted at ROFLCon (look there for a picture of a life-size Firefox mascot with Tronguy).

Blog Action Day is coming up

This morning I read about Blog Action Day, a campaign to get thousands of bloggers to write about the environment on October 15. I’ve actually got a draft post I’ve been working on that would fit the topic, so it’s an easy choice to make.

And for those of you who need a different kind of motivation, there’s a quiz: What kind of blogger are you?

I think that’s probably the first time I’ve ever been called a “socialite.” Frankly, I’m a bit disturbed. (And is it just my imagination, or does the drawing on that badge look a little like Neil Gaiman?)

Update Oct. 15: Here’s my post on water conservation in California. It’s actually not the one I had in mind, which I decided wasn’t quite on target, but I had some other ideas bouncing around in my head.

Update September 2008: They’ve taken everything down from 2007, including the images for the quiz results. I pulled a copy of the banner from the Wayback Machine and uploaded it locally.

(via Opera Community)

Geek Rivalries

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, now: the Geek Rivalries Meme

Star Trek or Babylon 5? Babylon 5
Windows or Linux? Linux
Windows or Macintosh? Mac
Farscape or Stargate? Farscape
Linux or BSD? Linux
Intel or AMD? AMD
Star Trek or Star Wars? Star Wars
Firefox or Internet Explorer? Firefox
Firefox or Opera? Firefox
Wordpress or Movable Type? Wordpress
Marvel or DC? DC
Neanderthal or Neandertal? Neanderthal (with the TH sound)
Slashdot or Digg? Slashdot
Anime: Dub or Sub? Subtitled
Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew? Dr. Pepper

The rules: You must choose one. If you like both, decide which one you like better. If you don’t like either of them, figure out which you dislike less.

Shuffling across the memetic landscape

Two months later, 12,500 pages mention Apple’s “Do not eat iPod shuffle” joke.

Ironically, one page that doesn’t mention it is the one that started it all. Apple has removed the footnote from its iPod shuffle product page. Sure, the comparison to a pack of gum is still there, but I guess enough people thought it was a stupid-lawyer trick instead of, you know, a joke.

Something I didn’t notice at the time, though: the U.K. version was worded differently: “Do not chew iPod shuffle.” Perhaps reflecting the relative populations, this phrase only pulls 48 hits (soon to be 49, I expect).