K-Squared Ramblings

Survived a Mild Slashdotting

This server weathered its first Slashdotting last Friday, or at least the first I’ve noticed. But then, it was a mild one compared to some reports I’ve seen.

While writing up my commentary on IE dropping WGA last Thursday, I realized that the original story was perfect for Slashdot. It had Microsoft, anti-piracy methods with privacy concerns, Internet Explorer and browser marketshare. So I looked to see if the IE team’s post was on the Firehose already, didn’t see it, and wrote up a quick submission. I also realized that I had an opportunity to plug the Alternative Browser Alliance in the text of the submission—something that I hadn’t been able to do on previous stories I’d submitted. (This is my 6th Slashdot submission to be accepted.)

So I submitted it Thursday evening, got a couple of dozen hits from the Firehose, and it got accepted around 11:30 pm, local time. I took precautions in case the traffic spilled over onto the blog, like turning on WP-Cache and disabling a few plugins, then went to bed. Read the rest of this entry »

Tertiary Slashdotting

Today I noticed a spike in traffic coming from a post on Spread Firefox where I had made a comment. Not a ton of traffic, just ~10 ~15 hits from the same page on the same day, but that’s unusual for traffic from SFX posts—especially old ones. I checked to see if it had climbed into the site’s list of top posts (the usual explanation), but it wasn’t there. I just couldn’t figure out what was causing the traffic.

Then I realized the author of that post had another story show up on Slashdot today. I discovered this chain of links:

1. Slashdot: Just what has Microsoft been doing for IE 7?
2. Idealog: Microsoft Drops The Ball on Internet Explorer 7 Standards Compliance
3. SFX: Should NewsCloud.com Remain Firefox Only?
4. The Alternative Browser Alliance (via signature in comment)

You can see how powerful the Slashdot effect is, if it can cause a noticeable (if minor) spike in traffic to a page 3 degrees away!

Of course, it pales next to being linked from the ISC Handler’s Diary, which seems to have pulled in 15 10 times as many visitors in 2 days. (Thanks!)

Choo-Choo Sandwich? Auughhh!

There are some things that no self-respecting Something Positive reader wants to see, and this recipe is among them:

Poor Choo-Choo Bear! Disguising yourself as a pitcher is one thing, but being turned into a sandwich? Alas, such a sad, sad fate for everyone’s favorite amorphous kitty.

(At least the sandwich probably won’t be as pink as Slashdot’s OMG Ponies! theme.)

Source: the Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book : (1953 Classic Edition), page 297.