If I'd known I was going to get all this company, I would have cleaned the place up a little. My "Should your website have a Flash intro" flow chart turned out to be very popular onReddit (and a few other sites). So much so that it was the top post on Reddit for most of the day and it was the top post for the day on Wordpress. When you're as shallow and ego-driven as me, this makes for a good day.
Although, in all seriousness, I really would have taken more care with the post if I had known so many people were going to see it. There were a couple of appalling typos in the first paragraph (which I've since fixed) and several people rightly pointed out that thejpeg of the flow chart I embedded looked kind of shit. I didn't bother to change the image. Give me a fucking break - it's a hostedblog that doesn't make me any money, how much of a shit am I actually expected to give?
I did get a good laugh out of the goon who had no idea how stupid he made himself look telling me to fix my "grammer". It's always a good idea to make sure you haven't made any mistakes with your own spelling or grammar if you're going to criticise someone else. Besides, if I wanted to get really pedantic towards annoying pedants I'd make a big show of pointing out that they were typos, not errors of grammar.
I would like to say thank you to all the supportive commenters, both here and on Reddit. That ratio of positive people to morons has been truly gratifying. Maybe some of you might even come back.
One of the things I found interesting is the recurring theme of people who want to show how clever they are by pointing out who did something "first". You don't have to do comedy/satire for very long before you realise there really aren't any new jokes. And you don't have to put your work out to public view for very long before you see how many people who will never create anything original of their own are eager to find fault in what you do.
This Toothpaste for Dinner cartoon was pointed out to me - it is essentially the same joke but I'd honestly never seen it before. It just shows that it isn't a particularly original idea for a joke. One person in particular was obsessed that I'd ripped of this blog post (referring to it here on my blog and on Reddit as "the original"). True, this one is actually about using Flash (for a whole site rather than an intro) but I'm not shy about saying (a) I'd definitely never see it before and (b) mine is way clearer in its intent and, in my not so humble opinion, way better.
The flowchart I'd actually seen a little while ago that was what I was thinking of when I did mine was about showing cops when to use ataser (hint: only use a taser if the only alternative is using your gun). I wish I could find it but I spent all day searching with no luck. So I'm copping to it barely qualifying as an original idea but the self-proclaimed "orignal police" got the specifics wrong.
One last thing about the day that made me laugh (which probably won't make anyone else laugh). This blog had settled into about 600 views a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. And here's the stats chart for the big day:
That line at the bottom isn't at zero. It varies beteen 500-800. But when the day's total went over 60,000 it's so out of scale with previous totals that it looks like it used to be zero.
This is my third most popular post by the way. My most popular post was about the diet pill "alli" that makes you shit oil uncontrollably. I'm not sure if this is a step up.
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