A brain transplant that doesn’t take.

I think it is time for a rant: our blog is celebrating the first month-day (one month from birth plus one). Thus I will celebrate by telling you all the nonsense I have learned in the past month and I will tell you some other secrets as well.  So if you want to read a lot of silly stuff, go ahead. If you don’t I won’t blame you.

The first few things are lists of stuff related to blogging in general. I will put them as collections of useful lists of randomness.

What to expect when you are blogging.

1. If you have never done it before, panic!
2. Panic some more after your first post.
3. More panic when people you know start adding comments.
4. Panic again when the unknowns start adding comments.
5. Even more panic when the spammers start hitting your blog. 
6. You’re sick and tired of panic, so now you just get mildly discomforted.
7. Lots of time spent taking care of your blog until you stop loosing sleep over it.
8. Now you get into a habit and start feeling more comfortable.
9. Panic again because you need to add content frequently.
10. You get tired of panic once and for all and if you have survived it, the blog starts taking off.

Ok, so the second list, is stuff that seems to work to get people’s attention (based on one month statistics, past returns are no guarantee for future returns).

How to make your blog a success.

1. It’s the end of the world, the LHC is gong to kill us all kind of thing.
2. Talk about something polemical where people have strong opinions.
3. Draw cartoons of round cows. 
4. Be self-referential (it forces people to go through your old posts therefore recycling material and working less for the blog).
5. Make lists like this one.
6. Use the delayed publishing button to make it seem that you are awake at 2 am. That way you look like you care.
7.  Better than that, if you are awake at 2 am writing posts, use the delayed publishing button to  make it look as if you were asleep by having the post show up at 5pm. This way you will not be considered a freak.

Beware of the following words: spammers seem to like em.

1. Recipe
2. Money
3. Cooking
4. You know most of the others and we won’t print them here. ( We don’t have enough statistics on these, so we can’t confirm or deny them).

Finally, if you are considering a brain transplant, it just does not take. Let me tell you a personal story: I realized that Monday I had to do what amounts to brain surgery. That is, installing a new OS on my computer. After the computer told me that it had to erase everything before proceeding, I hesitated and tried the instructions for a full backup that would make it happen without me loosing everything. For some reason, the backup didn’t take (still checking on that) and the brain transplant was aborted before any long lasting damage was done. Now I need to waste many more hours on Thursday making it happen.

 
Finally, realize that you are never going to please every reader, so it is not worth bothering to try. However, many people seem to like random links to take them to places that they had not expected (like the wikipedia in Japanese), but this week being the week when nobel prizes are announced, I thought I’d provide you with the link. And just to show that we are impartial, here is the link for this years ig-nobel prize. (Thanks Jim)