A Ton of Retrospective

Today, I want to take a little time (or a lot, I’m not sure yet) to reflect on the long and illustrious history of this beacon of internet integrity: A Ton of Bricks, the Blog.

It all started back in June. I was bored, and typing things at work makes me sound busy. I’ve got this big old keyboard that makes loud clackety-clack noises when I type, so everyone thinks, “oh, wow, he must be very busy, he is typing so much.” So I thought to myself, “hey, why don’t you write some crazy garbage and then,” and this is the clincher “put it on the internet so everybody can see it?” And then I answered myself, I said, “Self, that might be stupid, but let’s do it anyway!” And thus was born A Ton Of Bricks. Actually, thus was supposed to be born Anthropomorph (a way cooler name, don’t you think?) but that was already taken so I had to think of something else. And what sucks even more is that the Anthropomorph blog really sucks. I mean it hasn't been updated in like, ten months!

Within 4 days, my readership grew by over 500%. I mean, it went from me to me, my wife and three (of four!) friends. One of my friends, Mike, already had his own blog so I could even put a link on my blog to his. It was sweet. It was even sweeter when he put a link on his blog to mine. And from there, things just blew up! My wife started one, and so did everybody else! Literally. I think the ratio of blogs to people in the world is now approximately 15:1. But a lot of those blogs are just trying to sell me stuff like Viagara and real estate and those weird protein shake things. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, things blowing up. Once, I saw a video of a chemical plant blowing up.

Anyway, before we get to my greatest hits and moments from the past four months (you knew that was coming, didn’t you?) let’s do some scientific analysis of my blog’s history. If you are reading this and thinking “he has too much time on his hands,” you are wrong. My watch died three days ago, so I have no time on my hands and it is driving me crazy. Back to the topic at hand (why am I talking about hands so much???), the blog. The following chart shows both the trend in cumulative words written and the weekly rolling average of words per day, that is, the average number of words written per day for the last week.


As you can see, prior to this post, I have written almost 40,000 words. Okay, a lot of those words come from poems I didn’t write, but I still had to take the time to copy and paste them. The bottom line is that that is a lot of words. And they are all completely useless. I could have used those 40,000 words to write the first 75 pages of a novel or something. Instead, I just polluted the internet with worthless tripe. Unless you’re a publishing agent and you like what you see, then give me a book deal! I will turn you down flat, but then I can tell people at parties that I was offered a book deal by a big company but I turned them down because I am not a sell-out. Unless the money is big enough. Then I’ll be a sell out. Also, please notice that there are no long term trends in the rolling average of words per day. I guess that means I’m pretty consistent. Although there is a trend that I never write anything on the weekends. That’s because I’m not at work. My overall average words per day is 364.7. On days that I make a post, the median is 444 words. The following chart shows how that is broken up among the days of the week.


I guess it should come as no surprise that I apparently get more and more bored as the week goes on, that’s why Friday has the most words. And I know that I just claimed not to write on the weekends, but those average numbers for Saturday and Sunday are just vestigial results from my first few weeks when I had so much to say that I just had to write on weekends.

Finally, to give you a good idea of how the words are distributed in terms of words per day, the following chart shows the frequency distribution of words per day over a range of values.


You can see that this distribution is definitely not normal. It is very highly skewed to the left, and would probably be best modeled as a Poisson distribution, since it is indeed discrete. A Poisson distribution is defined as a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed time if these events occur with a known average rate, and are independent of the time since the last event. If you don’t believe me, check this out smarty-pants. I’d estimate the lambda for this distribution, but I don’t really feel like it.

So, after hitting you over the head with some pointless and inconclusive statistical analysis, let’s get to what we all came for in the first place. Remineshen….Reminescences….Reminiscences. There, that’s got it right!

So, follow me as we step back in time and relive some of A Ton of Bricks greatest moments.

This beauty is from July…. “And I was like, "weird, man." Could it just be a coincidence that, within ten minutes, we had seen both the original song and the spoof version ON THE VERY SAME TV???? No way. I figure that the universe was about to "do me in" or something, but at the last minute, totally wussed out because it had grown accustomed to my face. Lucky for me I've got such a lovable face.” That was such an awesome post!

And do you remember this one from July 15th? “And to think that this post started off in my head as a social commentary on why yuppies and hipsters are so stupid. Maybe next time I guess.” I don’t even care what the rest of the post was about, yuppies and hipsters ARE stupid! Ha ha ha!

I still stand by this quotation! “Even if I became the most famous blogger in the whole wide world, I would still never write a book related to it because, come on, that's just stupid.”

And who can forget my first List Tuesday post? You know, the one that included this nugget of wisdom? “The black squirrels that can be seen in various places in the district, especially in the northwest, are not indigenous to the area. Although they are the same species as the common grey squirrel, the black variety were originally brought down from Canada around the turn of the 20th century. Much like the all-too-common Labatt's Blue.”

Let’s not forget this one! “So I take the exit, turn right towards where I can see the truck sitting at a stop sign waiting for me. The following conversation ensues.

Me: Is something the matter?

Him: Can I interest you in a blowjob?

Me:..............Ummmmmmmm..................What??????

Him: Can I interest you in a blowjob?

Me: No! (while simultaneously flooring it)”

And then, remember when I introduced Random Picture Friday? That was so cool. “I stumbled across this little beauty: Livejournal pictures (I'd put the link directly to the post, but I don't know how. It's about 2/3 of the way down the April archive). This post contains the link to a great little page that shows you the last 40 pictures uploaded on Livejournal by anyone, anywhere. It is......fun, to say the least. Here ya go. Enjoy. Please note that some people post some really weird (alright, sick) stuff to their Livejournals, so watch out.”

And I know I still don’t like the misuse of irony! “Rain on your wedding day.
Not ironic, it just sucks.

10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife.
Not ironic. What would be ironic is if you had 10,000 knives yesterday, but you needed a spoon.

A free ride, when you already paid.
How could it be a free ride if you paid? Not only is this not ironic, it doesn't even make sense!

A death row pardon, two minutes too late.
Okay, that is ironic.”

And now, for my penultimate hit, that one time when I wrote about that one thing, remember? “Anyway, in reading this biography I have been formulating a horribly hackneyed and clichéd theory that dying or killing yourself will make you more famouser than other people. The following are a few unresearched and undocumented and sketchy case studies to "prove" my point.” Yeah, that was great.

And now, for the my greatest hit, I know you all remember this one….. “It is very highly skewed to the left, and would probably be best modeled as a Poisson distribution, since it is indeed discrete. A Poisson distribution is defined as a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed time if these events occur with a known average rate, and are independent of the time since the last event. If you don’t believe me, check this out smarty-pants. I’d estimate the lambda for this distribution, but I don’t really feel like it.” That one is so good I almost peed my pants.

Actually, there's probably some more good ones, I just got tired of looking. If you have any favorites that didn't show up on this list, let me know so I can read them and then do a total retread of them and pretend it's a new post!

Well, peace out, y’all.


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