Revision as of 17:28, 13 September 2014

Blogofractal

Edward Tufte's 'The Visual Display of Quantitative Information' is a fantastic book, and should be required reading for anyone in either the sciences or graphic design.

Title text: Edward Tufte's 'The Visual Display of Quantitative Information' is a fantastic book, and should be required reading for anyone in either the sciences or graphic design.

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Many of the memes need explanations.
If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Explanation

The Blogosphere is a blanket term for all the blogs on the internet, that link together and share information to the extent that the term "blogosphere" arose to describe the collective of blogs. This comic proposes a new structure for defining all blogs by: a fractal of blogs.

Edward Tufte is a statistician who worked on data visualization and wrote books on the subject, including "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information", as mentioned in the title text.

Meme	Explanation
TripMaster Monkey says	Tripmaster Monkey is a book by Maxine Hong Kingston about Wittman Ah Sing, an american graduate of chinese heritage. 'Monkey says' may be based on the saying 'Monkey See, Monkey Do'.
118th Post!!	A riff on the "first post" phenomenon.
Wikiconstitution!
OMG	Common acronym for "Oh My God", often used in messaging.
DeCSS	DeCSS was a piece of code for decrypting DVDs. There was a significant effort to prevent this code from being distributed, which triggered the Streisand effect.
Casemod your Boyfriend!!	Case modding is the modification of a computer chassis (or less commonly other devices), usually to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Casemodding a boyfriend would therefore attempt to make him more attractive.
FLICKR	A well known photo sharing site.
They're saying on Kos that	The Daily Kos is a web blog which publishes news and opinions about american politics, from a liberal standpoint. Alternatively, Kos is a greek island and popular holiday destination.
http://slashdot.org/articl	Slashdot is a technology-related news website frequented by geeks.
tagCloud	A Tag Cloud is a visual representation of keyword meta-data, usually with font size increasing with importance.
Cory Doctorow is a little upset about copyright law.	This is an understatement. Cory Doctorow is a strong activist in this area.
Hey guys what if Google is evil?!?	Don't be evil is the corporate motto of Google, however the sheer quantity of data held by Google is a somewhat scary thought. A number of conspiracy theories exist that Google is evil, bent on world domination, run by the government/CIA/FBI/illuminati/aliens.
I'll sleep with you for a FreeIpods deal.
FirstPsot!!	Some users on sites that accept comments will race to write the first comment (usually saying something like "First post!" or some variation thereof).
Snakes on an I don't Even Care Anymore	There were many jokes about Snakes on a Plane where a supposedly new movie to come out was named "Snakes on a ______". Clearly this person is tired of those jokes. See also 107: Snakes on a Plane! 2
KiwiWiki	A New Zealand (Kiwi) related wiki exists at kiwiwiki.co.nz, and this is likely included because Kiwi is an anagram of Wiki.
CSS	Reference to Cascading Style Sheets.
Comments (0)	The number of comments is zero, sometimes indicating that nobody cares.
Blogotesseract
¡play games!
[RSS icon.]	RSS is a standard for web feeds.
is AYB retro yet?	The shoot-'em-up game "Zero Wing" on SEGA's Genesis console features an English translation so terrible it has long been a source of memetic humor. The line in question is, "All Your Base are belong to us!"
Google Google Google Apple Google Goog
Cheney totally shot a dude!!!	A reference to Dick Cheney hunting incident.
Watch this toddler get owned by a squirrel!!!	An example of clickbait, usually a sensationalised headline which links to a page or video which is either of passing interesting or none at all. 'Funny' videos of animals and babies/toddlers tend to spread like wildfire online.
Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers	A reference to a widely circulated video, captured at a developers' conference, features a perspiring Ballmer chanting the word "developers"
I installed a Mac Mini inside ANOTHER Mac Mini!
Check out this vid of Jon Stewart
9-11 <-> Trent Lott!
Web 7.1
Kryptonite™ locks vulnerable to "keys!"	In about 2004, it was demonstrated that some tubular pin tumbler locks of the diameter used on Kryptonite locks could easily be opened with the shaft of an inexpensive Bic ballpoint pen of matching diameter, and this was widely reported.
Interesting post! Check out my blog, it has useful info on CARBON MONOXIDE LITIGATION	An example of a spam comment found where users can comment.
FIREFLY!!	Reference to Firefly (TV series)
HELP ME
Engadget
Boing Boing	Reference to collaborative blog site Boing Boing.
Gizmodo
MAKE Blog: DIY baby
My friend has a band!!
Jon released an exploit in the protocol for meeting girls.
Internets!
Howard Dean?
So I hear there's a hurricane.
We should elect this dude!
Google Maps is da best!!
Moderation: +1 Sassy	A joke on Slashdot's moderating mechanism. Each post can get a moderation that consists of a score (+1/-1) and a reason (Insightful/Funny/Troll/etc.) "Sassy" is not one of the standard reasons.
RSS!	RSS again.
A-list
<3	Emoticon for a heart.
Trackable URL?
I shot a man in Reno check it out on YouTube!	The first half of this line comes from Jonny Cash's song "Folsom Prison Blues", which is "But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die". The second half turns it around, because people often say "I did X, watch it on YouTube".
HEY LOOK ROBOTS!
Net Neutrality!	Net neutrality is a hot topic. It is the principle that ISPs and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally. There is great debate as to what level this should be enforced or not, and whether it should be regulated.
Friends Only.
Dupe!	A common note if the same thing gets posted twice on some forum. (Short for "duplicate".)
AJAX?
COMPLY
Cowboy Neal
Blogodrome
Hey look I got Linux running on my tonsils!	People would often brag about getting linux to run on strange hardware, from toasters to esoteric computers. This is taken to the ridiculous extreme of tonsils.
Look alive, blogonauts!
Cafepress cockrings
BOOBIES!!	Another reference to the "First Post" phenomenon. The popular news site FARK automatically changes entries of "First post" to "BOOBIES" and modifies the timestamp to be many hours in the future.
MIA
A Beowulf Cluster... of BLOGS!!	A Beowulf cluster is a computer cluster of computers networked together resulting in a high-performance parallel computing cluster. For a while, it was a fad to get one running on various strange platforms. This is a facetious example.
SPOILER ALERT	Often stated on the top of a post that contained spoilers. (See Spoiler (media).)
Dupe!	This is the second instance of this, and therefore a dupe itself.
You have been eaten by a Grue.
Ruby on a monorail	A riff on the name Ruby on Rails, a common platform for web applications.
Lesbians!
DNF Released!
Steampunk
BLAG
PONIES!
Xeni found some porn!
IRONY
LIARS!
Linux on Rails!	Another riff on the name Ruby on Rails.
Blogocube
del.icio.us!
404	Probably the most common error gotten in a web browser: HTTP 404.
o.O	An emoticon indicating confusion.
Don't slam the source when you close it.	The original phrase (generally spoken from parents to children) is "Don't slam the door when you close it." This twists it around to refer to Closed source software.

Transcript

From the makers of the Blogosphere, Blogocube, and Blogodrome comes

the Blogofractal

[A large rectangle subdivided into rectangles in a fractal pattern, most with a phrase or word inside.]

[Mostly left to right from top-left corner.]

TripMaster Monkey says

118th Post!!

Wikiconstitution!

OMG

DeCSS

Casemod your Boyfriend!!

FLICKR

They're saying on Kos that

http://slashdot.org/articl

Discussion

Strange - this explanation seems significantly less complete than 24: Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey and not significantly less complex - anyone care to weight in on that thought? -- Brettpeirce (talk) 13:31, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Davidy22 picks the daily incomplete explanation randomly from the list of incomplete explanations. So, each page has a fair chance of getting picked, but they don't necessarily have a rating of "needs most help" to "doesn't need much help" that is used to pick. Feel free to work on other explanations. The banner is just to help new users who want to jump in and get their hands dirty but don't know where to start. lcarsos_a (talk) 19:29, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Ponies is *not* a reference to My Little Pony (or at least, it cannot be one to the "Friendship is Magic" incarnation.) This comic is from 2006. FIM didn't debut until 2010. Either Randall has a time machine (a possibility one cannot, of course, completely exclude), or the reference is to something earlier. 199.27.133.122 23:44, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Makes me wonder what state MLP was in at that time. G3? G3.5 (also known as the Hell Babies edition)? --103.22.201.132 06:55, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Ponies may be a reference to the OMG Ponies! theme that attacked slashdot for April Fools Day back in that timeframe (my eyes still burn when I think about it).Seebert (talk) 21:52, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Why does he misspell "blagosphere"? What's this "blog" stuff? 108.162.218.118 05:08, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Since "web 2.0" is the current thing, "web 7.1" could also be a reference to the different surround sound configurations 2.0 and 5.1 and 7.1. 141.101.80.75 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Could CSS be Counter Strike? Source, specifically. It’s the only thing I’ve ever heard of as CSS. Netherin5 (talk) 16:03, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

And not one Blagojevich reference, even though that would've been contemporaneous to the comic. Blah. — Kazvorpal (talk) 01:41, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Does anyone know when Dandified Yum (DNF), the open source package manager for Fedora started development? If it was before this comic was released, then it is possible it could be referring to that. 162.158.62.157 12:23, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

@@ Line 141: / Line 141: @@
 |Cafepress cockrings ||
 |-
-|BOOBIES!! || A reference to the "First Post" phenomenon.  The popular news site FARM automatically changes entries of "First post" to "BOOBIES" and modifies the timestamp to be many hours in the future.
+|BOOBIES!! || Another reference to the "First Post" phenomenon.  The popular news site FARK automatically changes entries of "First post" to "BOOBIES" and modifies the timestamp to be many hours in the future.
 |-
 |MIA ||

Difference between revisions of "124: Blogofractal"

Revision as of 17:28, 13 September 2014

Explanation

Transcript

Discussion

Navigation menu

Personal tools

Namespaces

Variants

Views

More

Search

Navigation

Tools

Ads