Who woulda thunk it?
Author: Steve
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SLU v. Princeton
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Sociological Reasons
Andrew Gelman quote via Tyler Cowen via The Monkey Cage
We originally wrote this article in Word, but then we converted it to Latex to make it look more like science.
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Volcanic Billikens
Well, the Billikens bombed in Atlantic City in the A-10 Tourney. They hoped for an NIT bid, but didn’t get it. Now as I await the announcement of the College Basketball Invitational teams, I share some Google trends.
In anticipating the NIT announcements, someone started a thread on Billikens.com titled NIT Selection Show. Google picked up this thread for its search engine, and for most of the day, it was the 3rd item that came up when you searched for NIT Selection Show. Well, the Billikens.com servers paid for that tonight. Here is a Google trend graph for “NIT Selection Show”
So as thousands of college basketball fans whose bubbles had burst googled NIT Selection Show, many came across Billikens.com. Before tonight, the most users that had been on the message board at one time was about 230. Tonight, we reached 437. Even on an upgraded server plan, we crashed a bunch.
The really interesting thing is to see the spike in people who searched for “College Basketball Invitational”. The NIT selection show ended at 9:30, and it seems people frantically hunted after then for another bubble to ride.
My guess is the x-axis is Pacific time. So as soon as the NIT Selection Show ended, Google got swarmed with CBI seekers.
Google called the above trends volcanic. The below is a preliminary graph of Billikens.com traffic tonight….Does sort of look like a Volcano.
Sorry if these Billikens.com posts are boring. The site has just been pretty interesting to me in the past month. Now, lets make the Billikens 2010 CBI Champions.
Update: SLU, GW, and Princeton all made the CBI. The final four could legitimately include each of those schools.
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billiken_roy still has some sway
The Billikens have been on a little tear recently. They have won eight of their last ten. With that, Billikens.com started receiving more and more visitors. In about a weeks time, traffic increased by about 150%. This put some strain on my server, so I upgraded. Likely for next year, as the Billikids grow up, I will need to further upgrade, which substantially increase hosting costs.
For those of you that don’t know, Billikens.com is funded entirely through donations. The site has no ads or subscription fees. So the generosity of the users is what pays the bills. We have had a fundraiser every two or three years since 2003.
To pay for upcoming server costs, I started a fundraiser a couple of weeks ago. In the first week about $140 rolled in. In the next week, another $25 rolled in.
billiken_roy, a longtime poster and friend, thought this was outrageous and posted the following this morning
those of you that havent donated to the cause should be ashamed of yourself. $170 as of today? that is all that we have sent. i would assume most are at least sending $25 or more which would mean about 6 or 7 people are all that has donated thus far? if i was steve i would post a list of the donators to at least give some recognition to the few that have the decency to enable all to enjoy this site.
I saw this and I went to lunch. I came back, checked my email, and there were seven new donations. By the end of the day, there were eight more. And this does not include those who said they put checks in the mail. $430 hit my inbox today.
Billikens.com has been a tremendous hobby. There have been times in which I have thought of giving it up. There have been other amusing moments. I have been running a site devoted to SLU basketball since I was 12. It will be quite strange when I don’t. Regardless, days like today will always impress me.
Now lets see how many Billikens.com users read SteveRogers.info.
For a fun tid bit, in the last month Billikens.com received more traffic from (each) the US, Canada, Australia, Spain, and Ireland than SteveRogers.info did altogether. China came up just short.
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CoolStreetNames.com
Last time I was in DC, my friend Vicky told me about how part of her job is to work with a database of street names. In her day to day work, she finds interesting ones like the one below.
She emails and GChats these to friends. I suggested she make a blog about it. I offered to set her up with a domain name, CoolStreetNames.com, and she has started posting some her finds. Below is my favorite so far. When driving around here: Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
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Baby Picture
No. Not a baby picture of Steve. Nor did this Steve have a baby. Another Steve did. And one of the baby pictures is pretty tremendous. Another grad student here, Steve Snell, is the father of a cowboy, Abraham.
