Well, we finally upgraded Protozoic to WordPress 2.1 from version 1.5. For most readers, no real differences accompany the upgrade, though we are working on integrating our videos into a podcast stream as well as using 2.1’s features to better serve up our media. Also of note is the doing away of the stupid little image one must retype to post a comment. 2.1 comes with a nice spam plugin which checks for each comment in a central database of spam, so most of the work is done for us.

Notable improvements on the administrative side include a new interface, an autosave feature, and some other random crap.

Loki: In the meantime, don’t forget your chapstick.

Just thought I’d give you guys an update on our most popular searches. I always get a kick out of these. For the month of August, the most popular search term was “monkey bread” with 88 hits. The second most popular was “bot fly” with 9 hits. There must be some kind of internet fad going on with monkey bread right now; why else would it be generating 10 times the hits of other search terms.

Regardless, the full top 10 in order are:

• monkey bread
• bot fly
• heathcliff
• mandingo
• zucchini bread
• rice bugs
• big bag big bag lyrics
• homemade ant farm
• really free mp3s
• presto pizzazz

Two quick comments on this. First, of the top 10 search terms, 4 concern food (“monkey bread”, “zucchini bread”, “rice bugs”, and “presto pizzazz”¹).

Second, only 2 of the top 10 represent “projects” of ours: “homemade ant farm” and “big bag big bag lyrics.” This of course assumes that the big bag search is referring to our song.

The combination of these two facts leads me to believe that we should retire from our creative efforts and make protozoic.com an online food magazine.

¹ The Presto Pizzazz pizza oven is actually a popular search term and it shows up in various forms. It’s ranking would probably be higher if one counted all the variations.

I finally got around to doing 2 things I’ve been meaning to do:

• (Potentially) Related Posts now show up on the right menu bar when you are reading a specific post. It only searches by post title, so it is not very accurate.
• Flickr integration. I got a Flickr account and will be posting pictures to it. These pictures show up on the right menu bar as well. It displays the last 2 pictures I’ve taken. If you click “Recent Photos,” you will get a gallery of all the photos.

In other news, our videos are up on Google Video. If you search for “protozoic” you will see our stuff.

Last thing. We’ve been linked by a new site. I don’t know who it is, but he links to dragon‘s wife, so there must be some connection. Check him out. Speaking of that, I guess we should put up a list of related blogs in the menu bar. What do you guys think?

I really shouldn’t waste a post on this, but what the heck. As you can see, we’ve added a new header graphic to the page. I wish I could have used .pngs for the word “protozoic” and the alien, but I can’t because of GOD DAMN INTERNET EXPLORER! The .pngs looked better than the current .gifs, but oh well. If you have any issues viewing, leave a comment, I’d like to fix it.

After about 6 months of running protozoic.com, I decided to take a look at all the phrases that brought up our site in search engines. You see, when someone types in a phrase in search engine like Google and clicks on a result, the search phrase used to find the result is forwarded on to the site hosting the “result.” This phrase shows up in the server logs and various log analysis packages tally up the results.

So, looking through the search phrases that led people to our site show some expected and some unexpected results. Of course, obvious words like “protozoic” make sense (by far the most popular phrase), and it warms my heart that several people were obviously looking for us with phrases such as “mike tim gray spontaneous combustion protozoic” or “may i have some cake please video.”

Thanks to Tom, we have a wonderful selection of phrases originating from people searching for Committed ringtones for their cell phones. We can thank Brian for “infantryzone,” the “.475 wildey” phrases, and all the variations of “xtreme walking” and “parkour.” I have no idea why so many are interested in it, but it certainly seems popular. And of course, Fart Bomb is no doubt the target of “fart mp3,” “fart poetry,” “fart science projects,” “how do we fart,” and of course, just plain old “fart.” Wonder why people are so interested in farts?

All of these phrases that I’ve mentioned make sense. Of course, its interesting to see what exactly leads people to Protozoic, but still, the phrases do generally have something to do with the content. Its the others that confuse me:

• “chia pet growth directions” – Isn’t it on the box/seed packet?
• “parent’s benifits in prostitution” – This has a been a popular one. Not quite sure why.
• “conspiracy pumpkin quicktime movie” – I’d like to see that.
• “puffy pussies” – We’ve gotten several hits off of this. Different strokes for different folks.
• “clap on clap off slogan” – I searched the site and couldn’t even find the word “clap” mentioned once. Same goes for “slogan.”
• “venus’s moon” – This one makes me chuckle. Venus doesn’t have a moon, and when people go looking for info about it, they get this instead.
• “cereals stuck in aisle” – I don’t even know what to say about this.

I look forward to the next 6 months of search phrases to see what kind of stuff brings people to Protozoic.

Well, the site has been upgraded to the new version of WordPress. During the upgrade process, we decided to do a little site redesign to make it a bit easier on the eyes. We will continue working with the visuals, but the site is at least in a state now where it could come back on line. It’s not like the readership is that large anyway…

Shortly the Cave of Trouble’s 2004 cinematic outing, Spontaneous Combustion, will be made available on Protozoic.com. The other night Tim (Bear) and myself made minor corrections to it and then burned a proper DVD of it, which we think looks pretty good. And looking good is pretty important, especially when you take into account other major elements of the film like “plot” are damn near incomprehensible. I’m guessing that we will have the movie up for download sometime next week in both a small format and then a larger format (but not too large format). Then not too far off in the future, we’ll also be finishing up the music video for Spontaneous Combustion, “May I have Some Cake Please”, and probably putting that up too. Once that is done, we’ll go ahead and put together a DVD which we’ll be selling on the website.

In other news, progress on the album is going quite smoothly. More on that soon.

The only other piece of news I have concerns the Anime “Comic Party”, which I watched on Comcast’s On Demand feature this evening (currently there are a number of free programs you can watch On Demand as part of a promotion I’m assuming). The verdict is that “Comic Party” has to be the worst Anime I’ve ever seen. Don’t watch it. Carve Pumpkins.