Wednesday, 2 January 2013

2012 at the Peanut

Continuing the tradition, here's a wrap-up of the year for anybody-want-a-peanut.blogspot.ca ...

To summarize: productivity has fallen. I had 20 fewer blog posts in 2012 versus 2011. However, with the new management philosophy here at the Peanut we do more with less, and in spite of the drop in posts we had a 25% increase in traffic. As a result of meeting our targets for the year I have awarded myself a massive bonus, and the rest of the staff was given 256kb USB 1.0 flash drives for their efforts.

In media-related things, I went on CBC Radio in March to talk about golf courses.

I had some more blog posts printed in the Winnipeg Free Press: Donor fatigue, Water Park, Building trends, Dogs and suburbanites, System-bred criminals, and Mayoral pay. This past Sunday they also printed my post on #IdleNoMore in the dead-tree paper, but they did not put it on the internet. I suspect this is either because I posted a rant about fluff Free Press coverage the prior day, or because I called Terry Nelson a "grand standing buffoon" in the post. In hind sight that was probably unnecessary as I haven't heard a peep from him regarding Idle No More. (update: I've been told that it was only an oversight that it wasn't posted on the Freep web site.)

I was invited to a media night at IKEA prior to the official opening and got a glimpse of what it's like to be a journalist, with free-flowing champagne, smoked salmon on biscuits, special discounts and awesome gift-bags of swag!

And of course I was on Winnipeg Internet Pundits, this year more as a regular guest, taking to the airwaves approximately every four weeks.

New Winnipeg-ish blogs

The Power Of Words is written by former Winnipeg Police Sergeant James Jewell. James has written some outstanding posts with insight into the crime and the police service. Highly recommend you check this blog regularly.

Fellow pundit Greg Gallinger has an eclectic little blog greg.g. Some posts are little more than photographs, while others are more extensive, like his post on leaving downtown. Due to the minimalist nature of the blog I can't even tell if it's new this year, but it's new to me, so .... 

Everybody knows Bryan Scott's photo-blog Winnipeg Love Hate, but Bryan also started a tumblr page this year cleverly called "Bryan Scott" that features fantastic photos of many other places in addition to Winnipeg.

With something like 68 posts in less than 3 months, and often lengthy ones at that, it's hard to keep up with WpgNewsReview. Arthur Mira does a lot of digging through 311 stats and other publicly available documents and provides some interesting insight in many of the posts. In others he may say things that you disagree with, like that thing about Theo Fluery which I won't mention again, but the blog is what it is. He doesn't try to be politically correct.

Twitter personality Stefanie Cutrona writes at stefspeaks. This blog is not affiliated by the Mafia.


Former Winnipeg Free Press journalist and newly minted Macleans magazine contributor Lindsey Wiebe started a tumblr page, which is primarily a photo-blog. We here at the Peanut wish Lindsey well in her new job in The Centre Of The Universe.

I'm sure there are more, but it didn't seem to be as active a year in the bloggosphere. If you know of any good new blogs by all means let me know.

Also, I should mention the Spectator Tribune -- a new Winnipeg-centric web publication, featuring former Free Press and Uptown writers, among others. Perhaps a glimpse at the future of journalism as mainstream papers slash their original content.

Top posts from the Peanut

Our most popular posts this year were*:

CMHR Part 1: Project Management

Waterpark: 7 reasons to say "no"

Put a steak in the Kane rumours

Firehall land swap absurdity

Moving the CP rail yards

*My Blogger stats conflict with my Google Analytics stats. As both are Google products this confuses me slightly. I don't trust either, but I went with the latter for this list.

Those were most popular in terms of hits. In our opinion, our best posts of the year were:

The Winnipeg golf course series:
Overview
Action Items Part I
Action Items Part II
Wrap Up

Confusion Corner redesigned and unconfused

... and of course ...

The Adventures of Johnny Oduya!

Top search terms

directions to vimy ridge
ray rybachuk - Boy, this guy has really pissed some people off ... like whoever created this blog. 
evander kane rumours
sam owns an acre of land on red river. the government dams the river. a lake forms behind the dam, covering sam's land. does the government owe sam anything? - I'm serious. This is a question on some stupid LSAT or FSAT or something, and every time I put this on my year-in-review post I move up the Google hit list. I now populate 3 of the top 15 Google hits for this question! How do I make it stop???? Next year, no matter what, I am NOT putting this in my year-end post.
cool helicopters - who doesn't love cool helicopters??

Quirky search terms

are you a peanut blog - Well yes and no. See, it's not about peanuts per se, but ... ah forget it...
boobs touch - Tell me more ...
do people who wear keeping it riel shirts know who he is - Good question. I ask the same thing about those Che Guevara shirts ..
draw a peanut fast - OK -------------------- >
fuck you montreal police - Ya, fuck you!
how about our crooked mayor in winnipeg???????? - Winnipeg small talk: "So ... how 'bout our crooked mayor?"
hugh mcfayden who is he and why pee in mouth - Only Hugh can answer that question.
leah hextall feet - ummm ...okay.
manitoba hydro good place for a terrorist attack - Hello, CSIS?
maths blog still model maths park model - .... what?
me to you bears - I don't even know where to go with this one.
rod black ruins figure skating - Rod Black ruins everything.
sin like a mother fucker in edc - Where is this edc place, and how do I get there?
the used condoms - New indy group?
what a fuckup - I'm a little bit insulted that this search found my blog.
we want beer protest - #EmptyNoMore
what does a yellow yield sign mean - I'm beginning to understand why drivers are so bad.
who are the hookers in edmonton what do they look like and what are their street names - It's good to do your research before you travel somewhere.

Have a great year everybody!

See also:
Slurpees and Murder - an A-Z poem.

No comments:

 
/* Google Tracker Code