As we roll into another year I thought it would be a good time to look back on various stats I have collected over the past year. Hopefully I will continue to do this at the beginning of every year as a way to document how things progress over time.

I blogged here 9 times for a total of 3,208 words.

My blog was visited by 147,151 unique visitors generating 213,800 pageviews. Not bad considering I hardly update it anymore. I scanned 454 receipts and spent at least $346.96 in sales tax. Kristina and I fully funded our IRAs (including starting and fully funding her 2010 IRA at the beginning of 2011). We also contributed to our 401K’s at work and managed to put away some money for a down payment on a house. We visited Paris and London this year. I managed to give 5 presentations (slides) to various DC Tech groups. Attended 7 conferences:

UX Camp DC (1/8/2011) StartupXLR8R II (6/4 – 6/5/2011) Converge SE (6/24 – 6/25/2011) Mobile UX Camp DC (9/17/2011) Accessibility Camp DC (10/22/2011) An Event Apart DC (10/24 – 10/26/2011) WordCamp Philly (11/5 – 11/6/2011)

I took 5,589 pictures, 728 of those were star-worthy in Picasa. I posted 111 mobile photos from my phone. 8.61 gigabytes of data used by my Nexus One on T-Mobile.

My average weight in 2011 was 194.3. My lowest weight was 192.1 (6/8/2011) and my highest was 202.4 (1/1/2011), so I ended the year lower than when I started.

I spent 262 hours and 7 minutes in Dreamweaver writing code. 159 hours and 28 minutes reading tweets, 15 hours and 24 minutes viewing Facebook, 6 hours and 4 minutes viewing Google+, and 5 minutes and 17 seconds viewing MySpace. 124 hours and 53 minutes was lost to email: 83 hours and 37 minutes in Outlook for work, 58 hours and 52 minutes in Gmail. 34 hours and 3 minutes searching Google.

Tools used to gather this data:

TD Word Count plugin for blog word count stats. Google Analytics for various website stats. Picasa for organizing my photos. Hacker Diet Online where I keep track of my weight. Rescuetime.com for tracking which applications and websites I use.

Here’s to a number-filled 2012! My Stats From 2011 by Russell Heimlich

Driving is a piece of cake for this guy. Just take a look at all of the things he can get done while traveling 60 miles per hour on the highway.(via word theory)The King Of Multitasking While Driving by Russell Heimlich

Freaky stuff. Or maybe it was just a 1920′s hearing aid?Cell Phone Lady Time Travels To Charlie Chaplin Film by Russell Heimlich

I’m a fan of funny t-shirts which is why I obsessivly follow Threadless.com and Shirts.Woot.com . Just a few moments ago, Threadless announced their new shirts for this week and the one titled I [X] Tinman (1st picture) is similar to 404 Heart Not Found (2nd picture) on Shirts.Woot.com from 2008. I already own the 404 Heart Not Found shirt, now I just need to buy the Threadless one!Tinman Threadless Vs. Tinman Shirt.Woot! by Russell Heimlich

Google revealed a secret project it was working on to make cars that can drive themselves without any human intervention. These aren’t just experiments in a controlled environment either. The cars have “driven 1,000 miles without human intervention and more than 140,000 miles with only occasional human control” on real highways, streets, intersections, and even Lombard street in San Fransisco.The media has picked up on the theme that Google is doing it to improve society with the goal of reducing automobile fatalities and freeing up time spent commuting. These would be very positive things to come from this research but could take several years to come to fruition. I have a feeling Google is doing this for its own reasons.The Google search engine has web crawlers that follow every link it can find, slurping down the HTML which Google can analyze to determine where that page ranks in its index. These autonomous cars can be the start to real-life crawlers.Google Street View started when a bunch of cameras were strapped to a car continuously taking photos as it drove through an area. The photos that appear online are several months old at the earliest. If it could make gathering these photos more efficient, it could update the images faster, making Street View more relevant.Imagine if Google could send out these automated cars to collect data in the physical world that Google could use in it’s local search product. Some of the more practical applications include updating maps when roads are closed, continuously updating stores in Street View that might have changed ownership, or even determining the popularity of a place based on the number of people seen around it at various times of day.Google wants to start ranking real-life data in conjunction with online data. This is a clear step in that direction. And it should be no surprise that the self driving car project was led by Sebastian Thrun, co-inventor of the Street View mapping product.Google’s Self-Driving Car Is For Real-Life Crawling by Russell Heimlich

(via The Attention Management Blog)Where Good Ideas Come From by Russell Heimlich

CrunchGear recently opened my eyes to ShirtsMyWay.com, a site that lets anyone customize a dress shirt to their exact specifications. The minutia of details that one can pick and choose from is dizzying including the type of fabric; the design of the collar, cuffs, yoke, back, bottom, and pocket; type of buttons, button holes, collar stays, or a monogram; and, of course, the size of the shirt. Coming in at $75 per custom shirt at least, ShirtsMyWay.com is too rich for my blood. Besides, I’m not that great of a shirt designer.

But the site took me back to the days of the dotcom boom where I would spend hours on Customatix.com. The company was started by four Adidas executives in 2000 with the aim of letting anyone create a completely customized shoe. You could pick from a bunch of different styles, choose the colors of various pieces, have your name stitched on the back, pick the laces, and even add a logo from their huge library. I remember making a whole virtual closet full of shoe designs that I had no intention of actually purchasing. I guess that’s why they’re no longer around. Though I did get a friend a gift certificate to the site for her birthday and she did design and order her own custom-made shoes. On the brighter side, it looks like Customatix inspired the wave of hideous MySpace profiles later in the decade.

Custom Clothing Makes A Comeback by Russell Heimlich

The Mega Man series of video games has a distinctive soundtrack. The music from the games is so influential that a bunch of cover bands have incorporated the melodies into their own versions of the popular songs. Mega Man 1 -10 soundtracks – This is the full collection featuring music from Mega Man 1 for the original NES all the way through the recently released Mega Man 10. It weighs in at 684 MB and you will need 7 Zip for the PC or keka for OS X. The password for the archive is reddit. 8-Bit Instrumental is a video game-focused instrumental band from Brazil popular for their covers of Contra, Super Mario Bros, Street Fighter II, Altered Beast and others. They have an entire album dedicated to Mega Man 2 songs available for free on their website. The release was so popular that a hacked version of Mega Man 2 was released replacing the original soundtrack with the cover songs by 8-Bit Instrumental. Project X has a 14-track album based on Mega Man 2 available for download in one 33 MB zip file. The Boston-based band produces guitar/electronica music. Overclocked Remix has several remixes (mostly techno) based on Mega Man songs. The songs can be streamed via YouTube or downloaded for free. Game Over, a Swedish Nintendo metal band, has three songs based on Mega Man. They’re kind of catchy. Finally, thepulperizer.com breaks down the top 25 Mega Man songs. It is a pretty thorough list that I mostly agree with except I think the Bubble Man theme song should be number one, not number two. So there you have it, the ultimate list of Mega Man songs for any video game aficionado. After all, the best thing to do when you’re not playing video games, is to rock out to their soundtracks until you can. a

trololololololololololo.com has been making the rounds around Twitter the past couple days. The site shows a Russian man singing a cheery song in what I assume to be Russian. How could you not listen to it over and over? Justin Erik Halldór Smith has a good write-up about the background of this video on his blog if you want to read all about its history.

Seeing this site reminded me of a few other wacky-song memes that made their way across the Internet. If you like trololololololololololo.com, you’ll like these similiar sites. All of them are songs and most of them loop infinitely. Enjoy! http://www.lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala.com/ http://www.iiiiiiii.com/ http://www.ooooiiii.com/ http://www.dabadabadab.com/ http://www.lalalaa.com/ http://www.leekspin.com/ http://www.manamanadoodoodoodoodoo.com/ http://breadfish.co.uk/ http://www.getonmyhorse.com/ & http://shutupwomangetonmyhorse.com/ All of these sites descend from badgerbadgerbadger.com which first launched in September, 2003. a

Kristina got me some ties from cyberoptix.com for Valentines Day. My favorite one is this black tie for web nerds which reads #000000. For those not in the know, #000000 is the hexadecimal representation of the color black familiar to any web designer.

The octopus sucker tie is pretty rad too! a

Oh yea, I should probably start thinking about getting started with my tax preparation. (via nataliedee) a

I imagine this is how high-end crocodiles would rock their sweaters. a

typophile.com had a type battle for members to design a new logotype for digg.User aluminum posted this fine Bing version of the digg logo.

It’s a clever idea since both brands are 4 letters and the second letter is an “i”. (via dburka, the creator of the digg logo) a

If only image processing was as easy as it was on TV. a

This groom just couldn’t wait to tell the world of his new relationship status. He whipped out his Blackberry, just before kissing his bride, in order to update his Facebook relationship status and send out a tweet. Now with my wedding coming up this May, I got to thinking… but Kristina quickly put a stop to that and banning any sort of gadget on our wedding day. Fair enough. But I did want to live stream the ceremony. I was thinking of setting up my laptop with its built-in camera streaming everything across the Internet with something like ustream.tv or justin.tv. The venue has wifi and the computer can be near a power outlet. Since my venue is a music center, they should have a decent sound system that I can route to my laptop for a good quality sound source. Kristina and I will be miked-up so everyone can hear our vows and all that. To top it off, it would be neat if I could get a small, pinhole camera to discretely embed on my tuxedo which could also stream to the laptop and eventually out to the Internet as a second angle. That way viewers could choose the locked down wide angle shot as well as everything going down from my point of view. How cool would it look to see the crowds reaction as we turn and face them after being pronounced man and wife? That would be awesome. Plus, I would record all the footage locally to the hard drive just in case the Internet craps out we’ll still have a copy. After Googling around for a good mini spy cam, the Mini DV AEE-MD90 seems to be highly recommended. Here’s a good video review of it.

The only problem is there’s no way to stream the live video from it to a computer. The sound is also crap but that doesn’t really matter. Does anyone know of anything like this that would fit the bill? Has anyone done something similiar like this before? Any tips? a

FullBleed, a web magazine published by the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, did an interview with me for their Fresh Face column. The aim is to showcase up and coming creative professionals and I feel honored to even be considered. It was a lot of fun to do and a big thanks goes out to Stephanie Hay, Corey Greeneltch, and Sean McCormick who took my photo. Go check it out!

a

I just took a survey and one of the questions was about toilet paper. These were the answers to choose from…

I feel sorry for whoever falls into that last category. a

Probably the strangest clip I’ve seen in a good while. If this actually aired somewhere, my guess would be Canada… or California public access. Kudos for doing yoga in those tight jeans though. a

My 1994 Mercury Villager mini-van has served me well over the years but it has to go according to the U.S. Government. Since it gets a measly 17 combined miles per gallon according to fueleconomy.gov, my van is a certified clunker and eligible for the Cash for Clunkers program. This means I can get $3,500 off a new car purchase that gets at least 4 more miles per gallon or a $4,500 discount for a car that gets at least 10 more miles per gallon. That’s a sweet deal considering the Kelley Blue Book trade-in value is at most $1,550. The thing is I don’t really need a new car. I get to work using public transportation leaving the van only for small errands. Once a year we will take it on a road trip to Ocean City but that’s about the extent of my driving. I fill it up maybe once a month and according to FuelFrog (my review) I’m getting about 22 miles per gallon.

Because it has 130,000 miles on it, the tune-ups can be a bit costly about every other year. I have started noticing a high-pitched squeal whenever the accelerator is depressed and one of these days it will die. With this opportunity I decided to do a bit of research on Yahoo! Autos. I found 21 cars that fit my criteria including the 2010 Honda Insight, 2009 Honda Fit, and 2009 Honda Civic hybrid which all caught my eye. Kristina doesn’t like any of these because she already has a small sedan and strategically it would make sense to get another type of vehicle. I can agree with that, but bigger cars are more expensive.

There is also the option of brokering a deal with my dad for his Toyota Rav-4 with 100,000 miles on it in exchange for a car with the discount. He was the one who bought the van 15 years ago and paid it off before handing it over to me but such a deal sounds complicated. I just feel a little weird about getting a new car and then having it sit at home for most of its early life. So this is where I seek advice from the wisdom of the interwebz. What should I do? On the plus side an auto loan would help me build my credit score for when we eventually buy a house
a The New Car Conundrum: What Should I Get?

Threadless.com, the user submitted/public chosen t-shirt store, is my favorite source for shirts. I’ve built up quite a collection over the years; 19 to be exact. But this shirt tops them all…

Now if you’re not up to date with the latest Internet meme’s you might be a bit perplexed right about now. Allow me to explain. This shirt is a combination of two viral Internet sensations. The first is a YouTube video of a cat playing the electronic keyboard dubbed “Keyboard Cat”

The video has nearly two-million views and has become even more popular by people splicing it to the end of blooper clips as if to “play” that person offstage after a goof or follie. These have become known as Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat videos and PlayHimOffKeyboardCat.com has the best collection of all of them. The second meme in this shirt is from the Three Wolf Moon t-shirt

The shirt became popular for it’s sarcastic reviews promoting the great things that have happened to the people who bought the shirt. Hundres of comments were posted like this one, making the shirt an Amazon best seller “I admit it, I’m a ladies’ man. And when you put this shirt on a ladies’ man, it’s like giving an AK-47 to a ninja.” – T. Huynh “photo bum”, Amazon reviewer

The shirt managed to get over 9,000 diggs and a dedicated song thanks to CollegeHumor.com. So now you can see how that is one of the best t-shirts ever made. But this shirt also made history of it’s own by being the fastest trending t-shirt in Threadless.com’s 9 years of operation. “This design was submitted, and before we even noticed we saw it start to trend on Reddit. We put it up for scoring and it started gathering up 5’s faster than we could ever imagine. Over just one weekend Three Keyboard Cat Moon accumulated more scores than any other design in 9 years of Threadless history and the highest average score to boot. We listened and put it up for sale immediately. This is the first time we’ve actually ended scoring early in favor of printing the design.” – Jake Nickell, Threadless founder

The shirt is $20 and I just ordered mine using a gift certificate from a former colleague. Don’t be surprised if they sell out faster than the keyboard cat can play you off. Satirical irony FTW! a Perhaps The Greatest T-Shirt Ever Made