The Alliance

Survivor: Blog Edition

It looks like Don at Anger Management has the tentative schedule lined up for his contest, Survivor: Blog Edition. Below is a recap of where to find the pertinent information:

Survivor: Schedule

Survivor: The Slogan

Survivor: The Rules

Survivor: The Announcement

I've browsed the rules and contest outline, and if it's anywhere near the quality of work that Don does with his blog writing, it's sure to be a Home Run! it looks like a real interesting project with blogger participation in the voting and possiblities galore for skill, daring and knowledge (not to mention cunning behind the scenes deal making and sabotage)! Go check it out and keep an eye and ear open for more announcements regarding the final blog site, rules, contestants, etc.

Good Luck, Don!

Survivor: Blog Edition

Don's blogger contest, Survivor: Blog Edition, is up and running. Survivor is being hosted by Pixy Misa of Munuviana.

The Contestants, chosen at random by Don, are: Jeff, Jim, Pylorns, Emily, Helen, LeeAnn.

Their first immunity challenge is to plead with Rachel Lucas to return to blogging. As they complete their assignment, they e-mail it to Don at Anger Management. On Wednesday morning, Don will post each assignment to the Survivor blog and you, readers of the Blogosphere, will vote on which you assignment you think is the best. The winner shall win immunity from being voted off the contest. The rest of the players will vote one contestant off this week.

Here is the schedule for the contest this week:
Monday, November 10: 9 AM – Announce first immunity assignment
Wednesday, November 12: 9 AM – Assignments due
Thursday, November 13: 9 AM – Immunity winner announced, voting begins
Friday, November 14: 9 AM – Votes due, first loser announced, five players left

So check the site on Wednesday and cast your vote for immunity to your favorite entry!

New Blog Showcase Results - Still Struggling

For the third straight week, the League of Liberals has won sponsorship of the New Blog Showcase. The good news is that they were once again under 100% participation. The bad news is that the Alliance didn't take advantage of that fact, and actually saw its own participation ratio drop a bit.

I don't know what else to do to encourage participation. Charming Hostess Susie sends voting reminder e-mails and makes busy/lazy voting posts at HQ, and I'm giving thank-you linky-love at my own blog to reward those who voted. I'm out of ideas, and I encourage suggestions.

But I will entertain no suggestions of punishment for non-voters. Because despite the cap-feather that the Showcase sponsorship is, there are other good reasons to vote in the Showcase that have nothing to do with what coalition you're in, and if you don't care to avail yourself of them, that's your choice.

The important thing to remember is that new bloggers, more so than "old hands", remember who linked them. They are also inclined to reward their early supporters with return linkage and regular readership. If I may bore you with a personal example, Susie voted for me in the New Blog Showcase way back when, and I've gone on to be her #1 fan. I gave Blackfive one of the 9 votes that helped him win his Showcase when he was just a Blogspotted microbe, and even though he now gets more traffic in a day than I get in a week, he still reads my drivel, leaves comments, and gives links.

If you REALLY want to build your traffic, think about the future, because the helpless microbe you vote for today may well become the powerhouse super-blogger of tomorrow who remembers your early kindness.

Enough preaching. Here's the breakdown.

The following Alliance members were listed by the Bear as having voted this week:

IMAO (558 links) - 3022 visits/day V
Anti-Idiotarian Rotweiler (463 links) - 2835 visits/day V
Blackfive - The Paratrooper of Love (154 links) - 763 visits/day V
annika's journal & poetry (79 links) - 249 visits/day V
Ramblings of Silver Blue (121 links) - 206 visits/day V
The Alliance (156 links) - 156 visits/day V
Patriot Paradox (37 links) - 149 visits/day V
Bad Money (140 links) - 146 visits/day V
angelweave (111 links) - 115 visits/day V
Madfish Willie's Cyber Saloon (84 links) - 98 visits/day V
Practical Penumbra (176 links) - 87 visits/day V
Pardon My English (47 links) - 84 visits/day V
Being American in T.O. (43 links) - 70 visits/day V
See The Donkey (15 links) - 68 visits/day V
Altered Perceptions (44 links) - 65 visits/day V
physics geek (39 links) - 63 visits/day V
The S-Train Canvass (26 links) - 61 visits/day V
Semi-Intelligent Thoughts (60 links) - 45 visits/day V
Civilization Calls (30 links) - 43 visits/day V
CandyUniverse (41 links) - 35 visits/day V
Grim's Hall (15 links) - 31 visits/day V
Wince and Nod (42 links) - 30 visits/day V
The Psychotic Rant (26 links) - 26 visits/day V
Peripheral Mind (48 links) - 24 visits/day V
Five Wasps (14 links) - 23 visits/day V
Not Quite Tea and Crumpets (31 links) - 22 visits/day V
Hypocrisy and Hypotheses (23 links) - 22 visits/day V
curi's domain (7 links) - 21 visits/day V
Various Orthodoxies (28 links) - 17 visits/day V
Newmanisms (21 links) - 17 visits/day V
Cannon's Canon (16 links) - 11 visits/day V
Hoppings of Roxette Bunny (23 links) - 10 visits/day V
Flying Chair (32 links) - 0 visits/day V
Interested-Participant (63 links) - visits/day V

The following Alliance members were listed by the Bear as NOT having voted this week. If you voted and believe you got screwed out of being counted, drop me a line and I'll get you some sympathy linkage (see below for details):

Useful Fools (0 links) - 500 visits/day
Grouchy Old Cripple in Atlanta (106 links) - 452 visits/day
Anger Management (94 links) - 353 visits/day
Right We Are! (221 links) - 281 visits/day
The Inscrutable American (66 links) - 202 visits/day
Serenity's Journal (143 links) - 192 visits/day
Idiot Villager (24 links) - 181 visits/day
The Laughing Wolf (30 links) - 159 visits/day
Absinthe & Cookies (137 links) - 137 visits/day
Simon World (37 links) - 88 visits/day
DANEgerus weblog (37 links) - 86 visits/day
Elephant Rants (46 links) - 70 visits/day
Leaning Towards the Dark Side (29 links) - 69 visits/day
aimless (78 links) - 65 visits/day
Judicious Asininity (69 links) - 58 visits/day
anti-com.com (10 links) - 57 visits/day
VRWC, Inc. (45 links) - 54 visits/day
Anti-Anti-Flag.com (11 links) - 54 visits/day
TacJammer (47 links) - 53 visits/day
The Everlasting Phelps (33 links) - 53 visits/day
the evangelical outpost (56 links) - 52 visits/day
Left Coast Conservative (93 links) - 45 visits/day
Musings From The Imperial Senate (17 links) - 44 visits/day
An Englishman's Castle (4 links) - 44 visits/day
BigStick (25 links) - 44 visits/day
Curveball (11 links) - 43 visits/day
Who Tends The Fires (50 links) - 40 visits/day
You have got to be kidding me! (16 links) - 37 visits/day
Gleeful Extremist (39 links) - 35 visits/day
The Patriette (37 links) - 35 visits/day
Tom's Nap Room (32 links) - 33 visits/day
Irreconcilable Musings (36 links) - 28 visits/day
little miss attila (28 links) - 27 visits/day
BLATHER REVIEW (56 links) - 27 visits/day
All Encompassingly (23 links) - 27 visits/day
BigRedGiant.com (19 links) - 25 visits/day
Homicidal Maniak (18 links) - 24 visits/day
Blog O'Dob (21 links) - 22 visits/day
Cool Kid Central (12 links) - 19 visits/day
Ninjababe's Ramble (20 links) - 17 visits/day
A Life of Freedom (19 links) - 17 visits/day
Single White Male (15 links) - 17 visits/day
Intergalactic Capitalist (20 links) - 16 visits/day
The Wise Man Says... (42 links) - 14 visits/day
Elegance Against Ignorance (29 links) - 14 visits/day
The Kingdom of the Geeks (10 links) - 14 visits/day
The Stormin' Mormon (12 links) - 13 visits/day
Shameless Self-Promotion (13 links) - 12 visits/day
Mockingbird (12 links) - 12 visits/day
Johnalism.com (8 links) - 7 visits/day
Ego-Daily.com (2 links) - 4 visits/day
Capitalist Lion (32 links) - 0 visits/day
Cannot find server (5 links) - visits/day
It's High Noon Baby! (5 links) - visits/day
Eckernet.com (12 links) - visits/day
Intermittent Stream (2 links) - visits/day
Confessions of a Hockey Fanatic (6 links) - visits/day
Being English in New York

If you suspect your vote wasn't counted, please take the following steps:

1) Make sure your vote entry was on your front page as of Monday morning and that your link was to the New Blog's POST and not the blog's main page.

2) Make sure your link at Alliance HQ is correct.

3) Make sure you are properly listed in both the Ecosystem and the Bear's Alliance membership listing.

4) If all of the above are correct, leave a permalink to your vote in the comments to this post or e-mail it to me directly at harvolson@charter.net and I'll light up your link.

INSTAPUNDO DELENDA EST!

PS As a thanks to voters, I'm giving linky-love over at my blog, Bad Money.

Survivor: Blog Edition

This weeks Survivor: Blogosphere Edition immunity challenges are completed and posted. Now it's our turn to vote for the blogger who we think deserves immunity from expulsion this week. Once we have selected the blogger immunity, the other contestants vote one of the other players off the show!

Here are some really brief excerpts:
Entry One: "You suck Rachel. I bet those pictures of your "dogs" are really pictures of..."
Entry Two: "The rest of us knew that we were farked, And we sang dirges in the dark..."
Entry three: "Building a dominating or dominatrix force..."
Entry Four: "Why not fold your blog entirely, or better yet, repent..."
Entry Five: "...it was with great wariness and skepticism that I went through your archives."
Entry Six: "...someone out there still loves you no matter how badly your blog sucks now."

Make sure to read these comments... That looks like it's gonna be where all the behind the scenes action is going to take place. This should be fun!

Survivor: Blogosphere Edition

Well, the first week of Survivor: Blogosphere Edition is completed. It was a really interesting week. Jeff from BigStick.US won the first immunity challenge as voted on by us bloggers. Pylorns was voted off the island by the other contestants, and it wasn't even close! He voted against LeAnn or it would have been unanimous. That leaves five contestants to vie for the title Survivor Champion.

This weeks schedule of events and deadlines:
Friday, November 14: 5 PM – Announce second immunity assignment
Monday, November 17: 9 AM – Assignments due
Tuesday, November 18: 9 AM – Immunity winner announced, voting begins
Wednesday, November 19: 9 AM – Votes due, second loser announced, four players left

When you go over to the site, be sure to read through the comments as that is where a lot of the behind the scenes lobbying and alliance building is going on.

New Contest: King of the Blogs

The Challenge
Impress the judges and beat five other blogs to get the prize.
... then keep it...

The Prize

Pretenders to the Throne
Clarified
eTALKINGHEAD
Dr. Adrian Warnock
Anger Managment
The Commissar
Evangelical Outpost

The Judges
Wizbangblog
Madfish Willie
Rick's Cafe
Angelweave
King of Fools

The Host
Patriot Paradox

The Location
The url for the event is http://www.patriot-paradox.com/blogking/

And Speaking of Contests

Michael Williams, whose blog is entitled Master of None, has another blog exposure idea: a Scavenger Hunt.

Here's a blog game that'll be fun, and give some exposure to some less well-traveled blogs: The First Annual Blog Scavenger Hunt. The idea is simple: I write up a list of topics, and you find a blog post somewhere that discusses each topic. You can't use any individual blog for more than one topic, and you can't use any of your own posts. Further, honor demands that you not take any action intended to initiate a post on a topic for the express purpose of using it as an answer. Got it?

The deadline will be Monday, December 1st. Answers will count even if the topics are discussed facetiously, and they don't have to match the list word-perfectly; use your best judgement. Of course, no post related to the contest itself can be used as an answer. All answers must be links to blog posts, not any other type of website.

Once you've finished your list (or gotten bored), post the topic list along with your answers on your blog and send me a link with "[bloghunt]" in the subject. I'll post links to all the participants, along with my own answers, after the deadline.

If you think you're too busy to play, just print out the topics and fill them in during your normal browsing. (And look, no cheating by stealing links from other people; it's just a game.)

Ladies and gentlemen, start your lists.

hln

Bestofme Symphony

Jim from Snooze Button Dreams is doing a Best Of... compilation for old posts from bloggers and blogerettes.

Here is the lowdown:

This post compilation meme is structured like the Carnival of the Vanities but concentrates on the best posts from the history of weblogs. Post submission criteria are very simple. The post must be at least 2 months old and the submitter must think it is a very good post. How easy is that?

jrpeacock@charter.net is the address for submissions. Submissions should include the following:

• Post Title


• Post Permalink


• Author's Name (or handle)


• Weblog Name (if not obvious from the link)


• Submitter's Name/Handle (if different from Author)


• Description of post and/or why this post is being submitted (That is, what about this post makes you think it is one of the best from the weblog).

The only absolutely required item is the permalink. Other items may be left blank on the Bestofme Symphony post if they aren't provided with the submission. That could mean less people will go to read the post so submitters are encouraged to include as much of the info as possible.

Note that submissions do not have to come from the author so readers and lurkers with or without their own weblogs may contribute.

Deadline for submissions for each week's Symphony are Sunday at midnight (Eastern Standard Time) and a new Symphony will be posted each Monday. Submissions are accepted 24 x 7 so any that come in after the cutoff will appear in the next week's symphony.

So get with the program and send Jim your best posts of the past.

Glad Tidings

Loyal Alliance Member Jamie, aka The Gleeful Extremist, is getting married Saturday!!! Unfortunately, the Happy Couple needs a bed. If you have any loose change rattling around in your pocket, it would be good to hit his tip jar--you wouldn't want the Happy Couple to start married life sleeping on a futon, would you?

Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid...

Loyal Alliance member Serenity broke her ankle the other day, only a few days before the insurance at her new job kicked in. Now she finds that her broken ankle is going to cost $7244 plus incidentals to fix. Yikes! The bad part is she needs to scrape up 4K before they will even do the surgery!!!!

Here's the link to her PayPal button, in case you just won the lottery and don't know what to do with all that largesse...