tl;dr: First time here, clicked Wishlist Search, and it suggested the person whose song I was listening to at the time. Spooky as hell.
So here’s what happened to me today. Feeling unwell – bit of a cold and grumpy about it – and sipping a Lemsip to try to stave off the worst of the sore throat, I found myself
stalking a few people on Reddit, discovering new subreddits based on what they’ve commented in etc., and I discover /r/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon.
I put on some music while I surf – just a selection of MP3s that I’ve bought recently. The song that’s just come on is Peter Hollens’ and Malukah’s awesome cover of Christopher Tin’s
Baba Yetu (better known as the “Civ IV theme”). If you haven’t heard their cover of it yet, here it is on YouTube.
“Random Acts of Amazon?” I think to myself, “What’s that all about then?” I read a little bit of the newbie guide, then try clicking on the “Random Wishlist” button, just to see who
it picks out for me and what kinds of things they want. It picks out a random user… /u/peterhollens.
Wait, what? That’s got to just be a naming coincidence, right? That can’t be the same Peter Hollens whose song literally just started coming out of my MP3 player right
now, can it? I hop across to his intro thread and read some of his other
posts. “What the fuck,” I say out loud, “Is this random wishlist tool psychic or something?”
But no, it just turns out that on the one and only time I’ve ever been to this sub, and the one and only time I’ve ever clicked Random Wishlist, it happened to choose the
person whose song I was literally just listening to at that time. That’s insane.
So here’s a gift, Peter. Clearly the Universe wants me to send this to you. I don’t believe in destiny, but clearly it believes in you and
I.
Thanks to the data that /r/MegaMegaMonitor collates, I’ve been able to throw together some fun statistics about the MegaLounge chain. Let me share
some graphs with you:
Gildings per MegaLounge
As you’d probably expect, the lower (and more-populous) MegaLounges see more gilding than the higher ones. But…
MegaLounge generosity ratio
…if we take the ratio of the number of gildings per MegaLounge to the number of accounts in that MegaLounge, we get a ‘generosity score’, and that’s not so
clear-cut. The most generous MegaLounges are /r/MegaLoungeSol and the secret MegaLounge, followed by /r/MegaLoungeDiamond, /r/MegaLoungeRussia, /r/MegaLoungeVII, and /r/MegaLoungeVI. I wonder if these are also the lounges with the least content? Perhaps they’re places that people stop off at only as a steping stone on their
journey?
The least-generous MegaLounge is the latest one, probably because there’s nowhere to go yet as a result of being gilded there, but the second least-generous… is /r/MegaLounge itself! I feel like I should go there and gild some people, just to buck the trend!
This is all just something fun I threw together while I’ve been off work sick today. If there’s anything else that anybody would like to see extracted from MMM’s data, let me know:
it’s all interesting stuff!
Thanks to the data that MegaMegaMonitor collates, I’ve been able to throw together some fun statistics about the MegaLounge chain. Let me share some graphs with you:
Gildings per MegaLounge
As you’d probably expect, the lower (and more-populous) MegaLounges see more gilding than the higher ones. But…
MegaLounge generosity ratio
…if we take the ratio of the number of gildings per MegaLounge to the number of accounts in that MegaLounge, we get a ‘generosity score’, and that’s not so
clear-cut. The most generous MegaLounges are /r/MegaLoungeSol and the secret MegaLounge, followed by /r/MegaLoungeDiamond, /r/MegaLoungeRussia, /r/MegaLoungeVII, and /r/MegaLoungeVI. I wonder if these are also the lounges with the least content? Perhaps they’re places that people stop off at only as a steping stone on their
journey?
The least-generous MegaLounge is the latest one, probably because there’s nowhere to go yet as a result of being gilded there, but the second least-generous… is /r/MegaLounge itself! I feel like I should go there and gild some people, just to buck the trend!
Most-gilded Redditors in the MegaLounges
It’s possible to get from /r/MegaLounge up to the x35 MegaLounge with just 33 gildings, but nine Redditors have impressed others with their
MegaContent so much that they’ve attracted significantly more. /u/love_the_heat leads the way with a massive 76 MegaGildings, followed by /u/Gold_4_No_Reason and /u/madazzahatter (there’s quite a gap, then, before I come in at fourth place).
This is all just something fun I threw together while I’ve been off work sick today. If there’s anything else that anybody would like to see extracted from MMM’s data, let me know:
it’s all interesting stuff!
Please forgive the non-magic talk, but I wanted to share with you something I made recently. It’s a plugin you can install into your web browser that does this (pic).
What’s that? It’s a top hat and wand alongside the name of /r/MagicSecrets folks. It’s only visible to other/r/MagicSecrets folks, of course, but it’s visible from anywhere on Reddit. So you can instantly spot fellow magicians whether they’re hanging out on /r/AskReddit or just commenting on kitten pics on /r/aww.
What it’s especially useful for is spotting folks in e.g. /r/magic when the discussion gets close to something that should only be talked about in
here. You instantly know whether you should say “let’s go talk about this in /r/MagicSecrets” or whether you should simply say “this isn’t the place to
talk about this.” But honestly, these last few weeks I’ve mostly just been using it to give me a smile when I spot magicians elsewhere: like when I noticed /u/Jokers247 in /r/ImGoingToHellForThis earlier this week!
Want to try it? Instructions are over on /r/MegaMegaMonitor. Apologies again for the off-topic post.
I expect that there are many of you who would appreciate it (especially in its latest version), but haven’t heard about it yet. Basically, what it does is tells you:
What Mega*Lounge level people have reached (if they’re in the same or lower level than you), or that they’re higher if they’ve gotten higher
than you. That’s really useful when you’re gilding people!
If you’re in one of a set of special secret subreddits (including the MegaLounge chain), it’ll help you to identify your (Mega!)-friends elsewhere on Reddit. It’s a great way to
help build communities, because you’ll start “recognising” people that you’ve seen in the Megas (or… “elsewhere”) in the normal subs.
It’s a browser plugin that works on most desktop and some mobile platforms, and you can install it here. If you give it a go, let me
know how you get on and come chat with the rest of us about it, over in /r/megamegamonitor.
There’s also a new numbering scheme, which will be necessary to help support the way in which new subreddits will be added to MegaMegaMonitor in future.
Upgrading
If you’ve already got it installed, it’ll probably update itself within a day or two. Or you can update it sooner by asking Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey to “check for
userscript updates”.
If you’re new to MegaMegaMonitor (or if that didn’t work), instead go to https://danq.me/megamegamonitor/ and click the button to install it
afresh.
New features
Doesn’t throw error messages if you try to use it while not logged-in at all.
Continues to work in your sock puppet accounts with the cached data from your primary account.
New “MMM” text in top-right corner (near your username). Hover over it to see if your data is up-to-date and refresh it if necessary (note that there’s a known bug where new
installations say that it was updated “45 years ago”: probably an epoch problem but purely cosmetic).
Added a feature that will show you an icon next to the usernames of other people who use MegaMegaMonitor.
Improved automatic data updates so that they’ll always be triggered when upgrading to a new version of MegaMegaMonitor, to reduce the future risk of ‘sync errors’.
Je parle un peu le français. Je me excuse pour la rédaction du présent en anglais.
I have been staying in La Tania on a ski holiday with friends and family. This morning, I fell and her my neck, so I thought I’d take a break from skiing and do some geocaching
instead. The hike down the valley was hard in the fresh dump of snow, and I wished that I’d brought snowshoes! Or poles! Our even a rope! I routinely found myself wading through
knee-high snow, and I’d ocassionally have to traverse drifts that came up to my thigh. I was very glad to reach the convenient break point of La Nouva, where I stopped to chat to a
small yappy dog before pressing on.
Villaflou itself is beautiful: I especially love the cute little chapel at its heart. I spent some time investigating the wrong thing, looking for the cache, before eventually working
out where it might be. Only the 5th person to find it!
On the way back to La Tania (an even more arduous hike by a different route that I thought would be easier but truly wasn’t) I was distracted by two French ladies calling me over.
They were lost, having taken a wrong turn, and – perhaps as a result of them being 4 and 6 months pregnant, respectively – were finding it very hard to push themselves up the
mountainside against what was now ocassionally waist-deep snow. Naturally I came to their rescue, using my GPSr to lead them up to the path they sought: a further arduous journey of
pushing, pulling, digging, and crawling until we finally reached the outskirts of La Tania and they were assured of their safety.
Four hours of hiking in snow, sometimes up to my waist and rescuing two lost hikers makes this perhaps the hardest I’ve ever worked for a geocache. And I loved it.
Je parle un peu le français. Je me excuse pour la rédaction du présent en anglais.
I have been staying in La Tania on a ski holiday with friends and family. This morning, I fell and her my neck, so I thought I’d take a break from skiing and do some geocaching
instead. The hike down the valley was hard in the fresh dump of snow, and I wished that I’d brought snowshoes! Or poles! Our even a rope! I routinely found myself wading through
knee-high snow, and I’d ocassionally have to traverse drifts that came up to my thigh. I was very glad to reach the convenient break point of La Nouva, where I stopped to chat to a
small yappy dog before pressing on.
Villaflou itself is beautiful: I especially love the cute little chapel at its heart. I spent some time investigating the wrong thing, looking for the cache, before eventually working
out where it might be. Only the 5th person to find it!
On the way back to La Tania (an even more arduous hike by a different route that I thought would be easier but truly wasn’t) I was distracted by two French ladies calling me over.
They were lost, having taken a wrong turn, and – perhaps as a result of them being 4 and 6 months pregnant, respectively – were finding it very hard to push themselves up the
mountainside against what was now ocassionally waist-deep snow. Naturally I came to their rescue, using my GPSr to lead them up to the path they sought: a further arduous journey of
pushing, pulling, digging, and crawling until we finally reached the outskirts of La Tania and they were assured of their safety.
Four hours of hiking in snow, sometimes up to my waist and rescuing two lost hikers makes this perhaps the hardest I’ve ever worked for a geocache. And I loved it.
On the way out to the French Alps for a week of skiing, and we had enough air miles to upgrade to business class on the way out, so I’m sat in the lounge enjoying complimentary gin &
tonic and croissants. 10 in the morning, and I’m already buzzed: after a long and hectic few months, I’m really glad to be off on holiday!
Aaaand…. right before I left I put in an application for my boss’s job, which she vacated a few months ago. Should hear by the time I get back whether I’m being invited to interview,
so that’s exciting too!
Anyway: just wanted to share my excitement with my favourite MegaMasons. If I’m not online much this week, you’ll know why! Have a great week, folks: love you all!
