Last Monday, Alex posted a rant about how difficult blogging is on April Fool's Day. Is he ever right! You can look all over the internet, and everything you see is either false or suspect. Original content creators were saving their good stuff for April 2. And I learned a lesson. See, I was fascinated by a great story from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader about the guys on the ISS building a satellite out of a space suit, a ham radio transmitter, and garbage. So I posted it. And nobody read it, linked it, or shared it. Well, a lot fewer people than expected. I couldn't figure out why, because it was a neat story. I posted a link to the story elsewhere, and Tuesday night received a comment telling me that was no April Fool, that it really happened. Well, I knew that, but then it dawned on me that no one took the story seriously just because it was posted on April Fools Day! Next year, I'll make our feature story a list of cat pictures on April first. Here's what else happened this past week at Neatorama.
Jill Harness brought us 27 Fantastic Photos of Cosplay At WonderCon 2013.
Eddie Deezen told us about Blazing Saddles: Mel Brooks' Western Laugh Riot.
How to Get Girls Interested in Science came to us from the Annals of Improbable Research.
Mental_floss magazine contributed The Tunnel That Saved Bosnia.
Oh yeah, that story that no one read? SuitSat-1: The Garbage Satellite, came from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
We only had two brainteasers this week: Nightclub Password and Seven-letter Word. I was really impressed with the alternate answers you guys came up with for the latter!
Congratulations to the Choose Your Own Doctor Who Giveaway Winners, LisaL, Morgenstern, and Jospeh Cuffe! That's what you get for subscribing to NeatoMail, as the contest was exclusively for subscribers.
In the What Is It? game this week, the mystery tool is a mechanical pry tool that was used to free people who were trapped in cars before the jaws of life were invented. After studying the comments and collaborating with the powers that be, we decided to award two prizes for the correct answer. Craig Clayton said it is a automotive tool to force open body panels. That's sort of right. Then The Jaws of Life for [ pick your favorite Kardashian ]'s pantyhose." That's sort of right, and funny, too! So both Craig and Jonnette win t-shirts from the NeatoShop! The prize for the funniest answer goes to The Professor, who said, "It's the remote control for a North Korean TV set." Alrighty then, that's good for a t-shirt as well! Thanks to everyone who played, and see the answers to the other mystery items of the week at the What Is It? blog.
Oh, you better believe there are more giveaways coming! Alex even asked for your suggestions on what we should give away next. Don't know? Then you should look around the NeatoShop and see what you'd like to have.
The post with the most comments this week was What Should the Choose Your Own Prize Next Week Be? but we should probably eliminate that along with the contest posts for this purpose. In that case, the most commented-on post was Students Fight to Integrate Prom. Others with a good discussion were High School Student Bitterly Responds to College Rejections and Men: Can You Deal With It If Your Wife Wore the Pants in the Family? It's not too late to put your two cents worth in!
The most popular post of the week was How Indiana Jones Was Born, followed by Brainteaser: Nightclub Password and Houdini Octopus. Those were all from earlier in the week and may eventually be eclipsed by the WonderCon or the Blazing Saddles features.
I finally got around to counting the ♥s that folks leave at the top of each post this week, and it turns out that's the way y'all show love to cute things. The most ♥s went to Micro Piglet in Sweater Vest, The Best Easter Cake of 2013, Houdini Octopus, and Cute Alert! Easter Photo Shoot with Pit Bull, Chick, and Bunnies. Just about all the other posts with lots of ♥s were cute animals, too.
Usability tip of the week: With the new Neatorama design, we have expanded the ways you can interact with others on the site. Registered users can leave comments on the posts AND on other user's profiles -including the authors profiles. But if you don't have time or don't know what to say, you can simply leave a ♥ on the top of a post you like, or beside comments you like or agree with.
And if that isn't enough Neatorama for you, we have extra content and fun at our Facebook page, Twitter feed, and Pinterest pinboard. For mobile users, Flipboard makes it easy to keep up with Neatorama. Oh yeah -look for Neatorama on Instagram, too!