Eleven years' worth of Boing Boing posts in one file!

(image: number of Boing Boing posts per month by author, click to see larger)

Having very recently celebrated Boing Boing's eleventh bloggaversary, we're releasing an update of our previous archival release of Boing Boing posts.

This time, we're releasing a 120.3MB XML file (38.3MB zip) of 63,999 posts for your parsing pleasure. The whole file is released under a Creative Commons license that allows you to noncommerically remix and distribute it in whole or in part -- go crazy!

The first time we released a dump like this, Andy "Waxy" Baio made this breakdown of our blogging activity. More recently, I've been toying with this data behind the scenes and finding some interesting things. We want to see what you can do with it!

Happy (belated) Bloggaversary to us, and thanks to all of you for sticking with us for so many years.

[Download the zipped XML file here]

• [benher]

  Huh. All my embarrassing railing comments seem to correlate with all my drunken days off…

• [awjtawjt]

  so simple it doesn’t even need a dtd with it

• [Vance]

  This graph would be much clearer with Cory on the top. The big monthly variations in his posting are making the trends of the other posters besides Mark much less clear.

  • [Dean Putney]

    I put them in order of their appearance on the blog. Were Cory on top, everyone else would be squished between him and Mark, which wouldn’t really make sense IMO.

    That said, feel free to parse out the XML file and make your own graph.

• [Anonymous]

  This has got to be fake.Last time I fell for this it was all animal porn

• [hancocks]

  The file is organic, free-range, hormone- and antibiotic-free, and subject to the vagaries of the trade winds. Also, just plain free.

  Do not fold, spindle or mutilate. Not compatible with the Rockwell retro encabulator.

• [Anonymous]

  Before “Blog” became the buzzword, what was BoingBoing before?

  • [David Pescovitz]

    bOING bOING was a ‘zine and then a Web site. It became a blog when Mark installed Blogger in January of 2000.

• [Patrick Dodds]

  Complete with comments?

• [technogeek]

  Hmm. My reaction to this is “I wonder what a stochasticized BoingBoing would look like. Time to fire up Dissociated Press.”

• [waterapple]

  Yuck…”Bloggaversary”? Seriously?

• [Anonymous]

  Why not release it to Wikileaks. Might get more attention.

• [spill]

  Line 666:

  “The visual cliché du jour:”

  Heh.

• [Anonymous]

  When I saw the graph, I just assumed the red band was posts about Disney/copyright, the blue band posts about “this banana holder” (just look at it!), etc.

• [Rob Beschizza]

  Comments are not included, though the number of comments on each post is.

• [Anonymous]

  Firefox 3.6.13:
  XML Parsing Error: not well-formed
  Location: file:///C:/Downloads/bbpostdump.xml
  Line Number 53, Column 277:
  I was happy to discover…

  IE8: Warning about running ActiveX controls and XML source code.

  Was it really necessary to make reading the stuff incompatible with secure browsing?
  

• [brunocs]

  Completely unrelated to the actual post, but how did you generate that graph (which program was used)? It’s awesome!

  • [Dean Putney]

    The graph was made in Excel. It’s amazing how much that program is capable of.

• [YarbroughFair]

  A-Z Boing Boing Google Auto Complete:

  boing boing art
  boing boing blog
  boing boing cool tools
  boing boing die antwoord
  boing boing evil boy
  boing boing flickr
  boing boing gift guide
  boing boing hacked
  boing boing icp
  boing boing jerry lewis
  boing boing kitten
  boing boing lyrics
  boing boing mark
  boing boing net
  boing boing offworld
  boing boing pearl necklace
  boing boing quarantine
  boing boing rss
  boing boing stoic
  boing boing teacher
  boing boing unicycle
  boing boing video
  boing boing wiki
  boing boing xeni
  boing boing yoyo
  boing boing zombie shirt

• [Glenn Fleishman]

  Putting Cory in red was either a beautiful mistake or proof of the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose noodly appendages produce delightful graphs.

  Am I wrong to see Cory’s section as a wall of purifying flame?

  • [JonS]

    “Putting Cory in red was either a beautiful mistake or proof of the existence of the FSM”

    Well, it’s generally well known that cory wears a red cape while he’s blogging from a hot air balloon, so it makes perfect sense to me.

• [Justin Makeig]

  I’ve put together a quick search application with the content. Feel free to explore at http://boingboing.demo.marklogic.com/. This is a first crack. I’d like to add additional analytics and visualizations. I’d welcome contributions. I’ve put the code on Github https://github.com/marklogic/boing-boing.

• [Mekki]

  As an academic, I’m tingling at the analytic possibilities of these data. Huge thumbs up for making this available under a CC license! You guys keep on rocking. :D

• [thebelgianpanda]

  So Cory, what was with the dry spell a couple months back? Oh, and who is gonna parse this to track distribution of banana related posts? (Did I just volunteer myself?) Awesome stuff!!

• [technogeek]

  I finally got around to Dissociating some of this. With argument of +8, I get quotes like:

  Motor attached to see all 4 of the senior leaders use the electronics magazine. Now, have a look at Teresa Nielsen Hayden (this was his day off). We split, and she waves me forward, they’re guilty and the haptics let you feel that you simply…

  just found the newspaper after The Karate Kid? Imagine it, trust fund that they’re maintaining. (They don’t they often create a
  mean-spirited snark; and 2) that though it hurls thunderbolts like Zeus, it has merely added to evidence already gathering earlier this week, …

  The Yes Men Discussed the importance a la question de la forme du
  copyright ? Qu’est-ce qui est en jeu ?(…)Mr. Bechtolsheim, who this week unveiled his newest machine: the Sun Constellation craft Kosmos-2251 struck down this demand, noting the impeachment of Mr. Doctors recommend genital surgery in infomercia: instead, income is taxed at 100 percent, and
  that The proof is only available by the end of the year.

• [dross1260]

  Word count:
  9599 – “amazon”
  2773 – “steampunk”
  2670 – “mutant”
  845 – “banana”
  148 – “otis”
  112 – “Spaghetti Monster”
  18 – “kerfuffle”

• [technogeek]

  Boing Boing TV, this video of a non-existent fashion at all. Float
  naked, saying he wasn’t surprising, the source told the Sun. We
  bring grid-less powerful family gag: “Fooled” the company
  sending taken off and run through an intermediary transfer orbit
  (GTO)… Hollywood may sometimes several times chief sees paywalls like the one eyed baby which comes willing to find is those round
  mouse holes we got.

• [Gilbert Wham]

  Oh, thanks. You realise I have shit to do, right? Papers to write, work to find, kids to wrangle, things like that? Dammit.

  • [Dean Putney]

    We are by no means rushing you. You go right ahead and take your sweet time, baby.

• [JM]

  According to Waxy’s breakdown of the previous archive, and for some unknown reason, between March and April of every year the word “penis” was mentioned at least twice as much as in the rest of the year. That’s wazzup in Boing Boing.

  Congratulations to you all. I’ll be waiting for your genital ramblings in a couple of months.

• [Anonymous]

  oh wow i was just thinking “i have not enough information in my life” and now my prayers are answered

• [RedShirt77]

  this looks like a wired magazine chart

• [wnoise]

  But does it contain the “unpublished” posts that caused such rage?

  • [Dean Putney]

    Unpublished posts are not included.

• [Rob Beschizza]

  Download it and find out!