Time To Party
In August, I shared my progress on the endless grind to collect tags and commentary from 136,199 reblogs of Martin and Bosco’s post. Now that it’s early September, here’s a quick update.
So, Laura, how is the data collection going? Tap the “CELEBRATE!” button to find out! Heh.
Figure 1: The progress bar shows 100% complete after 81 days of collecting tags and commentary from the reblogs. This important milestone is celebrated with a confetti button.
I’m so excited to have completed the second major data collection step! Wasn’t the new progress bar fancy? Keep tapping the “CELEBRATE!” button to rain more confetti as a little treat.
Fun Fact
I ran the reblog data collection script 168 times without any issues.
Not exactly what the “R” in the FAIR data principles means (there it stands for Reusable data), but still a small victory for reusability in practice. A true modern-day miracle given how rickety Tumblr’s API is.
Stay Tuned
The next blog post will take a closer look at the daily note count line plot from the /notes API dashboard. Now that we’ve celebrated a second Martin and Bosco Day (July 13, 2025), it’s the perfect time to visualize the engagement. I’ll also discuss some of the decisions that shaped the analysis for the plot.
Thumbnail Image Credit
The colourful thumbnail image for this post is my close-up photo of the infamous ballpit at DashCon 2, Tumblr’s fan convention held in Toronto in July 2025. The ridiculousness of the ballpit matches the energy of my endless data collection phase. Perhaps a photo of me at the ballpit will appear in a future post.