It’s that time of year, again — time to take a look back at 2011, and see what you liked most about the Big Bad Blog.

How can we tell? We use a complex scoring system which tracks links back to the Big Bad Blog, comments made, and pageviews. Maybe not that complicated. However we came up with the list — and truth be told, even we are not entirely sure — this is it:

5: Google Plus: A first look

We received an early invitation to the new Social Network on the block, and dutifully gave our first impressions of it — and they were positive impressions, indeed.

While an update of those impressions are overdue — first impressions, while important, are not necessarily final opinions — this blogger still feels that Google Plus has the potential to be the best of the available networks, but it still has some way to go before it arrives there.

4: Character creation and alignment

The roleplaying area of the blog has taken a big backseat this year. While the generally haphazard update schedule has reduced the amount of content published, of all types, the roleplaying section has had to address a second deficiency: I stopped running my D&D game.

Most of the content I produced was the result of running a game myself — a weekly article was easy when I was introducing myself to the fourth edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game. Running a game once a month was enough to provide ongoing monthly articles — ideas or actions would arise in planning or playing that were comment-worthy.

But a baby makes for little playing time, nevermind planning time, and the game only managed one session after Maggie’s birth in 2010 to prove itself to be too much work. It went on hiatus, and my impression now is that it is a permanent one.

Since then, I have been thinking about my next game, which will be of the more old skool D&D bent. Although actual game development has been minimal this year — maybe it will get off its feet in 2012 — I read something that triggered ideas about alignment, in terms of the next game, and voila. A popular D&D blog post.

If scheduling permits progress towards running this new game next year — by no means a necessity — we should see plenty of roleplaying goodness on the Big Bad Blog next year.

Otherwise? The 2012 edition might not have a roleplaying entry.

3: Bringing down the meme: Demotivationals

It seems that every year, I get excited about a meme. And then soon in the new year, I get tired of the meme and write about it.

In 2009/10 it was the FAIL meme. In 2010/11, it was the demotivational.

Next year? No idea. I sadly feel as though I’m not amused by any current memes — it could be the end of a Big Bad Blog tradition.

This particular blog entry makes me quite proud: the comments tend to be people stopping in to tell me that I’m unfunny or stupid. This, as you may be aware, is an indicator of blog excellence.

2: Because you’re all horny for Felicia Day

It has long been noted that Felicia Day nude, Felicia Day naked, and their ilk are popular search terms, when it comes to finding the Big Bad Blog, sending over 100 people our way on an average day.

The traffic from these search terms seemed to be spiking over the summer, when I saw this photo on Wil Wheaton’s Tumblr thingy. (I always call then “Tumblr thingies”. Calling it “so-and-so’s Tumblr” seems wrong. Calling it a “Tumblr blog”, also wrong. What to do?)

The forces of Google meant that I had to write something including that photo.

And the popularity of the search term guaranteed its place here.

1: Twitter to Facebook not working

Back in February, I noticed that my tweets had stopped automatically updating my Facebook page.

This was a concern — I disliked, and continue to dislike, interacting with Facebook directly. But I like all the people on Facebook (also known as “all the people”) to be able to follow me, if they so wish.

So … importation.

It had, for whatever reason, stopped working. So I did what one does in these situations, and starting to try to figure out how to fix it.

Once fixed, I figured that I would post the solution, as it was neither easy to find nor immediately evident. Mine was apparently well-indexed on Google, as it prompted plenty of re-tweets, Facebook likes and (for this blog) a healthy number of comments.

A bit boring, maybe, compared to previous year’s number ones, but it’s nice to be helpful sometimes.

Felicia Day nude is the top search term for the past week. Again.

Felicia Day naked is number three. Felicia Day porn is number five. Felicia Day topless is number eight.

This is not abnormal. Which isn’t to say that you’re not abnormal for making such a search, just that you’re not alone and all of you seem to find your way here. There’s a reason why Apparently the internet needs more naked Felicia Day is listed to the right as one of the more popular articles on this website.

If there’s one lesson that I have learned in the two-and-a-half years I have been running the blog, it’s that putting the words “nude” and “Felicia Day” in the same blog entry will result in thousands of pageviews, even if they appear in different paragraphs, and the former is not meant as an adjective to describe the latter.

It is, perhaps, the only piece of SEO advice you will ever find on this website. These terms have been sitting at or near the top of my search results every single day since mid-2009. If nothing else, it is a sure sign that nude Felicia Day photos are not available on the Internet. Because if they existed, you wouldn’t be coming here.

For whatever reason — Comic Con? Eureka — the hunt for a naked Felicia Day is more intense this week than ever before. Denizens of the internet are flocking here in huge numbers hoping to see Felicia Day without a shirt.

Well, horny Sci Fi nerds, you’re in luck:

Just kidding, of course. Ms. Day is fully clothed — or so Mr. Wheaton assures us. Believe what you will. Just be prepared for Wil Wheaton to call you a creeper.

Creeper.

Photo fearlessly, boldly and blatantly grabbed from Wil Wheaton’s Tumblr.

Sometimes trying to make a quick quip about the day’s news is difficult. Take this article, which tells us that Italian banks will begin to take ham and wine as collateral on loans. Why not cheese, you ask? Because they already do this with cheese. The World Italy is a strange place.

(by Travis Louie)

Wil Wheaton writes about the days following the making of Stand By Me: I think it’s spooky how the four of us ended up being so much like our characters: River died too young, Corey struggled like crazy to get his personal demons under control, Jerry found success and happiness, and I’m a writer.

Robots are developing the ability to lie. Can the Terminator-apocalypse be far away?