MPC's tobacco of choice (for now)

The Burleyphiles have tried, but I am still a VA/anydamnthing kinda dude

to see if we can put up a widget that shows the current tobacco of choice as a widget up on the right...my vote for right now is split though...between OGS and OJK

this could be a fun quarterly thing! Am I nutzo?

Josh: love the widget idea ... Lars?

For burlies, lots of folks seem to be smoking OJK, HB and Riverboat Gambler.

The VA/Can Popper crowd clearly favors MNF and/or OGS

Perhaps categories should be considered. Lots of folks here are like me and smoke burlies 99.9% of the time and to be honest I can't vote for or against MNF or OGS as I've never smoked either. So maybe vote for Official Burley, Official VA, Official English and Official Balkan Blend. This way, regardless of preference everyone gets equal representation.

I can't think of any reason not to do it your way GI.

So every quarter (starting Q4: 2008 = now) we vote on favorite:
Burley
Va
Va/Burley
Va/Per
English
Balkan
Aromatic
Other

Is that right?

Perhaps the mathematicians should weigh in on this concept. Just a thought.

is not a branch of mathematics ;)

but wth, I could make a histogram for you, no problem.

there is the issue of the data collection though, and what to do with outliers, like revor plug for example, I think it is only me and Morleysson who have mentioned this one.

hmmm, perhaps if one wades through the "watcha smokin" threads for a full quarter... then you could get enough info.

and, you forgot the Bur/Per...

anyway, think one should restrict this to only commercially available blends.

I am just rambling along, incoherently, coffee have not kicked in just yet...

I like it. Voting in the favorite VA, Burley, English or whatever would need some sort of application with a tobacco database that knows what Riverboat Gambler is and what Three Nuns is, etc. That way the numbers get to speak for themselves. Of course this will take some time to make.

The duct tape solution would be to just have people yell and scream in a thread and let some poor sap (Rick) add up the votes.

The first solution is by far the coolest, but I can't start to imagine who has the spare time to make a web script that can handle this.
The second solution works wonderfully, but robs us of easy-to-access statistics. Manual labor is involved no matter what.

Any PHP scripters in the house who has nothing else to do? :)

what about a hybrid...where there is a post quarterly and the five top tobaccos make it on a poll to see what the winner is...

that way there isn't as much need to count in the thread...moreso just get an idea from it...and let real statistics chose...though it seems a bit overkill to do every type...

how about favorite codger and favorite tin-popper?

Cheers,

Josh

brewing coffee I came up with the fun idea of the sound of mpc..

assign a frequency (ie pitch) to a tobacco, like dark plug is in the lower regions, OGS in the higher.

the strength would be the gain, this making BnB a low frequency distorted signal :D

the frequency of the different tobaccos popping up at a thread at mpc would be the "key strokes"

to take a simple concept & complicate the living daylights out of it! One man, one vote, KISS.

Piatt - McBaren Navy Flake
Muddler - Morley's Best

I think we're getting some good feedback and I'd like to move forward with this but "the how to" is still a bit muddy ... keep the comments coming guys (you new guys too please! you're part of the family now.)

If there is one thing I truely want to be sure of its that this must give everyone a voice. Per GI's description I guess I'm a can popper. Ok. I guess I'm guilty as charged. All the more reason I want to make sure the guys (like GI) that go for the tubs of tobacco or folks that go for bulk tobaccos (McClelland, C&D, etc) get a voice too. This MUST NOT become a "just us can poppers" thing. Its all or none at all as far as I'm concerned.

As far as me taking time counting up the votes - no problem, I don't mind. I wouldn't have the time to count every comment in every daily smoking thread ... but I could wade through a quarterly vote with no problems.

Categories ... maybe we are (I am) being too anal (been guilty of that ten thousand times before) trying to put all the sub categories up for a vote. Maybe ... maybe it should just be:

*** Tinned tobacco
*** Non-Tinned tobacco

Simpler?

I mean...we all sort of see the trends of common tobaccos on the site...so maybe quarterly people sort of nominate tobaccos that they see a lot of...and then use the poll widget to check the nominations...that way everyone can get an easy equal vote...

and the two categories seems the most logical way as well...

Cheers,

Josh

I don't have enough brain power to think up something clever, so Muddler's solution works for me :)

Slartie - Orlik Golden Sliced

It could be fun to have some sort of script trawl the site for blend references and make some statistics. I think that would be really cool.

I guess non-tinned means bulk, not just weed in plastic barrels or pouches. But, just in case, here goes:

Bulk: Morley's Best
Tins: GLP Laurel Heights (difficult choice)
Barrels: ERR
Pouches: Balkan Sobranie

Hopefully, I haven't complicated it too much. Omit the barrel/ pouch stuff if I have Rick.

if "todays smokes" became a thread section on its own, and dates where in the header of all new threads, a script would be very much easier to implement....

A "Todays smokes" forum section is doable, but I'd hate to mess with the URL now since all the search engines have us cached all the way back to day one.

seem to have some nice libraries for data collection.

I do see another problem.... to identify the tobaccos, and just not that, all the abbreviations as well...

hm, on the other hand, one could build a look up table I guess, or do some statistics, correlating GH - DBE with Gawith, Hoggarth & Co - Dark birds eye

hey now, this is more fun than completing old hand ins, shame on you rick ;)

And so it begins.

I had one last thought ... and this is because I was thinking of two people (Henrik and Capt Bob) but also in regards to all the rest of the tobacco sluts out here. I think we should also add one category: "Honorable Mention".

Lets face it ... Henrik smokes stuff stouter in vitamin N than most of us can dream of smoking without passing out ... Capt Bob smokes only two blends and I don't remember anyone smoking either besides Bob ... And then again all of us have one or two tobacs we smoke that no one else around here touches. I don't want any of us to feel like we're forgotten in this "Flavor of MPC" thing.

Sooooo ... three categories seem to fit the bill:

*** Tinned Tobaccos
*** Bulk Tobaccos
*** Honorable Mention Tobaccos

Tinned and Bulk will be easy - whatever gets the most votes wins for the quarter. Honorable Mention has me confused as to how to handle it since all tobaccos mentioned will likely get one vote each. Any ideas how I can do this fairly?

First of all ... Mike ... YOU SLUT! LOL.

Bulk and Barrels fall into the same category.
Pouches and tins fall into the same category.

Yes I realize some cross over happens (ERR is both bulk and tin by this categorization) but I think most here that smoke ERR will list it on the Bulk side anyway.

Lets make sure we all agree before listing tobaccos ... please!

=====================================
Obviously my previous post was in the fullness of excitement over the idea taking wing so quicky ... then I rethought it and thought 'oh damn, what if someone disagreed' ... aargh.

Someone buy me a decision I can't seem to make one today!!!!!

I agree with you.

I don’t mean to sound negative, but do we really want to go here and designate one tobacco as “the choice”.

I’ve been guilty on other sites of participating in such surveys and voting for my “one and only” tobacco or my “desert island blends”, but I’m not sure what purpose that really served. Sure you get a “winner” but usually not a clear majority. Am I a loser if I don’t smoke the winner?

Most pipe smokers I know are very independent people and respectful of others. We all have our favorite blends and I think we should keep it that way.

I don’t think we need an “official" tobacco, as individuals we should make that a personal decision.

Burro, I believe this little project is about visualizing what blend people are buzzing around at the moment, rather than an elitist statement of what people _should_ smoke. Around here nobody takes anything too seriously. People have had their laughs on my expense about my Orlik Golden Sliced obsession on several occasions.

Case and point

Image 1
Image 2

... and I keep coming back for more :)

Frankly I'd be very surprised if this became anything but fun and games.

We all have our favorites, and due to unknown circumstances, a given blend starts getting smoked by everybody all at once. It happened with my beloved Orlik Golden Sliced some months back. Our resident burleyphiles were appaled (still in humorous exchanges of opinion). It's part of why I love this place. We're so informal and laid back it's scary :)

I don't know about other sites Burro - here on MPC we just have fun. The idea was to churn up some conversation about what our favorite blends are at the moment. Certainly NOT to try in any way, shape, or form to tell someone else what to smoke. Oh my. No, no, no. As long as you smoke a pipe you're my friend. I don't care if you're smoking Mixture 79 in a Cob or a Aged Haddos Delight in an S.Bang ... you're a fellow pipe smoker and thats all that matters to me. I think you'll find all of here on MPC are of the same opinion in that regard.

Part of what I was thinking was how this would be for the sake of folks cruising by our site for the first time - a (potential) new member would be curious who and what we are. Well from a pipe smokers point of view a quick look at what we smoke tells you a bunch about us. I've heard it said that many other sites kind of look down on you if you smoke Prince Albert in an estate Kaywoodie but here we respect Prince Albert and think Kaywoodies are pretty darn ok too! Some folks have joined up here simply for googling the term "Codger Burleys" ... and we welcome every one of them.

To be bluntly honest I only saw this as a silly way to redo what we did months ago when I started calling MacBaren Navy Flake MPC's unofficial tobacco of choice. I envisioned Navy Flake and OGS going the way of the dodo as far as ever being called the tobacco of choice since we now have so many Burleyaholics. I figured our next tobacco of choice would be Old Joe Krantz. But like so many things here the idea evolved and now we can list three different tobaccos instead of one. Thats a great thing as it opens the door to a wider audience! GI pointed out that some of us are simply not 'can poppers' but buy bulk instead. Personally I'm a can popper that is just starting to play with bulks. By listing Tinned Tobaccos, Bulk Tobaccos, & Honorable Mention Tobaccos we give room to all manner of tastes within the group.

Its about fun. Its about sharing. MPC is not now, nor can I ever envision it becoming a tobacco elitist kind of place. Hell, the codgers here would shout that kind of person out in total embarassment. And I'd shout right along side of them.

Better? Sorry if this caused any confusion.

I concur with everything said. These folks aren't attempting to create some sort of elitist "Smoke Penzance or your a douchebag" campaign. Much to the contrary I think this gives most everyone a say as there are lots of categories to fit whatever your smoke of choice is. No one here will ever try to dictate to you what to smoke. You may hear "brand X is fantastic" and then several folks following up with "Yeah I'm smoking brand X and yes it is the poo." Clearly we saw this happen this year with McBaren Navy Flake, OGS and Old Joe Krantz. Of course not everyone liked all of these blends so what develops is various factions the Burley Codgers, Can Poppers etc. Here at MPC there is no dominant faction and most of the time we just agree to disagree and go on about our business. What Rick smokes and what I smoke (relative to both pipes and tobacco) are very different things. Neither of us is right or wrong, just right for our particular tastes. No one is attempting to convert anyone or make someone smoke something they don't want to. In fact despite all the hype, I haven't yet smoked McBaren Navy Flake or OGS. What's more, I don't think Rick has smoked Old Joe Krantz. There may be light hearted banter and kidding but at the end of the day you smoke what you want to and so does everyone else (unless of course you smoke Mixture 79).

I tried OJK! Chris gave me some one time we got together. It wasn't my cup of tea but I'm glad I had the chance to try it. See, that's one of the things I like so much about MPC - I rely on the burleyaholics to sample lots of burleys and then I try what they say is best! Its not about a competition between burley lovers an VA addicts any more than being about Kaywoodie vs Dunhill, its about sharing our common passion: a love for pipes and tobaccos.

GI : if you ever want to try Navy Flake or OGS just shoot me a private message (I'll keep your secret LOL) and a tin of each will be on your doorstep before you know it.

Can we kick this off? Is everyone ok with it? Burro? (don't be shy, we value your opinion here)

Bulk-Riverboat Gambler seems to have the most buzz right now. Enough to dethrone OJK? I'll let others decide that, but I think even Captain Bob would lend his support for RG.

For Codger Burlies-with the demise of Edgeworth, I'll go with Prince Albert.

Tins-I'll let you guys decide that one.

Honorable mention to Captain Bob's blend, FVF, and Cob Plug.

I hope I did this right. I was kind of confused.