In searching about an obscure fact concerning languages I found Paul Graham's essay "Beating the Averages"[0] I found it interesting, and started to read some of the other essays. As a quick hack I then drew a diagram of the obvious connections between them[1]. Similarly, I then used a PageRank-style ranking of the essays[2].
I sent the results to Paul Graham, who said I should submit them to HN, of which I'd never heard. I did so, and they pretty much sunk without trace, as do so many of my submissions. Even so, I read some more, and stayed for a while.