Guesses at Nothing

Instant Google Pudding

Guesses at Nothing — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 22:35:01 GMT

Photo CC licensed by Krstn Hrmnsn

Google Instant -- you may have noticed it. Neat idea, but I have a qualm.

Do you know that feeling you get when you are doing something familiar in a dream, but it doesn't quite work correctly? Like using the T.V. remote but the buttons are all wacky?

That's how Google Instant's interface feels to me.

I detest my mouse and use it as rarely as possible. Many of Google's products (Reader, Chrome, Gmail) have great support for keyboard shortcuts, but this seems to be lacking on Google's homepage in general and especially with Instant.

Logic bears that the most important part of a search engine result page would be the actual results, yet to get to them without the mouse on Google Instant it takes 15 keystrokes using the tab key to get to the results. There may be another key that does the trick, but I can't find it. Also, in order to get from result to result you need to tab twice to get by the 'favorite' star next to the link.

C'mon Google, there has to be a better way.

Couch Potato Karma

Guesses at Nothing — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 01:49:06 GMT

What would you say if I told you that right now as you read this, and even as I typed this, I am working on curing muscular dystrophy?

You'd probably say, yeah, whatever Jim, I know you like to watch a lot of T.V. and surf the internet. You'd probably say, I also know that you are not a doctor nor do you play one on T.V. But thanks to the power of the internet I am doing my part (however miniscule) to find clean energy and water, cure muscular dystrophy, fight A.I.D.S. and more.

The idea is this, by installing a piece of software on your computer you can dedicate spare computing cycles to projects that need to analyize HUGE amounts of data. So in your own small way you can do things to help cure cancer in children. And a real-world-measurable-by-economists benefit that is more important than your inflated-sense-of-self-esteem-and-extra-karma-points-for-paying-it-forward-that-you-can-brag-about-on-facebook motive is that in your own small way, you've helped defer the cost of the infrastructure that it would take to analyze all that data. So win-win -- you can brag about what a great person you are and you've saved science some money.

Here is where you can sign up. Just download and install the app and then sleep better at night knowing what a great person you are.

If you're the type that thinks universally rather than globally, you can dedicate your computing cycles to SETI@home¹, so your Windows 7 laptop could even possibly detect intelligent life in the farthest reaches of the universe.

¹In some bizarre twisted logic of the weird place in time that is the beginning of the third millenia Anno Domini a high school IT administrator lost his job over a misappropriation of school resources for running SETI@home on school equipment. As this FAQ mentions, the cost of running SETI@home is not exactly nothing, but we are talking proverbial beans here for the sake of a legitimate scientific purpose IN A PLACE OF EDUCATION. So much for internet karma.

Because Gilligan Could Not Stop For Death

Guesses at Nothing — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:00:00 GMT

Think Gilligan's Island Theme:

Because I could not stop for Death

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

----

Sorry I ruined it for you. Forever.

Inspired by the alt text from this XKCD comic.

The Sun Only Sets

Guesses at Nothing — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:44:17 GMT

The sun only sets so it can rise somewhere else.

Why Posterous Sucks

Guesses at Nothing — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 02:24:15 GMT

Editor's Note: This blog post contains jargon that my reader(s) may find unsuitable. Reader discretion is advised.

Cruft
Cruft
Cruft
Cruft
Cruft

I recently went through the arduous process of removing all the posterous cruft that accrued in my blog since I started using their service. Cruft is the little bits of unused data that build up in computers over time. I am using it here to mean crumby markup that doesn't serve a purpose other than taking up bandwidth.

HTML is simple. Note the code below:

<p>This is a paragraph in a paragraph tag</p>
<blockquote>This is a block of quoted text</blockquote>

The above code would output:

This is a paragraph in a paragraph tag

This is a block of quoted text

Simple, right? Except posterous¹ inserts all kinds of meaningless tags and classes and even invalid markup like <p/> which as far as I know means nothing to nobody.

Another downside of posterous is that they host all your images. So when I sent them a post with a pic they stored the image on their servers and hotlinked to it from my site even though MetaWeblog API supports uploading images. This is potentially good as it saves on bandwidth, but as I noted in my post on cloud computing, the downside is that when posterous disappears, so do your images. And this happened too, recently posterous suffered a DOS attack that lasted for SIX DAYS.

And yet one more reason why posterous sucks is that they steal your link love. Google gives credit for original content, so when posterous double posts your content to their site you can incur a duplicate content penalty, and since posterous even adds a link back to their site you pass PageRank to the posterous site.

To be fair, my intent of using posterous as a way to update my blog without having to go through the interface may not be what the posterous peeps intended. In the end, without page views you can't monetize, so posterous is being smart by sending all the traffic back to their site (although they aren't upfront about this). Also, there could be other revenue models. (Maybe insert ads in my feed while being upfront about it, and perhaps even share the revenue.)

So I cleaned up the cruft. Got my images back and hosted safely on my site and learned my lesson. In the end I've only myself to blame. Ultimately, if you don't control your own data then you don't really own it. (see also: facebook.)

¹ To be fair, since I used gmail to generate the post, this could be cruft that gmail generated. Historically, Google has been lax about valid markup.

Like The Last Minute On A Treadmill

Guesses at Nothing — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 01:03:59 GMT

Six Figures Getting Sick (Six Times)

Says my wife.

Whoa, man.

Guesses at Nothing — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:13:20 GMT

The following statement is true. The previous statement is false.

The Knowing Colorful Greeks

Guesses at Nothing — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 22:37:38 GMT

I did not know this, but apparently Greek statues were once painted.

[via kottke]

When I think of ancient Greece I think of stylish togas, and marble statues and tablets.

This is an affront to my perception that ancient Greece was a cold, sterile place.

Maybe the color explains the knowing Archaic Smile.

I always think that that smile is the smile that someone 'in the know' smiles upon the unknowing.

Segregated Groceries

Guesses at Nothing — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:23:51 GMT

Overheard in the Target grocery line:

"Sorry it's taking me so long to bag your groceries. I'm trying to keep them segregated."

And yes, I do live below the Mason-Dixon.

The Thought Just Occurred To Me

Guesses at Nothing — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 04:05:34 GMT

I've got a whole database full of $#17 that came from my head.