Google side alleys and back corners

Years ago I wrote a piece about the way in which many people spell the word crawl (as in a baby learning to crawl) as crowl, which of course is my surname - it was while I was searching Google that I discovered this fairly common error. For a long time  I couldn't find that article, then it turned up on my Evernote files, and I transferred a tidier copy of it to this blog. 

My search that resulted in discovering the connections between crowl and crawl started because I was looking up my own name on Google. Self-indulgent, you might say, but I'm the sort of person who quite often sits down to check what's turns up on Google when I put my name in. I also like to check out the results when I look up my books. I'm sure there are other things to do in life, but sometimes this turns up some interesting stuff, the sorts of things you'd never otherwise discover.

For instance, I put the words Disenchanted Wizard in the search box today, because that's the name of my latest book, and I wanted to see where it was appearing on the Net. One of the things I discovered is that Kobo has a list of books with the word disenchanted in their titles, and my book is among them. Thanks, Kobo! (I've only just noticed that another book, Reviving Old Scratch, which I read last year, and which I lent to a friend just yesterday, is also on this list, because its subtitle is Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted.)

I also discovered that a writer named Keith Timson, who, coincidentally was born in the same year as me - 1945 - had written a short story called The Disenchanted Wizard that appeared in a magazine called Dark Horizons, in 1991. Nice that he chose to give my book some advertising over 25 years before it was written!

And of course I found that The Disenchanted Wizard turns up on some rather suspect sites, where they're trying to give my book away for free when they don't have any right to do so. When I clocked on on of those sites, the response was 'refusing to answer Google's inquiry.'  LOL

There's also a list of all my books on a site called Medical Books. Okay. Not sure of the connection there, although admittedly the non-fiction title, Diary of a Prostate Wimp, is somewhat medical. Each of the books, which all appear twice in this list, have blio beside them. Presumably blio.com is one of the distributors of the books. But that still doesn't explain the Medical Books aspect of things. Still it's nice to be turning up in all sorts of places!

One of Kobo's Asian sites is advertising TDW. Wow! I'm world famous!!

But perhaps the oddest search result came up as 'PDF Read [Southern Book] - Diary of a Prostate Wimp - Kitchens R Us. When I clicked on the link it said that the page wasn't found but it brought up the Kitchens R Us page anyway, on which there is nothing about either Prostate Wimp or Disenchanted Wizard, rather to my disappointment. I'd love to know how the two were connected, and why my latest book brought them together.

Lap of Luxury

After visiting so many stately mansions and large abodes on our travels around the UK, you’d think we’d have got an idea what it means to have a luxury home. But it seems we’re not really aware of what’s current.
A modern luxury home is expected to have all sorts of things included that once upon a time would barely be dreamed of. Many of them are ‘smart’ houses. They’re equipped with high-tech computers that monitor and control all manner of features in the house. Remember when Tom Cruise goes into his apartment in the film Minority Report and speaks to the lights? That’s just a very simple example. The computers in smart houses sort out not just the lighting, but the heating, the cooling, and the security. (Just don’t let there be a power cut - although no doubt many of these houses have their own generators as well.)
Modern luxury homes are also made of eco-friendly building materials, and incorporate a large number of features that make them green in the very best sense. (If we can just get computers to go green we’ll be really making progress!)
And then of course, the humans in these ultra-clever homes expect to be looked after - pampered even - by their homes. Spa pools, whirlpools, saunas, heated marble floors and towel bars are the sort of things that will keep the soft as soft humans happy. And for the woman - or her maid, more likely - the kitchens in these homes are aimed at the gourmet cook. They’re expansive (the kitchens, not the cooks) and they have smart appliances. That ‘smart’ word again. What does it mean when it comes to kitchens?
Because these luxury homes are likely to be networked electronically, kitchen items, from stoves to fridges may start ‘talking’ to each other. And may even ignore the humans!