Back in 2006/7, when I was out of work for some months, I was persuaded I could produce some income by writing blog posts for various sites. According to the site owners I would make piles of money and probably never have to go to work again. Yeah, right.
However, I did write a lot of blog posts, including ones for a site called Orble, where I had two blogs running consecutively. Both of these blogs mysteriously disappeared a few years ago, and no amount of inquiry to Orble elicited any response. Thankfully, I'd kept the posts from one of the sites - WorkReport.net - relating to issues I had with my prostate in the late 2008-early 2009, because I wanted to write a book using them. (The book eventually got published as Diary of a Prostate Wimp, available as an e-book on Amazon Kindle as well as other devices.)
I did make some cash out of these sites, through Google Adsense, so they weren't entirely wasted.
Another site, Triond, where I also made a small amount of cash (they paid monthly, rather than waiting till the payments had built up to US$100) also eventually went into some kind of AWOL status, and refused to respond to enquiries. Dozens of bloggers wrote to them but they just ignored us all.
The problem with these sites gradually disappearing off the Net is that you lose all the blog posts you've written - unless you're very good at backing things up. I wasn't that good, but early on I tended to write the posts offline, in Word, and then upload them to the blog. Which meant I had copies of them.
I've been sifting back through my old files, and have discovered a fairly large wad of posts, some good, some not so good. In order to give the better ones a new lease of life, I'll add them to this blog over the next months/year. I'll note on when and where they first appeared (if I actually have those details) so that you don't think you're reading totally new material. Not that it would matter: there's an awful lot of recycled material on the Internet!
Just another little project....
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Living with computers
Just thinking how commonplace computers and such have become in my lifetime; actually it's not even that long. My first experience of computers, as far as I can recall, was when I worked at the Dunedin City Council, back in the eighties. We couldn't actually change anything on the computers (which in those days were still fed by cards with holes punched in them), but we could type something onto one of the terminals, and print it out. That was Big Time! (The actual computer filled an entire room and had enormous rolls of tape spinning around working very hard.)
I think the very first computer we actually owned was one that was about the size of a calculator: it was about twice as long horizontally as vertically, and you could only fit one program onto it at a time. With an upper limit of something like 64 bits...! It was very low level programming, but it worked...even though it was frustrating having to delete one programme in order to do another. From memory this was called the Casio PB-100, and it was very popular, in spite of its considerable
limitations.
I remember sitting up to the wee hours of the morning inputting information on its little keyboard, and getting very frustrated when one single error would make the whole programme refuse to run.
At some point after that I used a friend's computer. He was always somewhat ahead of us, and had a computer where you spent a great deal of time typing stuff in via the keyboard (that was progress). You had to add in information for bolds and italics and all that sort of thing, because of course it did none of these by the mere press of a couple of keys. There was no mouse, so if you made a mistake you had to go back by pressing the cursor (at least I think that's what we must have done - it's a long time ago) in order to change things.
And then all this information was recorded on a tape. You'd play the tape back and only then would you discover whether you'd done everything correctly or not. If you hadn't, you have to go back and find the error and fix it, and then record it again and then play it again...I don't know how we had the patience, quite honestly.
Finally, around 1989 we bought an Amiga 500; this was truly the Big Time! What a wonderful machine that was. Okay, you had to save things to disks, and it was wise to do this fairly regularly. And you couldn't use more than one programme at a time, so none of this modern idea of having several programmes open that you're working on simultaneously. You had to find your own typos and do your own proofreading. Woe betide if you didn't save on this machine...the work was gone for good.
I first learned to use a mouse with the Amiga. I can remember trying it out at a friend's house and seeing the cursor flying out of control all over the screen, and wondering how anyone ever got any finesse with it.
The Amiga played some great games, ones we thought we far superior to what Microsoft was producing at the time. And we eventually began to discover email, and the Internet. It would cost us a dollar an hour to be online, and we could spend an hour just getting online. Email was terrific; the Internet didn't seem to be that big a deal initially.
Regretfully, Amigas went out of circulation, and we finally had to concede to buying a PC. (Which was named Alphonse, as have all of his descendants since). Though we mourned the loss of the Amiga, it didn't take long to get used to the new style, and by now browsers had appeared, and we realised just how extraordinary the Internet was. And this was before Wikipedia, IMDB and dozens of other sites that we use all the time - even before Google. Remembering a time when these didn't exist, or when they were baby sites trying to find their way, seems odd now. They've become so much a part of the Internet worlds.
And then we added a laptop to the family (this must have been in the mid-noughties, because we had we carted it around parts of Europe in 2007). Later, though probably not that much later, an iPad invaded the place, and an iPhone (this was my wife: she's always been up with the play), and then Smartphones and such.
Now my wife even has a Mac after the laptop became sluggish and slow. I don't personally like it much: Apple seems to have contrarily put things that are normally on the right in the PC on the left, just to be annoying. And there are other things about it that don't grab me. Still, it has its points, and occasionally I do concede and use it for something.
The computers over the year have done very little 'computing' - for me they're biggest benefit has been being able to write at speed, and correct easily (I bought my first typewriter in the year I first started work and taught myself to touch-type; that was around 1960...), and cut and paste and so on. But the other big boon has been the music programme, Sibelius. If only I'd had this when I was younger I would have had a ball with it. The hours it would have saved writing out fair copies of music for others to be able to read. Not to worry, it came along in good time, and along with the millions of words I've written on the various computers, there have been hundreds of thousands of notes.
What a time to be alive!
I think the very first computer we actually owned was one that was about the size of a calculator: it was about twice as long horizontally as vertically, and you could only fit one program onto it at a time. With an upper limit of something like 64 bits...! It was very low level programming, but it worked...even though it was frustrating having to delete one programme in order to do another. From memory this was called the Casio PB-100, and it was very popular, in spite of its considerable limitations.
I remember sitting up to the wee hours of the morning inputting information on its little keyboard, and getting very frustrated when one single error would make the whole programme refuse to run.
At some point after that I used a friend's computer. He was always somewhat ahead of us, and had a computer where you spent a great deal of time typing stuff in via the keyboard (that was progress). You had to add in information for bolds and italics and all that sort of thing, because of course it did none of these by the mere press of a couple of keys. There was no mouse, so if you made a mistake you had to go back by pressing the cursor (at least I think that's what we must have done - it's a long time ago) in order to change things.
And then all this information was recorded on a tape. You'd play the tape back and only then would you discover whether you'd done everything correctly or not. If you hadn't, you have to go back and find the error and fix it, and then record it again and then play it again...I don't know how we had the patience, quite honestly.
 |
| Was it really this big? Seems enormous. |
I first learned to use a mouse with the Amiga. I can remember trying it out at a friend's house and seeing the cursor flying out of control all over the screen, and wondering how anyone ever got any finesse with it.
The Amiga played some great games, ones we thought we far superior to what Microsoft was producing at the time. And we eventually began to discover email, and the Internet. It would cost us a dollar an hour to be online, and we could spend an hour just getting online. Email was terrific; the Internet didn't seem to be that big a deal initially.
Regretfully, Amigas went out of circulation, and we finally had to concede to buying a PC. (Which was named Alphonse, as have all of his descendants since). Though we mourned the loss of the Amiga, it didn't take long to get used to the new style, and by now browsers had appeared, and we realised just how extraordinary the Internet was. And this was before Wikipedia, IMDB and dozens of other sites that we use all the time - even before Google. Remembering a time when these didn't exist, or when they were baby sites trying to find their way, seems odd now. They've become so much a part of the Internet worlds.
And then we added a laptop to the family (this must have been in the mid-noughties, because we had we carted it around parts of Europe in 2007). Later, though probably not that much later, an iPad invaded the place, and an iPhone (this was my wife: she's always been up with the play), and then Smartphones and such.
Now my wife even has a Mac after the laptop became sluggish and slow. I don't personally like it much: Apple seems to have contrarily put things that are normally on the right in the PC on the left, just to be annoying. And there are other things about it that don't grab me. Still, it has its points, and occasionally I do concede and use it for something.
The computers over the year have done very little 'computing' - for me they're biggest benefit has been being able to write at speed, and correct easily (I bought my first typewriter in the year I first started work and taught myself to touch-type; that was around 1960...), and cut and paste and so on. But the other big boon has been the music programme, Sibelius. If only I'd had this when I was younger I would have had a ball with it. The hours it would have saved writing out fair copies of music for others to be able to read. Not to worry, it came along in good time, and along with the millions of words I've written on the various computers, there have been hundreds of thousands of notes.
What a time to be alive!
Sunday, March 09, 2014
You have to wonder...
I get Google ads alongside my Gmail, something that doesn't bother me in the slightest, because most of the time I barely notice them. (I can read a newspaper and miss most of the advertising.)
But I have to wonder at the the appropriateness of the some of the ads that do turn up. Alongside a poem in an email today were the ads listed below. The poem was about seeing dance in every movement of life, and it's a nice piece by Mitch Roberson called Every Day We Are Dancers. The bit about the two men carrying a huge mirror across the road is particularly neat.
So let's look at these ads, and see if Google has lost the plot or not in its ad placement.
But I have to wonder at the the appropriateness of the some of the ads that do turn up. Alongside a poem in an email today were the ads listed below. The poem was about seeing dance in every movement of life, and it's a nice piece by Mitch Roberson called Every Day We Are Dancers. The bit about the two men carrying a huge mirror across the road is particularly neat.
So let's look at these ads, and see if Google has lost the plot or not in its ad placement.
Thursday, December 05, 2013
Click here
I remember being
told some years ago now that to write click here in a blog
post was really old hat, and rather amateurish, and that you should make the
need for clicking more informative, more inviting, and less obvious.
Curiously enough, in spite of that advice, and its apparent authority, writers
of blog posts and articles on the Net still use click here ubiquitously.
(Ubiquitously is one of my all-time favourite words, but it's not
as popular on the Net as click here. Actually ubiquitous is
far more popular than ubiquitously - but I digress, though
before I do, how this for a sentence: When looked for with proper
binding, the previously ubiquitous pentaquarks disappeared.)
Back to click here, as in (Click here to read the full decision) which will take you to the most recent decision in the Author's Guild's case against Google's library book scanning project.
This click here will take you to the full transcript of Joss Weldon's Equality Now speech. I'll let you discover now what equality he's discussing.
This one is self-explanatory, as some click heres are: (Click here to read the profile on Smashwords in Forbes Magazine). This heads in the direction that the original 'authority' expected - the one I mentioned in the first paragraph.
You can Click here 2013-07-07 to listen to
Nadia Bolz Weber's sermon on What a lousy idea it is for other people
to be the source of our peace. Weber always has something edgy to say
in her sermons.
And finally, here's a long
introduction to a piece by Karl du Fresne, which ends with a definite click
HERE:
Karl believes that the Australian
ownership of most of our newspapers has significantly contributed to the
decline, but he also blames the ‘feminisation’ of media content. “Before the
feminist lynch mobs assemble, I should explain … it’s not female journalists
I’m concerned about – far from it – but the creeping feminisation of newspaper
content. By this I mean the increasing proportion of newspaper space devoted to
‘soft’ topics – fluffy human interest stories, gossipy items and lifestyle-oriented
content better suited to women’s magazines. Some call it latté journalism. In
metropolitan papers especially, café reviews and profiles of celebrity chefs,
fashion designers, baristas and TV personalities have displaced investigative
reporting and traditional ‘hard’ news about events and issues of importance.”
To read Karl’s excellent analysis, click HERE.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Paradoxical cat
Apparently it was Erwin Schrödinger's birthday yesterday, our time, and because the UK and US are still catching up, they're still celebrating it. Google, in fact, has celebrated it by producing one of its doodles:
I'm not quite sure why there's a particular fuss about this one of Erwin's birthdays; it's only his 126th, not the sort of number you'd normally celebrate with or without the hundred. Can anyone remember their 26th birthday celebrations? I'm not going to ask if anyone can remember their 126th, because I don't expect that people of such an exalted age will still be playing on their computers at this time of night. Actually, according to our current records, no one has lived to the age of 126 as yet - to find people that old you have to go back to early Biblical times. The oldest person on record in modern times was Jeanne Calment, of France, who lived to 122 years, 164 days, and her birth date was verified. Jeanne was certainly close to celebrating her 126th birthday, you might say.
Meanwhile back to Schrödinger, who's famous in popular science, as it were, mostly for his paradoxical cat - or the lack of his cat. Don't ask me to explain, because quantum physics - in which the cat features to a certain extent - isn't one of my specialties. The cat features even more in science fiction, I think, where some very clever stories have been woven around this fictional creature. For some reason the cat has taken on a life of its own, becoming part of popular culture, and while its name is known the reason why it is important (or unimportant) is much less known. That's a bit of a paradox in itself.
I'm not quite sure why there's a particular fuss about this one of Erwin's birthdays; it's only his 126th, not the sort of number you'd normally celebrate with or without the hundred. Can anyone remember their 26th birthday celebrations? I'm not going to ask if anyone can remember their 126th, because I don't expect that people of such an exalted age will still be playing on their computers at this time of night. Actually, according to our current records, no one has lived to the age of 126 as yet - to find people that old you have to go back to early Biblical times. The oldest person on record in modern times was Jeanne Calment, of France, who lived to 122 years, 164 days, and her birth date was verified. Jeanne was certainly close to celebrating her 126th birthday, you might say.
Meanwhile back to Schrödinger, who's famous in popular science, as it were, mostly for his paradoxical cat - or the lack of his cat. Don't ask me to explain, because quantum physics - in which the cat features to a certain extent - isn't one of my specialties. The cat features even more in science fiction, I think, where some very clever stories have been woven around this fictional creature. For some reason the cat has taken on a life of its own, becoming part of popular culture, and while its name is known the reason why it is important (or unimportant) is much less known. That's a bit of a paradox in itself.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Comments I don't need...
It happened tonight that I went checking back through this blog to find something related to Bill Bryson and design flaws. To my surprise there was a relatively new comment on the post, even though the post itself dates from September 2005 (it's one of the earliest ones on this blog, in fact). I was possibly even more surprised to find it was what you might call a 'spam comment' - in other words, if a human had written it, he or she had done so some time ago, and had then sent out the comment to any sites that would accept it. There must be something about this blog that allows those sorts of comments to be picked up, at times.
I scrolled through the other posts around that period and sure enough there were scattered comments on different posts advertising sites where you could buy diet drugs, or cheap insurance and other such stuff. They mostly seemed to be in the 2005-2007 period, so perhaps the bots that send these things are geared towards older posts so that they're less visible to the blog owners.
Interestingly enough on one of my other blogs, The Daily Writer, I get notifications via email regularly that 'someone' has 'commented' on a post - but these are newer posts. One in particular has suffered constant comments of this kind. Normally by the time I check them out they've been removed - presumably by some program that Blogger/Google runs. I wonder why that doesn't work on this blog, which is run by Blogger as well?
Friday, June 08, 2012
O Fortuna!
This is certainly random, but well worth including. A video that matches the music of O Fortuna! from the cantata Carmina Burana with some daft animation and some even dafter (supposedly misinterpreted) words.
I'm sure I've told everyone in the world this story before, but I was listening on the radio to Carmina Burana back in the early seventies (I think it was around the time my wife and I were newly married and living in Tooting Bec, in London). And during the big baritone solo, when he has a long high tessitura section (in other words, he sings at the top of his range for some time - had to throw the word in there just to show how knowledgeable I am) there was a sudden stop in the singing, and a good deal of banging and crashing. It turned out that in the heat in the Albert Hall, the baritone had fainted, and fallen backwards into the first violins.
I caught up with this on television a day or so later, and watched the scuttling and kerfuffling amongst the poor old string players as they tried to save themselves, their music, and their instruments from this unexpected debacle.
But the further twist to the story was that in the audience was a young singer who'd in the week or two before this event had sung the baritone role up in the north of England (if my memory serves me rightly). He rushed back stage, told the management he could sing the role, was put into a tuxedo, and sang. I don't know what happened to him subsequently (or to the original baritone) but I'm sure it was a great boost for his career. I'd love to know if anyone remembers this incident. Of course, having now said that I looked up Google, and the details are there! Fantastic.
The original singer was Thomas Allen, whose career didn't suffer particularly from the incident. The young singer was Patrick McCarthy, who went on to push his range up and became a tenor, and then gave up singing in favour of conducting. The understudy for Allen was a doctor who was singing in the choir, and, since he was attending to the unfortunate singer, couldn't take over the role! And I was correct about the year, 1974: the year I was married.
On a different subject, the Spellchecker for Blogger must be having a day off: it didn't recognise tessitura, or kerfuffling (it can be forgiven for those, perhaps), or, most surprisingly, tuxedo!
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Riding boots and Haiku
I used to use Google Desktop on my computer at work, where it was great for finding the countless files that my boss and his offsider produced. There were often several copies all exactly the same filed in different folders. When I got this Dell computer, however, it didn't seem to like Google Desktop, and my geek son told me that there was an in-built search engine anyway, kindly provided by Microsoft.
Well, there was.
Microsoft promises much -
Much disappointment
for the person word-searching.
I've just been reading a few of the haiku in the sample version on Amazon Kindle of Bicycle Haiku - hence the sudden bursting into miniature poetry (haiku are a bit like miniature horses, aren't they?) This book is a series of sketches and haiku done while the author was riding from San Francisco to New York in 1979. The author, Kevin Kelly, self-deprecatingly writes in the blurb: This book will not be a best-seller. It's a book of poetry, and you know what that means. It might appeal to anyone intrigued by pedaling across a continent, or loners fascinated by blue highways and other little-travelled roads, or sensitive souls really into haiku, or sketches. I can imagine a few odd ducks who collect self-published books that will be thrilled by this book. Personal friends of mine may be interested in this vanity publishing. For the rest -- that is for most normal people -- there is nothing of fashionable interest here.
However, Microsoft's in-built searcher now searches only when it feels like it, which, increasingly of late, has become less and less of the time. Microsoft Word promises to identify all my spelling mistakes, too, but this resource has also become very spasmodic: on some Word files it works, on others it refuses to do so.
Microsoft promises much.
But unconfident
spellers daily left at sea.
And the only reason I was trying to use my in-built search engine was to see if I had anything on riding - I'd already found the Bicycle Haiku reference on Evernote, but it didn't seem to go with English riding boots which is what I was more particular about finding. The riding boots in the picture, which are an example of the English variety, seem a little lost in the midst of their field. One is looking off to its right, trying to find its owner; the other is snuggled close to its twin, just in case it gets left behind. At least that's how it seems to me.
One boot surveys the landscape;
searching. The other
leans, hides inside itself.
2020: It's a while since I wrote this post, and my experience of Word's on computer search system is that it's much improved.
Well, there was.
Microsoft promises much -
Much disappointment
for the person word-searching.
I've just been reading a few of the haiku in the sample version on Amazon Kindle of Bicycle Haiku - hence the sudden bursting into miniature poetry (haiku are a bit like miniature horses, aren't they?) This book is a series of sketches and haiku done while the author was riding from San Francisco to New York in 1979. The author, Kevin Kelly, self-deprecatingly writes in the blurb: This book will not be a best-seller. It's a book of poetry, and you know what that means. It might appeal to anyone intrigued by pedaling across a continent, or loners fascinated by blue highways and other little-travelled roads, or sensitive souls really into haiku, or sketches. I can imagine a few odd ducks who collect self-published books that will be thrilled by this book. Personal friends of mine may be interested in this vanity publishing. For the rest -- that is for most normal people -- there is nothing of fashionable interest here.
However, Microsoft's in-built searcher now searches only when it feels like it, which, increasingly of late, has become less and less of the time. Microsoft Word promises to identify all my spelling mistakes, too, but this resource has also become very spasmodic: on some Word files it works, on others it refuses to do so.
Microsoft promises much.
But unconfident
spellers daily left at sea.
And the only reason I was trying to use my in-built search engine was to see if I had anything on riding - I'd already found the Bicycle Haiku reference on Evernote, but it didn't seem to go with English riding boots which is what I was more particular about finding. The riding boots in the picture, which are an example of the English variety, seem a little lost in the midst of their field. One is looking off to its right, trying to find its owner; the other is snuggled close to its twin, just in case it gets left behind. At least that's how it seems to me.One boot surveys the landscape;
searching. The other
leans, hides inside itself.
2020: It's a while since I wrote this post, and my experience of Word's on computer search system is that it's much improved.
Friday, November 04, 2011
Mrs Chrissy Johnson
I find it hard to believe that a post I wrote back in 2007, partly on the city of Boise in Idaho (where the young lady one of my sons is due to marry in January comes from, as it happens, though I didn't know that at the time); partly on a blogger called Raed who vanished off the Net for a few days and caused a global query, Where is Raed?; and partly on a previously unknown young lady called Chrissy Popadics, is still being picked up when people put the search term 'chrissy popadics' into Google. Even today, my post comes up fourth on the Google search results.
Now something I hadn't realised at the time is that the marriage of Chrissy Popadics and the football star, Ian Johnson is inter-racial and that apparently caused some strife, with a number of threatening letters being received by Johnson after he proposed to Popadics on television at the end of a game. Johnson is only partly black as it turns out, although if it's anything like New Zealand, if you're partly black, you may as well be fully black. Maori in New Zealand, however much actual Maori blood they have, are still Maori. It's one of those oddities of life.
The news on Chrissy Popadics, these days, seems pretty minimal, which might explain why that one post of mine keeps getting high into the search results. Google has only just changed the way search results appear: the most recent get precedence; the oldest go down the list. Which means that Mrs Johnson has possibly had her great moment of fame, and is living happily in obscurity once again.
Now something I hadn't realised at the time is that the marriage of Chrissy Popadics and the football star, Ian Johnson is inter-racial and that apparently caused some strife, with a number of threatening letters being received by Johnson after he proposed to Popadics on television at the end of a game. Johnson is only partly black as it turns out, although if it's anything like New Zealand, if you're partly black, you may as well be fully black. Maori in New Zealand, however much actual Maori blood they have, are still Maori. It's one of those oddities of life.
The news on Chrissy Popadics, these days, seems pretty minimal, which might explain why that one post of mine keeps getting high into the search results. Google has only just changed the way search results appear: the most recent get precedence; the oldest go down the list. Which means that Mrs Johnson has possibly had her great moment of fame, and is living happily in obscurity once again.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Changing looks and computing plays
A few days ago I decided to change the look of this blog to Google's new dynamic approach, which means that not only can the writer of the blog change how everything appears on the page at the drop of a hat, but so can the readers.
However, there are some frustrations with this new look. firstly, it's much harder to search on it. For one thing on some of the dynamic pages you can't even find a search box. Secondly, all the additional matter that you've so carefully added to the page over the years seems to go AWOL. The Google ads are still there - on some versions of the page - but not consistently. Links to other sites seem to vanish completely, and other interesting bits and pieces are all hidden away somewhere that I haven't been able to discover since I did the change.
So tonight, as the observant will note, I've changed the look again (or the 'template' to use the correct term). In fact I've done it on all the blogs I have on Blogger. Given them a facelift, but left them so that they're still easy to follow and won't go swishing all over the page as soon as you touch something.
I quite enjoyed that, but I didn't enjoy trying to find some information again on one of this blog and spending far too long doing so. In fact, anything that's older than this year, it seems, just comes up as a complete chunk of stuff: all the posts from 2008 will arrive if you ask for some info on a post that was done that year.
Not so hot.
Incidentally, what I was trying to find were the dates of the plays I've acted in over the last decade. It's been quite a productive time in that regard, with roles in nine plays, and music written for a tenth. Here's the list.
Update as at 30.3.13: I've now completed another role, or rather two roles: Rev Hinton, and the Doctor, in Harvest Field, the Ministry of Rosalie Macgeorge. This play had its world premiere last night, and its one and only performance, as part of the Dunedin City Baptist Church's 150th Celebrations. The script was by Greg Brook, who also directed. The play was performed at Otago Boys' High School Auditorium.
And, while I haven't acted otherwise since my part in The Mousetrap, the first part of last year was greatly taken up with Grimhilda! which I'd written with Cherianne Parks, composed the music for, played the piano during rehearsals for (and occasionally stood in for the Music Director).
However, there are some frustrations with this new look. firstly, it's much harder to search on it. For one thing on some of the dynamic pages you can't even find a search box. Secondly, all the additional matter that you've so carefully added to the page over the years seems to go AWOL. The Google ads are still there - on some versions of the page - but not consistently. Links to other sites seem to vanish completely, and other interesting bits and pieces are all hidden away somewhere that I haven't been able to discover since I did the change.
So tonight, as the observant will note, I've changed the look again (or the 'template' to use the correct term). In fact I've done it on all the blogs I have on Blogger. Given them a facelift, but left them so that they're still easy to follow and won't go swishing all over the page as soon as you touch something.
I quite enjoyed that, but I didn't enjoy trying to find some information again on one of this blog and spending far too long doing so. In fact, anything that's older than this year, it seems, just comes up as a complete chunk of stuff: all the posts from 2008 will arrive if you ask for some info on a post that was done that year.
Not so hot.
Incidentally, what I was trying to find were the dates of the plays I've acted in over the last decade. It's been quite a productive time in that regard, with roles in nine plays, and music written for a tenth. Here's the list.
1. Mr
Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe, [second production by Narnia Productions], 2004 (Teachers’ College auditorium)
2. Uncle
Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, Sept
2005 (Teachers’ College auditorium)
3. Mr
Dussel in The Diary of Anne Frank, 2006
(The Playhouse)
4. The
Father in And Then They Came for Me, May
2008 (Globe Theatre)[also co-directed]
5. Reepicheep
in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,
Sept 2008, (Mayfair Theatre)
6. Ormonroyd
in When We Are Married, May 2009,
(Playhouse Theatre)
7.
Jacob Marley and Mr Fizziwigg in The Christmas Carol Nov 2009 (Mayfair
Theatre)
8.
Pianist for Love – or Nearest Offer Apr 2010 (Playhouse Theatre)
9. Rev
Harry Harrington in Shadowlands, May
2011, (Playhouse Theatre)
10. Paravicini
in The Mousetrap, October 2011
(Mayfair Theatre)
I've kept a journal since 1987 (the first entry discusses my daughter waking up in the night with a rat in the room - the only time such a thing has happened - and dropping it down the toilet to get rid of it) you'd think it would be easy to track down the dates of these productions. But for some reason there are chunks of time when I didn't make entries in the journal, and often they seem to coincide with the productions of these plays. Furthermore, I've often written about these plays on this blog - or so I thought. But in fact I hadn't. I only seem to have mentioned Anne Frank in passing - after it was finished - and the two earlier Narnia plays barely get a look in. Odd.
The Star newspaper is supposed to have some references to a number of these plays, but when you click on the Google search results, invariably you find that you locked out of the archives. So you try the Star page...worse still. The search box that's supposed to be available according to the help page is missing and when you try to access 'all' newspapers, it happily gives you nothing more than 2011.
The photo is from The Mousetrap: all cast members on stage in Act II (Natalie Ellis, who played Mrs Boyle, doesn't appear in the second act). I'm sitting comfortably on the couch keeping the audience guessing as to my role in the situation. The photo was taken by Andy Cook, who designed the set.
Update as at 30.3.13: I've now completed another role, or rather two roles: Rev Hinton, and the Doctor, in Harvest Field, the Ministry of Rosalie Macgeorge. This play had its world premiere last night, and its one and only performance, as part of the Dunedin City Baptist Church's 150th Celebrations. The script was by Greg Brook, who also directed. The play was performed at Otago Boys' High School Auditorium.
And, while I haven't acted otherwise since my part in The Mousetrap, the first part of last year was greatly taken up with Grimhilda! which I'd written with Cherianne Parks, composed the music for, played the piano during rehearsals for (and occasionally stood in for the Music Director).
Friday, September 09, 2011
Catching up on HitTail after a spell
It's quite a while since I checked out HitTail's results for this blog - I used to do it regularly (partly for something to write about), but I notice that they've got results going back to March this year which I've never looked at.
That's okay, we'll sort that in due course.
Meantime, I also checked the search words that people have used that bring them to my site. Amazingly athlete's hand continues to do well - it's at the top. One little post from I don't when - and a joke post at that - and this is the result. Crazy.
The second in line is a bit of a newbie to me: googleads.g.doubleclick.net. I looked at that and wondered what the heck it was, since it seems an odd thing for someone to enter in Google's search box. Anyway, doing exactly that, I find that it comes up with an explanation from Google's help desk itself. I began to read the explanation, got bogged down a couple of sentences in, and let my brain say, Pooh, don't get that - too difficult to understand without concentration.
Another curiosity keeps coming up on the list - it's currently third in line: Zirka circus. The post I did on this in 2010, has obviously drawn some people over and over. Zirka circus is a NZ-based group, with mostly an Asian cast. Some very good stuff in it too.
Surprise, surprise, my own name comes up fourth on the list. Wow, I must look for myself an awful lot, or else there are a lot of other Mike Crowl's out there doing the same thing. (One was a headmaster at a high school in the States who got himself into strife, being accused of harrassing his staff. He resigned, and I haven't caught up with what happened subsequently.) In Google.co.nz, by the way, this blog comes up first if you enter Mike Crowl as a search term.
Zirka Circus review gets fifth place, and The Great Divorce notes sixth. This latter search term has been one of the tops for a long time, although you won't ever find any 'notes' on C S Lewis' The Great Divorce on my blog. It's just the fact that the blog title has 'notes' in it that makes the difference!
Nintendo jewellery and Brent Stavig make seventh and eighth - again two items that have earned pride of place on this blog for their regular appearances (mostly because I keep writing about them because they keep turning up on HitTail - it's a bit of a Catch 22).
James Berardinelli and Frederick Buechner marriage are the last two in the top ten. I haven't mentioned Berardinelli for a long time: he's the film reviewer who has hundreds of reviews on imdb.com - not ibdm.com as I first typed: they have a site too, and it's also about movies. Cunning!
People must look for the quote on marriage by Buechner and find it on my site. Guess it's a helpful thing to use at your wedding...
The hundreds of other search terms that make it onto my list are often repeats of the above ones in some form or other, and all the old favourites are still there. Before I go I just need to mention some of the 'keywords' that have sent people to the blog; some quite intriguing ones...top heavy body builder, armwrestling my wife, [like that one] skinny ties versus normal ties, where to buy cigars in Dunedin, drugs corner cut off of credit card [what?].
It has to be said that if you went looking for any of these in an Encyclopedia it's doubtful you'd find them. Good old Google!
That's okay, we'll sort that in due course.
Meantime, I also checked the search words that people have used that bring them to my site. Amazingly athlete's hand continues to do well - it's at the top. One little post from I don't when - and a joke post at that - and this is the result. Crazy.
The second in line is a bit of a newbie to me: googleads.g.doubleclick.net. I looked at that and wondered what the heck it was, since it seems an odd thing for someone to enter in Google's search box. Anyway, doing exactly that, I find that it comes up with an explanation from Google's help desk itself. I began to read the explanation, got bogged down a couple of sentences in, and let my brain say, Pooh, don't get that - too difficult to understand without concentration.
Another curiosity keeps coming up on the list - it's currently third in line: Zirka circus. The post I did on this in 2010, has obviously drawn some people over and over. Zirka circus is a NZ-based group, with mostly an Asian cast. Some very good stuff in it too.
Surprise, surprise, my own name comes up fourth on the list. Wow, I must look for myself an awful lot, or else there are a lot of other Mike Crowl's out there doing the same thing. (One was a headmaster at a high school in the States who got himself into strife, being accused of harrassing his staff. He resigned, and I haven't caught up with what happened subsequently.) In Google.co.nz, by the way, this blog comes up first if you enter Mike Crowl as a search term.
Zirka Circus review gets fifth place, and The Great Divorce notes sixth. This latter search term has been one of the tops for a long time, although you won't ever find any 'notes' on C S Lewis' The Great Divorce on my blog. It's just the fact that the blog title has 'notes' in it that makes the difference!
Nintendo jewellery and Brent Stavig make seventh and eighth - again two items that have earned pride of place on this blog for their regular appearances (mostly because I keep writing about them because they keep turning up on HitTail - it's a bit of a Catch 22).
James Berardinelli and Frederick Buechner marriage are the last two in the top ten. I haven't mentioned Berardinelli for a long time: he's the film reviewer who has hundreds of reviews on imdb.com - not ibdm.com as I first typed: they have a site too, and it's also about movies. Cunning!
People must look for the quote on marriage by Buechner and find it on my site. Guess it's a helpful thing to use at your wedding...
The hundreds of other search terms that make it onto my list are often repeats of the above ones in some form or other, and all the old favourites are still there. Before I go I just need to mention some of the 'keywords' that have sent people to the blog; some quite intriguing ones...top heavy body builder, armwrestling my wife, [like that one] skinny ties versus normal ties, where to buy cigars in Dunedin, drugs corner cut off of credit card [what?].
It has to be said that if you went looking for any of these in an Encyclopedia it's doubtful you'd find them. Good old Google!
Google Cup
17.7.26
I've only just discovered that there's a page called Google Doodles, and all these creations can be seen there, including the latest World Cup one, which was a fine example of the craft.
Saturday, September 03, 2011
Blogging with a new interface
Blogger (under Google's management these days) has just updated its interface, for the first time in a while. The last time it did it, I went back to the old interface, because the new one was a bit of a pain. This post is by way of a test, to see what happens when you try some of the features.
Well, firstly it's saving like billyo. Ever couple of seconds the save button up the top is flicking on and off, presumably keeping tabs on what I'm writing.
I'm just looking to see what's new...there's something called a 'jump break' which does this...
Well, firstly it's saving like billyo. Ever couple of seconds the save button up the top is flicking on and off, presumably keeping tabs on what I'm writing.
I'm just looking to see what's new...there's something called a 'jump break' which does this...
Friday, August 05, 2011
google + from facebook
Upgrading, or shifting sites, are both things that we tend to react against online. Unless there's a really good reason to upgrade a programme, I won't do it automatically; I've been hit too often by Firefox Mozilla upgrading and causing problems with add-ons and such, to take just one example.
The latest version of Sibelius - version 7 - is now out and I'm hearing less than enthusiastic reports. Seemingly there are a host of new sound samples, but it's also gone over to the 'ribbon' style of menu, and this has been decried by a number of Sibelius users. I'm not sure that that would bother me so much (since I'm used to Windows 7 anyway), but apart from this the improvements seem to be mostly cosmetic. Having not very long ago shifted to version 6 (being forced to, in fact), I'm not desperate to upgrade just for a few tinky-tonk changes.
And a couple of people have enthused about Google +. But I can't see the point. Changing from Facebook (for all its faults) is a major undertaking. Firstly, will the people you're in touch with on Facebook shift with you? (Not very likely.) What will happen to all your collected stuff? Who will care that you've gone to the supposedly 'better' Google +? Not many people, I think.
And you lose access to all those click here buttons that now dot the Net for Facebook and Twitter and so on. Certainly these aren't the greatest loss, and the loss can be overcome, but if Google + is so good, why isn't it available as well as all these other options?
I think Google might have got out of the starting gate far too late on this one; the other horse have won the race a long time ago and the next race is already beginning. (I once swam in a school race in which I was still plugging along when the next race started...)
There are nine 'good' reasons to shift to Google +, according to an article by Mark Sullivan in PC World:
Integration with other Google services (that's sort of a plus for me, but not enough of one)
Better Friend Management (Google's circles and inner circles and so on just don't grab me...it all sounds like too much effort).
Better Mobile App (I don't have a smartphone so this doesn't make me want to move).
Easier to find stuff and share. (A piffle reason, I think.)
You can get your data back. (Well, this might be a plus, but I'm not convinced entirely.)
Better Photo Tagging. (This relates to Facebook's recent upgrading - there's that word again - of the tagging scene and its implications. Hmmm, one reason out of six so far isn't enough.)
Strong group chat features. (I never group chat, so that one's out.)
Safer Content Sharing. (Assigning a privacy level to each piece of content I share sounds like a load of work to me.)
Google is a better steward of your personal data. (This is no different from reason five, I think.)
Sorry, Mark, you just haven't convinced me. And neither has the one person I know who's shifted to Google +. He sent me an email today via Google +, but of course I couldn't reply to it, or comment on it....not being in the Google + system. See what I mean?
The latest version of Sibelius - version 7 - is now out and I'm hearing less than enthusiastic reports. Seemingly there are a host of new sound samples, but it's also gone over to the 'ribbon' style of menu, and this has been decried by a number of Sibelius users. I'm not sure that that would bother me so much (since I'm used to Windows 7 anyway), but apart from this the improvements seem to be mostly cosmetic. Having not very long ago shifted to version 6 (being forced to, in fact), I'm not desperate to upgrade just for a few tinky-tonk changes.
And a couple of people have enthused about Google +. But I can't see the point. Changing from Facebook (for all its faults) is a major undertaking. Firstly, will the people you're in touch with on Facebook shift with you? (Not very likely.) What will happen to all your collected stuff? Who will care that you've gone to the supposedly 'better' Google +? Not many people, I think.
And you lose access to all those click here buttons that now dot the Net for Facebook and Twitter and so on. Certainly these aren't the greatest loss, and the loss can be overcome, but if Google + is so good, why isn't it available as well as all these other options?
I think Google might have got out of the starting gate far too late on this one; the other horse have won the race a long time ago and the next race is already beginning. (I once swam in a school race in which I was still plugging along when the next race started...)
There are nine 'good' reasons to shift to Google +, according to an article by Mark Sullivan in PC World:
Integration with other Google services (that's sort of a plus for me, but not enough of one)
Better Friend Management (Google's circles and inner circles and so on just don't grab me...it all sounds like too much effort).
Better Mobile App (I don't have a smartphone so this doesn't make me want to move).
Easier to find stuff and share. (A piffle reason, I think.)
You can get your data back. (Well, this might be a plus, but I'm not convinced entirely.)
Better Photo Tagging. (This relates to Facebook's recent upgrading - there's that word again - of the tagging scene and its implications. Hmmm, one reason out of six so far isn't enough.)
Strong group chat features. (I never group chat, so that one's out.)
Safer Content Sharing. (Assigning a privacy level to each piece of content I share sounds like a load of work to me.)
Google is a better steward of your personal data. (This is no different from reason five, I think.)
Sorry, Mark, you just haven't convinced me. And neither has the one person I know who's shifted to Google +. He sent me an email today via Google +, but of course I couldn't reply to it, or comment on it....not being in the Google + system. See what I mean?
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Gottage
When I hear the word 'steel' as in steel buildings, I tend to think of something quite solid - as in steel tools. But I think our American cousins basically mean buildings like garages, carports, garden sheds when they're talking about steel buildings that are similar in construction to Skyline's various buildings, for example. Compare the two pictures, the US on the left, the NZ on the right.Anyway, it's just my lack of knowledge of what steel is (or its degrees of strength) that's the issue, I suspect, rather than a question of semantics. The US garage has a neat design, don't you think?
Just an aside: when looking at the Skyline page I thought they had a misprint, un
til I realised it was 'misprinted' in the same way everywhere. They kept using the word, 'gottages' - which at first I read as 'cottages', of course. When I tried to get a definition of 'gottage' Google helpfully suggested I meant, 'cottage', so it's just as confused. It turns out 'gottages' are basically like cottages and are almost like another name for a sleep-out, except that a gottage is something rather more fully-constructed, having a kitchen and bathroom as well as a bedroom and living area. In fact, friends of ours put one on their property for the mother of one of the couple, some years ago.I can't remember them ever calling it a gottage, as I probably would have queried it at the time. Google obviously hasn't caught up on it yet either.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Google pays up!
My first ever cheque from Google in payment of Adsense credits arrived today. $125.65 in NZ dollars.
It's only taken me four and a half years to get that much - I first started collecting from Adsense way back in late 2006 after I finished up at OC Books. And because the income came in so slowly - and Google doesn't pay out to overseas customers until they've got $100US in the kitty - it's been a long time coming.
However, in recent months there have been considerable amounts coming through Triond; for instance, up to today for June, I've earned US$5.94, which is about ten times what I use to earn in a month, or three months even. So the next Google cheque may not be quite so far away...2012 rather than 2016!
On another tack, I've been using Evernote for a few months to keep track of odds and ends I come across on the Net, or other bits of info. It's great because it syncs onto a cloud, and I can pick it up on other computers. Occasionally it's a bit clunky...like when it copies something from a site, and insists on putting a box around it so that you can't insert other stuff easily...but in general it's a great storage space.
And it has a great search function. For instance, I wanted to see if I had anything that related to the phrase laminate flooring. I couldn't find that phrase exactly, but in the process of looking I found all sorts of other interesting things (that I'd forgotten about!)
A note about where the first floor plans for the house are stored, for example. The following "MIDDLE AGE TEXTING CODES:... ATD: At The Doctors. BTW: Bring the Wheelchair. BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth. FWIW: Forgot Where I Was. GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low. GHA: Got Heartburn Again. IMHO: Is My Hearing-Aid On? LMDO: Laughing My Dentures Out. OMSG: Oh My! Sorry, Gas! ROFLACGU: Rolling On Floor Laughing And Can't Get Up. TTYL: Talk To You Louder".
This odd ending to an interview with N D Wilson (who is currently writing the screenplay for C S Lewis' The Great Divorce : Let's just say, I used to hate coffee, and now I don't. I've also gotten pretty good at deep breathing exercises and lying on the floor. [Don't ask me what that's got to do with the rest of the piece.]
Or this intriguing introduction to The Annual Turing Test: Since 1991, the Turing Test has been administered at the so-called Loebner Prize competition, an event sponsored by a colorful figure: the former baron of plastic roll-up portable disco dance floors, Hugh Loebner. When asked his motives for orchestrating this annual Turing Test, Loebner cites laziness, of all things: his utopian future, apparently, is one in which unemployment rates are nearly 100 percent and virtually all of human endeavor and industry is outsourced to intelligent machines.
Or from a piece on urbanisation: Once, while jogging on a treadmill on the top floor of a Sao Paulo hotel, I tried to count the many helicopters buzzing by. The city has the highest rate of private helicopter use in the world -- a literal sign of what heights people will go to in order to avoid the realities of the world below.
Okay I haven't found anything helpful in relation to 'laminate floors' but I'm having a ball going through these old files...
It's only taken me four and a half years to get that much - I first started collecting from Adsense way back in late 2006 after I finished up at OC Books. And because the income came in so slowly - and Google doesn't pay out to overseas customers until they've got $100US in the kitty - it's been a long time coming.
However, in recent months there have been considerable amounts coming through Triond; for instance, up to today for June, I've earned US$5.94, which is about ten times what I use to earn in a month, or three months even. So the next Google cheque may not be quite so far away...2012 rather than 2016!
On another tack, I've been using Evernote for a few months to keep track of odds and ends I come across on the Net, or other bits of info. It's great because it syncs onto a cloud, and I can pick it up on other computers. Occasionally it's a bit clunky...like when it copies something from a site, and insists on putting a box around it so that you can't insert other stuff easily...but in general it's a great storage space.
And it has a great search function. For instance, I wanted to see if I had anything that related to the phrase laminate flooring. I couldn't find that phrase exactly, but in the process of looking I found all sorts of other interesting things (that I'd forgotten about!)
A note about where the first floor plans for the house are stored, for example. The following "MIDDLE AGE TEXTING CODES:... ATD: At The Doctors. BTW: Bring the Wheelchair. BYOT: Bring Your Own Teeth. FWIW: Forgot Where I Was. GGPBL: Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low. GHA: Got Heartburn Again. IMHO: Is My Hearing-Aid On? LMDO: Laughing My Dentures Out. OMSG: Oh My! Sorry, Gas! ROFLACGU: Rolling On Floor Laughing And Can't Get Up. TTYL: Talk To You Louder".
This odd ending to an interview with N D Wilson (who is currently writing the screenplay for C S Lewis' The Great Divorce : Let's just say, I used to hate coffee, and now I don't. I've also gotten pretty good at deep breathing exercises and lying on the floor. [Don't ask me what that's got to do with the rest of the piece.]
Or this intriguing introduction to The Annual Turing Test: Since 1991, the Turing Test has been administered at the so-called Loebner Prize competition, an event sponsored by a colorful figure: the former baron of plastic roll-up portable disco dance floors, Hugh Loebner. When asked his motives for orchestrating this annual Turing Test, Loebner cites laziness, of all things: his utopian future, apparently, is one in which unemployment rates are nearly 100 percent and virtually all of human endeavor and industry is outsourced to intelligent machines.
Or from a piece on urbanisation: Once, while jogging on a treadmill on the top floor of a Sao Paulo hotel, I tried to count the many helicopters buzzing by. The city has the highest rate of private helicopter use in the world -- a literal sign of what heights people will go to in order to avoid the realities of the world below.
Okay I haven't found anything helpful in relation to 'laminate floors' but I'm having a ball going through these old files...
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Google, Facebook and Research questions
UMR Research has just released their findings relating Google, Facebook and privacy and the following are some of the stats.
- 54% of New Zealanders believe that Google should be regulated to protect personal privacy. 51% think that Facebook should be regulated to protect personal privacy.
The question is, what do we actually mean by 'regulation?' This is one of those research type questions that doesn't tell us much.
- 67% of New Zealanders and 69% of Australians oppose Google sharing New Zealand data with American intelligence agencies such as the FBI, NSA and CIA. 71% oppose Facebook doing the same.
This is a bit more definite. I presume that Google does share some data with American intelligence, but what's being shared and what's not is vague here. It's a bit like saying two thirds of my family don't think family information should be shared with the neighbours across the road. What is actually meant by 'family information' in such a case?
- 54% of New Zealanders think that Google does a good job protecting people’s privacy, compared with 45% of Australians.
So if that's the case why are we looking at more regulation?
43% of New Zealanders think that Facebook has too much power.
Power to do what?
- 94% of New Zealanders have positive opinions of Google, compared with 84% of Australians. Fewer New Zealanders have positive opinions of Facebook (73%).
Again, a vague statement that tells us very little.
- Only 19% of New Zealanders think that Google has too much power, while 46% believe that Facebook has too much power.
Huh? Further up we were told that 43% thought Facebook had too much power.
- 23% of New Zealanders believe that Google manipulates search results for its own benefit, compared with 32% of Australians.
Yup, there's always plenty of conspiracy around when you ask a question like that!
- 54% of New Zealanders believe that Google should be regulated to protect personal privacy. 51% think that Facebook should be regulated to protect personal privacy.
The question is, what do we actually mean by 'regulation?' This is one of those research type questions that doesn't tell us much.
- 67% of New Zealanders and 69% of Australians oppose Google sharing New Zealand data with American intelligence agencies such as the FBI, NSA and CIA. 71% oppose Facebook doing the same.
This is a bit more definite. I presume that Google does share some data with American intelligence, but what's being shared and what's not is vague here. It's a bit like saying two thirds of my family don't think family information should be shared with the neighbours across the road. What is actually meant by 'family information' in such a case?
- 54% of New Zealanders think that Google does a good job protecting people’s privacy, compared with 45% of Australians.
So if that's the case why are we looking at more regulation?
43% of New Zealanders think that Facebook has too much power.
Power to do what?
- 94% of New Zealanders have positive opinions of Google, compared with 84% of Australians. Fewer New Zealanders have positive opinions of Facebook (73%).
Again, a vague statement that tells us very little.
- Only 19% of New Zealanders think that Google has too much power, while 46% believe that Facebook has too much power.
Huh? Further up we were told that 43% thought Facebook had too much power.
- 23% of New Zealanders believe that Google manipulates search results for its own benefit, compared with 32% of Australians.
Yup, there's always plenty of conspiracy around when you ask a question like that!
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Google Art Project and grudges
No doubt I'm way down on the list of hearing about the Google Art Project, but at least I'm not like one commenter on the videos relating to the Project who said that now Google was taking over the art galleries!
As another wisely pointed out, many people don't have access to these galleries; they're on the other side of the world, and even if you wanted to visit the Uffizi, for instance, you have to wait in a queue for hours. By which time you're exhausted and don't have the energy to spend time with the art. (We waited in the queue for around a half an hour and then decided there were better ways to spend our limited time, went down the road, and found a superb gallery with hardly anyone in it!)
It's never going to be the same experience as standing in front of the original - no more than the Google street photographs are the same as the reality of standing outside a real house - but there are advantages. Access is great, for starters; you can go in really close on the paintings and see the detail not in a fuzzy way, but as clearly as you can see the whole thing. This is something I'm really appreciating. When you look at an art work in a book, for instance, you can't get any closer than the page and your eye's focus will allow. Consequently, details are out of your range.
The colours are superb as well, and the range of galleries is beyond belief. What is there not to appreciate about the Art Project. Good old Google, I say.
Check out the videos on the site, too, particularly the behind the scenes one which shows the photographers capturing the works digitally, cycling, in some cases, around the laminate floors in order to give you a sense of actually walking through these museums.
As I said above, there are always the grumblers. Here's one commenting on this particular video: Google lack any ingenuity or creativity of their own and either buy or steal intellectual property to compensate for their lack of creative vision. This project is a strong example of them stealing from me after presenting the idea to Google Ventures. It's not just myself who have an aversion to Google. Groupon told them to shoveit after being offered $6 billion and Path denied them after googled offered $100 million. There are stealth groups in SV who want to see google fall..
Hmm. Groupon and Path turned down $160 million between them. Some people must have grudges.
As another wisely pointed out, many people don't have access to these galleries; they're on the other side of the world, and even if you wanted to visit the Uffizi, for instance, you have to wait in a queue for hours. By which time you're exhausted and don't have the energy to spend time with the art. (We waited in the queue for around a half an hour and then decided there were better ways to spend our limited time, went down the road, and found a superb gallery with hardly anyone in it!)
It's never going to be the same experience as standing in front of the original - no more than the Google street photographs are the same as the reality of standing outside a real house - but there are advantages. Access is great, for starters; you can go in really close on the paintings and see the detail not in a fuzzy way, but as clearly as you can see the whole thing. This is something I'm really appreciating. When you look at an art work in a book, for instance, you can't get any closer than the page and your eye's focus will allow. Consequently, details are out of your range.
The colours are superb as well, and the range of galleries is beyond belief. What is there not to appreciate about the Art Project. Good old Google, I say.
Check out the videos on the site, too, particularly the behind the scenes one which shows the photographers capturing the works digitally, cycling, in some cases, around the laminate floors in order to give you a sense of actually walking through these museums.
As I said above, there are always the grumblers. Here's one commenting on this particular video: Google lack any ingenuity or creativity of their own and either buy or steal intellectual property to compensate for their lack of creative vision. This project is a strong example of them stealing from me after presenting the idea to Google Ventures. It's not just myself who have an aversion to Google. Groupon told them to shoveit after being offered $6 billion and Path denied them after googled offered $100 million. There are stealth groups in SV who want to see google fall..
Hmm. Groupon and Path turned down $160 million between them. Some people must have grudges.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Progress?
In the past, even before I began writing for publication, I would keep files of clippings out of newspapers and magazines. I even used to try and put them in some order, or keep a primitive form of database so as to know what I had.
In fact, what would happen is that I'd come back to them some years later, find all these clippings which varied in interest from 'none' to 'moderate' and eventually toss them out. The only time they got used was if they were used when I first found them. After that, they usually became excess to requirements.
When I first started my current job, back in late 2007, part of my work involved scanning articles of interest onto the computer and databasing them. Sound familiar? However, it quickly became evident that it was much easier to find the article online - most newspapers have websites these days, and most magazines. That saved the tedious process of scanning (the scanner has gathered dust mostly since then) and also saved databasing, since Google Desktop did that side of the job much more effectively for me.
And then along came Zotero, and articles could be copied in the blink of an eye, as soon as you found them online (because now we were catching up with the information less from newspapers and mags and more from the Internet itself). No more cutting and pasting; just a click of the appropriate button and we were away. The databasing isn't so good, and will have to be reconsidered, and sometimes it's better still to use the slightly older method of putting the item on the computer itself.
But with Zotero you have access to the articles wherever you are: at work or at home, or anywhere else.
All this is well and good. You know what's funny, though, don't you? I'll come back to these pieces in a few years time, find they vary in interest from 'none' to 'moderate' and eventually delete them. The only time they'll get used will be if i use them when I first find them. Sound familiar?
In fact, what would happen is that I'd come back to them some years later, find all these clippings which varied in interest from 'none' to 'moderate' and eventually toss them out. The only time they got used was if they were used when I first found them. After that, they usually became excess to requirements.
When I first started my current job, back in late 2007, part of my work involved scanning articles of interest onto the computer and databasing them. Sound familiar? However, it quickly became evident that it was much easier to find the article online - most newspapers have websites these days, and most magazines. That saved the tedious process of scanning (the scanner has gathered dust mostly since then) and also saved databasing, since Google Desktop did that side of the job much more effectively for me.
And then along came Zotero, and articles could be copied in the blink of an eye, as soon as you found them online (because now we were catching up with the information less from newspapers and mags and more from the Internet itself). No more cutting and pasting; just a click of the appropriate button and we were away. The databasing isn't so good, and will have to be reconsidered, and sometimes it's better still to use the slightly older method of putting the item on the computer itself.
But with Zotero you have access to the articles wherever you are: at work or at home, or anywhere else.
All this is well and good. You know what's funny, though, don't you? I'll come back to these pieces in a few years time, find they vary in interest from 'none' to 'moderate' and eventually delete them. The only time they'll get used will be if i use them when I first find them. Sound familiar?
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