Archive for 2005
Grokker Won’t Work
June 17th, 2005 • General
I just gave Grokker a shot, you know, they too have a “G” to start their name.
Well, I can honsetly tell you that I’ll never be seeing Grokker again. Aside, from requiring JRE and having me wait for Java to load, hanging my Firefox a couple of seconds, and annoying me even before I saw any result, they just stripped me from the right to scan.
That’s right. How do you think people search? Do you honestly think they… read?! They don’t. We don’t. We scan for content, looking for bold keywords, relevant content, and we develop skills based on our expertise. I, for one, have developed the skill to filter relevant/irrelevant mailing list results, it only takes me a glance at the little text the other big “G” provides me, and I can figure out what the whole topic is about.
Please, I’d love to try alternative ways to search, but trust me, big and pretty circles aren’t the way to do it.
Website Thoughtfulness
June 4th, 2005 • General
Unfortunately, I’m not a Mac user, I’d love to switch to OS X one day as my desktop of choice, but that’s probably going to take a while. I’m currently on KDE 3.4 though, and I absolutely love it.
Anyway, I wanted to check the current prices on G5′s, and for some reason I
decided to try apple.com/g5…
surprise, it works! Trying apple.com/g4
works too, and it redirects you to
http://www.apple.com/hardware/powermacg4/,
apple.com/music takes
you to http://www.apple.com/itunes/.
You just got to hand it to them, now isn’t that right? Maybe now they
could try some smarter suggestions instead of listing all available pages.
A Must Read
May 28th, 2005 • 2 comments General
O, Draconian devil!
Oh, lame saint!
If you don’t understand what these lines mean, then do yourself a favor and read this book, it’s one the best novels I’ve read.
A Better Brain
May 27th, 2005 • General
Sleep is when your brain processes new memories, practises and hones new skills – and even solves problems. Say you’re trying to master a new video game. Instead of grinding away into the small hours, you would be better off playing for a couple of hours, then going to bed. While you are asleep your brain will reactivate the circuits it was using as you learned the game, rehearse them, and then shunt the new memories into long-term storage. When you wake up, hey presto! You will be a better player.
11 steps to a better brain is a very interesting read. Turns out that us, programmers, really should stop living on pizza and diet coke and actually get some sleep. Enjoy!