The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
Google autocomplete results have always been a font of joy; nowhere else is humanity’s curiosity and stupidity celebrated in such equal measure. But when you really start to comb through what it has to offer—as xkcd does today—it goes from amusing to disturbing and back again way quicker than you’d think.
Why are Americans afraid of dragons?
Why are wrestlers always wet?
Why do testicles move?
Why is there kicking in my stomach?
Yay, Google :)
Alternative version:
My boss sent this to all of the bioinformaticians/software engineers :)
To which I reply:
The software that I use to generate the photo albums has started being annoying and inserts javascript that generates a “Built with XXX, Click here to buy a license” soft-popup in the album pages. It’s annoying as feck. I set about to do something geeky about it and came up with this:
find . -name "*.html" -execdir sed -i -n '1h;1!H;${;g;s/<script type.*CDATA*</script>//g;p;}' {} +
This little snippet checks the thousand of HTML picture slide files that I have and just removes the offending bit of HTML, all in one line that takes about 30 seconds to execute.
I love linux.
Cards available on Etsy
Once in a while, I check my website usage stats. It never fails to amaze me. This website is, for lack of a better description, an I-Love-Me affair where I post things that I want to remember or stuff that I like. Yet, on average, 635 people visit daily, which means over 2000 daily page views, or 12000+ daily hits. Now slashdot this ain’t, but it’s still fairly impressive :) Also, considering that the blog is crossposted to FB, the actual usage stats might actually be higher. People stumble onto my website from all over the world.
What’s even more interesting though, are the google search terms that people use to wind up on my blog. I did a quick check and, for the last year, the top search term has consistently been “porn”. Which is odd, considering that there isn’t any. Other perennial favourites are:
and for reasons that I don’t get, “michel roux lemon tart” is always somewhere up in the top 5.
There are also some really random ones:
dalek porn
canadian beer
debugging is a state of mind
keep calm and drink wine
and a new one for me: nyotaimori The link is rather NSFW.
I tried a tool called myscriptfont.com to convert my handwriting into a TTF font. It’s not half bad. The letter heights are a bit all over the place. but the results are still surprisingly good considering it took me the whole of 5 minutes to do!
The record-breaking digital series “Epic Rap Battles of History” (ERB), created by Peter Shukoff (aka Nice Peter) and Lloyd Ahlquist (aka EpicLLOYD), features comedic rap battles between historical and/or pop culture figures—such as Albert Einstein vs. Stephen Hawking and Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates. The series, which airs on the YouTube channel /ERB, is currently the most viewed format on YouTube on a per episode basis.
Yesterday was National Library Workers Day, where library staff, users, administrators and friends group to recognize the valuable contributions made by all library workers.
Have you hugged your sexy librarian today?
Edit: In the same vein, I read an article about weird shit people ask booksellers. Thought I’d leave it here.
Customer: Urgh. Shakespeare. He’s everywhere, isn’t he? You can’t escape him. I wish he’d do us all a favour and just die.
Customer: I need a really awful book to give someone I hate. Any recommendations?
Customer (holding up an art book): Wow, Picasso must have gone out with some really ugly women.
Customer (buying a copy of Gulliver’s Travels): I’m thinking of going travelling, so I thought I’d give this a read to give me ideas of places to go. He seems to have gone to some really crazy parts of the world!
Customer (to her friend): I only like books that I can really believe happened, you know? Like Twilight.
Customer: Do you have audiobooks on sign language?
Customer: I don’t like biographies. The main character pretty much always dies in the end.
Woman (holding a copy of a WeightWatchers book in one hand and The Hunger Games — a science fiction novel — in the other): Which of these dieting books would you recommend?
Customer: What book do you recommend I read when I’m on the Tube to get girls to want to sleep with me?
Customer: Do you have any books signed by authors who are likely to die very soon? I’d like to make an investment.
Customer: I’m looking for that book, Romeo And Juliet. It’s about a fight between the DiCaprios and another gang.
Customer (eagerly): I really liked Fifty Shades Of Grey. (Pause) Do you have an illustrated version?
Customer: Hi, I’m looking for a Bible for my mother but I’m not quite sure who the author is
Elderly female customer: I can’t believe everybody’s reading this Fifty Shades …
Bookseller: I know. I take it that it isn’t your cup of tea, then?
Customer: Oh, no dear. Been there, done that — no need to read about it!
Customer: Hi, I’m looking for a book version of my satnav.
Bookseller: Do you mean a road map?
Customer: Maybe.
Customer (holding a signed copy of a Jacqueline Wilson book): I want to buy this book — but not this copy because someone’s written in it.
Bookseller: That’s the author’s signature!
Customer: I don’t care who’s written in it. I just want a clean copy!
Customer: Hello! I’m searching for a book. I’m not sure of the publisher but it’s really great and I just have to read it again.
Bookseller: Sure. What was the title of the book?
Customer: Well, the thing is, I don’t really remember.
Bookseller: OK, then how about the author?
Customer: I don’t know his name.
Bookseller: Right.
Customer: But he was definitely European…
Bookseller: OK.
Customer: It was non-fiction. Some kind of study. Probably.
Bookseller: Right.
Customer (looking expectantly at the bookseller): Come on, you must know the book I mean!
Customer: Do you have the new book by Charles Dickens?
Bookseller: Well, he hasn’t published anything since the 19th century …
Customer: The new one that Oprah Winfrey’s promoting.
Bookseller: Oh. A Tale Of Two Cities, yes, we have that.
Customer: Yeah, like I said, the new one.
Customer: Will you be getting Tolkien in for a signing soon?
Customer: Where in the book does it tell you how many pages there are?