Month: May 2008

Why haven’t you been recycling?

Is it because you claim not to know where to take recyclable materials to be processed?
Ha ha! If you live in Johannesburg, scratch that excuse off your apathetic list, and revert to the “I am a useless human” excuse.

I present, for your benefaction, the Pikitup list of Garden Refuse Transfer sites (something of a nightmare to discover on your own via that site’s page navigation) — many of which include recycling facilities for all manner of substances. In fact, almost everything you are currently chucking in the bin could probably have been recycled — even electronic waste.

Make an effort. Keep those recyclable plastics, cardboard, paper, glass, and tins separate, and deliver them to your nearest site every now and again. The list on the webpage even has street addresses. I promise, it gives you a cheery warm feeling deep inside when you drop off a batch of stuff that would otherwise have reported to a landfill.

Xenophobic Ads by Google

Sometimes ads by Google are unintentionally funny. This example is at the end of an article by Ndomiso Ngcobo, discussing the response to the recent xenophobic attacks in Johannesburg.

It seems Google Ads is suggesting that the refugees should have rather gone to the States, which is amusing on a number of levels considering the problems the States have with illegal immigration across their southern border.

Hammer OS news goes elsewhere

The influx of Hammer OS related information is threatening to overwhelm your magnificent Waffle Master (I know, hard to believe yet true!).

Until the Waffle Group runs Hammer OS, visit hammeros.wordpress.com for the latest in Hammer OS news, views, and installation fests that I’m certain you are all just clamouring after.

Go there now!

Search

When you search for search, what does your internet search engine search for?

Google is undeniably the market leader in internet search. Surely every search engine, when prompted with this query should return Google as the first hit on the list? Surely, if the search service you ask has the user’s best interests at heart (those are your best interests), this is what would happen?

With the possible exception of Google, that is. By entering your search for search into Google, you obviously already know about them. To serve their users optimally, they should tell them about other search engines.

I decided to test my hypothesis — search engines have their users’ best interests at heart — by checking whether they tell me about Google. More importantly, Google had to be the first hit (after sponsored ads, if any).

Method

Starting with Google, enter the search term “search engine” in the search dialogue box. My starting point was Google.co.za

The first hit on the page (that was not a sponsored link or advert) should be followed. Assuming the link takes one to a search engine site, the term “search engine” is entered into the newly discovered search engine’s dialogue box.

Repeat the above steps until a stable pattern emerges, or until one is returned to the starting point (in my case, Google.co.za), or until a site is returned that has no search input box.

Results

Google.co.za -> Search Result
-> Altavista.com -> Search Result
-> Search.com -> Search Result
-> Altavista.com -> Search Result
-> Search.com -> Search Result

Stable pattern established.

Conclusion

WTF? Search.com is a meta-search engine, so it just spat out Google’s search result. I suppose, arguably, arriving at Search.com is arriving at Google + others. But Altavista? Who uses Altavista these days? I can hardly believe it still exists, so what’s going on here?

Addendum

Repeating the experiment, but searching for “search” instead yields this:

Google.co.za -> Search Result
-> Yahoo.com -> Search Result
-> Google.com

Hooray! My faith in the intertubes is restored.

100 Word Stories

It seems that I am unlikely to finish my series of 100 word stories any time soon. The original deal I made with myself was to only publish batches of stories that I wrote once the next batch had been written. It was yet another of my long line of self-imposed project plans, but one that met with relative success.

This leaves me in a situation where the last batch I wrote and dispatched will never be published. The original intention behind the delayed publishing was to motivate me to write the next batch. It no longer is motivating me, but it seems a shame to never make the rest of the stories public.

So now they are public. Check out the full collection of 100 word stories written for friends and family on deviant art.

The Scourge of Piracy

Piracy of the highly rated Hammer OS is rampant. Look at these crusty sea dogs installing an unlicenced copy of Hammer OS on an iPhone.

People with excessively long beards are liersliars, cheats, and thieves, and those hairy people have obviously stolen that sledgehammer from one of their parents’ tool sheds, thus invalidating their Hammer OS licence.

Be warned, those who wish to steal Hammer OS, the legal penalty for pirating Hammer OS is Hammer OS.

Hammer OS Lock-up

Sometimes Hammer OS installations fail, freezing during the initialisation process, as in this attempt to install Hammer OS on a pigeon.

Fortunately, this quite rare, and generally only happens if you are a troll and get exposed to sunlight while attempting to install this most versatile of operating systems on an arbitrary object.