Hard to believe it's real

For some reason today I was inspired to use the WayBack Machine to find the earliest incarnation of the Google website available.

Once at the site I noticed that a link was provided to a 'stickers' page.  And once I was on the stickers page I was surrounded by internet gold, or, more accurately, early/amazing versions of the Google logo that could be downloaded and posted on one's site.

I'm a big fan of the two early 'Google doodles' they had available for public consumption:

Burning Man festival

 and 'the holidays.'

Of course, one wouldn't want to miss the earliest incarnation of the Google logo.

I can't help but wonder if WordArt was maybe a little too accessible in early Google offices.

Cameron - 11
Neil - 0

Gmail Tap

Last night I noticed that Google released an April Fool's day app called Gmail Tap. The premise of the app was that you could compose messages on your phone using a combination of Morse code and predictive spelling.

What I find funny about this is that I really don't think the idea is all that crazy. Just imagine the benefits.

-The entire screen could function as a receiver as it only needs to records dots, dashes, and nothing.

-Only about 26 letter codes would required by users,  and I don't think that this is necessarily particularly onerous. With a good predictive spelling mechanism this could be pretty fast.

-Users would only need to know Morse code and would not have to worry about letter or character placement on their phone's keyboard.

Maybe the neatest possible outcome of such an app would be that if incoming messages could be translated back into Morse code through the phone's vibrate function one could communicate without relying on sight or sound, or even the ability to use a keyboard. And wouldn't that be neat?  And might such a functionality potentially be of use to individuals with visual or auditory impairments?

All of this to say that I hope Google actually considers developing an app along the lines of Gmail Tap, it might actually be more useful than it seems at first.

More from the 2011 Windsor Pumpkin Regatta

While at the 2011 Windsor Pumpkin Regatta I grabbed a few clips of the races.



[Embedded video]

As you can see, even the motorized pumpkins aren't particularly fast.

On a related note, not that it really matters, but at least at points today we have been the first Google Blogs result when searching for the "Windsor Pumpkin Regatta." This really amazes me. I really thought that higher profile blogs would have claimed this spot. Apparently not.

Check this out

I just learned that you can search Google by providing vocal commands. Apparently this fucntion is called Voice Search.

While it's not quite perfect, it is pretty neat and it's definitely worth checking out.

Will Google ever stop amazing me?

Work around?

For much of this evening Blogger has been unable to accept new posts or comments.  It seems that there are some issues that they are trying to resolve.  As far as I can tell they have thus far been hesitant to suggest a time by which service will be restored.

Anyway, all of this means that I can't get my up to the minute stats that I am accustomed to checking periodically throughout most evenings.  How am I supposed to get any work done if I can't confirm that we have had three pageviews in the past 2 hours?

I am curious if this post will even be posted as the system is supposed to be down (though I am trying to post it through an in-direct mechanism that I hope is still functional).  Actually, testing this mechanism is my only real justification for this post.

Update: My 'work around' didn't really work - it was held up in the system until Blogger came back online.

Google strikes again

These guys are amazing.

A happening 24 hours in Halifax

Yesterday afternoon Neil and Rebecca returned to St. John's for a week of high-level math and family fun. Almost as soon as they left the peninsula I put myself in extrovert mode and started attending a series of public performances.

I started things off with a nice comedy show.

Several weeks ago I noticed that our neighbourhood blues bar, Bearly's, plays host to a weekly Wednesday night comedy show called Laughter Burner. What made me really want to give this show a shot was that it is hosted former Stop Podcasting Yourself guests, Dylan Rhymer and Ben Mills.

After several weeks of conflicting squash sessions, I was finally able find myself free on a Wednesday evening last night. Not only was I free, but I was also able to talk Jeannette into attending the show with me. At about 8:00 we made our way over (as that was the advertised starting time), though it turns out that we were there quite a while before things started. Actually, I am pretty sure that we were the first people there for the show (though there were a few others in the bar for standard bar related activities). Fortunately we were able to pass the time with a friendly discussion about the qualities of the actors who have portrayed James Bond and the relative merits of their portrayals of James Bond.

The show, which consisted of a number of short acts puntucated by draws for crappy prizes, was great. Aside from the hosts, we were also both particularly taken with the final act of the night, Peter White, a fellow sufferer of kidney stones. Though neither Jeannette nor I was lucky enough to win one of the sets of sub-par prizes (which always include a sample of cheese), we were both convinced that the show was worth our time and worth visiting again. Hopefully we will be able to make it again next week (or at least to another show in the near future).

Much to my surprise, the live performance theme was continued today when I met Jeannette (who provided the following photos) for lunch and we happened upon a jazz band performing next to the ferry terminal. After a few minutes we started to get the sense that the band we were seeing, 6:20 Jazz Lab from Mobile Alabama, was something of a religious group. The emphasis on spirituals was quite striking, as was the fact that the band had a "drama department." It seems that the drama side of the group was used to provide either dancers or costumed characters to match the theme of the song.



Based on some Googling, I got the sense that this band is in town for a number of Christianity-themed performances. Unfortunately I couldn't find a proper website for them, or a real explanation about what they were doing on the waterfront today.

Alongside this group, and seemingly somehow related to them, was former major leaguer Bernie Carbo. At the time I had no idea who Bernie Carbo was, or why he might be manning a personal appearance stand next to the Halifax harbour.



After I returned to the apartment I was able to learn that Carbo, most famous for his pinch hit home-run for the Boston Red Sox in game 6 of the 1975 World Series tied the game and preceded Carlton Fisk's game-winning 12th inning home run, suffered from a number of addictions before finding solace in Christianity. It seems that Carbo, after becoming a hairdresser, now spends much of his time with church related activities.

While hunting down information about Carbo and the 6:20 Jazz Lab I happened to swing by the TD Halifax Jazz Festival website and see that there was a free Klezmer performance at 2:30 this afternoon by the Halifax group Der Heisser. Because I didn't have anything scheduled for this afternoon I decided that I would try to swing by the jazz festival main tent and take in some of this show. Though I didn't stay for the entire show (it was a little hot for me), I did really enjoy the part of the show that I saw.

These three performances were really quite useful as I was once again able to confirm that I am really only interested in seeing performances that are indoors and that have proper seating. Having to brave anything less than ideal conditions really impedes my ability to enjoy a performance. That being said, I am considering attending another free jazz festival performance tomorrow afternoon.

Hey da Google, stop creeping my email!

So da Google has totally started creeping my email, and I don't like it.

I know that they have been basing ad choice on email content for some time, but this seemed somewhat passive and easy to ignore.

Recently the have stepped up the creep factor.

Tonight I was sending an email when I encountered a dialog box. The box wanted to know if I had intended to include attachments with my message (I had not). It then went on to say that I was being asked this question because I had used the phrase "I have included" in my message.

Holy crap da Google, at least let me send my messages before you start creeping my email. Now I feel as though I need to watch myself even when preparing my message, which isn't a particularly pleasant feeling. (The best/worst part of this is that da Google already knows that I have written this and criticized it - hopefully they will place conciliatory ads in my inbox).

Are bloggers working for the weekend?

For the past few weeks I have been noticing a trend relating to the blogs I read. It seems that there are many more posts on weekdays than on the weekends. The dips in the chart below should demonstrate this point rather clearly.



I guess I could probably find out if I wanted to, but I wonder to what extent internet traffic, and blog posts, dip on the weekend, or when people are not at work. For better or worse, I get the sense that much interneting/emailing is done on the job (to be fair, much of this might even be work related).

In other internet/Google related matters, earlier today I came across the Google Public Policy Blog. Though I have subscribed to their feed, I haven't had much of a chance to check out their content yet. Generally, I was initially a little surprised to see such a blog, but upon a little more reflection it made some sense. I am kind of curious to see which issues are considered important by Google and how they approach these issues. Anyway, some of you might want to check it out. Also, the focus is definitely not just the US. It seems that they are even funding policy fellowships for Canadian students (actually, a post about this program is how I happened to be clued into the existence of this blog).

A Few Quick Notes 263

-For the past few days it has been on the cold side, some days going as low as -21 (maybe even colder). Today was a bit warmer, and it is forecast to be warmer still tomorrow. Unfortunately, with the rising temperatures we are supposed to get some snow, rain, and ice pellets, which seems like quite the combination.

-I managed to crank out another two loaves of bread this morning while preparing breakfast and working on school related things. It seems that Wednesday morning is a good day for me to do some bread baking.

-Today I had the opportunity to do some poking around in the Novanet catalogue (the union catalogue for Nova Scotia post-secondary institutions). The more I use this catalogue the more I think that it was designed to prevent access to materials. Not only are there all kinds of duplicate, and confusing, records, in many cases the records don't reflect what is actually available in the library (particularly when it comes to electronic journal access). I really don't understand how such a catalogue could have ever been deemed acceptable by any of the participating institutions.

-Recently I have been thinking that what we consider to be our tastes/preferences are really just functions of availability (mark another one up in the original thought tally).

-A few days ago I started using Google Reader. While I don't like everything about the service, I am generally pretty satisfied. I am somewhat amazed that it took me this long to start using a feed aggregator of some sort, particularly as there are a number of blogs that I check on a regular basis.

-I have to give my second round of lectures starting next week. Again I seem to have lucked out and picked a topic that I am familiar with and that relates to topics I have been reading about already this term. Hopefully they go a little more smoothly that some of my first lectures.

-We will be having a pot roast for dinner. Actually, I should consider taking things out of the oven in the very near future.

-A few days ago I came across the video for Colleen Power's new song New Townie Man. I was immediately taken with the piece, but that is likely only because I am townie male, and they tend to do pretty well in this piece.



Yesterday I was talking to a friend, who happens to be a 'bayman,' about this song and he expects that several responses to this song will be drafted and posted in the coming days and weeks. I really hope he is right, adding a Compton and Juice vs. Gazeebow Unit feel to this video and the resulting discourse would be great.

A Few Quick Notes 209

-While the temperature has remained moderate these past few days the
fog has certainly not been even close to moderate. At the moment it
is hard to see from one end of a moderately sized parking lot to the
other. Amazingly, only a few flights seem to be delayed.

-In the most recent issue of the Scope it is reported that with the
addition of a new Tim Hortons there will be 11 such stores in the
city. As soon as I read this I was taken aback, without more than a
minute or two of thinking I was able to come up with at least 12 such
stores (and that wasn't including the new one). To confirm my hunch I
checked the phone book and confirmed that there are certainly more
than 10 such sites. The Tim Hortons website goes so far as to suggest
that there are close to thirty sites in the St. John's metropolitan
area.

-Last night we had our first Ultimate game of the week. The game was
a make-up for a game that was originally scheduled some number of
weeks ago. Though we were winning by several points for much of the
game the opposing team did gain a fair bit of ground in the second
half. Fortunately, we were close enough to 15 that even with our
diminished rate of scoring we were still able to hold on for the win.

We have another game this Wednesday. After our second game this week
I am not sure how many more games we have as part of the regular
season, this might be the last one.

-While my bean plants seem to still be alive they don't seem to be
growing at the same rate they were in July. Presumably the lack of
sun and heat that we have been experiencing has negatively impacted
their development.

At this point I am pretty sure that if they ever do manage to produce
beans it will be well after I have departed for the summer. Actually,
the one bean that I did spot seems to have vanished.

-In the past few days I have had some good celery. This is a nice
change as the celery that I have been able to get up to this point
this summer has been somewhat inferior. Both texture and flavour have
been problematic and not up to my exacting standards (and that is not
to mention that the price tends to be triple what I am used to paying
at Lobos in Montreal).

-I recently learned that some Google Alerts also cover blog posts.
This means that people could be accessing Montifax, or any other blog
for that matter, because of their interest in a word or set of words
that Neil or I use in a post. While I guess this capability is
something that I should have expected it has thrown me for a loop
(though this may be because I know that this feature has likely drawn
a particular person's attention to this blog at one time or another).
Anyway, I guess I guess I should be used to this concept, maybe I
should even start throwing in words that will likely draw traffic (as
high readership is clearly one of our overriding goals with this
blog).

Google Analytics: A few days on

As I mentioned a few days ago, I recently started tracking usage on Montifax with Google Analytics. While we are only about two weeks into the tracking there are a few trends that seem to be developing.

Most notably, it seems that our users are, as expected, coming largely from regions inhabited by people we know. This means that St. John's, Halifax, and Montreal are three of the world-wide hotbeds of readership, while a few other North American cities have also shown up on lists of locations of people checking the site. As time goes on we seem to be getting the occasional hit from other countries and other parts of Canada and the US. I think that I was most surprised to see China, Turkey, and Indonesia on the list of countries that have had Montifax related activity from inside their borders. As exciting as it is to get a new country, these still don't represent a large portion of overall readership/visitors (as I wouldn't want to assume that just because one visits a blog that they actually read the content).

Another trend seems to be developing in terms of daily visitors. Though we had one day with only about two, a more typical days see anywhere from 7 to 13 people check the site. While not staggering by any means, it does seem to be regular (and more volume that I can generate by checking on three different computers).

A more surprising trend is that on most days one or two people find Montifax through web searches (and on a few days up to three people found us Montifax this way). While most find us through Google, a few have found us through Yahoo (but those seem to be the only search engines people have used to find us). The range of search terms used to find us is quite impressive. Not only have people been found us when searching for the Goobies Moose, but also when searching with the following search strings: 'she served us topless,' 'market research coffee table books,' not wearing underwear,' and 'newfoundland beer consumption.'

While it seems that part of the point of Google Analytics is to help webmasters/administrators increase traffic we haven't seemed to be able to use the service to achieve such ends. Mainly access to the service has allowed us (more specifically me) to see how people are accessing the site and generally how many readers we get on a daily basis. While most of this isn't all that important or useful I have enjoyed having the information. Furthermore, this gives me something else on the web to check on a daily basis when I really can't find some more useful way of using my time.

A Few Quick Notes 182

-Not surprisingly, today was filled with rain and overcast skies. As was the case yesterday, winds were low, and temperatures were at least approaching ten for much of the day. Apparently, though I don't know on what basis this is being suggested, we are due for some temperatures in the teens and maybe even a clear-ish day in the the near future.

-It seems that when writing my post about our foray into the realm of usage stats with Google Analytics I hadn't noticed that we seem to have actually had one hit apiece from both Indonesia and South Korea, though I can't imagine why. I guess in the future I will need to pay more attention to the light shades of green on the map displaying the origins of our visitors. Sorry if anyone's feelings were hurt through my omission.

-Kirsten and I took another trip to the library this evening. I did a little reading in one of the books that I checked out last trip and also skimmed/read sections of political science journals. My general goal is to re-familiarize myself with some of the literature of the field before I return as a student in the fall.

-Today I was able to set up my Dalhousie email address. Unfortunately, this was much more complicated that in should have been. Instead of quickly creating a NetID and password I hand to dink around for a long time and then eventually use a backdoor that Neil found to finally have a password issued. Though I couldn't believe it at first, I think that Dalhousie might have a less user friendly system than McGill.

The big plus of the Dalhousie system is that they allow me to get my university email in my Gmail account (which is particularly important considering how cumbersome the webmail application is). While McGill allowed this for a period of time they eventually clamped down and disallowed the access that was needed, costing me valuable minutes a day.

-On Thursday I should be sending a few more things to Halifax, this time with Rebecca's father. I guess I really should start to box some of this up so that it will be ready to go when he arrives in two day's time.

I am particularly looking forward to being able to use the mixer once I arrive. While in Montreal I was forced to return to the stone ages and mix everything by hand. A few of the other kitchen related implements will also be quite nice (particularly when complimented by those already possessed by Neil and Rebecca).

Google Analytics and Montifax: A Partnership Built in Heaven?

About a week ago I learned of a new service provided by Google. The service is called Google Analytics and it provides relatively detailed traffic statistics for websites. One adds a section of code to one's website and then sits back and waits for the various stats to role in.

Almost immediately I thought that such a service could be used with Montifax so that Neil and I could get some sense of our readership. Not only would be be able to tell, to a limited degree, how many people were reading Montifax, but where they lived and how they were coming to the site (i.e. searches, referrals, or direct traffic).

So far none of the stats that have become available have been that surprising. Most of the readers, such as they are, are from the St. John's/Mount Pearl area, with Halifax the obvious second place. New York and Michigan (the two locations from which my uncle would check the site) are also represented. On top of that there seem to be a few people in the Montreal region, the Toronto region, Alberta, and B.C. (On the other hand, there are a number of people that could be reading by means not accessible to this application, RSS feeds being the most obvious means by which this could be occurring).

Even less surprising than the locations of the readers are the numbers. I would guess that the handful of regular readers are all people that are known to me (as I can't imagine anyone that didn't know Neil or I taking the time to read this).

In many ways having this knowledge makes writing these posts much more personal than it previously was. In the past it was possible, though unlikely, that just about anyone could be reading my posts at any time. While this is still true, I now have firm evidence to suggest that it isn't likely the case and that I do in fact basically know on a first name basis anyone who is likely to read this content.

Anyway, as time goes one and we gather more data it will be interesting to see if the usage and readership stays the same, or if it shows any change.

A Few Quick Notes 155

-Today, as predicted by Environment Canada, was quite warm. As far as I can tell, there wasn't a part of the day during which a full winter coat was needed, and when the sun was out during the middle part of the day things were really quite pleasant. Since that time there has been some deterioration in the form of precipitation, but nothing major.

-As regular readers of this blog will know, for years I have had an inability it cook beans and other legumes in a personally satisfactory manner. Somewhat surprisingly, this does not mean that I have stopped trying. Actually, my culinary efforts have been quite to the contrary, bean dishes spring forth from our fertile kitchen with a surprising rapidity. The problem is that most of these dishes verge on inedibility.

Remarkably, for dinner tonight I managed to make a bean dish that was more than just edible, it was actually tasty.

For some reason I decided that I would try to make chickpea curry. To find out how to do this I slotted both words into a handy Google search box. If I recall correctly I examined only the first entry and found that I had all of the needed ingredients (why go further just to find that I wouldn't be able to make another version of the same thing).

Of course, being me, I decided that I didn't really need to follow the recipe and would rather just use it as a form of guidance.

Within a few minutes I was on my merry way, frying onions and tossing in unmeasured quantities of spices.

One early, though major, modification was to add a chicken breast. This was mainly because I had earlier in the day thawed the piece of meat and felt that it would be best to use it before it spoiled. Also, who wants to eat a meal that doesn't have at least some form of meat?

After allowing the meat, chickpeas, and spices to simmer for some period of time I added a few stalks of celery. I didn't have a particularly good reason for making this addition, but I guess I felt that I should have some fresh vegetables with my meal.

Anyway, after allowing the celery to cook with the rest of the dish for some period of time I served myself a generous portion on top of a bed of rice. Immediately I was surprised to find that it was edible. As I continued to eat I learned that it was not just edible but tasty. Maybe I will have to try this again in the future, or maybe I want to stop cooking beans/legumes on a high note.

-For some reason all of people covered by today's Globe and Mail Obituary section were quite young. If I recall correctly, the oldest individual to be profiled was 67, while one or two were in the 56-57 range. Such a range of ages is much more depressing than the typical coverage of ninety year-olds.

Google USPC 2007

In just less than 30 minutes I'm going to be writing the annual United States Puzzle Competition, sponsored by Google. The top finishers are invited to compete for the US at the World Puzzle Competition, this year to be held in Rio de Janiero. The competition also serves as the Canadian qualifier.

The competition consists of about 20 questions of varying point values, to be completed over the course of 2.5 hours. It is thought to be unlikely for anyone to complete all the puzzles in the alloted time. The puzzles vary in format from sudoku-esque puzzles to puzzles like you might find in a kiddie puzzle book, namely the puzzle asking you to find the 10 differences between the two pictures.

I first heard about this competition through slashdot just over 3 years ago. This is my third time writing. Last year I came 19th in Canada, which put me in about the 90th percentile of competition writers, although I wouldn't quote me on that. I'm hoping to do better this year, but I'm not expecting to. The results will come out on or about the 20th of June.