fiona was here
wishing she had a clever tagline

I thought Technorati's notion of embedding linked tags in blog entries was pretty clever. Problem is: it indexes the tags to the wrong entries, at least on my blog. For instance: my last entry, tagged "Schiavo" doesn't come up. However, the previous entry, which had nothing to do with Terry Schiavo at all and bears the tags attention and jackasses, is returned by Technorati for the Schiavo tag. I always find it tragic when something I thought was clever fails in the execution.
hope springs eternal: technorati, tagging, metatagging, failure

Terri Schiavo's blog. I laughed, I'll confess, because it's funny as well as offensive.

technorati tags: schiavo, fauxblogs

Why does everything have to be a "national tragedy" these days? And why do we all have to get together and cry about it? What's the point of all this public grief? It's just another ploy for attention, like people who claim to have been traumatised by 9/11 when it really had no effect on thier lives other than they were looking for an excuse to wig out. Any horrible human tragedy and people are grabbing onto it's coat-tails in a desperate Bid for Attention. James Roszko's brother is perfect example of this: sending condolences was a nice thing to do and he should have done so and then shut up about it, because it's no longer a kind, caring gesture if you want everyone to know about it. It's just attention-seeking.


technorati tags: attention, jackasses

I was quite peacefully watching t.v. earlier when an advertisement came on for Mel Gibson's Exploitation of Christian Wallets (I think he titled it "The Passion of the Christ" or something assinine like that) and I thought, "Oh, it must be out on video. I must be careful not to inadvertently rent it." Then I realised it was another fucking version; a bigger, longer, uncut version. So Mel can make more money off stupid ignorant religious types who believe it thier duty to line his already over-full placket under the guise of "remembering the story of Christ". Lies, of course, all of it; if they wanted to "remember Christ" properly they'd give the cost of movie admission to the poor or even, dare I say it, to the church (who could use it to buy themselves a new pope who's throat muscles worked well enough to tell Gibson where to shove all the filthy lucre he obtained peddling his gory, biased version of the so-called Truth).

technorati tags: melgibson, movies, christianity

The longer you don't post for, the harder it is to post. Performance anxiety about being clever enough to compensate for all the silence kicks in.

I do not feel clever enough today so all I will say is: Prince Charles doesn't deserve to get married and live happily ever after. I'm glad Lizzie's being pissy about the matter. He should suffer for the rest of his life for being so selfish as to wantonly choose to marry a woman twelve years his junior (who was only twenty years old) and proceed to destroy her life. And arguments about his duty to procreate and populate the royal line are bollocks; discovering a woman his own age similarly equipped with a womb would not have necessitated a quest similar to the Holy Grail.

technorati tags: royalty, QueenElizabeth, selfishness

Metafilter offers more speculation about the implications of Google paying Firefox folk (okay, one person) to do, ahem, Things.

On an unrelated note: is this on your list of regular reads, Katester?

The lead engineer for the Mozilla Firefox project is now employed by Google. But he's still working on Firefox. It sounds as though they are paying him to continue doing what he's already doing. Which is, let's face it, suspicious. Unless they're going to come play BrowserWar with Microsoft.

technorati tags: google, wishes, firefox, browsers

Metafilter has finally implemented tagging (although the tags on that page don't work very well: go here for links that actually work or, for random, delicious-type fun, add a tag word to http://www.metafilter.com/tags/ ), something I'm surprised they didn't do sooner. (I still fail to understand why they don't have categories for posts but whatever, I'll take my metadata however I can get it.) But like any other means of finding relevant information on the internet, it's only of any use when you're doing it right. And so many of these tags are completely and totally worthless that it's like having all the french non-fiction shelved at 448: it lures you into a false sense of organization.

technorati tags: tagging, folksonomy

For those of us who have problems spelling stuff, sweet beloved Google has come to our rescue again with Google Suggest. It seems to be based on the notion that you're searching for what everybody else is searching for and therefore thier queries will satisfy your needs: Our algorithms use a wide range of information to predict the queries users are most likely to want to see. For example, Google Suggest uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers.

Technorati Tags: search, google

I've been getting a ridiculous number of hits from people seaching for videos of the tsunami on Yahoo! and MSN Search. I'm showing up as number two on both. Which strikes me as ridiculous. There's no way I'm that important. And then I realised I'd mis-spelled tsunami, as had all these lovely people using Yahoo and MSN, as "tsumani". If they'd used Google, like good boys and girls, thier spelling error would have been pointed out to them oh-so-politely: did you mean tsunami video?

The fact that so many people showed up here looking for something makes me want to be useful to them and provide them with the content they desire because the librarian in me feels like that would be a nice way to contribute to the universe. So these are the best links from the above Google search:

Asian Tsunami video footage from the web (Scroll down to see listing of videos)

Full Tsunami Video Footage, Pictures, Clips And TV News Stories (Annotated bibliography of internet sites)

On a not terribly related note: I want an internal cross refrencing system for my blog; something that lets me put "See" and "See also" notes at the end of an entry.

Imagine my excitement when I discovered that LibraryElf's list of libraries included the Ottawa Public Library and I could, therefore, create an RSS feed for my library books. Will this mean my books will start being returned on time? I bet it will. Well, it might. It's a mondo-clever way to use RSS though.

CNN fired Tucker Carlson. Good riddance sweetie. Why don't you take up interpretive dance and stop with the whole "journalist" thing, already?

Also, I think Bill Gates may have called me a communist. Not that I mind, since I don't particularly value the man's opinion on anything, but it never fails to amuse me how someone can take belief in a theoretical system of economic governance based on the notion that everybody should help each other and share what they have into a slur. I think I'd rather be a communist than a man whose company was sued repeatedly all over the world because they were being underhanded assholes. But hey, who am I to judge?

Since the New York Times has freely maligned IE, I would have thought that Microsoft, being the big stanky bullies that they are, would fight back in some way; break a few metaphorical kneecaps, if you will. But no, they're sitting staunchly still, refusing to release a new version until the next Windows release in ought-six. Slackers.

And I'm pleased to say, current sources seem to indicate a most exciting shift towards Mozilla, namely Firefox, a trend reflected in my own site stats. So PFFFTTT! on you Microsoft and I hope you trip and fall over something.

Video from tourists in Sri Lanka who weren't real concerned at first.

Edited to cross reference myself: http://fionica.twoday.net/20050103/

A recent article in Library Journal discusses librarians' relationship with search engines, namely Google. I hadn't realised there were any real, live information professionals out there who still believed that there was any question as to whether students should be taught how to use Google. What the hell else are you going to do? Let them continue to flounder with their ill-crafted queries? Get off your asses and teach them the fucking Joy of Boolean already! Or even just some basic math, I'm not fussy.