Tuesday 19 October 2010

Rabbit AND Boole

An image search using the above terms throws up a blast from the past in the form of Johnny Ball. I remember him being on the telly doing what was supposed to be fun children's science programmes back in the 70s and 80s. It was that TV era when making lots of noise, smells and bangs was what was supposed to make science interesting. It didn't interest me (although to be fair, I wasn't a child). The explanations weren't complete though - too much left unexplained. Also very patronising, I thought. If I'm going to be patronised, I'd rather it was Sooty and Sweep doing it. But it is a marker of the time that TV started to turn itself over to dumbing down education and to bigging-up personality-led programmes. Bring back How? is all I can say.

The Johnny Ball Productions website is an examplar of the marketing usefulness of the Net and some of the problems that come with assuming that just cos it's on the 'Net that'll do. This is a forum where Mr Ball can reach millions - but it's a really pants website. Dated font, poor layout, poor quality images. It doesn't look professional atall. Not the kind of impression I'd think Johnny wants to make. Bah humbug!

Wednesday 13 October 2010

Rabbit AND Logic

Flushed by the success of my last venture (that was a bit of irony) I thought I'd do similar and go for Rabbit AND Logic this time. Following Fibonnaci down the page, my eye rested on this gem on FanFiction.net. It's a fanisode of Deep Space Nine and has most of the elements I like in a story - Sci-Fi, rabbits, fluff and a big dollop of whimsy. In this episode Garak obtains a strange new pet from Earth......

I don't know if it's meant to be funny, but it is, very.

If Boole has done one great thing, it is that his logic led to the widespread development of Fan Fiction. It is wobbly, it's wierd, it's a lot nerdy and it's great fun. It's the best kind of produserism and it exemplifies contemporary life. I guess I've said this before about other sites, but Fan Fiction sort of typifies the 'Net for me - collaborative, ever-adaptive and adapting, creative, inspirational, assymetrical and connective. So there.

Thursday 7 October 2010

Bunny AND Boole

I like this random choosing of my search terms more - but surely, I hear you cry, that isn't the point of this? You are breaking the rules Alison! Well yes, but they are my rules, and (what is more) rules are most useful when used to guide rather than limit. Thus, today I went back to the start and used Bunny (as they are my interst here) AND Boole (as this is all about him - BTW check out BOOLFEST) and found myself going here FUKGAMES.com where there are gazillions of PC games to play. There are 128 games to do with bunnies apparently. In the interests of research I have forced myself to play one or two......

...the first is called BUNNYKILL and I am still waiting for it to load......and waiting......and waiting.....ooookayyy. This "game" seems to involve the 'player' watching a movie of bunny figures fighting each other using various different types of medieval-looking weapons. I don't actually get to do anything. Unless I've missed the point somewhere. I'm beginning to suspect I'm being an advertisers' dupe here. Hang on.....

...the second one loads faster and works but it's terrible. It's like trying to play a very slow, badly designed verion of one of the earliest sega-megadrive games. Pants. What's this site for? I think these sites are bit like blogs. They exist for the people they exist for and are a whole lot of self-indulgence with the hope that others out there will show an interest. Well sometimes they do and sometimes they don't and I guess, that's ok. But all the same you'd have to be really, really bored to willingly seek this out and spend time here. Poor old George would roll in his gravy at the though of his beautiful logic being used in such a piteous way. :)

Thursday 30 September 2010

Logic Bunny

I followed that last Boolean search with the first words form the last so - Logic AND Bunny. Why? Cos I can. I may have mentioned this before but this is as I see it where Logic - even BOOLEAN - is never without other impinging factors. I get easily bored with rules, even my own.

Anyhoo, this is a wierd and very likeable photography site Logic Bunny It's also perfectly in tune with the Boolean issues I have, as it explains: "An anti body-shape manipulation stance is taken at Logicbunny Photography. Slight imperfections will be removed (that pimple that Murphy’s Law said will appear the day prior to your shoot), but if you want your body reshaped - then move along, this is not the place for you. The end results are portraits of you looking the best that you look". In other words, though perfection is possible, it is not necessarily the result. My thinking is that BOOLEAN logic DOES offer perfection - a bit like The Diceman experience it takes away the need for a great deal of decision-making - but perfection isn't always desireable or necessary.

Re the inital photo though it doesn't really do the site justice and could be off-putting. It was only that I wanted to know why a nice young lady would be lying amongst a pile of small brains that I went further LOL

Wednesday 22 September 2010

Bunny Logic

I got bored with standard Boolean searching and decided to go for something simple : Bunny Logic. Here's what I got http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Logic_Bunny It all makes sense to me now - the broken bottles all around, the multiplying but imaginary rabbits everywhere, the popping sounds. The universe is clearly full - very full - of imaginary rabbits coming into and out of being. This, for me, explains one of the unsolved mysteries of space. I know that theories of Dark Matter have been put forward, but what we have here is something far more compelling: Fluffy Matter. And that explains why the dark has a thick, fuzzy look, especially at closing time, when logic bunnies are popping otu of the bottles in a big way. Superb.

Tuesday 10 August 2010

Paperback NOT Nigella

This search took me to Waterstones, but as soon as I got there a pop-up popped up telling me they'd love my feedback if I've got a minute to fill in a short survey. Yes, well I have got some feedback: Dear Waterstones, don't get in the way of my browsing by asking me for my feedback!!

This is an increasingly frequent occurence with websites. It's a bit like entering a shop in RL and as soon as you get through the door, someone leaping in front of you and asking you how good the shop is and what needs improving! Don't they realise how annoying it is? Ah, but there's the rub: with so much competition and so many places competing for the attention of the human eye and wallet, the businesses are understandably frantic to make sure they are doing everything possible to keep us on board.

Anyway, the upshot for me (as always) is that I can't be bothered with their site. I want browsing to be easy and fun, not laced with an ambush when I stick my head round the corner, to mix metaphors. Next search Fantastic OR Savings LOL

Wednesday 4 August 2010

a AND domestic

First try of my new search strategy and it returned this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Domestic-Goddess-Comfort-Cooking/dp/0701171081 Amazon is pretty much my second home on occasions and I would sorely miss it if it wasn't there. So what is it good for apart from buying books? Well, obviously there is the 'search inside' function which means I can check out the book first to see if it's what I want. It's also VERY useful for detecting palgiarism LOL!! Amazon saves me a great deal of time and money in travel too. But as for the wider implications.....

......just thinking in terms of saving time and money, the effect of Amazon and similar for anyone in academcia anyway is that research time is speeded up. There's no waiting for weeks for a book to arrive at the library or bookshop any more - quite often it's easily available online to buy instantly and/or available as a googlebook. Thinking about this on the wider scale, one can argue that at least for certain areas, the production of knowledge must have also speeded up - perhaps we will see the implications of this somewhere down the line.

Borrowing from Dave Kenyon's thinking, there is also a problem created here for research by students, and that is a tendency to use the "search inside" function on Amazon as a way of generating quotes. Unfortunately what this means is that often only a page of the text is read - or even just the bit that has the search word in it - which means the context is not grasped and there is a deal of misunderstanding of what the words actually mean. The result is an essay full of info-bits which are thinly understood, if at all. In comparison, when a book is taken from a library shelf there is more of a likelihood that the student will read the bits before and after their passage of interest and so grasp the wider picture.

As for the Domestic Goddess in the link above, there is no search inside function here - unsurprising really! I'm not even going to start on what I think about the idea of domestic goddessness.

A final thought. The war between the online and real-world booksellers has clearly brought many changes, most obviously the bookshop-coffee house binary which has definitely made the world a better place. 'Search inside', and suggestions for similar titles etc are the online bookshop's way of replacing the bookshop experience. I'm not sure where each might go from here, but one thing that has dealt the real-world shop a leftfield blow has been the electronic reader - it remains to be seen how much, if atall, this supports one or the other business.

Thursday 29 July 2010

A rethink of Bunny Booleanism

I think it's time to rethink my strategy really. I've been to some interesting sites so far but I get the feeling I'm going to end up going round in circles booleanly. The trouble is that most of the rabbit sites inevitably use the same words (and I know that anyone out there could have told me so - but I wanted to try it out). Anyhoo, once again we come up against the wicked problem of Boolean digitality versus human analog-ity: the fact is that I can't - or won't - be happy with such rigidity as offered by the bunny limits, and I'm growing bored. And to solve the problem, bizarrely I'm going to make my strategy MORE rigid.

So...instead of using the bunny related words to direct my travels, I will now simply choose the first two or three words offered on the site after the page title and see where that takes me. I am sure I will travel with Boole well beyond the bounds of bunny worlds. See ya.

Monday 26 July 2010

Domestic AND rabbit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_rabbit A clear example of all that's wrong with using Wiki as a source. Initially it seems pretty sound. But problems abound: "Animal rights activists have opposed animal experimentation for non-medical purposes" it maintains. This implies that AR activists don't oppose other kinds of experiment -but they very definitely do. A later contradiction of this statement is itself queried in the article There is also a very clear bias towards experimentation, no mention of how many rabbits are used, for instance, just how useful they are. Again: "Show rabbits is an increasingly popular wholesome activity for individuals and families. Showing rabbits helps to improve the vigor and physical characteristics of each breed through competitive selection". This is quite clearly just the opinion of the writer, but is presented as some kind of 'fact' about rabbits. There are many who would dispute both the wholesomeness of showing rabbits just for entertainment of the shower, and selective breeding which can result in horrendous deformation of rabbit characteristics and consequent medical problems for their bearer.

That's a bit of a rant for today. However, I did come across a new truth about rabbits - people use them for show-jumping! Bizarre and sad.

Friday 23 July 2010

Diet AND rabbit NOT pellets

The very, very, very strange thing about this result http://www.hopperhome.com/rabbit_food.htm is the use of Mr Potato Head bits and bobs for the pictures. It's a funny and frankly, a bit freaky too.

This is one of many semi-amatuer rabbit sites that offers links, a blog and various items of interest and information about rabbits as well as a whole big dollop of personal experience. It's a good exemplar, I think, of that halfway house the Net offers between professional knowledge and vernacular. If you warp the Laswellian Two-Step Flow model and apply it here, you have not just one opinion leader to understand, filter and disseminate media messages (in this case about bunnies) but a vast mesh of similarly informed opinion leaders.

There are two questions (at least) here. First, where is the info is coming from? While individual experiences obviously vary in many cases, it's perfectly possible to imagine that the same "official" information/knowledge circulates like an endless game of Chinese Whispers, passed on from one semi-official site to another and mixed with a liberal dash of on-the-ground experience. On the other hand, there are often contradictions. This sets up the next question then: how is one to decide which of the many sites to take as reliable? For academic purposes, it's fairly easy to decide what site to use, but when looking after animals (or for that matter mending the car) it's not. You want a bit of personal experience in there, certainly - one likes to think that the site has been put together by an experienced bunny keeper. But what about the situation where (as with this site) where one type of food is recommended but on another it's claimed to be dangerous? I call this the parsnip-lettuce problem.

Anyhow, it's a bit of a fun site with some nice pics, although a little thin on textual design . For this search I took Dave's advice and altered the order of things so that rabbit wasn't first. My next search will be Domesticated AND Rabbit

Friday 9 July 2010

Rabbit AND food NOT farm

Today's hop brings me here http://www.rabbit.org/faq/sections/diet.html the House Rabbit Society's website. A really upbeat bounce-back from that nasty rabbit farm. A person shouln't be fooled by the basic look of this site - the HRS is a fantastic resource for anyone who has rabbits, whether 'house' or otherwise. This raises an issue in my mind about the importance (or otherwise) of how a website is presented. HRS is a place that is visited by many keen rabbit owners and casual visitors I guess, and they haven't really bothered with bells and whistles. And it's easy to use. The problem with it is that you get lost in it, because of all the interesting stuff on there (if you like bunnies of course). I just accidentally came across a guide for bonding bunnies and lost half an hour there. That's the 'net for you.

Anyhoo, the whole idea of a House Rabbit used to seem a bit bizarre to me. Rabbits are, after all, designed to live outside. How do you replicate that in a house? How do you replicate burrowing for instance? The HRS knows. Check it out. Next search: Rabbit OR diet NOT pellets

Wednesday 7 July 2010

Rabbits OR types

Today's search came up with two sites I had already visited first, so I employed the Fibonacci rule and went for number 3 (which logically I would have done anyway). Oh but this site is a bit of a challenge http://vimeo.com/groups/7080/videos/9836667 It's an independent documentary film channel and this is a video of a rabbit breeding/farming facility providing rabbits for restaurants.

Oh dear. If you like animals at all this will be really upsetting. Hundreds of rabbits kept in tiny cages. No hay, just wire under their feet. Only room to turn round. Tragic and appalling. But the documentarist seems to think it's fine. I haven't really got much to say but people SHOULD watch this - we should all know where our food comes from.

Tuesday 6 July 2010

Rabbits NOT Leporidae

This search took me to one of those really boring/annoying websites
http://www.petwebsite.com/rabbits.asp which serve as umbrellas for lots of topics. Annoying because when you really want info quickly it adds another few clicks to the searching. Boring because there are so many links that it's confusing and tiring having to bother. On the good side, some of those links are useful - they go to rabbit welfare sites and places where you can get really solid info. On the not-so-good, lots of the links are to rabbits for sale. I don't think you should be able to sell animals over the 'net. So there. Lots of links to rabbit products for sale too.

It's well named: Pet Website. Does what it says on the tin. This kind of "shop" did not used to exist in the high street: the local pet shop sold pets, petfood and pet products. Occasionally put ads in the window. But the major stores now do do the things that the websites do. They have links with welfare groups. They advertise insurance company prodcuts and services. They sell second-hand pets. They have books and training days too. I wonder if it is because they have to compete with the web, or with each other?

Difficult to ascertain what search to use as the term 'rabbit' is repeated endlessly before you get to anything else. New rule then: a word will only appear once in each search - I obviously can't using Rabbit AND Rabbit. It looks like it's going to be the words "types" and "rabbits"

Monday 5 July 2010

First Hop: rabbit AND bunny

Oh dear! Already I've run into trouble as the first site offered was this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit . I can see that Wiki is going to be a bit of a pain in the scut and if it begins to turn up too often as first choice I'll have to rethink the strategy. Never mind that at the moment - what about the site? This Wiki isn't a bad piece of work all told. It does have a few errors (e.g. that bunnies get along with guinea pigs) but it is quite thorough - enough for year 7 project on rabbits, say.

What I like about this Wiki is that it deals with the whole creature. So here we have the details of how it eats, breeds and lives alongside myths and legends, its use as clothing, and fictional bunnies, with loads of follow-up links. This is an important issue: if you compare to, for example, TV wildlife programmes, in these there is far too much spectacle and natural history info which rarely moves beyond what a creature eats, what eats it, how it mates, what it fights, and where it lives. Go to the related website and you get much of the same, or "how it was filmed"; it's a very narrow view.

Having said that, this Rabbit Wiki is structured very much around the "scientific gaze". There's no feeling that we are talking about a living bouncy hoppy creature here. The categories are science-discourse-based: "location and habitat", "characteristics and anatomy", despite the break-out into other info areas. One thing is very absent here though, considering the science-focus - there's nothing about the use of the rabbit as a scientific tool: a big, big gap in the Wiki.

Not counting the titles and redirects, the next terms will be rabbits and Leporidae, separated this time by the Boolean term NOT.

Boolean Bunny challenge

As part of Boolefest at the University of Lincoln I have set myself the challenge of wandering the 'net using three parameters. The first is that I use Boolean search terms AND, OR, and NOT and combinations of these in rotation. The second is that I use only rabbit-related words. Thus, I will initiate my wanderings with Rabbit AND Bunny. I'll visit the first site that Google offers me, and, having enjoyed its offerings and blogged about it a bit, I will choose from that site the first two rabbit-related terms therein and use these for my next search.

If during my searches, the first site that Google offers is one I have already visited, I will bring in the third parameter, which is the Fibonacci sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 etc (I will obviously need to ignore the first few numbers of the sequence).

Why am I doing this? Because I want to! Also because it involves three of my favourite things: rabbits, numbers, and serendipity. And also because it's that apprent randomness overlying a very strong structure that makes bunnies so fascinating. That's Bunny Logic for you.