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!
Tuesday 19 October 2010
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.
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. :)
...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
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
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.
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.
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