Posts from LiveJournal

Google for instance have wonderful text processing skills. And their spell checker actually learns. Although the human side leaves a little to be desired.

This neatly brings me to one of the reasons I’m posting this (as hinted at two entries ago). I recently started a new website, http://www.condoms-cheap.co.uk which sells things (I’ll leave it up to your imagination to guess what. Again I’m, not sure who I’m telling exactly since the only person reading this knows about it anyway). And it has very few inbound links(ah, I get to explain how Google works; something the person in question might not know about). When I say very few I sort of mean none. As in it has some but they aren’t in search engines yet. And since this page is not in a search engine this won’t really help much.

Google gives a page a rating called PageRank. This is defined recursively and is confusing to think about from the middle (and since it’s recursive everything is the middle - bear with me). When a page links to another page, Google counts it as a “vote” for that page. So pages with more votes have a higher PageRank. However the votes from a page with a high PageRank are worth more. Not sure where to go from there but I hope it was educational.

Meanwhile check out:

• http://video.google.com/
• http://catalogs.google.com/
• http://maps.google.com/

The first will be cool eventually but isn’t that impressive technologically. The second is absolutely stunning to be honest. The third is nice as a “proof of concept”. It will be better when the rest of the world exists. Now if they could include public transport in the system, scheduled flights and ferry services and keep it all up to date, they will definitely rule the world. Imagine being able to put in two addresses (not just cities but exact addresses) and it tell you exactly how to get from one to the other. Now that is what the information revolution should be about.

This is a continuation of the previous entry but I like the wonderful computer advice of “save often”.

Anyway today we had a half hour Viennese Waltz class. After a migraine I’m usually dazed and dizzy for a day. Spinning around for half an hour didn’t help. But we’re getting quite good now. If the judges see the first thirty seconds of us dancing we’ll be fine. After that we’re just too tired.

It is now 15 nights between now and the time and I see Julia again. Just over two weeks. Should be enough time for her present to arrive even if it is delayed… which I think it might be. Shame I completely failed to keep it secret from her.

I’ve also been thinking about the London Ball in relation to Julia. But I can’t articulate the thoughts so I’ll leave it there.

My hands are cold and it’s making typing hard.

I was walking with Sherwin and some Hong Kong Chinese girl from the beginner’s class today. I think her name was Theresa but I can’t be sure. Anyway I mentioned Julia to her (mainly because it was snowing really heavy. It wasn’t settling though (it has actually been snowing on and off for about four days now - no hint of it on the floor in London)) and she said she used to have a boyfriend in England but it didn’t work out. She then went on to add unexpected detail that caught me completely by surprise.

Which brings me neatly on to another point. I tend to judge people’s intelligence on their language ability. With a native language this works reasonably well. But there are so many people I know now who don’t have English as their first language it doesn’t work. But it doesn’t stop me being surprised when people are smarter than they sound.

This stupid spell checker keeps finding don’t and haven’t incorrect. I call it stupid because compared to the clever things that some people do with text and language processing, a spell checker is really simple. I bet it doesn’t even learn…

Well it’s been a long time since I posted anything. Partly because very few people read this and at least one complains :P Therefore I can’t guarantee that I will keep posting here regularly so you better like what you get.

Why exactly I’m posting now I’m not sure. Well that’s not true I have one reason but I’ll get to that later.

I had a migraine yesterday which was not good. It occurred right at the start of team practice which is even worse. To anyone who has never had a migraine (to anyone? Only one person is likely to read this but it’s therapeutic to assume lots read), please don’t assume it is “just a bad headache”. Search the internet for “migraine” and read about it.

Anyway the practical outcome of the migraine was that I had 18 hours sleep last night. I got in at 9pm, fell asleep. Woke up at midnight and got undressed then fell asleep again. I finally woke up at 3pm this afternoon. It’s amazing how bad having that much sleep can be.

For some reason I didn’t wake up today until 1pm. Which meant I missed my only lecture of the day but it’s not a big problem. I think I’ve finally caught up on all the sleep I’ve been missing.

Greg Egan is an amazing author. I’m currently reading “Diaspora” which basically seems to be a collection of ideas on philosophy, quantum mechanics, ethics, the nature of consciousness and cosmology all rolled up in a neat plot. At the moment he’s describing the experiences of these beings that suddenly have to cope with moving into a five dimensional universe and the emotional stress it causes…

Galaxia Plus is also coming along surprisingly well.

And I should also have my bag tonight! Which is lucky since I need my dance shoes before my class at 8:30…

Having something I can throw random thoughts at whenever I at a computer is probably a bad thing… especially considering how much I’m at my computer.

At the moment though I genuinely have some free time… I have to wait two minutes to see if the GP server will start itself automatically. Ooh look, the two minutes are up. And unfortunately it didn’t start… I’ll sort it eventually.

I just discovered I left my back at the IVDA techie meeting at Laurie’s. Not exactly a big problem if I get it back before my dance lesson on Tuesday (it has my dance shoes in it).

Speaking of IVDA some of the ideas they have are very ambitious and it will be an amazing day if it all works out.

It is now exactly two weeks until I go to Finland (well to the nearest few hours at least). Unfortunately I have too much going on in the mean time to think about it which is unfortunate. And the really weird thing is I have to keep reminding myself that sometime in between being busy and going to Finland, Christmas fits somehow…

Well since I already had the domain I decided I’d put it to use. Viewing my journal should redirect you to OliverBrown.me.uk which should display my journal properly. It’s probably buggy though so watch out…

I really think I should write something exciting for my inaugural entry. The fact that I did this at all is quite amazing. I’ve thought about it a few times but kept deciding I could write my own that was better; but never got round to it. Well I could always just embed it into a website of my own if I wanted to.

Odd coincidence. I spell checked my entry and it came up with “ve” (from “I’ve”) as an error. “Ve” is a gender-neutral personal pronoun used by Greg Egan; an author whose books I’m reading at the moment. Very good books by the way.