Tag: Google

I’m Going to Say Something Nice About Microsoft

My friend Farrell grew up in New Orleans. His mom, a widow, still lives there. Over the past few years she has begun to enjoy using a computer, and to celebrate that, Farrell got her a very nice Compaq laptop.

Of course, as is the case with so many computer users, when things began to spiral out-of-control and she had nowhere to turn. Being in Connecticut, I couldn’t drive over to help.

I had spoken to her over the phone, but it was difficult. She didn’t know where everything was and had a lack of confidence in her own ability to follow my instructions. There had to be a better way.

This afternoon I called her on the phone. Using Microsoft’s Remote Assistance, which is built in to XP, I was able to control her computer from my computer. It was my keyboard which sent the commands to her machine and my mouse which moved the cursor.

The experience wasn’t without problems. We disconnected twice, taking her back to a login screen. But, by and large it worked just fine.

I was able to install the Google toolbar, remove some icons from her desktop, resize her screen to the proper 1024×768 (from the 800×600 it had been set at), add a quick launch toolbar and desktop links to some newspapers she reads.

There is no possible way this could have been done without Remote Assistance. Because of its direct connect nature, it would not have worked had she been behind a firewall or router, as I am. One router is fine. Two is one too many!

There is another benefit as well. As I moved and manipulated things, I could show her what she would have to do when I was gone. Very valuable.

Microsoft hit a home run with this feature, though it’s probably underused.

Silence of the Ram(s)

I love my little auxiliary computer. It’s the one that runs Mandrake Linux and sits next to my main (though less powerful) Windows XP machine.

It started life as a Pentium II 300, but thanks to a ridiculous mail order sale, it is now an Athlon XP 2400+. Of course changing the motherboard demanded a new power supply… and it really needed more memory… and there was this CDRW that was only $10 after rebate. You get the idea.

I’ve got Mandrake running nicely… well, nearly nicely. I might reinstall it, again. Anyway, I’ve got it running. And I do use the machine. But there is a continuing, nagging problem. When I turn it on, it’s like standing next to a 747 as the engines get run up!

I know what the problem is. Buying the motherboard, CPU and fan on a ‘deal’ meant the components were low end. For the internal CPU cooling fan, that meant very noisy.

I had heard about Zalman cooling solutions and how they were often nearly silent. I decided to try one. I think it’s interesting that Zalman sounds like an Eastern European name – since it’s a Korean company.

I read a lot and settled on the CNPS3100-Plus. It is a two stage cooler, with a pure copper heatsink shaped like a flower, and a fan. The fan, which isn’t mounted directly atop the heatsink as most are, comes with a “noiseless fan connector.” That’s a clever way of saying a cable with resistor to drop the fan’s voltage and speed.

I went to Google’s price comparison search engine and found the best deal. “Froogle” is a good idea, but is often confused when many items are listed together. It took me a while to find the right item and price. I ordered two. One for the auxiliary and one for the main computer.

For the past week, these two hermetically sealed “Quiet CPU Cooler” kits have sat in my office. Tonight, I finally installed the first.

I removed the original heatsink, a fan attached to a honeycomb of copper. Because it was held by tension, I used a screwdriver to stretch it a little more and pull it off the CPU socket’s pins. The kit came with a tube of thermal grease, which I spread over the area where the CPU and heatsink would touch. Then I replaced the original fan and heatsink with the copper flower. I hung the new fan from the screws that hold PCI cards on the motherboard.

When I fired the computer up the first time, it swung right into action. But, when I went to close the case and try again, the computer let out with a steady tone and shut itself down.

Modern motherboards monitor the fan that cools the CPU. Maybe this one was judging the slower fan as not sufficient? I readjusted the BIOS settings so it wouldn’t monitor the fan anymore. The computer booted right up.

Amazingly, most of the racket the PC had been producing was no longer there! There was still noise from the power supply fan and the new CPU fan – but it was worlds away from the racket I had heard before. I was able to heard the chatter of the disk drives as they accessed data. Earlier, that noise was masked.

Later tonight, or maybe tomorrow, I’ll install the second cooler on my main computer. So far, I’m very impressed by what I haven’t heard.

Reading Slashdot

I like to read Slashdot. It’s one of my top two websites.

For the uninitiated, slashdot.org (no www necessary – thanks) is where geeks go for geeky news. If someone has built a monorail in their backyard, perfected stovetop fusion, or said anything good about Linux (or bad about Microsoft), it can be found on Slashdot – “News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.”

There are no Slashdot reporters. This is a site that aggregates from other sites, much as Matt Drudge does. Everything that’s posted is submitted by one of the zillions of readers.

Because of the site’s dedicated readers, smaller sites that get mentioned get overloaded with the aptly named “Slashdot effect.” It is funny to see an interesting post and then note comments, only moments later, proclaiming the linked site as unreachable!

I like reading Slashdot, and I like submitting articles. It’s good to help steer the nerd news agenda.. It’s also a good way to get this website a little free publicity, as they list the URL or email address of those who submit stories.

I’m sure my Slashdot posts had something to do with my rise in the Google rankings. Slashdot is a 9 or 10 in Google’s page rankings. So being mentioned there is very important.

If you’re interested in what interests me, here’s my list of Slashdot submissions – some accepted, some rejected. You’ll notice there’s one pending, a story about burning audio CD’s at concerts.

2004-05-03 17:02:03 Take Home The Concert on CD (articles,media) (pending)

2004-04-28 18:00:25 Sweet News for Open Office Suite (articles,software) (rejected)

2004-04-28 07:34:19 Outsourcing Doesn’t Always Pay (articles,tech) (rejected)

2004-04-25 18:03:14 Linux/Unix computers hacking target (articles,linux) (rejected)

2004-04-06 00:44:51 My personal Linux frustration (askslashdot,linux)(rejected)

2004-03-01 05:06:14 Fighting Piracy is Bad for Business – Honest! (articles,media) (rejected)

2004-02-23 03:38:55 How Geeks REALLY Use High School Gyms! (articles,tech) (rejected)

2004-02-15 02:15:35 I’m Watching Those Who Watch Me (articles,internet) (rejected)

2004-02-08 22:39:48 Microsoft search (askslashdot,microsoft) (rejected)

2004-01-19 23:08:31 Commercials come to the net (after this word) (articles,media) (accepted)

2003-12-06 23:09:58 Perfect Weather on the Net (science,science) (accepted)

2003-11-23 20:27:55 Synthesized Singers (articles,music) (accepted)

2003-11-19 22:37:35 Bill Gates and the Nightclub Video (articles,windows) (rejected)

2003-11-03 01:58:19 Is this the future of TV? (developers,tv) (rejected)

2003-10-29 08:10:39 Fire photos – amateurs as the new chroniclers (articles,media) (rejected)

2003-10-24 07:17:56 Here Comes the Sun(spots) – they’re huge (radio,science) (rejected)

2003-10-24 04:37:54 AOL tweaking users computers… and not telling (articles,spam) (accepted)

2003-10-02 06:41:07 Experience one hour in only thirty minutes (articles,games) (accepted)

2003-09-25 03:12:13 Do geeks really need planes to fly? (articles,hardware) (rejected)

2003-08-20 18:38:39 If you know… how can you stop it? (askslashdot,tech) (rejected)

Blogger’s note: McD points out, all my accepted Slashdot submissions can actually be seen in context by clicking here.

You Go Google

It is tough to turn on a financial show, or look at the Business Section of the Times, without reading more and more about Google. They have announced their IPO, and the two geeky boys who came up with the idea will be wealthy beyond anyone’s imagination.

If PR were the arbiter of how company’s do financially (and often, it is not), Google would be high atop the pack. Microsoft would be down at the bottom.

Google built its reputation by doing what it does – searching – better and faster than anyone else. There were plenty of search engines before Google, but none as good. And they did it without cluttering up the landscape with intrusive commercial content.

Stop and think for a moment of what Google has to do to perform searches for you. It seems as if they have the entire Internet cached on their servers – every single byte! Recent educated rumors say they have somewhere near 100,000 servers scattered around the globe.

Did I mention, it’s free!

After years of court battles, commissions and hearings, Microsoft is often referred to (at least on hobbyist bulletin boards) as the “Evil Empire.” Until recently, I had never seen anyone ever say a bad word about Google. There are concerns about Google’s new Gmail and its privacy implications – but even then, Google is criticized for underestimating the worry, as opposed to being a bad company.

Maybe I’m oversimplifying, but it seems the traits one normally needs to make a lot of money are hardly ever benevolent. So, Google comes across as a breath of fresh air because their whole reason for being seems to be based upon benevolence. And, the numbers seem to say, benevolence can work.

Wouldn’t you want your boss to speak like this as a letter to potential Google shareholders from company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin did? The letter is located in Google’s registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

Our employees, who have named themselves Googlers, are everything. Google is organized around the ability to attract and leverage the talent of exceptional technologists and business people. We have been lucky to recruit many creative, principled and hard working stars. We hope to recruit many more in the future. We will reward and treat them well.

We provide many unusual benefits for our employees, including meals free of charge, doctors and washing machines. We are careful to consider the long term advantages to the company of these benefits. Expect us to add benefits rather than pare them down over time. We believe it is easy to be penny wise and pound foolish with respect to benefits that can save employees considerable time and improve their health and productivity.

The significant employee ownership of Google has made us what we are today. Because of our employee talent, Google is doing exciting work in nearly every area of computer science. We are in a very competitive industry where the quality of our product is paramount. Talented people are attracted to Google because we empower them to change the world; Google has large computational resources and distribution that enables individuals to make a difference. Our main benefit is a workplace with important projects, where employees can contribute and grow. We are focused on providing an environment where talented, hard working people are rewarded for their contributions to Google and for making the world a better place.

Here’s a success story where the main characters get rich because of what they did and did well – not because they screwed the other guy or played hardball in business or did anything underhanded.

Wake me. I must be dreaming.

Another Pox On My Web-house

I look upon the Internet as Manhattan circa 1974. There are museums and cultural attractions. There are hookers, scams and slime. Everyone lives together, though grudgingly at times.

As with the Manhattan of 30 years ago, the underbelly businesses on the net are constantly trying to gain an advantage – often at the expense of the legitimate residents. One of the ways we all see this is in spam. As the proprietor of a website I have additional tsuris. Today, a new one.

I think I have complained before of what’s called ‘comment spam.’ Scummy websites, which could never achieve legitimate ‘weight’ on Google, plant comments on blogs like mine. The comment itself might be as innocuous as: “Ain;t it the truth” or “I couldn’t agree more.” The comment isn’t as important as the fact that it’s accompanied by their web address. That address, appearing on loads of blogs, will increase their Google rank – a very valuable commodity.

I scan all the comments I get, and these spurious ones are gone in a hurry. I hope all bloggers are as diligent – though I’d guess they aren’t. A few days ago I woke up to find a few dozen of these, all from an IP address in Russia.

Now another parasite rears it’s ugly head. Today I started getting bounced spam email – email sent to addresses that don’t exist or won’t accept the mail for other reasons. Why am I getting these bounces? Because the spammer put a return address (nothing more than a random jumble of letters) that ends “@geofffox.com.”

Already, because of this spam, at least one website has informaed me that mail from this site will be refused! It’s a site I don’t care about, but they surely aren’t alone.

What did I do to get this honor? Nothing. I’m sure I was just picked at random as the spammers tried to hide behind any scent of legitimacy they could find.

I continue to say, unless email is fixed so it can be trusted, the Internet will surely die or lose its incredible promise.

More Penguin Grief

I have now reloaded Mandrake Community Linux onto the second PC. It has been named – all computers have a name – Bullwinkle. This one I’m typing on will become Rocky. Later there will be a Boris, Natasha, Peabody… you get the idea.

The installation went easily (after all these installs, I should know how it’s done). Unfortunately, after the CD’s were on the computer a new ‘evil’ reared its ugly head.

The Mandrake people had decided to change the directory structure of their mirrors (mirrors are other computers that carry files in exactly the same way as the mater server). This killed all the hard coded directions to specific files!

I had been working for a few days trying to install video drivers. Now, files that were crucial to the process were unavailable. I kept going back to Google and the Mandrake site and then finally, I found a glint of hope. It wasn’t the exact answer, but enough of a hint that I was able to find the files and move them into my machine.

Are they correct? I’m not sure. The method I used was ad libbed and a little unorthodox.

Meanwhile, an hour and 15 minutes ago I started the process of preparing the new video driver. For that entire time I have been watching text and random characters fly across the screen on Bullwinkle. There’s an admonition from the developer that this step would take a long time. That was an understatement.

Hopefully over the next few days I’ll get this puppy humming. Hopefully.

More And More Linux Frustration

This is a rant born of frustration. I guess I’m looking for some sort of community consensus – not how I should solve my problem, but how the Open Source community should attack a real problem of usability.

In my heart of hearts, I so want to love Linux. But now, after months of trying, I’m wondering if I’m not ready for Linux, and more importantly, if Linux isn’t ready for me.

Some quick background. I took my last computer course in 1968 (that’s no typo). To my friends, I am tech support. My wife has watched me guide others through menu after menu, all while in bed, with my eyes closed. The computer I’m typing on was assembled by me from parts I specified. The one next to it has just received a motherboard/cpu transplant on my kitchen table.

I am not a technophobe. Still, Linux frustrates me in nearly every possible way.

Over the last week, since rebuilding my auxiliary computer, I have loaded and reloaded and reloaded again. My estimate is a dozen loads of 5 or 6 different flavors of Linux. Each of them similar. Each of them different.

I’m starting to get worried Comcast will flag me for overly taxing their system with all the iso’s I’ve scarfed up.

On some distributions my audio card is recognized. On others it’s not, or is only after some minor tweaking. On one (and I wish I could remember which one) my TV card plays. On others, it’s cryptic error messages – messages which make Microsoft’s error messages seem kind and gentle. On one distribution, the box for the TV is blank, but the rest of the screen is full of noise, which seems to be the disjointed TV video.

The only way to get the printer to work (it’s attached to an onboard print server on my router) is by first making believe it’s attached directly to this computer and then editing the file. Clever.

None of the Linux variants I’ve used knew what to do with the video system on my motherboard – though it’s far from esoteric. I am stuck with a generic VESA driver, which means my system is running slower than it should.

I have tried to fix all of these problems, but let me use the video problem as my example. Doing a Google search for the video chip (KM400 from Via) and Linux leads to some interesting suggestions. There are some that seem to be translated to English from Chinese, but not well enough that anyone speaking English could follow. Others originate in German, then English, and again something is lost in translation. Steps are missing or just hinted at. No two suggested remedies are exactly the same.

As I look through the Usenet responses, it’s tough not to pick up smart ass disdain from many of the cognoscenti! And, I expect to get some of that here.

One of the things that’s touted as a strength of Linux, and weakness of Windows, seems to be the opposite. Windows lives in a standard world. My Linux box does not. Will the Debian driver work in my Mandrake distribtution? Maybe, though probably not.

Does my 2.6 Kernel need different care and feeding than a 2.4? Seems like it. But, I don’t really know what a kernel is, much less why 2.4 and 2.6 eat different food.

My motherboard came with all the Windows drivers I’d need – none for Linux.

Will I have to compile a package? Can I? How do I do it?

I want this to work, yet I feel Linux is fighting me. The Linux community seems anxious for this to work… and at the same time it’s scared that their baby will go mainstream… afraid that someone will do to Linux what they perceive AOL did to the Internet!

I’m not going to give up. But, I am getting very frustrated – very. I can’t believe I am alone.

The Penguin And Me

I am in love with the concept of Linux. It’s possible, at the very same time, I’m not in love with Linux itself. I have spent the last 2 days loading at least 10 different configurations of Linux onto the new ‘old computer.’

First, an explanation. Every time I mention Linux I see eyes glaze over. What is it? Why is it there?

Linux is an operating system. It is based on Unix, a wonderful operating system which (I think) was devised at Bell Labs a long, long time ago.

An operating system is what stands between you and your computer. It knows how to wake the computer when you apply power and it provides a handy set of commands and protocols to speak to the computer.

Like French, Spanish and English – each operating system can tell your computer meaningful things, but using different words. And, each operating system understands different words.

Programs meant to run on Windows do not run on Linux (this is a simplification, but the exceptions are really out of the norm right now). Obviously, the opposite is true as well.

So, why run Linux, when everyone else is running Windows?

Not only is Linux free, that is immediately evident. But Linux represents a different way of doing business. In its simplest form, anyone who uses the basic building blocks and adds to them for their own purposes, contributes those additions to all other users. Even without charging for the software, there’s a reasonable business in charging for technical expertise.

Most web servers are run on Linux. Many scientific applications run on Linux too. Google is either running on Linux or something closely related (I can’t remember at the moment).

My hope is to run Linux alongside my Windows machine and use it for utility purposes, including developing new pages for my website, and weather analysis using GrADS.

The problem is, in a somewhat anarchistic community, the various Linux flavors aren’t always compatible with one and another. Not only that, Linux is nowhere near as good as Windows in recognizing the hardware within your computer. So, it is hit and miss as to whether any particular Linux distribution will be able to do anything that another distribution can.

I started with Fedora Core 2. It is the latest rendition of what is the desktop successor to Red Hat Linux. Then Mandrake 10 Community. Later Fedora Core 1. Each time I configured my machine a slightly different way, loading some programs and excluding others.

None of the Linux variants could see and understand the video controller for my computer. I am running video, but not at the speeds I should be getting. Some of them saw my audio card – well, all of them saw it. They just didn’t see it in a way that would make it work. In some flavors of Linux I was easily able to switch to a working audio solution; though I know about the solution only through a lucky find while looking for something else.

All of things things would be fairly painless in Windows.

As I type this, I am loading Red Hat 9. It is an older distribution, one that Red Hat itself doesn’t support any more. There seems to be a lot of software that I want to run which is already packaged for this particular variant. I’m in the final stages, which means over 300 MB of fixes and updates, all of which were downloaded through my cable modem.

Sometime later tonight I will be finished. Hopefully, RH9 will be the answer to my prayers. Otherwise, it’s back to the drawing board and more installs.

One more thing. Here in the Fox household, Linux is referred to as “The Penguin.” That nickname is based on Tux, the Linux mascot, who is a penguin, of course.

100,000 Pages Served

Sometime on Monday the little counter on the bottom right of this website will spin past 99,999 and move into six digits. It’s my website, and I am impressed. I never thought there would be anywhere near this much traffic.

However, let’s keep this in perspective. Compared to a large commercial site like Google or Yahoo I’m not even a rounding error. This site has so little traffic that it easily shares a computer with dozens of other small sites (and my server is in Chicago).

For a one man operation with no promotion, and no draw other than a look at what I’m thinking on any given day (not much it often seems) 100k since July is livin’ large.

To define terms, each time a full page of this website is viewed the counter goes up one. This page counts as one. If you go back and look at a single archived entry, that’s another one. Looking at a full screen of thumbnails in my gallery is one more. And, if you click on any of them to get that single image in a larger view that is yet one more.

There are other counters at work on the site. Most of them operate behind the scenes on the management pages.

This is the 400th entry in my blog which started on July 4, 2003 (you can see the titles of each with links by clicking here). The combined text and images here take up 285 MB. This website has spit out a little less than 15 GB of data, enough to fill 20 or so CDROMs. There have been 56,000 separate visits to the site. If you count each individual file that’s called on, each image, style sheet, table and text files, you will be just short of 1.5 million hits!

This site is fully indexed on all the search engines, but gets the most traffic, by far, from Google. The largest number of referrals come from people entering the name, “Scotty Crowe,” John Mayer’s road manager who I had written about… and who doesn’t appear on other sites often enough to move me from a prominent showing on Google and Yahoo. In 2003, Scotty was only number 2, just behind “giblet gravy,” a term I had used in a context that probably wasn’t be searched for.

There are other Geoff Fox’s listed on the Internet – many others. But, I am the number one result when you Google my name. I’m also high on the list for ‘dissed’ and, of course, Scotty Crowe.

Each day, between 350-450 of you visit, looking at about 2 pages per visit on average.

There is a certain amount of exaggeration when you see all these numbers. Some do nothing more than reflect the Internet equivalent of a wrong number, as people come here by mistake. Others are reflecting robots and spiders and crawlers from search engines like Google, Yahoo and now Microsoft. Still more, less than 10% but significant, are from me… looking for errors and proofreading my work (I spend a lot of time spellchecking and proofreading my work and mistakes still get through all the time).

Actually, I often stay away from the public pages, lest I run up the counter.

If I told you how much this endeavor has cost, you’d probably be surprised. The main software is Movabletype, which is free. Same goes for Gallery, my photo gallery software and GrADS which produces the meteograms. All the software on this site is freeware.

Renting my little corner of cyberspace is also pretty cheap. I paid $100 for one year of webhosting, which provides the destination when you type https://www.geofffox.com. For that $100 I get 350 MB of space, more bandwidth than I can use, and the ability to control my mailboxes and truly be the master of my own domain! Owning geofffox.com is another $20 (I also own tv-cd.com).

Please accept my thanks for coming here and helping me stay motivated. I have become somewhat anal – posting virtually every day. I am surprised, gratified and a little scared when I think you’ve spent a time reading what I have to say.

Tech Support

Wednesday night was tech support night. Between shows I drove to my friend Steve’s home, no more than 10 minutes from the station. He’s a great guy, and his wife is nicer.

He’s my physician, so I fix his computer and he fixes me. It seems like a decent arrangement, though there’s probably more downside risk to me should a problem go unfixed.

He had muddled along in computing for years. With the birth of his first grandchild, his computing needs increased. There were photos to tweak and upload – which led to a scanner and DSL connection (I’m much more a fan of cable modems than DSL, but that’s another story for another day).

What had been a reasonable, older Gateway system has become a problem. The photo work pushes it to its limits – slowing him down. The screen is a 15″ CRT, running at 800×600 resolution. After all the menus and taskbars are drawn on the screen, it’s got the spaciousness of a New York City efficiency.

For most applications, any old PC will do. I hear stories all the time about people buying new computers, sending old ones to the trash heap. It drives me nuts!

I’ve gotten call telling me how a computer is running slower, as if computers atrophied. “Malware” can make a computer slow down, but it’s curable.

The dirty secret of the computing world is, most CPU speed is wasted. For Internet browsing, word processing and email, the vast majority of computers up to four or five years old are fine. All they usually need are a little more memory and hard drive space – both of which are easily added. Why spend big bucks if you don’t have to?

Steve’s computing problem relates to an incompatibility between a driver for his video card and the new scanner. Every time you set the scanner in motion, you get an error message referring to NV4DISP.DRV. Then the program just shuts down, as if nothing had happened.

There is nothing as cryptic as a Windows 98 error message. It offers little information and no hope.

My first line of defense is to go to Usenet via Google. Usenet is where nerds go to find other nerds. NV4DISP.DRV has been cited often on Usenet. Still, my first looks didn’t bring me a solution – and I still don’t have one.

It is possible that this old computer, with the video subsystem an integral part of the motherboard, has a fatal dislike for the scanner and they will never play well together. I don’t have my hopes raised. I will keep trying.

I’m Watching You Watching

On this blog, some entries are better written than others. Some entries are meaningless to anyone but my immediate family and friends. Sometimes what I write is insightful and full of a worldly understanding (Hey, no one else is going to say this about me. I might as well).

Like a good geek, I go through my logs from time-to-time (All right, I’m obsessed – so shoot me). It’s interesting to see whose coming here and what they’re reading. You couldn’t do this with a Google sized site, but most of the time I can track a reader as he decides where to go next. And, I’ll admit to doing a few “whois” searches to see who owns the IP address doing the browsing.

Looking at my log, I know that at one time my largest source of hits from search engines came about because I had misspelled he name of the comedian “Carrot Top!”

I’ve just started seeing a significant flow of traffic over the last few weeks to two IP addresses at Microsoft (65.54.188.40 and 65.54.188.42). Though AWStats doesn’t see them as a search engine spider, I believe that’s what they are. This month I’ve had over 20 MB in bandwidth and 1,600 hits go to those two addresses (and mine is a little, personal site with only around 220 MB of content – much of that in photos). This is probably the beginning of Microsoft’s push to unseat Google as the search king.

Just as interesting to me, and noted by some other users of Movabletype, my blogging software, are hits in the referral log from sites that aren’t referring readers to me! Though&#185 http://paris-hilt0n-video.blogspot.com, http://www.hummer.c0m, http://blog.j0hnkerry.com, http://outd0orsbest.zeroforum.com/zerouser are listed as having sent browsers this way, searching those sites shows no reference to me at all.

This ploy, and ‘comment spam,’ are new and insidious methods for trying to game the system by having your link land on lots of blogs, using their ‘good name’ with the search engines to elevate yours. I can’t believe I’m the only one looking. What else do people see?

&#185 – To prevent these folks from profiting again, I’ve replaced one letter in each URL with the number “0”.

Searching’s Not Easy

Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about search engines – sites like Google and Yahoo and Alta Vista. Yahoo, which used Google’s search engine, has now switched to another supplier. Microsoft says they’re going to go into competition with Google. This is not as easy as it seems.

First, an admission. I like Google. While the other search engines were becoming more portal-like, and more commercial, Google was keeping true to its purpose. Searches on Google seemed, to me at least, to hit the mark more often.

As tough as it is to believe, Google is the little guy! Yes, they will soon be going public for billions of dollars (no joke) they are pipsqueaks compared to Microsoft. Heck, their first day valuation will probably even fall short of Bill Gates alone.

Here’s the part I don’t understand. If these others are going to try and unseat Google, don’t they have to search just as thoroughly?

My website’s software provides an easy view of the spiders that crawl through. The chart below this text shows January 2004’s activity from the search engines. There is Google and there is everyone else. No one else even comes close.

And, imagine how large their database must be when they’re looking at 85+ mb of my stuff!

Dissed By Google

This website’s importance on Google, which had risen to 7 (on a 1 – 10 scale), is now back down to a 5. That 7 was probably more than I deserved – but I’m still disappointed.

Nothing is different. Nothing has changed. If anything, there’s more content and a higher count of page reads.

Will I become a Google importance obsessive? Let me think about it (every waking hour) and get back to you.

The King of the Fat Lip

About a year and a half ago, one night for no apparent reason, my upper lip swelled to the size of my thumb. I think I was riding in the car when I felt the first tingling. By the time I got home for dinner, I looked downright scary.

I wasn’t in pain, but I certainly couldn’t go on the air. People would be calling the TV station wondering what had happened to me. Children would lose sleep or get nightmares. It was that bad – this is no exaggeration.

I spoke to my doctor, Steve.

Let’s stop here for a second. It drives Helaine a little nuts when I refer to a doctor by his/her first name. Doctors should be doctors – not Steve’s. I understand the logic. But, I’ve known him for nearly 20 years. He’s a great guy and recognized as a great doctor. He’s Steve.

The lip subsided. Still, Steve ran me through every test known to man. Nothing.

Meanwhile, since the major swell-up, I found myself getting itchy on my palms and the soles of my feet. My fingers would swell. Sometimes my toes would itch. Of more concern, there was, what I surmised, was constriction in my wind pipe. Would this condition block my flow of oxygen?

I tried going to Google to see if there was medical knowledge that would help me. Without going into too much detail, you’re not going to get a lot of medical help by searching for “swollen lips and fingers.”

Helaine and I went on vacation to Las Vegas. While taking golf lessons I started inflating and deflating – fingers and lips swelling and subsiding. It was scaring the living daylights out of me.

There was no apparent reason for this internal body change after 50+ years. I was eating different foods in a different climate, drinking and bathing in different water. My total environment had changed but not my symptoms.

Steve spoke with a colleague, the head of the Allergy Department (it has a much more complex name, but you get the idea) at our local, major teaching hospital. If this was an allergic reaction, there would be no one more qualified to find it. I went to visit him.

I remember our first meeting. It might have been in his first paragraph to me when he said he probably wouldn’t be able to tell me what was causing my troubles… but he’d be able to control it. And, he did.

Religiously, I have been taking antihistamines every day. Amazingly (except one day, months ago, when I missed my pill), I have been symptom free.

I know I will be on this, or a similar medication, for the rest of my life. And, I will also be going to visit this doctor… forever. Truth is, I need the prescription and he’s entitled to get paid for keeping me swell free. So, we go through this medical charade where I go to his clinic at the hospital, tell him I’m symptom free, and get a prescription. He’s a smart guy… fun to chat with, though I assume there are others, sicker than me, waiting for his expertise.

Today was my day to visit. I’ll be back in June.

Who Came Here in 2003

I don’t have an incredibly long history as a webmaster. So, for me, it’s often confusing and at the same time interesting to peek at the inner workings of this site. I have owned the domain name geofffox.com for a few years, but it’s only been since late July that I’ve mounted this blog and photo gallery.

My webserver is actually located in Chicago, and run by hostforweb.com. It is shared with other small websites. I have access to most of the server’s guts through shell programs.

In order for you to see what you’re reading now, I have to upload all the files and images and programs from home. There are a number of programs, like the one that produces the weather forecast meteograms that run on clocks and execute a few times a day. I had to write the scripts to do that too.

Running this website has forced me to learn a little about a bunch of computer disciplines, like php, Perl, bash shell scripts, html and a veritable alphabet soup of minutiae. It’s been challenging and like Blanche Du Bois, I am often dependent on the kindness of strangers. The more I learn about computers, the less I realize I know.

With the year over in less than four hours, I though I’d summarize a little of what’s gone through this site in 2003. Since it was only born in July, the stats are (hopefully) less than what I’ll get to publish in 2004.

7.76 GB That’s the total amount of data I’ve spit out. It melts down to 10 CDROM’s worth… or a few DVD’s. The majority of my hits go to the United States, but most of Europe and the Pacific Rim are represented as well.

271.69 MB That’s what Google slurped up. Loads of spiders and crawlers moved through the site, picking up the data that goes into search engines. Google took down nearly 5 times as much data as the next biggest search engine and was responsible for 6711 page views by users. I have chronicled elsewhere my rise in the Google rankings – a feat which both intrigues and fascinates me.

Giblet gravy That’s the most used search engine phrase that sent people to the site. They must have been disappointed because I used the phrase to illustrate a point that had nothing to do with cooking. The next most requested phrase was Scotty Crowe, John Mayer’s road manager.

Thanks to everyone who’s written to ask me for John’s email address. Even if I had it, I couldn’t give it out. You will be glad to know your admiration is not misplaced. There’s a whole lot to admire about John. I don’t think he’ll be spoiled by success.

I’m not sure how or why, but people searching for dangerous Internet cafes in las vegas nv and she had to remove her shoes airport ended up being sent to geofffox.com.

My cousin Michael and his wife Melissa in Sunny Southern California became blog readers. More than anyone, Michael made me realize I could use an editor from time-to-time. I try to spell and grammar check, but you need a dispassionate eye too.

My dad reads the blog every day. That pleases me more than he’ll ever know.

From time to time I’ve looked at my logs, seeing where readers are coming from. There’s someone at NBC in NY who reads pretty regularly, same at the vendor of our station’s weather equipment and Mississippi State University, where I’m taking courses. Most readers are connecting through residential addresses, but I’m amazed by all the different companies and universities that are listed.

Once, I made reference to probes of my home computer by a virus ensconced in a PC at a San Fransisco Honda dealer. I made an analogy that used the word ‘doorknob’. A few days later a computer at a doorknob manufacturer downloaded a significant portion of this site. They’ll be as surprised as the giblet gravy crowd.

In 2003 approximately 17,000 separate viewers came calling to this site. Collectively you visited 30,000 times, downloading 872,000 files. My page counter now sits just north of 60,000.

Every word I write is read, re-read, edited, punched up and perused again before it goes online. One of the more pleasant surprises of blogging is how challenging and how much fun it is to write. I never felt that way about writing before.

Often it is a cathartic experience, allowing me to get something off my chest. Other times it’s fun to let you in on something I observed and want to share.

My family puts up with this to a point. I reveal a lot in this blog, but not everything. A friend wrote to tell me he was surprised to see this ‘warts and all’ self assessment. If there are warts here, they are a small portion of my own personal wart colony. Like most people, I keep a few skeletons in my closet.

Thanks for reading. It really means a lot to me. Really.