Salon.com Life | My rich, beautiful girlfriend makes me feel like a loser: “The way we feel has a lot to do with what kind of story we tell…”

“Yesterday the temperature dropped to -52.6C (that’s -62.7F). Even for Halley that’s officially ‘cold’ as it only drops below -50C a couple of times a year, if at all. The lowest recorded temperature here was -55C way back in 1974.

There are plenty of fun and games to be had in extreme temperatures like this. First we repeated an old trick that we tried last year. When you throw boiling water into the air at this temperature it evaporates before it hits the ground.”

[from simonc.f2o.org/]

Google is a tool to help us find things on the Web, right?

Fine. I use Google; quite a bit, in fact. I’ve gotten quite good at using binary algorithms to find obscure data on the Net in a flash. I love their image search, and the maps looks like it might one day be useful (if I ever go anywhere again).

But I’ll be damned if Google isn’t providing a serious impedance in my professional lives.

The easiest (NOTE: not “the only,” just “the easiest”) way to make a site that has one data source for the content and multiple data sources (to provide for multiple designs) is to use dynamic data. Store your content in a database, publish it on the fly. The data is stored completely unconnected to any design elements; that’s all left to the PHP script and the CSS.

(And for those who wonder: I’m aware that CSS is the design element of the chain, and that you can use multiple CSS pieces for a single document; however, let’s say that one design for desktops has extra menus, extra graphics, etc.; and that your alternate design for PDAs and Blackberry devices is stripped down for compliance purposes)

And it’s not that it’s impossible to build a data driven site — far from it. All you need is knowledge of whatever database app your server provides, whatever server-side script your server allows, and some algorithmic abilities.

Unless you want Google to spider your site.

I’ve spent the past week reading all sorts of Google related docs — theories of programmers on how their searches work, internal documents on the progression of the search rules, etc. — and I get it. And I love what they’ve done, because (from the end user standpoint) it does a great job of finding relevant documents, weeding out spam, and helping me find what I need to know.

But if your data is dynamically generated, you’re missing out on being included in quite a bit of their recipe, because bots and spiders don’t read databases.

And so this tool that is supposed to help other people has become this major hindrance to my future approach to website architecture.

And fuck all of you that say this is helping me think outside-of-the-box. I was doing that when I came up with a brilliant approach to modular site design, and now that’s fucked, thanks to our “need” to be tops on the Google pages.

What, suddenly we’re making ad revenue off of random searches or something?

Ignoring the content (British political jab, blahblah), check out the perspective. This is a painting done on a sidewalk — the hole is not real.

OR IS IT? Mwahahaha…

“Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. ‘Yes’ is the answer.”
–Swami X

What a perfectly wonderful evening. Filled with good conversation and laughter and new friends.

This is the kind of night that should happen more often. Relaxed, the barest amount of anxiety on my part (that’s my favorite part about the evening).

And as I’m driving home, it hits me that the moon is almost full, and nothing crazy happened today.

Yes. This long, hot summer may be bearable after all. At least it’s starting off well.

Things I despise today:

Overanalysis
Learning curves
Challenges with no discernible meaning or point other than wasting my time
Software upgrades
Silence

…yeah. I really hate silence. Although I think today it’s only because I badly need help waking up.

Allow myself to introduce… myself…

It’s amazing outside right now. I’m only upset that I don’t have a camera worth a damn; the lightning is a perfect combination of heat and summer thunderstorm. It’s the perfect storm, come to think of it — light rain, breeze, and these gorgeous silver forks racing from one horizon to the other.

I’m glad that I learned to recognize and store moments like this.

All this is doing today is keeping me awake. But it’s funny as fuck to watch my intern jump every time I click on the pig.

Every. Bloody. Time.

Heh.