Going to Google

How do you get to Google? Do you type something in the address bar at the top of your browser and it takes you to your search automatically or do you type "Google" in the address bar and it takes you to the Google front page, where you then do your search?

I ask because sometime during Access my Psychology teacher mentioned that her husband is prone to doing the latter. I only thought about it recently because I, too, put "Google" in my browser's address bar rather than put an actual search topic in.

What do you do?

1701

According to my "Published" panel, upon saving this will be my 1701st blog post. The number 1701 carries a certain significance in society thanks to a long-running television/movie franchise. Unsure what I'm talking about? Much as I hate telling people to "Google it" when I can easily tell them myself, in case, I recommend Googling the number.

My Android versions

Seeing that I have written about Android on four occasions so far (here, here, here and here), I thought it was time to write about which versions of the mobile software I've used since owning smartphones.

My first smartphone, the one I purchased in late 2012, runs on 2.3.6 Gingerbread. The second, which is the one my Hong Kong uncle gave me, uses 4.1.2 Jelly Bean while my current phone features 5.0.1 Lollipop. I have never owned a pre-Gingerbread or Honeycomb (3.0–3.2.6) phone and while I haven't used 4.0–4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich or 4.4–4.4.4 KitKat, my gift phone and current phone were on those versions, respectively.

The next version is currently using the working name of "Android M"; the proper dessert name will most likely be revealed when Google releases it later this year. My phone model was released last year and it is possible that it will receive an update to Android M.

The unexplored region

My brother and I ventured to the northern part of our town this morning. The northern side is the area of the town that I am the least familiar with, primarily because it's more awkward to access than the other areas, and also because it isn't up-to-date on Google Maps. The latter is a fairly minor reason not to go someplace local, as people used to explore without consulting a map, but I like to see an aerial perspective of where I've travelled.

I thought I'd take a picture of some British houses; I have an abundance of nature images on my blog, and while nature is wonderful, sometimes buildings make a pleasant change.

When we walked through the woodlands of the northern region, it brought back memories of Southern Oregon; the terrain was reminiscent of the mountain ridge on our property back there.

This is a small "valley". We passed through here a short time before we were walking on concrete again; once my brother and I were back on the hard paths, we took separate ways back home.

Potential Android names

Following up on my my post about the creativity of Android version names, I decided to come up with a list of potential names for future versions, continuing the dessert-theme. Bolded names are existing versions, the italicised name is the expected successor to the current version of Android (Jelly Bean) and the remaining names are what I came up with for this post:

C: Cupcake

D: Donut

E: Eclair

F: Froyo

G: Gingerbread

H: Honeycomb

I: Ice Cream Sandwich

J: Jelly Bean

K: Key Lime Pie

L: Lemon Meringue

M: Marzipan / Mud Pie

N: Nougat

O: Oatmeal Cookie

P. Peach Cobbler / Peppermint / Petit Four / Profiterole

Q: Quince Tart

R: Rice Pudding

S: Strawberry Trifle

T: Toffee

U: Upside-down Cake

V: Vanilla Sundae

W: Walnut Brownie

X: ?

Y: Yam Flan

Z: Zucchini Bread (I've only known this food as a dessert.)

My brother thought of O, I had to cheat for U through to Y, and I couldn't come up with anything for X! I don't know if there are any desserts that begin with the letter X. P was remarkably easy, to the point where I chose four desserts with the best-sounding names.

Another one of my jokes (16)

This is a joke that I thought of last night, just before I went to bed. When I used it this morning it was greeted by groans, as it has an incredibly obvious punchline:

"What is Chicken Little's favourite James Bond film? Skyfall."

I won't be surprised if someone has already come up with this joke. A Google search for "Chicken Little Skyfall" does find websites where "Chicken Little" and "Skyfall" are linked, such as the title of this one, but so far I haven't observed any other Chicken Little/Skyfall jokes other than mine.

"Everything at Once" - Lenka

A piece of music for today's post; it's "Everything at Once" by Lenka, an Australian singer. I saw her a few times in a commercial when I was in Suffolk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfy5CBfjZ8s

I had not heard of Lenka prior to seeing the advert, and I had to Google the song's lyrics to find out. I like both the sound of "Everything at Once" and Lenka's pronunciation of certain words in the track. Both her albums are available on Amazon UK.

The irony here is that the advert wasn't for her: it was for Windows 8!

New York City, the place without a Walmart

I've listened to the song "I Ain't in Checotah Anymore" by Carrie Underwood a few times over the past few years. There is a very interesting line in the song:

"You can get anything you want here,
Except a Wal-Mart store"

I took this particular lyric to be an exaggeration, like the hotel having more people than her hometown or what she paid for a meal being the equivalent to a down payment on a house in Oklahoma, although in fairness, I was unsure of the point of the line. I found out recently, however, that the lyric can be taken literally as New York City does not have a single Walmart store (this link is from 2011, but a Google search will confirm that the city does not have one).

Walmart wants to build in New York City, but so far they have been unsuccessful and in the short-term this is unlikely to change. It is surprising that there aren't any Walmart stores in New York City, given that the place is the United States' largest city and home to over 8,000,000 people. It's a fascinating fact, nevertheless!

Two definitions of "pet peeve"

A "pet peeve" is something that we personally find extremely annoying but other people often aren't bothered (as much) by. Normally a pet peeve involves something small such as fingernail biting, ear scratching, or lolspeak. As far as I've always known somebody can have multiple pet peeves, as "pet" in this instance means to me as "unique to a person"; for example, a pet peeve of mine is when someone is eating down my ear, and another pet peeve is when someone types "a men/women" when the grammar should be "a man/woman".

When reading a forum today I saw a person discuss one of their "biggest pet peeves", and they were corrected by other forum members saying that a "pet peeve" is a person's biggest peeve: to them it was redundant to say "biggest pet peeve". This contradicted my long-held understanding of "pet peeve", as I defined above; when I Googled the term the general consensus among the websites I viewed supported my interpretation, although a couple of other sites supported the other view.

Do you have pet peeves and a biggest pet peeve, or just peeves and a pet peeve? I can certainly understand the other interpretation and where the redundancy comes from, but I'm curious to hear more opinions given that I had never heard of or thought about it until today.

Ryan Cabrera

When listening to a shuffled list of music earlier I heard "Shine On", a single by Ryan Cabrera from his album You Stand Watching. During the track I thought about how long it had been since a Cabrera song had been a major hit on the radio; "Shine On" was moderately successful in the second half of 2005 into 2006, but "On the Way Down" and "True" in 2004 and late 2004/early 2005 respectively - both from Take It All Away - were far bigger songs of his.

It's a shame that Cabrera has mainly been off the radar since "Shine On"; his music since that single has so far not reached the level of success his 2004 music attained, and a look for him in Google's news search comes up with articles about people named Cabrera, but they are almost exclusively about other people with his last name. Cabrera seems to be active, as a view of his website reveals that he has plenty of tour dates scheduled for the next couple of months.

Hopefully he'll return to prominence one day; for now, here's "Shine On":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw61uNS7Y7Q

Android version names

I've recently been researching Android, as it's something I've heard about for a long time but wasn't exactly sure what it was; I now know it's a phone operating system developed by Google. The most fascinating aspect of the software was the name of each major version release, as each one is named after a dessert:

Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, Froyo, Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, and Jelly Bean are the current names of each version of Android. I think they're very imaginative...and tasty! During our last year in the United States I heard radio adverts for phones highlighting "Android Cupcake" and "Android Donut", but not having my own phone I never thought to look the terms up (my current phone is a feature phone, and uses a basic touchscreen proprietary software developed by Samsung).

I'm now looking forward to one day hearing names such as "Android Marzipan" or "Android Strawberry Trifle", and I'm certainly interested in what dessert will be used for "Z".

Bread crusts

In a radio advert I heard recently, its primary voice actor said something about "not throwing their bread crusts away". While it was obviously said humorously within the context of the advert (I don't remember what the advert was about, but that is immaterial to the purposes of this post), it did get me thinking: why do people often throw the crusts of bread away?

The crust is not any less edible, less tasty, or even less healthy (as far as I'm aware) than the rest of the loaf, yet a significant amount of people seem to not bother eating it. I performed a Google search and it brought up some discussions on the subject of throwing away bread crusts, and among the reasons for not eating the crusts were that they're dry, likely to fall apart, pure dislike of the end pieces, and even because the crusts "are not a symbol of wealth".

None of the above rationales are convincing to me. Too dry? They can be toasted. Fall apart? Doesn't make them inedible. Merely dislike them because they're the ends? Same. Not a symbol of wealth? Neither is soup but plenty of people eat that. When there are millions of people starving in the world I think these are fairly poor reasons to not eat something as simple as bread crusts. Even feeding the crusts to birds or ducks is a better choice than throwing them away, in my opinion.

As for me, I eat the crusts as they are still a part of the bread even if they are the end pieces. There are plenty of options for them: for some examples they are nice with jam spread on top, used for cheese on toast, peanut butter is a good choice; and yes, I will also eat them without any sort of topping. Crusts are good: utilise them! Be creative!

How about you? Do you eat bread crusts?

On increasing blog views

A few days ago, my friend Jenny wrote a post on her blog in regards to increasing blog views. She had some advice on what to do, further advice on what not to do, and some humour mixed in there too. In her comments section I posted some blog view ideas that have been working for me, and I will be again writing about those ideas for this post although they will be in greater detail than what I put in the comment (they will also be adjusted to apply to everyone). I shall also be writing about some more ideas that I have thought about since then:

1. An active blog
Anyone who is serious about having a blog with a significant base will have to make sure they post regularly. The definition obviously varies, but I would consider an "active" blog to be one that is has at least a post per week. The basic point of a blog is to write content for people to read, and if you do not write anything on a regular basis, you will not receive many views.

2. Suggesting posts to people who may be interested in a topic
Mindlessly spamming your blog will only cause it to blocked, blacklisted, or have something else done to it that will cause its reputation to be ruined. However, sending a particular post to somebody who might be interested in its topic is acceptable: for example, if you found an online recipe, used the recipe, then wrote a lengthy piece about it, it would be a good thing to send the post to the writer of the recipe (this does assume the post is helpful, whether it is a glowing review or something constructive that suggests how the recipe could be improved: do not send them a post that outright insults them). Doing so offers the other person feedback, and gives your own work some views (who knows? Maybe they will suggest your piece to others, or even decide to follow your blog themselves).

3. Using Twitter
If you have a Twitter account and several followers, it would be very worthwhile to link to your posts in your tweets. If you do not have a Twitter account, and therefore no followers, it will still be worth creating an account there: it is likely you will know people with Twitter accounts, so you will be able to follow each other. In addition, careful use of the hashtags (the "#" on the keyboard, followed by another word, such as "#cooking" or "#homecooking") can attract people to your tweets, and therefore your posts. If you have written about painting, placing "#painting" in your tweet will help you find some views.

If you use other social media, such as Facebook or Google+, I also recommend linking to your posts on those sites as well. Be warned, however, that it would be best not to use those accounts solely for the purpose to linking to your blog: no one wants to follow a spammer.

4. Telling friends
Simple word-of-mouth by telling your friends about your blog will get you views. In addition to having friends who "officially" following my blog, I have other friends (and family) who follow my blog...they are just not in the "followers" section. If your friends find your blog interesting or merely a fun read, they might even tell their friends about it.

5. Commenting on other blogs
Commenting on other blogs can certainly raise your profile. However, I would be very careful with this one: it is probably not a good thing to comment on other people's blogs just to promote your own, and commenting on every "most popular" blog may be seen as suspicious. If anything, I think it is best just to comment when you feel it is appropriate to, and give the comment substance: the occasional genuine, well-thought out comment to another blog will give you more readers than spamming them with silly comments will.

6. Keep the blog fresh
This is perhaps the hardest of all: coming up with new topics to post, and frequently, can be very difficult: even for me, the hard part is not the actual writing, but coming up with something to begin with. If you run out of things to post and are constantly going back to old writings on the blog, or anything you do post that is new comes across as a redress of everything done before, your readership and amount of views will decline. At the same time, if you have a particular style, your readers like your blog the way it is, and you are still gaining followers, it is probably best not to stray from that formula too much in case the changes drive them away; but you can still modify a format without alienating readers.

At the end of the day, I believe it is best not to worry too much about views, and instead just blog because you are fond of blogging and are into writing. Evidently you should make some effort in attracting a base, but the readers will come to you with the more you write (I am finding that posts of mine from months ago are receiving more views now than they did when they were initially submitted).

Finally, when referring to other people, it is also courteous to give them credit where it is due. As such, I would like to thank Jenny for inspiring me to write this post.

Problem (second part)

Well, yesterday and today have sure been fun: I spent most of yesterday trying to fix the virus and today re-installing the software on my computer

A couple of days ago, I noticed that whenever I did a Google search and clicked on a result, I would get re-directed to some other site (normally spam sites, but occasionally legitimate sites too). I dismissed it as a bug at first (completely the wrong thing to do!), but when the problem persisted the next day, followed by all sorts of other errors, I became worried.

I asked Dad for help (he works in engineering, and to say he is "very good" with computers is an understatement), and we found out that my computer had been infected with something called the "Google Redirect Virus". Essentially, it is a piece of malware that gets onto the system, and as its name implies it hijacks parts of the system to redirect Google search results to random sites (although it does affect other search engines as well). It is mainly an annoyance, but over time it also causes the computer to slow down.

We downloaded several piece of software including tools specifically designed to combat this specific piece of malware; however, nothing we used worked to remove it. Despite reading comments from people who claimed that these programs did the trick, we found them all to be a waste of time. Ultimately, I decided to go with a plan that would remove the malware: wipe the C:\ drive and re-install the software. I ensured that all my important files were backed up.

Dad and I wiped the entire hard drive this morning, not just the C:\ partition. By lunchtime Windows 7 plus the anti-virus/anti-malware systems had all been re-installed and upgraded, and I spent the rest of the afternoon re-installing the software on my computer. Not everything is back on the computer yet, but everything important has been restored. As a consequence of wiping the hard drive and re-installing the operating system, the malware has been removed.

I can think of better ways to have spent the weekend, but it is my own fault: I had not updated my computer's anti-virus for quite some time. My brother had told me that the protections were out of date, but I did not do anything about it. Not to worry: I certainly will not be making that mistake again!

Harry Potter books

We sorted out several boxes containing books this afternoon, and in one of them was our Harry Potter collection! Like most of our belongings, it has been a very long time since we have seen our Harry Potter books, and I did take a moment to read the first and last pages of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (the best book, in my opinion) before we put the books away.

Did you know that several countries have a unique cover for each of the Harry Potter books? We first found this out when my grandparents visited us in California in 2000, and my grandmother said she was look for some American copies to take back home. See the differences between the British covers:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU3xD2YMTJnU4wgpGge-J6N6UV5B8-4SNQU6xpZXiVEh6Y6IoF5rcMeZnOtnS9FJrZCFMfqy9OGdsfCBhaUVaU3stnXxt2udS-yw1xz1cr6C56rahPTuGLNn4cGlpUWg7oVub_msgGPG46/s1600/harry-potter-books.jpg

Compared to the American covers:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxuYYWsG51fLxS0RKO0DfZpAYU3oqCSlKtl0BiaEvtpJ7PwZzeXm8bzXMIA3fiPE6fXQQGiqVkfhOc4_gvIYc9RShKQ-i4f6u7XuW8IsQ9QHvCsUVvZGFH29A2t3orxwoFsX37YuvsVD8t/s1600/harry-potter-collection-21.jpg

Quite a big difference there! Typing "harry potter covers around the world" into Google Images will show a multitude of the varied Harry Potter covers from the world over. I find it fascinating to look at them all and compare them.

Note: neither of the images in the links above are mine; they are merely two images that I linked to from here.

London Bridge

You have most likely heard of London Bridge. People, regardless of country, think it is a majestic and architecturally-beautiful looking bridge that towers over the Thames (the river that winds through London) as it crosses the water. In reality, this is London Bridge:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:London_Bridge_Illuminated.jpg

The bridge people often think is London Bridge is called Tower Bridge, and it is this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tower_bridge_London_Twilight_-_November_2006.jpg

As with Big Ben/the Clock Tower, the name for one subject is being used to describe another, except in this case, it is two completely different structures having their names used wrongly rather than the name of an object inside a building being used to refer to the whole structure itself. I suspect with London Bridge/Tower Bridge, Tower Bridge is incorrectly called "London Bridge" because it is an icon of London like the Clock Tower, and is assumed to be the main bridge (hence "London Bridge"). Even when I went onto Google Images to find an image of London Bridge to link to, a large share of the images that came up were of Tower Bridge.

"Sentimental" - Julian Velard

A couple of days before we moved from Littleport, I was in a store to get a few last-minute groceries. While in there, I heard a song on the store's radio I really liked the sound of. I took note of a couple of the lyrics, and put them into Google when I got back home. It turned out it was a song titled "Sentimental", by an artist called Julian Velard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6N23rCS26c&feature=related

"Sentimental" is a really nice, gentle song, and I like it: the instrumentals and vocals are great, and I was surprised to see that the album it comes from was released only a few months ago. I think it comes under soft jazz/piano, but whatever the genre, it is a fine song. While I will have to take a look some more of Julian Velard's work, what I have heard so far has been good, and hopefully I shall be adding his new album to my list of albums that I would like to buy. I am very glad I was in the store that morning, otherwise I would not have heard "Sentimental".