www.richardhagen.org

In the early days of Web search, well before Google, search results weren’t so repeatable or stable. With Google’s highly tuned PageRank algorithm, things settled down a bit. Perform the same search one day and again a week later and you’ll get the same results in the same order (sorta).

I’d sometimes like to see a bit of variation, particularly in image searches.

I wonder if there is some way that Google could introduce noise into the search mechanism so that results were slightly more jumbled. Obviously this would need to be optional as you’d still need repeatability for most searches.

Hmmm.

Another good ‘un.

• I thought of a funny thing (the Revolution went direct to DVD).
• I thought of a brainy thing (the attractiveness ratchet applied to Internet dating).
• I thought of a happy but sad thing (the third amazing-person scenario).
• I saw something that made me so happy I wept (learner unicyclists at the Melbourne Museum).
• I found a bike for a friend (thanks Annette for the bike!)

In an interview in The Spectator, Peter Vaughan says:

Joe [Orton] was a one-off. He would always wear army boots, a Chairman Mao jacket and an old War Department gas mask over his shoulder in which he had his meat pie for lunch and his copy of the script. If I asked him about a line, he’d tell me it means whatever I wanted it to mean. [Harold] Pinter would say the same thing, and, years later, when I was making the film The Crucible, so, too, did Arthur Miller.

Why surprised? Orton and Pinter are stylists who are also exemplars of precision. (I don’t know enough about Arthur Miller to say anything.)

(Mr. Helpmann: Ere I am J.H.)

For each movie listing, the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) provides links under the heading “If you enjoyed this title, our database also recommends:”…

What is the longest loop of chained recommendation links? What is the shortest loop of chained recommendation links? What is the longest chain before entering a loop?

Hmmm.

I try to use the phrase lay down misere as often as feasible.

Total uses in 2007: 0.

I gave Cathy a laser screwdriver for Christmas.

I was having such a good time playing with it that she was forced to remind me that her elderly mother was trying to sleep.

Who’d have sonic?

Today is Christmas. It’s one of those relatively rare days when I interact with people who aren’t very good at having conversations. I find this unsettling, as it feels like I’m being pummeled into acquiescent silence.

I want to spend the next year working on my ability to smash through the barriers (not just theirs, mine as well) that inhibit genuine conversation.

Ambrose Bierce wrote:

Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.

This is taken as a prescription by many would-be conversationalists.

I’ve also been through periods where I believed that I was invisible. Careful here: I didn’t believe that I could do things without people seeing me but that people were unable to see me.

I’ve worked very hard on not being invisible and I seem to be mostly visible these days.

Like Harry Joy, I’ve lived through periods where I have believed that I was in Hell.

These periods mostly happened more than five years ago.

Scarily, though, I still have the occasional Hellish moment.

I’m going to be in Melbourne from 20th Decmber to 1st January. Things will probably thin out here. Sorry.