Hoke’s Ramblings

I was explaining the concept of Google Bombing to a colleague the other day, and it struck me that Google’s method of ranking pages based on anchor text (the descriptive text people click on to visit a particular site) must mean that the word ‘here’ must point to some pretty inane places, seeing as just about every webpage has a link somewhere that says ‘click HERE to whatever’.

Checking this in Google (click here) returns mostly application download pages, in rough order of appearance:

Acrobat, Quicktime, Realplayer, IE7 (ugh), Winzip, Firefox, Winamp and Google Earth, with DivX bringing up the rear of the leaders.

So I suppose this gives a rough guide to how widely publicised the various apps are on the web, but more importantly, shows another (albeit minor) flaw in Google’s Pagerank system.

Microsoft’s built-in calculator is fairly useful in it’s own simplistic way (don’t get me started on Google’s awesome calculator, which will even tell you how often once in a blue moon is). However, in scientific mode, the SQRT (square root) button disappears.

Thankfully, Microsoft have a knowledge-base article to tell you how to get around it (raise your number to the power of a half). A more elegant solution is to check ‘Inv’ and click ‘X^2′, but I digress…

I draw your attention to exhibit A, the ‘Applies to’ section: Top of the list is Microsoft Windows 3.0 Standard Edition.

Talk about apathy.

This weekend my old varsity mate Peter stayed with us for a night en route to Durban, visiting from Taiwan. With him came his wife, Ava, who I’d only had the privilege of meeting once before at their SA Wedding, and Christina, their 10-month young daughter. What a cutie-pie she is! Barring a hiccup at midnight involving cell-phone alarms and time zone differences, it was great having them here to catch up and reminisce about the old days.

I made a wonderful discovery last night. If you’re thoroughly parched and feel like you could drink up a small lake, Mugg & Bean has BOTTOMLESS lemonade for R8.90!

A lemon tree, my dear Watson!