Friday, May 22, 2009

Extra Cash Ideas

Surveys

Aussies Only:
http://linkbee.com/2718 (this one has personally paid me)

http://linkbee.com/2727
http://linkbee.com/2735

Worldwide
http://linkbee.com/270L
http://linkbee.com/28BE
http://linkbee.com/28B6
http://linkbee.com/28BG (USA, Canada, United Kingdom & Australia)

Paid To Twitter programs (Worldwide)
http://linkbee.com/2753
http://linkbee.com/28AK

Other programs
If you blog or Twitter and are posting links, using those "short" link websites, you might as well get paid, so have a look.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Galleries - Interesting pictures

AWESOME sand sculpture photos from festival in the USA. http://linkbee.com/270F

The gallery title is "Strange Food" but it should have been called "Food I'm Not Touching". Truly bizarre. http://linkbee.com/04NK

Gallery of Cave Hotels around the world... now this is what I call COOL! I need a cave to live in. Caves rock. http://linkbee.com/ZY56

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Very Tweety

I deleted the LoudTweet on my LiveJournal (because apparently, some people don't like reading my tweets there). Hey, I can actually understand that. It's funny how tweets are cool when you're reading a timeline, but in a journal site it... just isn't cool. I suppose while in Twitter we're used to short & sweet comments, our attention span is short but matches the size of the info.

So. I'm not going to spew them all into here using LoudTweet. It has its merits, but I think it's better suited to someone who only tweets once or twice a day. On the other hand, I tweet a lot. Like, heaps. So I'll post a handful in here that are less irritating than the others... how's that? :D

One type is the competitions. I'm backtracking a while, so I apologise if any of them are expired. From now on they should be fine.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

A reason for being

Merely posting weird search results has made this blog a little difficult to populate. Essentially what I've found is that what I comment about in my search results comes up next time. And I don't REALLY want to post the same item every time ;)

Something I also do in my spare time is enter competitions. I swear, one day I'll win the car. But I digress... I *do* win things, every now and then, from stationery to lunch boxes, thumb drives to watches and t-shirts. Even small items are exciting to grab from the mailbox. So I've been Twittering the better comps so that other people can enter too. I know that reduces my chances of winning (haha!) but it's all about the looooove!

If you don't follow me already, I'm @Ruu_Elisa. Send me a Direct Message there to say hi! Or just start any tweet with @Ruu_Elisa and I'll also see it. And if you hear of a cool comp to enter online make sure you post it - and send it to me so I can retweet you!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

*huge dive*

For someone who's trained in IT, I can be amazingly Luddite in attitude at times.

Ok, who am I kidding? I absolutely despise change to anything and everything that might upset, nay, even vibrate my cushy little comfort zone. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming out of Windows 98, and by the time I took the plunge, I'd already modded my software in a desperate attempt at improving the poor memory performance. I had replaced the Windows shell with Litestep (OMG! that was just SO AWESOME and sexy that I was almost able to forgive its shortcomings). In fact, my time with Litestep shell awakened me to how people could switch to Lunix AND LIKE IT. *

It took the dogged determination of my then-boyfriend to pull me out of the dark ages and into the light of Windows XP. That's right, folks, this little gamer had been playing Quake 3 on an OS that had been long left behind by her battlemates. Other LANners at Macquarie Uni had eagerly queued up for the debut sales of Windows Millennium Edition (HA! Hahaha, haha. And ha. HAHAHA! ok, I'm over it now.) In even larger numbers they grabbed hold of Windows 2000's Professional release. So there was I, languishing on an OS deemed by the gaming community to be three-times-superceded.

And even when I relented, it wasn't so much that the boyfriend convinced me. He also lived with Mr Cool Geek, who helped run the LANs, and one of the coolest dudes I've ever met. Goo rocked up to my place, shiny XP CD in hand, and it was a done deal. There's no way I could win the argument against the two of them ganged up, so I let them have their way with my little puter.

I fell in lust with XP so fast that it's odd I'd resisted so long. But here I am, doing it again, sworn not to touch that rabid Vista. Anyway, this post wasn't about Microsoft. Microsoft, a company that once made Millennium Edition. HAHAHA!

This post was about me and social networking. I hated hated hated the idea of Facebook and was NEVER joining it. I now have tons of friends on Facebook. Worse still was that freaky Twitter thing. I have no clue how you work that damned thing, it's new and faddy, it won't take off, I'm not bothering with a weird texty thing like teenagers use in class! So, did I mention that I love Twitter more than I love Facebook?

And stubbornly yet again I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in these API thingies and clients and whateveryoucallits for Twitter. I don't need to tweet from my car, from McDonalds or while on my mobile phone. There's nothing wrong with the Twitter home page, why get any other app?

Today I went searching for a tiny Twitter app to run on my desktop. I'd reasoned that if something were running down there, I'd be more likely to update it more than once a day. (The impetus for this was the fact that I am earning money from advertising on Twitter, and the less I talk the less I earn.)

First I tried a browser plugin for Firefox. I HATED IT. It was just ugly, weird and made me feel like a DOS n00b seeing a mouse for the first time. Binned. Then I found something called Klipfolio. A forum post said it had a Twitter option. WOOT! Install, ok, now I need to add the Twitter "Klip". WTF?

I need to interrupt myself here. I've never been so pleased with a new app as I am with Klipfolio. It's a collection of shortcuts ("Klips"). You can view it as a window, a toolbar, a taskbar, a sidebar, whatever you want. In that way it reminds me a bit of Litestep but brought into the 21st Century. You install your base, um, thingy, and then you choose your addons and snap them into the bar/window/toolbar. You can have it always on top, you can hide it, you can have it sit above your taskbar, etc. You can make it huge or tiny and you can just drag and drop to rearrange your Klips.

Right now I have a little CPU monitor (96%, but that's a game's fault), a currency converter telling me that the Aussie dollar is worth 54 euros, a search box for Youtube, and a widget that brings me the latest flash games. But I digress. I wanted this thingy just for the Twitter widget so I could post from the desktop.

AND THERE IS NO SUCH THING! Oh the tears. Klipfolio has a metric bajillion** Klips doing everything and more, including a Facebook "status" updater showing you what your friends are all doing, but no Twitter widget? The only one they have sends you nothing but dev updates and news from the Twitter owners.

Frown.

Tantrum. It must be here somewhere.

In the end I've compromised. I Klipped in an RSS feed for my Twitter page instead. Incidentally, this wasn't so easy. Twitter futzed with their feeds not so long ago and made them rather unfriendly to third-party applications in general. Even Google Reader can't cope with them (they require certificate authentication). So I found a free clean burner site and wedged its offering into the RSS. I now have a cool little tooltip that pops up from the clock showing new Twitter tweets in my feed. And of course I can turn it on or off, make it show more or less often. I can't directly update Twitter yet but Klipfolio say it's in the works. And if one of the tweets looks interesting I just click it, the tweet appears in Firefox, and I can hit reply.

I feel fresh and new. Invigorated and very proud of my achievement.

I think this must have been how Hillary felt on reaching the peak of Mt Everest.

Or how Bill Gates felt when Microsoft released Windows ME.***

Hahahaha!

* Lunix is not a typeoh.
** Bajillion is a technically scientific number.
*** ROTFLcopter.

Monday, March 23, 2009

BEGIN rant

I love JavaScript. Don't get me wrong, I do think it's incredibly versatile and creative.

But I CANNOT STAND its overuse. This is my one and only bugbear with Gmail, which is otherwise absolutely awesome. However, this rant isn't about Gmail.

It's about WordPress. How can any of you stand it? I'm about to smack my monitor into kingdom come. I had wondered for ages what it was like (since so many bloggers use it) but I'd never been quite game enough to use it here and upset the status quo. I'm so very glad I never did. It's evil.

I'm now a contributor on another blog and the administrator uses WordPress... and ugh. It hangs my browser non-stop while executing who-knows-what scripts doing goodness-knows-what. Sheesh, ALL I WANTED TO DO was paste some HTML to embed a video. But nooooooo. That's too hard. This has turned my ten minute article into nearly an hour. And still, it looks like I will be unable to grace the article with the fair Lee Lin Chin's news report.

Rant finished. I now return you to your regularly-scheduled program. Carry on and feel free to use
JavaScript to your hearts' content.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

In which I extol the virtues of bubble shooting

As predicted, there are a lot of variations of Bubble Shooter in the search tracking. But in a new development there's now "dead whale bubble shooting". Uh, nice.

And someone's looking for "insect bite vacuum eBay". Is there actually such a product? In the words of Sean Connery, I'll buy a dozen.*

There are a fair few Bingo Marker searchers landing here. Welcome! We'll pretend for a moment that you meant to arrive! Same with the people who were after the motorbike and stonehenge cakes, and the mayor who scaled the ladder to rescue the sunbathing dog.

My proudest moment for today is being the top result for "my crazy dance salta nallen". Even if just for a moment. Even if I have no clue what it's about, it doesn't matter. It's all about the glory.

* on SNL, of course.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Alright Team!

Here we go!

Today's episode is a story all about me. You'll have to excuse the odd grammatical snafu - searchers CLEARLY pay no attention to my story-writing needs. (Clears throat.) Let's begin.

Pleased to meet you - my name is Mark Nolan.

Evidently, today I must be wearing odd panties. I think those are the kind where one leg-hole doesn't match the other. They're also known as Sims 2 panties. Well, nobody ever accused me of being a fashion tragic, since I'm actually a Romanian truck driver dancing.

My job involves nude pics of Coles Supermarket, Dubbo. Quite often, after work, I'm known to wanking wrap it in tissue no mess.


In my spare time I pretend to be a disabled lady given a mermaid tail. Or if it's a slow day, I often switch to happy religion, and footprints are carved into the floorboards by monk who has prayed at the same spot for 20 years. (Editor's note: This one wins the "longest search string" award for the week.)

Before I go, I must tell you one last snippet about myself. My proudest achievement for the year so far: I am presently the #1 Google result for "gargantuan lactating whale". Now I'll be able to sleep at night.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Persistence

Just for a taste of something different, I'm going to blog about the things people searched for that led them to my blogs. I had a look at the results for this blog (weird search) and there's nothing new. Boo! But I think Google felt sorry for me because the search results for the other two made up for my disappointment. Among them - "38KKK nipples".

Pardon?

I am ONE HUNDRED PERCENT sure I have never blogged about 38KKK nipples before. In fact, I would have thought it was BUST size, not nipple size, but I digress. Why are people searching for this? They should just enter the search string that would get them results, and that is "gargantuan lactating whale". (I apologise in advance to anyone who actually *is* a size 38KKK nipple since I apparently just called you a gargantuan lactating whale, and you might not actually be breastfeeding. Sorry.)

Additionally this week we have "eggs south pole". Um, sure, I suppose if you are an Antarctic researcher then you occasionally have a yearning for sunny-side-up, and Google is always handy for finding out which nearby shops on Antarctica stock locally-sourced free range.

Someone is searching for "priest panties training bra". Someone else wants "horrific burns groin petrol station" which presumably relates to a recent news story, but do they expect pictures? Seriously? I know that if it were me watching someone with their nether regions on fire, the first thing I would do is grab my trusty Box Brownie and snap away.

Now, putting aside someone looking for "presidential pardons", there are five different combinations looking for Susanka Bersin, including naked, nude, and fake. She's a popular lass. Sorry guys, no naked Susanka Bersin here. I did post about her boob grope and the resulting slap, but she was well and truly clothed.

All of these so far were for Crazy Odd, but looking at No Added Salt was also interesting, for a very different reason. First, we have a new entry: "Jay Leno poopy butt". I'm sorry Jay. I truly am.

And then we have a bunch that seem to be from someone, ahem, "resourceful". I have to list these. I just can't do them justice by describing them one by one.
  • cognitive bubble shooter
  • one mans blog bubble shooter
  • bubble shooter salt
  • bubble shooter cognitive
  • bubble shooter game one mans blog
  • bubble shooter one mans blog
  • bubble shooter
  • salt bubble shooter
  • cognitive games bubble shooter
  • one mans blog bubbleshooter
  • bubbleshootergame one mans blog
  • bubble shooter cognitive games
  • bubble shooter "game one" mans blog
That, kids, is called "persistence".

The sad part is that now, if this person tries to search again, my blog is going to come up EVERY SINGLE TIME. Hell is Weird Search Blog.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Fresh Produce

I had another stroll through the bowels of my referrers today (or, "Where did these people come from?"). A handful of people trickle in here each day; considering I don't promote this place I can hardly complain. Also, in Weird News Today™, randoms are following me on Twitter. I've no idea where they're coming from, or what could be so exciting in my tweets. But in response I'm going to post fewer tweets were I complain about the weather.

Your favourites* are still hanging around. There's apparently no curing some people of their addiction to bat poop, butt paste, snotty sims or boiling urine. But in an exciting new twist* we now have "urine smells like hot dogs". Just HOW close are these people getting to their toilet bowls? And why would that bring them here? (For the record, I have no idea if my urine smells like hot dogs, because I don't make a habit of sniffing it.)

Someone with an odd fetish found me via "japanese panties and pantyhose clips". Someone disturbing via "Australian bushfires hot chicks". Well yes, I should imagine families' injured laying hens would technically be hot chicks. I can only hope that you weren't searching for burned or injured female humans with that string.

Sir Paranoid wants information on "Google Phone Tracking", presumably because he stole a car with a phone in it and is concerned that police might show up in lieu of some hot girls with drugs.

Before I go, I need to include this one because it made me laugh rather than just scratch my head. I know that I used the word lickable in a recent post, and I was totally referring to cool widgets in templates, which are very lickable. And occasionally I will post a pic from Fail Blog since it is funny. But why someone would combine them is beyond me... nor do I really understand how "fail blog lickable" landed them here. If I knew who they were, I'd pass them tissues to cope with the disaster. Oh the humanity.

Gotta run. Someone is "stealing panties from back garden" and I need to go look for them out my back door.

* Or not.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Nonsense Words

I'll admit it, I never actually expected to discover that people are finding me via nonsense words. I'm now the top search result for "protectrix cowpuncher quickthorn", but that's to be expected, since it was a Googlebomb experiment.

But "dfhla" - now that's another one altogether.

A closer look tells me that this came from a keyboard-mashing incident while I was testing my feed. Google indexed it in the sliver of window before I deleted the post. But hey, let's get into the more interesting shall we?
  • perfume plane
  • mrs peabody's beach (please note correct use of apostrophe)
  • new zealand korean priest bike blog
  • salt bubble shooter
  • lady chatterfield ( ! ! ! )
  • searches like chuck norris
Look. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times.

You do not search for Chuck Norris. He finds you.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Bushfire Appeal

Are you in Australia?
Is this you?

I'd really like to help out, but to be honest, I am not that rich.
You know, it's sad and all, but it's not in my street and life goes on.
I don't really want to part with my hard earned cash.
There's a credit crunch you know? The government will help them.
Poor Bushfire people, but I don't want to use my credit card online.
I really can't be bothered.

Don't feel guilty, do it the easy way that costs you nothing!

Coles Supermarkets all over Australia will be donating 100% of their store profits for this Friday, 13th February, 2009. If you don't believe me, check out their website at www.Coles.com.au. All you need to do is do your normal grocery shopping there on Friday instead of a different day or shop. I'll be there and Coles isn't even where I normally buy from. I'll even be there without my car, and taking a taxi to get the stuff home!

Please, I rarely ask people to send stuff on, but let everyone know about this. Get into your email now and spread the word, or click the little envelope below to send it from here.

Let's turn a Black Friday into a good one.

~ Elisa

cross-posted to um... everywhere

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Attention "Template Designers"

Floating two white columns of 50% transparency over the top of celebrity pic does not a "template" make.

Nor are you hosting "over 100 blog templates" by repeating this exact "design" with 100 different celebrities.

Just had to get that off my chest.

I found a template I like, by a completely different designer, but it has a few teething problems. If you're reading this at stupid o'clock in the morning of the 10th of February, you can see what I mean. There are some page elements turned on that the designer hadn't counted on me using. Please mind the holes in the floor and the dust etc while I iron them out. Do not adjust your screen.

American Pink Begone

I REALISE that the colour scheme now breaks all the rules of design.

The background is simply an emergency two-minute fix to remove the ghastly pink that was scaring small children (apologies to the original designer). It isn't a permanent thing. It's merely intended to put a few optometrists out of a job for lack of work.

UGH!

This template is now seriously annoying me. It's embarrassing. I apologise for the over-abundance of pink, and the sheer in-your-face blandness of it all.

We've nearly got to The Moment, folks.

The Moment is when my annoyance overrides my laziness, and I do something about it.

Just now, my interest in a cup of coffee is far outweighing the annoyance factor. However, like a splinter under the fingernail, it continues to irritate, and procrastinating doesn't make it go away.

Mutter.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

You Found Me HOW?!?!

Today's instalment of weird search features some unusual search string combinations.

How novel! ;)

First of all, the ones that make sense, since I blogged about something quite similar:
  • paper shredder Darwin
  • intruder panties sausage
  • bagpipe funnies
There's a certain, um, satisfaction (?) in seeing those things come up. Or something. But then we have the ones that don't quite make so much sense, or reflect pretty badly on me, or both.
  • I steal panties
  • comet shakes Dubbo (serious? I didn't feel a thing)
  • has a weird fascination with snow plows
  • hamster in Kuwait
  • urine smells like popcorn
  • bailey cream on the plane
  • boyfriend number 2
  • boiled urine smell
Just WHAT were those people trying to find?

Do we actually want to know?

And who can forget our absolute regular?
  • batt poop butt paste
But seriously. I had to end on a more serious note. Something you might not be aware of. Thanks to Google's Webmaster Tools, here's the news (don't forget you heard it first in Weird Search Blog):
  • Elisa was arrested
cross-posted to No Added Salt

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

The Joys Of Dialup

Technically of course, I'm not on dialup. However, my internet plan has a data cap, and once I reach that limit, I am shaped to 28K speed until the end of my billing cycle.

You can appreciate that I'm overjoyed at this. $#@$@&!#%@ kids %@&#$*!*

There are ways around it of course. You know, like calling Mr ISP and crossing his palm with silver. Regrettably, I love money, and don't have enough of it to be upgrading myself to the point where my monthly access cost would feed a small African nation. If I did, I'd be cruising the streets in my brand new black Prius and handing out autographed souvenirs before retiring to my ecological mansion complete with servants, swimming pool and orchard.

I can dream, can't I? Besides, being rich probably wouldn't make me happy. My dad has been fanatically saving every penny since nineteen yickety two, but hey, you can't take it with you.

In the meantime I have Coca Cola :D

Disclaimer: I am not paid to tell you that I'm drinking Coke.

Drats.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Google Is Dangerous!

Strange Things Are Afoot At The Circle-K, in the words of Ted Theodore Logan.

While queueing a post about a ninja and searching for an accompanying image, I discovered that all Google's search results for "ninja" had the warning: "This Site May Harm Your Computer". Being an online geekery fanatic, I did what any normal geek does: I jumped into chat with my significant other to see if I was the only one getting this result (aka "have I got a virus?").

No, I did not, since he turned up Disney as another site that was apparently extremely dangerous.

However, I just had to share the best result I found. (Click my screenie below to see what it's all about.) Google will kill you. Google is a ninja that will come after you in your sleep. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

~ Elisa

cross-posted to Crazy Odd News


Saturday, January 31, 2009

FeedBurner: The Review

So I've given FeedBurner some extra time to sort itself out. I'm not 100% happy, but I've decided that It May Stay. (However, if it puts its feet on the couch, leaves the toilet seat up, or eats my Tim Tams*, it's O-U-T-the-door.)

Here's a play-by-play.

Reliability: 4/5
Setup: 4/5
Features: 5/5
Ease of use: 4/5
Integration with Blogger and Google: 5/5
Syndication speed: 3/5

In the reliability stakes, I'm still getting messages telling me my xml page has "failed", which stops syndication dead. However, half an hour later I get a message that all is well, without me doing anything. FeedBurner seems to have issues with server lag. I hope it's temporary.

Setup of any new system is a pain. The downfall for FeedBurner is the sheer number of options. Fully-featured is sometimes a bad thing, and some were impossible for me to understand. As for the options I want, it has them all, and I'm happy with them.

As far as integration goes, only products owned by Google can earn 6 out of 5, however, it's not yet 100% integrated and sometimes pops up a Blogger window inviting you to paste code in manually. I expect that in time this will be seamless.

Now... speed? Or should I say... lack thereof. FeedBurner has never spontaneously syndicated my RSS feed within 4 hours of posting. Left to its own devices, the posts appear in Google Reader well after 1pm. The site post time is always 9:XXam on the blog, however. This is frustrating. However, as long as they still arrive each day I will accept this as the one truly abysmal part of FeedBurner.

* If you don't know what a Tim Tam is, or you've never had one, you MUST seek out a local seller and try them. Also sold as "Arnott's Biscuits" overseas, they are biscuit orgasms. When I say biscuit, it's like a cookie but not. A Tim Tam is two chocolate malt cookies (not as chocolatey as Oreos) with a creamy vaguely chocolate filling (but not strong or sickening sweet) and covered in milk chocolate. And no matter how it's described, it doesn't do the food justice. A favourite pastime of Australian talk show hosts is to make American guests eat these, and the guests are regularly reduced to wordlessness and/or expressions of blissful disbelief. "Mmmmmmmm!" and "Ohhhhh!" and "That is Soooooooo good!" are fairly regular comments. So yeah. Go find them somewhere like Google. It is soooo worth it.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Lost Visitors

The following numbers of visitors were (presumably) severely disappointed on discovering my blogs:

1 passing strange spike lee
1 body odor ban for zurich workers
1 bubble snuggly 2
1 elderly lady hits man on scooter to go to hair appointment
1 dorrah january
1 gaming delight
1 celcius to farren (hey, at least *I* got ONE of them right)
2 kitchen implement
2 aqua slave for the paper
2 homemade deal or no deal
2 can u freeze baileys irish cream (No.)
4 zoo sex
5 bag pipe player
5 talented artist
5 caught wanking

Feel free to vote for your favourite.

Personally, I liked "zoo sex".

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Antsy.

I'm getting antsy. I love the template on No Added Salt, because I can customise it (and I have) by adjusting colours, adding links, changing menus and so on. Here on Weird Search, I just chose a standard one. I'm certainly not known for my love of all things pink. But it does the job, seeing as how this blog is, and will remain, predominantly about the text and what's written.

Unfortunately, Crazy Odd in particular is not all about text. It's a multimedia blog, so having it sit in a run-of-the-mill standard No Frills template is eating at me. I'm getting antsy. I hate changing templates on anything though, what with the joys of adjusting stuff everywhere and editing all my future posts because the colours don't match... and then there's my loathing of the limitations of most of the three-column templates I've seen... so I've put it off. I'm the champion procrastinator.

However, today my search in Intarweb Land found me at a blog that has.. GASP!.... four, count 'em, FOUR columns and was designed effectively to give the main blog area plenty of room. Oh, how I swoon at good web design. How I lust at lickable widget placement. How I long to... erm, never mind, it's probably not appropriate for me to share.

So I went looking at more templates. I think I'm leaning towards Gabfire Maq. I don't like the colour scheme, but that's easily remedied. I also don't like that it makes me think of Macs, but I might have to learn to deal.


Decisions, decisions.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Miserable Failuer is Me

Apparently, I'm years behind Intarweb-Land in hearing about the Miserable Failure Search.

I laughed. Quite a lot. Reminded me of www.nochucknorris.com and its similar Google bombing.

I wish people would Google bomb my blogs ;)

What was interesting though was that there have been a few more creative attempts in the past, including "nigritude ultramarine" and "seraphim proudleduck". So... maybe I was onto something when I spammed twitter with "protectrix cowpuncher quickthorn".

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Scowl...

Mutter.

Since the last post went immediately to where it belonged, I am grudgingly going to give FeedBurner another day to prove itself useful.

So far it's been a 48-hour+ bad, bad, first impression.

So. Make with the goods, Google!


Image: some random intarweb chick shaking her fist. Possibly at FeedBurner, possibly at Microsoft, maybe at George W Bush? I dunno. Sorry about all the venting here of late. It is just that. And yeah, I'm aware that shaking one's fist at a free service is a bit like ordering a low-fat soymilk decaffeinated iced mochaccino with artificial sugar, dairy-free whipped cream, and a carob stick instead of the chocolate wafer... and then complaining that it tastes bad.

Perhaps I should blame Canadia*! Yeah. Just as effective, but far more satisfying.

{wink}

* "Canadia" is not a type-oh.

Oh yeah! Before I forget. I laughed. It was a geek thing. Red (aka Deimos) was having huge issues with access to his website. Ports, IPs, NATs, router, his ISP, and apache were all suspects because he couldn't connect externally to his home-hosted site. During his investigation a lot of us were throwing suggestions and helping troubleshoot. And then he says...

[Red] So, I don't understand intertubes much..
[Elisa] you put them inside the tyres on your bike, duh
[Qwyxzl] teh intarwebz are for porn, Red. That is all you need to know.

...haha imagine something in that came up in a weird search! hahaha

* goes to watch the internet is for porn for the billionth time *

* laughs, and then recoils in horror as her 12 and 13yo sing along *

* poofs*

posting at 9.52pm

It would be interesting to see how long it takes for this to end up in the rss feed. If I were a betting girl, I'd probably put ten bucks on it being more than three hours. If.

Ode to Feedburner

Oh Popular Utility
Have you ever had a clue?
Must you suck so royally?
Did Google buy and ruin you?

Did your feed burning ever work?
Was there a time when you kept time?
Will my timestamps remain dirt?
And did your automatic ping once chime?

I resync and cry
My RSS still dry
I slap resync again with a clout
This time you say "time out..."

Here in sorrow I now mope,
Hoping this is just a two day glitch
How dumb to move three blogs! I'm a dope...
Wondering if I should bite the bullet and switch

...off

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Feeling A Bit Frustrated

I am still battling with my RSS syndication. The feeds cut off at (255?) characters. I did this to encourage readers to click through to view the site - this gives me a better idea of who is reading the blog, and it lets them see it in its technicolour glory. I acknowledge that my blogs aren't at the cutting edge of artistic design, but, it also allows things like html, pictures, embedded objects (like games) and links you can actually click. (I know, some readers can cope with these things, but some can't.)

However, setting the short syndication is also a pain. It cuts off mid-sentence with nothing to tell the reader it was done on purpose, or to click the title to see the whole post. Quite frankly, it just looks unprofessional.

So I have a bugbear in Blogger! Who would have thought?

I may have to investigate other feed options. Watch this space, I guess. Or, don't?

Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Latest Weird Search Results

Ok, so it's not so much that the search results are weird, but the actual search terms people plug into Google.

I've blogged about this before, on
No Added Salt, including the fact that on-and-off I am nabbing the #1 through to #4 search results for "jay leno egg beater guitar" and consistently have #1 and #2 for "religion nonspecific". But, here are some new entrants.
  • offbeat travel (well... different)
  • jay leno egg beater guitar google (ok, someone's trying to see if I'm telling the truth?)
  • happy religion (joyful joyful - hot tip: avoid Scientology)
  • fireys (perhaps related to a fire station burning down recently)
Now, none of those are particularly bizarre. But wait. There's more.
  • sucky sucky long time
  • scout facelift 2009
  • dr elisa dumbest criminals
I don't think I've ever been called Doctor before.

And "bat poop butt paste" is still a winner for... some strange people... coming in with a #3 result.

I'm... proud?

cross-posted at some point to No Added Salt

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Sympathy?

You'd think I would deserve some, seeing that the temperature has been in the high 30s for the last two weeks or so. Sweat just drips. (That's Celsius, kids, since only stupid countries* use Farhen- Fahrenh- Farren- that stupid archaic temperature scale.) But my dearly beloved just said it was lucky he didn't buy us a house in Lapland (where it's about 25 below right now). How kindhearted! ;)

At least he was nice enough to point out that I'd re-nabbed the #1 Google search result for Jay Leno Egg Beater Guitar. Which is kinda bittersweet, because it only happened after I lamented its loss on Twitter.

~ Elisa (who had to put her name today because there's an asterisk below)

* Just kidding about your country being stupid. Please don't hurt me. It's not our fault our ex-PM is a retarded moron just like your soon-to-be-ex-president.

PS. I bet you're surprised there was an asterisk!

Saturday, January 10, 2009

A Thought About Helium

I really should be posting some of my brilliant Helium work somewhere. There was a livejournal community for Helium writers, but it seems to be dead.

* ponders creating a new blog for spamming Helium articles
* unfolds plan for Taking Over The World™
* stands at front doorstep to laugh maniacally at the neighbours
* runs from a vicious pelting of mud

~ Elisa ~ is not going to bother to sign her name most days

PS. * growls that her preferred text colour is a pita to set

I like to ramble

This blog doesn't have rules like my other two. I might not post every day. I might post ten times on some days. I might go a month without saying anything at all. And when I do post it might be a load of crappy rubbish that only I have any interest in.

You have been warned.

Something I found amusing is the search results where my other blogs come out as the top result. It got me thinking and wondering if the most interesting one (religion nonspecific) might have anything to do with the fact it was cross-posted on two blogs (which are #1 and #2 in the results).

They link to each other. I wonder if that's why. Maybe I'll spam a few of the other blogs' posts and see what happens. Something like the "boiling urine" post. We'll see.

~ Elisa

PS. Blogger has 8 choices for font. Arial, Trebuchet and this one (Verdana) are quite similar. Courier sucks unless you want it to look like a 1980s computer printout. The last four are clones of Times New Roman. Death to serif fonts.

Friday, January 9, 2009

About this blog

I wrote this entry on the 10th of February 2009, but I've shoved it to the oldest entry.

I've realised rather belatedly that apart from a very vague post about this blog having no rules, I haven't said much about what this blog even IS.

My "About Me" page is rather generic and common to all three blogs. So, here's what Weird Search is about.

As the title suggests, primarily I wanted somewhere to note down the odd things that people search for in Google (and elsewhere), especially the things that they search for that somehow lead them to one of my blogs. I found some of these search strings amusing and figured others would. I have also moved a lot of my geek-like stuff out of No Added Salt and into here (so you'll see things like how I choose a new template, how I deal with blogging tools, and so on).

But as a bonus extra, this place has also become my random vent place, and hosts odd snippets of my life. The truly bizarre thing is that people are subscribing to this blog. I honestly would have thought the other two were far more worthwhile to read. There's no accounting for taste, huh?

My contact email:


Feel free to send funny pics, beautiful pictures, or feedback.
Feel free to stick hate mail up your ass.

:)