Thursday, November 27, 2008

ISTJ

This blog seen as an ISTJ (introverted, sensing, thinking, judging) blog by Typealyzer. The site analyzes the blog and provides a Myers Briggs type personality categorization. Some other blogs categorizations:



I don't give the categorization much weight but you might find it fun. I am not convinced it isn't almost totally random. A similar site guesses whether the author is a man or woman: "We have strong indicators that http://dooce.com/ is written by a man (99%)." "We guess http://blag.xkcd.com/ is written by a woman (50%), however it's quite gender neutral"

The categorization software seems to only use the home page (the exact url you use) to categorize the site. If it is effective at all (which I could see it being - for some categorizations anyway) increasing the pool of data used would likely help a great deal. My guess the current method also means the categorizations for sites could vary a great deal over time.

Notice how the Myers Briggs type "names" (for each group) are given a positive spin. Nothing like ESFJ - "The Lazy Couch Potatoes."

Friday, November 21, 2008

Google SearchWiki



Google now lets you customize your search results. You can move results around (change the order in which they appear) add your notes and remove sites you don't want to see. Others don't see your notes by default but they can choose to look at all the notes for a search.

Suggestions for Improving Google (Jan 2006)

1) Let me chose the type of files searched (exclude pdfs, word, power point..). Then if I can’t find what I want I can expand to include them. At the very least give me some way of making the type much more visible (I realize it is there now but I often click before my mind notices...).

2) Let me remove web sites from my default searches. I would imagine this could even be used to help Google’s normal search results by getting a sense of sites huge numbers of people “block” The same spam sites show up for searches and I would rather block them if Google can’t figure out how to do so.

3) Let me create site search lists, where I create lists of sties I want searched


The third one Google did a year or two ago. I have created several search sites based on that capability: investing search - science search - Management Search.

Related: Google Knows it is a 2.0 World - What Factors Should be Used to Determine Search Results - Google PageRank Update - Yahoo's Open Approach to Search

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Manners

Re: Bad manners

One of the things I have grown to appreciate the importance of is some shared sense of manners. As a kid I thought worrying about which fork was used for salad was silly. Actually I still think that is silly but I didn't appreciate the annoyances caused by people that just don't care about how there selfishness impacts others when I was a kid.

Now I understand how a shared sense of common courtesy is important - to hold back people from being overly selfish (how about the idiots that insist on yelling into their cell phones in libraries, or when they are being waited on in a store, or wherever else they happen to be doing, for example).

And if I must comply with a few rules I find silly so I can exist in a society where others have a shared sense of unacceptable behavior that is ok with me. I now appreciate the idea of acceptable codes of conduct that people are encouraged to follow. I really didn't understand how selfish so many people would be without rules telling them not to interrupt others, or eating with their mouth open, or treating others with respect, or realizing you must share with others (toys, when you are a kid or time with other speakers...).

I tend to be a bit cantankerous, refusing to accept things just because that is the way things are. But I have grown to appreciate the wisdom of good manners. Within that acceptance there is still room for me (and those like me) to quibble with some of the rules of good manners, but the concept I now appreciate.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

NORC

I heard a new acronym recently that I thought was amusing: NORC: Naturally Occurring Retirement Community. Essentially these are similar to "strange attractors" in chaos theory where retired people are naturally drawn to live. Perhaps areas with good medical facilities, near recreation and shopping areas, community centers, libraries... that can be walked to.

Related: retirement planning posts on the Curious Cat Investing blog - How Walkable is Your Prospective Neighborhood