Entries with tag "google"

You may have noticed (if you're not logged in) that I've added a few small ads to the site. I've tried to make them as unintrusive as possible — matching them to the site's color scheme, etc. Even so, I hate to do it. But the flight lessons I'm taking are putting pretty significant demands on my budget, and I'm trying to find ways to reduce my monthly expenses in any way possible. The $160/mo I pay to keep BinRock online was obviously one of the first things to look at. I've never considered adding ads to the site before, because I always assumed they'd only bring in $10 or $20 a month, and that just wasn't worth the clutter they add. But I've been talking with friends of mine who participate in Google AdSense, and I've been learning that actually, based on my monthly traffic, it's quite likely that I'll bring in something in the $80-100 range — over half of my monthly server costs. That's just not something I can ignore — at least for now. Once I've finished the flight lessons and my finances have settled back down, I may get rid of them again. And of course, if it turns out they really aren't producing enough income to be worthwhile, then they'll be gone much sooner than that.

On the first of every month, BinRock's web server logs are automatically analyzed and I get a report. My favorite part of that monthly report is always the list of search terms that brought people to my site. For the last year or so, I've been making a monthly friends-only post on BinRock listing the most amusing of these search terms for the previous month. The only reason they aren't publically accessible is because I fear it would only serve to further convince google that my site is a good place to find pictures of naked frat boys. So for those of you who don't have accounts on BinRock, I've gone ahead and cross-posted all of those entries to LiveJournal. You can see them all here.

While reviewing this month's web server logs, I noticed that someone arrived at my site via a Google search for "ass munching crap bat". Intrigued, I performed the search myself. It turns out I'm on the tenth page of search results. I can only imagine the passion that burns in that tragic shell of a man for scatological chiropterans.

I was reading a blog entry describing a cool website that analyzes your NetFlix rental statistics, and I decided to finally subscribe to NetFlix as I've been considering for months. I clicked the link to NetFlix in the blog entry and started filling out the subscription forms.

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Last week, I decided to try vegetarianism again, and to take it seriously this time. Ironically, it's not having Andrés and Amy here that swayed me, but rather the Simpsons (I try to base all my life-altering decisions on cartoons. It makes things interesting). Lisa became a singer and Homer was her manager, but his ways were brusque. She asked him to stop beating people up to get things done for her, and he chided, "Oh, you eat sausages, but you don't like seeing them made." To which Lisa replied, "I don't eat sausages!"

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Another cool example of the sheer genius concentrated at Google. Google Sets accepts a list of terms, and attempts to predict other items that fit in the same "category". It's eerily clever. Some examples I tried: supra/camry, images and words/awake. Did you forget the noble gases? Enter helium/argon/neon and you get the rest of the list (with some other non-noble elements at the end, though). What movies has Angelina Jolie been in? I know she was in Hackers and Tomb Raider... Awesome.

I learned today that well-known linguist, human rights speaker, and every political band's favorite source of samples, Noam Chomsky, an Institute Professor of linguistics at MIT. Just one more reason I'd love to have spent time there.

As for Google, my score on the SAT, the only saving grace of my academic career, would be irrelevant to them. What they're interested in is an employment candidate's performance on the GLAT — the Google Labs Aptitude Test. In case their URLs change, I've got the four pages here:

• Page 1
• Page 2
• Page 3
• Page 4

I love working at Xapiens, but I can't help but swoon at a company that clearly has so much nerdy fun in what they do, and look for the same in their prospective employees. Though I feel terribly inadequate, perhaps someday I'll work up the nerve to send them my resume or something. In the meantime, I'll continue to gaze on them from afar with heart-shaped eyes.

Warning: We Brake For Number Theory

I think I can safely say that Google is the company I'd most like to work for. But I'm scared to imagine the heights to which my nerdiness would soar in that kind of environment.

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