Monthly Archives: August 2006

Altavista vs Google

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Sorry to be (once again) working against the popular trend but has anyone else noticed that Altavista is a rival search engine to Google!? It’s only based on two experiements, & don’t get me wrong, I’m not an expert, just a ‘user’. First experiement, typed in my full name and compared the results. Second experiment, typed in ‘Caroline Celico’ and looked in images for results.

On the first test Altavista found pages on me (including the odd ones) which Google did not. On the second Altavista found the getty images of the wedding to Kaka, which Google did not.

Then again (nice phrase that) when I entered my full name in both and searched under images, ‘AV’ came up with a big fat ’0′ while Google found results from my blog. (And most visitors to my blog come via Google).

It’s all kind of amusing when I think that Altavista was the top dog back in 1997, until I was seduced a couple of years later by peer-pressure to go-with-Google. Sorry, it’s my fault for rely on just one search, so  I’m using Altavista again – at least as a cross-check vs the almighty Google. .

Every official photo from Caroline Celico’s wedding

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Kaka slipping the ring on Caroline Celico

I’ve tracked down the fantastic getty images pics – here with all 83 official wedding photos from Caroline & Kaka’s wedding. Yes, all 83. You can thank me by leaving a comment if you feel like it. Getty images also hosted the great Pele exhibition in London earlier this summer, so it kinda fits.

PS: The link to the pics is now fixed!

Malcolm Gladwell podcasts

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Thanks to the Guardian – Malcolm Gladwell talks to Robert McCrum The writer of The Tipping Point and Blink in conversation at The Purcell Room, London. (mp3, 36m).

Right near the end I liked the bit when Malcolm says he doesn’t believing in planning and gets a big laugh from someone in the audience (no doubt with a five year plan..).

It’s your cake, you eat it

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The media are going bananas over the Government’s under-estimate of the number of east European immigrants..but we love the pretty Polish girls in our local coffee shops don’t we, hey? (And the Treasury can’t get enough of their contribution to the UK’s economic growth in 2005 & 2006).We want to have our cake, and eat it!

Taking a bite out of the world’s largest cake at the 2005 Las Vegas Centennial.

4th anniversary – 4 o’clock kick off

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I’ve just spent all my pocket money on two tickets to see Brazil vs Argentina, with Kaka down to play, on 3 September. It’s also a nice way to say thanks to Shirley on our 4th anniversary (1st meeting at the Barley Mow in Shoreditch on a Rolling Stones night). Plus a great way to see the new Arsenal stadium!
 

Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags

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I thought Clay Shirky’s Spring 2005 article of this name () was worth reading, if only to come to this choice section:

“It comes down ultimately to a question of philosophy. Does the world make sense or do we make sense of the world? If you believe the world makes sense, then anyone who tries to make sense of the world differently than you is presenting you with a situation that needs to be reconciled formally, because if you get it wrong, you’re getting it wrong about the real world.

“If, on the other hand, you believe that we make sense of the world, if we are, from a bunch of different points of view, applying some kind of sense to the world, then you don’t privilege one top level of sense-making over the other. What you do instead is you try to find ways that the individual sense-making can roll up to something which is of value in aggregate, but you do it without an ontological goal. You do it without a goal of explicitly getting to or even closely matching some theoretically perfect view of the world.”

Mark Jennett – Jazz

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A year and a half on from the healthy schools programme I came across ex-colleague Mark Jennett’s jazz entry on Sang Lang Productions. Looking good Mark. Spooky! 

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I have no streetcred, bye

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This oz teen’s youtube rap (RE: LonelyGirl: Lazydork is Better Than You) made me laugh (+ check the dig at Murdoch- I’m guessing that’s the media tycoon, not the A-team character); plus other respondees.


Chinese sculpture to do Dr Martin Luther King

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To my surprise now I find, a Chinese sculpture artist Lei Yikin has just been chosen for the memorial sculpture:

$40 million for the 40th anniversary

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In a few months time the plan is that work will start on a memorial to Dr Martin Luther King Jr in Washington DC, due to be completed by 2008 for the 40th anniversary of King’s death. The Washington, DC Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project will cost $100 million and to date just over