As I have mentioned, I have been writing a lot lately, and my wrists and forearms have been suffering as a result. I learned a long time ago that the best thing you can do for your RSI is minimize the repretion, so I keep a plethora of input options available, from my precious Apple ergonomic keyboard (useable via Griffin’s iMate adb-to-USB adaptor) to a couple of graphics tablets to differing standard-layout keyboards.

One input methodology has always been avoided on my part, however, because of my early, extended exposure to optical character regognition systems (I helped develop a specialized data input system for art-auction results in the very early 90’s, pre-Windows). The input stsyem is not OCR-based, but observing how OCR developers evaluate and make claims of “99%” accuracy made me highly skeptical of similar systems’ marketing claims.

In OCR, a factual claim of 99% accuracy can be made when a 99 of 100 characters have been accurately recognized and rendered. Of course, this sentence contains about fifty-odd characters. So 99% accuracy can mean one error in every sentence or two. Which makes it less useful than one might hope.

As voice-recognition systems entered the market, I watched as similar claims of accuracy were made, and concluded that voce-rec had to overcome the same hurdles that OCR had yet to master.

Finally, with the the release of IBM’s ViaVoice sometime in 2000, and after hearing my father describe the reasonably good results he has experienced with Dragon’s line of voice-recognition dictation software, I concluded it was time to keep an eye out for a good price on voice-rec sofware.

Boy, did I find a good price. But that’s a separate entry.

So far, I’ve found ViaVoice to be reasonably effective. I have yet to really put it to work, but will certainly followup on this.

Since I’m down in the comix review trenches, I decided to add a category to the blog here which allows me to set up a direct link to the reviews i’m writing for Cinescape, and eventually elsewhere.

So for the next few days, you’ll be seeing a few more links added here. I currently have 25 pieces up over there, not all of them are either comics-oriented or publicly available; they have a premium/freebie content strategy over there so, naturally, I wish to respect that.

Additionally, I’ve had the odd piece rejected over there for one reason or another and this will provide an opportunity to publish them as well.

mmph – I see I have a layout problem to contend with, too. Oh well.

NATURALLY! No sooner do I attend the yoga school of mt-search in order to implement a near-satisfactory local sitesearch, prompted by the inexplicable failure of Google to add my data until an obscure, but frequently 30-day, time frame, than they reinstate the more rapid updates. It appears as if their results base for this site is now lagging only by a reasonable day.

Since my trust in Googlation has been sufficiently shaken, I will keep the local search in place.

I wonder if the interregnum of decent search results represented a quick-and-dirty Googlebomb filter among Google’s bird-brained search staff.

After some backflips and one system level workaround, my local sitesearch is now in place. It uses the Jay Allen developed mt-search, one of the first add ons developed for MT, well before version 2 and MySQL support were added.

Because of this, although mt-search is highly configurable, it’s very idiosyncratic, compared to add-ons created after Ben and Mena released their plug-in spec; additionally, Jay made some fundamental assumptions about how Movable Type’s CGI directories and access would be configured in relation to the local path to the actual directories one serves the blog per se from.

Finally, Jay has been attempting to move on from the product, and thus as MT continues to grow, one hopes that the Trotts see fit to rework search such that it’s as easy to set up as the rest of their material.

Becasue it’s pretty poky, I’ve left Google up as a search option for those of you, like me, that grit their teeth when a ‘puter takes more than 2.3 seconds to complete a task. You may not get entries from this month; but you could use the browser’s page search feature too, ya know.

I will be busy with various things this weekend (guests, tall ships, cooking) so I may post a bunch of make-up stuff later…

Thank you for your patience!

Why, it’s a brand-new Y2k voodoo doll, complete with pins!

Congratulations, Paul, now you can hold off that pesky Millennium Bug with ease as long as necessary! Please email shipping info as soon as is convenient, and we’ll move heaven and Earth to get your prize to you.

In July 25th’s En cas d’urgence gardez votre calme I acknowledged that I’d recieved my fabulous prize from Paul Frankenstein Light Industries by posting a shot of me in the shirt.

Blabbing on at length, I eventually proposed this site’s inaugural contest: who ever first identified all of the items in the photo (not counting your humble host) which had been previously featured in individual entries here would recieve a randomly drawn gimcrack from our household Big Bag o’ Mystery Stuff, a bag which was manufactured by none other than your pal and mine, Archie McPhee.

How fitting, then, that the winner of the contest should prove to be Paul Frankenstein (“Stine”, to his personal trainer and entourage). Mr. Frankenstein correctly identified the two items immediately behind my head as having been the subject of blog entries: the infamous KG Bobblehead and the less-well-beloved Blue King.

Oops! In looking into that last entry I realized that I’m overdue to provide my wife with a special prize of her own. So here it is:

http://www.phobe.com/otter/

Mr. Frankenstein, in the comments section on the entry which launched his winning observations, also felt that he recognized the “Redneck Rock” LP seen on the floor of my apartment in the lower right of the large picture. I assured him that it was doubtful, as the LP was an independent release originating in Vancuver, WA in the mid-seventies, and that I had found it in a free pile recently but been afraid to listen to it to date.

Rest assured, I’ll listen soon, and you’ll get to share the love, dear readers.

Today I passed the exam for a Washington state learner’s permit. I’ve never had a driver’s license. Wish me luck.

B!x appears to be only the second individual to independently discover my International Organization of Cynics, Ne’er-do-Wells, and Misanthropes website. I’ve not tooted my own horn in the past concerning the site becasue it’s kind of a one trick pony – you join, and then you can see your name displayed on a cool certificate, suitable for printing – and I want it to be a bit more brawny.

But what the hell?

Come on down! Maybe some more action will stimulate me to address the site’s deficiencies and limitations.

Google Information for Webmasters corrects my superstition regarding *.shtml pages, discussed in this recent post.

Fiction: Sites are not included in Google’s index if they use ASP (or some other non-html file-type.)

Fact: At Google, we are able to index most types of pages and files with very few exceptions. File types we are able to index include: pdf, asp, jsp, hdml, shtml, xml, cfml, doc, xls, ppt, rtf, wks, lwp, wri.

Howsomever, searches via my nice, shiny new google site search are NOT turning up recent results. Results for individual entries show up through June 3.

There has been some recent discussion, from January through just about early June, concerning Googlebombing and similar results of Google’s preference for well-linked, frequently updated pages in their search results. At the tail end of the discussin came some speculation that perhaps Google would be forced to rejigger their searchengine in order to skew away from bloggers.

What’s really interesting to me about this sudden google-invisibility is that I’ve had and used the mike.whybark.com domain for years now; I’ve always noticed googlebot in my logs on a regular basis.

Suddenly, it’s gone.

So here’s the 19-cent question: have other toilers at Acme Bloggers, Inc. or Universal Blog Provisioners, Ltd., noticed this sudden cessation of Google love?

—

And an update: I repaired my malfunctioning PHP forms, and everything should be hunky-dory, except that I know I used a deprecated form because the current usage lacks sufficient sample code and discussion to date out in the great singing beyond of 00’s and 01’s.

So now it’s off to iron the curtains!