I just found out about another reason to switch browsers to the Gecko family (I use Phoenix personally): keyword searching.

Imagine you want to use a search engine, say Google, (or any site that provides a search facility) to quickly search for information on horses. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just type “google horses” into your address bar and have it give you all the search results? Well, you can. And here’s how to do it:

1. Go to the site of your choice (we’ll use google), and enter a simple keyword (we’ll be using horses). You’ll get something like “http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=horses” back as a URL string.
2. Remove the search term (horses) from the URL and replace it with “%s” (with the quotations) to get something like “http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%s“. Bookmark this string.
3. Go into “Manage Bookmarks” and look at the properties for the bookmark you just created. In keywords, add “Google”.
4. Go back to your browser and type “Google horses”, and you’ll get your search results.

Very simple, yet extremely clever. I’ve already created a few bookmarks that you can use (just add keywords): Feedster, Google, and Dictionary.com.

Remember, you should be able to do this with just about any site with a search engine, so try it out a lot. Unless you use Internet Explorer. In which case, upgrade and then try it out.

Technique via Surf*Mind*Musings

I’ve made a few more changes to the site. Firstly, I finally got round to writing a new About page. Rather than just being a horrible mixture of previous about pages (themselves mixtures of earlier about pages), it’s an entirely original one. Hooray for not being lazy for ten minutes!

I also added a Code section to the site. This will archive various scripts (including the PHP challenge entries) and programs; for public consumption.

So, the BBC are testing the nation again. First time, they wanted to know our IQ (I did well), then our knowledge of current events and now… relationships. From objective subjects (IQ tests must be objective to count for anything) to something that is so subjective as to be viewed differently by everyone. Great thing to test.

Next up on the BBC’s schehdule is Favourite Things: you have to pick your favourite film out of a selection of 5 and are then castrated for getting it “wrong”. If only Stalin had thought of this.

My hand hurts. A lot. The muscles that connect my fingers are dead, the tendons aren’t letting me grip anymore and holding anything with any mass is damn near impossible. Twitchy-twitchy, it goes.

Why doesn’t it work, you ask? What foul fate befell my hand? What savagery mutilated it so? I’ll tell you: bowling. Today, I went bowling for four and a half hours. Now, that might not seem like an excess to some people (Americans who are obsessed with the sport), but to someone who has played only once in the last year it’s a lot.

It was, however, a very good 8 games. I managed to win 3 of those even though the machine was randomly giving us all extra pins (that we never knocked down) and taking some away. The scores were consistently over 100 (which is alright for where I live – not many people bowl regularly), and the atmosphere was competitive enough (without getting remotely serious) to make it seem like a real victory when winning.

Despite the loss of my hand for the next few days, I think I might go bowling more often. It’s fun, and cheaper than I remembered. And there’s always those crazy ball-polishing machines to keep people entertained.

I finally got around to integrating the fantastic Textile into Finetto (the CMS for this site). Thanks to Dean Allen for letting me use it.

Incidentally, this will be the first public post I make since the integration so if anything goes wrong, ignore all that praise.