Burningbird

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Stavros, weblogging’s only Wonder Chicken and his rather interesting MetaFilter buddies have found a new use for our poor misused and overly worked Google — they’re using it to send “secret” messages to each other. Usually the kind of messages you don’t want your mama to see. Or my mama for that matter.

How does it work? Simply encode your message into a Google search string, making sure to include some reference that will guarantee that your friends weblog rises to something approximating the surface, and then click on your weblogging friend’s webpage in the results page. Bammo! Instant message — well instant if your friend is reading the referrers at the time.

Of course, an email is more sure and AOL IM is faster — but there’s something deliciously warped about Google Instant Messaging that appeals. It’s a weblogging thing.

Note: This only works if your intended targeted weblogger checks referrers (a referrer is a web link that leads to your page). However, since most people have also started using the Referrer Thingy, this shouldn’t be a problem.

Update: This is very tricky. You have to use the right combination of words to pull up the target weblog, and then you have to form your search string carefully to make sure you get at least one result back. See Advanced Search. Between this and googlewhacking, webloggers must be the most precise Google searchers in the world.

<edit />: Hey! I received a secret message:

• burning bird hi shelley! is this flowbait?

Flow, baby. Flow.

Recovered from the Wayback machine.

I love music, all kinds of music — everything from Alanis Morissette to Lifehouse to Aerosmith to Sting to Billy Joel to the Beatles to Opera to Swing to classic rock and roll and on and on and on. Everything but disco and jazz that’s too heavy. You name it and unless it’s too extreme or bizarre, I’ll probably like it.

Tonight, there was one song I couldn’t get out of my mind — Rufus Wainright’s “Hallelujah” from, of all things, the movie Shrek. If you’ve seen the movie, you know the song I’m talking about — a beautiful melody that can bring tears to your eyes. Tonight I listened to it over and over again, while I did a little exploration.

I actually found a song about weblogging. Maybe you’ve seen it? It was almost a googlewhack, there’s only two links to it within Google. Part of it goes:

No one’s reading my web log.
No one cares about,
What I got to say, and I’m
Getting’ kind of discouraged.
Hope someone reads it all today.

I might just quit this here web log.
It’s too much trouble to,
Write it every day, and I’m
Getting kind of depressed, now,
Even more depressed than I was before.

Blowing the seeds off a dandelion, watching them get caught up in the wind and dance away, wondering where the seeds will land and if they’ll sprout.

• At

Mandy’s Place

I don’t want to take another step. I don’t want to feel like I’m on a moving walkway that will force me to take that step whether I want to or not. I just want to stay here. I’m in a comfortable place right now or it is becoming comfortable. I don’t want to go out and fight battles right now. I know what is ahead and I don’t want to face it yet but the walkway keeps moving and I keep moving with it. I might have to start walking backwards but I don’t think that will help because then I’ll trip and fall down and I’d be really unprepared for what will come. I could turn around and start running the other way but that option doesn’t get me anywhere because then I’ll have to keep running for the rest of my life. I can’t try to always swim upstream. Someday I’ll see that it is shorter just to swim all the way across the river.

• At

The Rock Pool

Back to school tomorrow.
I am torn between anticipating and dreading it. How I am ever going to get up at seven in the morning I do not know. How am I going to get used eating on a schedule again? Am I going to survive this year without getting majorly disillusioned with the whole schooling system and depressed. Again.

• At

Stephie’s Blogger

LOOK EVERYONE! Michelle signed my guestbook! MICHELLE IS THE BEST GUESTBOOK SIGNER EVER! So this entry is just for her.

At

A Secret Smile

I blubbed when I heard Marjan died. He held his own through the worst abuses and as soon as he felt loved, nurtured and respected again he was safe enough to die.

• At

fi-del-i-tie

Looking back from the perspective of 30 minutes later, I think I have a new verse for “Blowing in the Wind” – something about how long one poet can go. I won’t bore you with the rest – host makes nice comments; hairdresser reads; host lies nice comments…

• At

A Step into the Mind of an Insane Lunatic

Can you dream a wish so high as to see it touch the sky and on the eve let it slip into the sea and off to shores unknown and far until the morning comes and offers to loan reality for the dream and real for the unseen?

Down on the wind.

Beautiful music and a web of discovery — it doesn’t get much better than this, does it?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Bribes! Bribes! What’s this about bribes!

Dearest, the mugs were nothing more than party favors at a Blog Party. Best kind of party, too. I didn’t have to clean up after any drunks, or end up with someone reflecting a whole lot of bad taste or an advanced state of inebriation — or both.

Wait a sec…are you another Australian?

8:27pm

TX Meryl turned me on to a posting she knew I would like. Wrong. I LOVED it!

Gretchen Pirillo — whatever she says, is ditto for me. Double ditto. With fudge sauce. Tim Tams on the side. This posting made my evening!

Oh, and BTW, regarding having comments for weblogs: The only reason I write to this weblog is the joy of meeting all of you. I’ll trade 100 hits for one comment from you, my weblogging readers, any day, any minute, and second.

Now, excuse, I have to go think of a really good zinger back at Jonathon. Something realllly good.

6:22pm

I need to stop screwing around and get back to work, but wanted to drop in apologies for the slight down time earlier. I followed NJ Meryl’s suggestion about adding a little more variety to my comment counter and had the hardest time remembering that this was PHP, not Perl or Python. Crash and burn.

Speaking of coding: Garth are you playing around with someone’s closed source code? Tsk tsk tsk.

1:13pm

Per Jonathan – female orgasm pill. He thinks it will outsell viagra.

Sweet heart, whatever gives you the idea that we need a pill?

10:47am

And did you all notice that I now have a thought for the day, listed after the Blogicon items? Hmmm?

10:13am