Today I would like to announce the availability of the GrabPERF Search Performance Index.

The goal of the index is to provide performance metrics for a group of search providers around the world. The results are based on a direct HTTP GET request being made for the search results page by the GrabPERF Agent.

Currently only live data is available. In the near future, archival results on a week by week basis will be made available.

If there is a search provider that has been missed, please contact the GrabPERF team.

Since November 5 2004 (Geez! Have I been blogging that long?), I have written 1,744 posts (this is 1,745). So, as you can well imagine, I can’t remember whats in most of them. I know which ones are the most popular and what’s in those, but on the whole, I couldn’t tell you what’s in most of the posts I have put up in nearly four years.

So it always astounds me when someone goes to one the more obscure posts. Astounds me to the point that I have to go to the site and find out what I said.

The long tail meets the absent-minded.

Landed in the US on a one-day business trip today. The family is enjoying Christmas with the grandparents in Victoria, BC, and I need to work remotely to cover the time.

I flew into Seattle for a one-day trip, with my brand-new Advanced Parole documents. Figured it would be speedy.

90 minutes later, they let someone who has gone through a number of security checks and other body scans into the US.

Have to wonder what people from other countries have to go through.

Technorati Tags: Green Card, Advanced Parole, immigration, strip search, body cavity

Ok, we are back from Wasaga Beach. We crossed the border in a ridiculously easy manner — when you have a work visa, you always expect the body-cavity search treatment — and made a run for Syracuse. We picked a hotel out of the air and lucked out with the Comfort Inn near the Syracuse Airport. They said they were dog-friendly and they weren’t kidding. more hotels need to learn how to treat people who travel with pets from this place.

If you are on the New York State Thruway, and need to crash with your puppy, make it to Syracuse and this place will treat you like a normal person, not someone who wants to destroy their hotel.

Tags: Comfort Inn, Syracuse, travel, pets, dogs

Every day, the Digg search measurement times explode.

Maybe they need to look at that code again…

Technorati Tags: Digg, Digg.com, GrabPERF, Web+performance

Have I told you why I love my wife?

For Christmas, she bought me The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.

Swooooonnn!

Oh, and there were some other presents as well.

Technorati Tags: Calvin+and+Hobbes, calvin, hobbes, calvin+hobbes

Now that I am back on US soil, I have some tips for surviving your trip to London.

1. GSM Phones. If you are one of the millions in the United States who subscribe to a CDMA service (Verizon, Sprint, etc.), invest a few bucks on eBay and buy a low-end, unlocked, tri-band GSM phone. I have used GSM for years, and the unlocked phones give you an amazing advantage — you buy a pay-as-you-go SIM card once you arrive.

   In the UK, incoming phone calls are free. If you have a half-decent office phone system, you should be able to remotely forward your desk phone to your UK number and voila! You have a local number that folks in the US can always reach you at.

2. OYSTER CARD! If you plan to travel anywhere on the London Public Transit system, buy an Oyster card. Same concept as the pay-as-you-go SIM card. And you’re never fussing with change or daily passes for the tube, DLR or busses.
3. Saline Nasal Spray. This seems like a bit in the “too much information” category, but trust me on this one. London’s atmosphere makes New York seem like an untouched Alpine pasture. After one day there, your sinuses will feel and look like the inside of a pool filter after a dust storm. A simple nasal spray takes of this, and often provides a somewhat scary indication of what man does to the urban environment he lives in.

   If you don’t want to pack one with you, you can buy some truly awesome stuff at any Boots — Sterimar. What makes this stuff uniqe is that it is aresol powered. Unlike the wussy atomisers we use over here, this stuff is freakin’ jet-propelled — if it can’t blast the crap out, it’s likely brains.

4. Look to the right. Yeah, we all know that the Brits drive on the other side of the road, but many an American has been nearly killed in the first twelve hours on the ground by using their instincts and not their brains. I am in this group.

   Thankfully, the Brits provide nice warning labels at most crosswalks; look down, and they will tell you which direction to look in to avoid becoming a hood ornament for a Bentley.

5. Change Wallet. Dear lord; you will need one of these or you will blow out every pocket you have. The Brits still use a lot of cash, and like the rest of the world, the lower denominations of their currency are coins, not bills. A solid change wallet is key.
6. Take the red-eye. You will search online and find a multitude of strategies for dealing with jet-lag. I have a simple one — make sure your flight takes you overnight so that you land at Heathrow/Gatwick/Stansted/Dublin/Luton first thing in the morning. For folks on the East Coast or Central Canada, this means flights between 19:00 and 22:00 Eastern. For West Coast folks, it’s a 11-12 hour flight and an eight-hour time change, and Heathrow opens at 07:00, so 11:00-14:00 Pacific is a good range.

These are the top six I can think of rigt now. Comment on your strategies if you have them.

I have this search set up to deliver the things that Google’s Blogsearch finds out in the blogosphere containing Moleskine in it. Sometimes, it delivers some real gems, like Joe Lavin’s The Condensed Guide to Looking Like a Writer (found via Professor Barnhardt’s Journal).

The take-away quote from this article?

At the very least, costing $15 a pop, the Moleskine can certainly put the “starving” back into starving artist.

Read it. It’s a reminder that having the tools doesn’t make the owner an artist.

Technorati Tags: Joe+Lavin, Moleskine, Humor, Satire, Starving+Artist, Professor+Barnhardt

July 25, 2006 at 19:48:24 GMT.

That’s the last time that the Technorati bot indexed my blog.

I am confused, because of all the sites out there, my blog should be pretty easy for Technorati to index — this server, as well as the GrabPERF servers is hosted in Technorati’s racks. Theoretically, the bot should be able to index my blog without leaving the building.

I posted something this morning, and IceRocket, Google Blogsearch, Ask.com Blog Search all have it.

I am wondering if anyone else is noticing this.

Technorati Tags: Technorati, Tags, Indexing, bots, search, blog+search

The Flickr tag search for Moleskine is always good for a laugh or two.

I think that this fair lass from my ancestral homeland has a larger issue with Moleskines than I do.

“They are not all here believe me…just sifting through stuff to pack…or not to pack….”

She also has her own Moleskine pool.

Technorati Tags: Moleskine, Flickr, 12+step+program