‘Sentiment mining’ – i.e. trying to gauge the Public’s attitude towards an institution, product, firm (etc. etc.) though automatic analysis of Social Media posts (etc. etc.) is now considered an essential tool for market researchers and ‘reputation managers’. But there are problems. One of which is sarcasm. Given its prevalence, serious errors can be introduced […]

Vi Hart, adept at mathematics, music, and explaining things, made this video that explains the point (and the lack of point, too) of 12-tone music:

BabyWasher, the automatic dirty-diaper-changing invention, honored by the 2019 Ig Nobel Prize for engineering, now has a name, and is now undergoing intense development. You can follow the progress by visiting the inventor’s new web site, BabyWashers.com.

I find myself incredibly frustrated with Adobe products again. I don’t know why it’s so hard to make sorting and tagging software that just works, although I suppose having over 465,000 photos may stretch the limits of any software. But … Continue reading →

I feel like I owe the internet an update, but what could I possibly say to cover the craziness that has been the past two months? This Coronavirus thing was a thing. I had a Thailand trip planned for 3 … Continue reading →

Readers of Language Log will certainly be aware of Tocharian, but when I began my international research project on the Tarim Basin mummies in 1991, very few people — only a tiny handful of esoteric researchers — had ever heard of the Tocharians and their language since they went extinct more than a millennium ago, […]

Ewan Spence, "Apple Leak Reveals Radical New MacBook Pro", Forbes 5/4/2020: Apple may finally be getting round to updating the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Intel's tenth generation processors. The good news is that the MacOS powered laptop going to get a bucketload of extra power.[…] This laptop is loaded to bear in terms of memory […]

Today's xkcd illustrates why topic modeling can be tricky, for people as well as for machines: The mouseover title: "As the 'exotic animals in homemade aprons hosting baking shows' YouTube craze reached its peak in March 2020, Andrew Cuomo announced he was replacing the Statue of Liberty with a bronze pangolin in a chef's hat." […]

You guys must give a lot of parties because you all have really good ideas!  I can hardly wait to see what Spec and Skeeter choose to do for the celebration party! Tra and Skeeter and I hung out on Friday with some of you.  It was so great to see everyone. I was expecting Spec would show up […]

Guy 1: Cleaning gutters with a leaf blower. Guy 2: Holding him up with JUMPER CABLES.

Finally! The RAZR flip phone becomes useful!

What's a kludge? Is it like a monkey wrench or something?

Oh man, this is great! It's perfect for... seeing texts the second they come in? Showing off your cell phone? Watching videos in a horrid orientation? Wait a minute, why is this useful again?

~NSHA

I wonder if the fact that it was St. Patrick's Day had anything to do with this solution.

One of my favorite bands from the 90's is Powerman 5000. My favorite song of theirs is Drop The Bombshell, a really fast paced song that I thought would be a perfit fit to the Terminator movies

This is the last video I created using Windows Movie Maker before switching over to Adobe Premier Pro CS3. It's the first Terminator fan video I created where I used all four Terminator movies

A lot of people didn't like this movie because of the religious overtones throughout the movie. I'm not one who's particularly religious but I thought this was a brillian movie and a welcome change to the post apocalyptic genre

I've seen a few tribute videos to this classic western (One of the best as far as I'm concerned) done to Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead or Alive. For this one I did a twist

Having a wireless connection can be a great thing to have: you have fewer wires spilling all over the place for you to trip over, or for your dog to chew on when you're not looking. And it allows you to set up your computer anywhere instead of having it fixed close your phone cable outlet

When this website was focused on post apocalyptic survival one of the topics I mentioned was how to create a “bug out bag”. These are ready made emergency packs that you would grab when staying in your home was not an option. A bug out bag or emergency bag can be used for more then the possible collapse of civilization as we know it. In the event of a natural disaster, or if your stranded in the middle of nowhere, having an emergency supply of necessities can save your life.

Now that you know what essentials you need to pack in your bug out bag, we can now pack it. But packing your bug out bag isn’t just stuffing it in a big ball and hoping for the best. You need to pack it in an organized manner that allows you to find things quickly and know exactly where they are, and allow you to easily keep track of your bug out bag’s inventory when it’s being stored. As a former soldier I can’t stress the importance of keeping things organized and neat because when your adrenaline is going and your in a fight or flight state you won’t be thinking rationally. So here’s how you pack your bug out bag effectively.

Well, it had to come up at some point, so I may as well tackle it as my very first post. Tipping is intrinsic to hospitality. In places like Las Vegas or other tourist destinations it can get a little out of hand (I can hail my own cab, thank you very much) but bartenders lie in a grey area. The amount of people who say “Well, you only open my beer bottle, where’s the skill in that?” is staggering. I don’t come to your office job and say, “You type up reports. Any idiot can type!” I’ll explain it to those of you that don’t or haven’t worked in the service industry.

YouTube and other video sharing sites like Vimeo for example are great places to get traffic to your website or blog. But there only as effective as the traffic those video receive, makes sense right. Obviously if your vides are getting next to no hits, your website will see little to no increase in traffic, which in a word sucks. So for this post I'm going to go over some simple steps you can use if your new to YouTube to help get your videos noticed. In the next post I'll cover some ways you can take those videos and use them to get traffic back to your site.

In my last post I showed some simple ways you can use to help get your videos more views and subscribers. Now let's talk about getting some of that traffic over to your website or blog. Being that YouTube is the most used search engine in the world right now, and showing no signs of slowing down, this is something you want to tap into.

It seems there are literally thousands of sites that promise to promote your website or blog…..but for a price. The best known one is Google Adwords where you pay so many cents per click depending on the competition of the Keywords you want top rankings in. And while this will get your website to the top page in Google not everyone has the budget to fork out hundreds of dollars in advertising. But you can promote your site for free using some of these methods. Most of these are going to take time to build up before you start noticing huge amounts of traffic, but they will work if your willing to put the time in.

When you submit a website to search engines, most search engines automatically crawl websites looking for links and popularity of the sites they crawl to determine how they list on search engine results, one site that doesn’t is DMOZ. Also known as the Open Directory Project or ODP, this directory is entirely monitored by people (volunteer editors), this means that you have to submit your site and wait for somebody to physically look at your site. This process can take weeks, months, or even in a few cases years, so why bother with this site at all?

Using twitter is a great way to promote your website or blog and increase traffic. If your new to twitter and never used it before it works like this. You get 140 characters to write a short statement or advertisement depending on what you’re using the site for. Most people tweet simple things like there not feeling well or changes in their social life. All that’s fine but you want to use it to promote your website, so here are some simple things to optimize your tweets to get the maximum traffic return.

Google keyword tool is a great free seo tool you can use to find keywords for your site. Without keywords or key phrases your site won’t be found by users, and you won’t be indexed by the search engines. It’s also important that you pick the right keywords that match your sites description. Often these are overlooked, leaving people frustrated that their sites aren’t getting the hits they would like. To use Google keyword tool to fink keywords, here’s what you do.

Backlinks are one of the keys when it comes to how to promote your website. More backlinks equals more traffic to your website, and more traffic to your website equals better search engine results which equal even more traffic to your website….so you can never have enough backlinks.

In my last post I showed some of the ways that will get your link request shot down. For this post I’m going to show you how you can get those backlinks using some simple link building strategies to get backlinks and increase traffic to your website. Google Page Rank Before you start looking to get backlinks to your site what’s your page rank? A lot of sites owners don’t want links from sites that don’t have page rank. They want links from sites that will in time help boost their own traffic and a site with low or no page rank isn’t appealing compared to a site with a rank of 5 for example. Google also judges a site based on the number of high ranking pages that link back to that site, more high ranking pages equals more popular. To boost your page rank concentrate building links from link directories such as Digg, Reddit, and Stumbleupon. There are dozens of these sites and most have page ranks of 6 and up. Also add content to your site on a regular basis and remember to ping your site whenever you add new content to alert the search engines of changes to get indexed faster..............

When it comes to adding content to your site one effective method is to write a list post. Why should you write a list post? Because a list post provides an easy to read format that allows your vistors to quickly scan content in an easy to follow format. And while well written original content with useful information will always be better at keeping your readers coming back, writing list posts will get them in the door. Here’s some of the reasons why you should write a list post.

Traffic we all want it, so how do you get it? You’ve picked your topic, and you got your site up so how do you get visitors to your site. Getting website traffic can be frustrating at the very least, a major agonizing pain at the worst. Here are some tips on how to get website traffic.

When it comes to SEO optimization for your website or blog Google provides many free seo tools and resources. And while many will argue about different techniques at building traffic, using these Google SEO tools listed below will help you analyze your site, fix problems, and help get your website the traffic it deserves.

First off what is a favicon? If you look at the browser bar on this webpage just before the sites URL address is a small picture. When it comes to helping make your website or blog stand out there a huge benefit. They allow your readers to find your web pages easily if they have many browser windows and tabs open at once. If a visitor bookmarks your site in their favourites list the standard “e” icon is replaced by your picture helping your link stand out from the rest so they can return to visit. And they can also be used to help brand your site. Who would have thought a tiny 16x16 picture could help that much.

If you’re new to creating websites you’ve probably heard of Google’s sandbox even though Google denies that it exists. What this means is that a site will site for an unknown length of time waiting to get indexed. Traditionally this can take weeks or even months. Frankly who the hell wants to wait up to 6 months to get indexed by Google, that’s far too long.

So you’ve decided to make a bug out bag, you’ve picked all the items you know will be the most effective. But what about the bug out bag itself? Selecting the right pack is just as important as what you put inside it, after all this will probably be on your back for a good length of time. The last thing you want is a bag that either isn’t strong enough to hold the weight of your equipment, and doesn’t fit you properly causing pain and discomfort. Here are some things to look for when selecting the proper bug out bag for your emergency supplies. The first thing you want to do before you buy anything is know what your budget is. Check online and store flyers to see what brands they have for sale and compare prices. Other sources to investigate are websites such as Ebay, Craigslist, or Kijiji, to see if there’s some second hand bags that are in good shape. Also check with places like Amazon.com and U.S Calvary (U.S Calvary deals with military and police clothing and equipment) And of course look for local military surplus stores. Now you want to decide what type of bug out bag you want to use. All bags can be broken down into three categories.

One of the corner stones of SEO is to get back links from other related sites, talk to anyone who knows even a hint of what search engine optimization is about and they’ll all tell you this. It’s what makes the internet….well the internet. But when it comes to linking to sites one you have to be especially careful of are sites that are considered “bad neighbourhood sites”

When it comes to getting your site indexed and noticed by search engines everyone unless you’re absolutely brand new to the internet knows that in order to get noticed you need other sites linking back to yours. One method you might not be aware of is to use a link wheel. So What is a link wheel? Unlike the traditional back link or reciprocal links from other sites, a link wheel is a collection of web 2.0 sites that you create. Link wheels can range in size from a small handful to several dozen, and each site has relevant content to either your main website or blog, or to a specific page you’re trying to promote within your main site. In short your link sites are being used to give your website more authority and trust for a specific topic. This in tern gives you a better SERP or search engine ranking position. It also helps drive targeted traffic to your website.

When it comes to getting people to your site one of the ways you can do this is through social bookmaking sites. And while these all give your site excellent one way back links, there is one site that you should sign up to first to get more traffic, and that site is Stumbleupon. Why you should use Stumbleupon to get more traffic If you’re not familiar with Stumbleupon this is how it works for your site to get more traffic. Instead of using keywords like how you would for a search engine, visitors select categories that interest them such as videos, music, or computers to name a couple examples. Once they pick their categories and click on the stumble button their randomly taken to a site, article, or video that fits that category. They can then decided if the like or dislike that site by giving it thumbs up or down. The more thumbs up your site gets the more hits it will get because it will show up more frequently when people stumble that category. Visitors to your site can also write reviews and share it with other users or add a sites link to their list of favourite sites giving you even more exposure, back links, and that oh so coveted traffic..........

Google Keyword Tool and Google Traffic Estimator, both of which are free tools provided by Google to help you analyze and find keywords that you can use to help promote your website and drive targeted traffic to it. And while these tools are very similar (there pages look almost identical) there are some key differences between the two free tools.

If you’ve spent some time on Youtube you’ve probably heard of their partner program, and that you can make money from your videos through revenue sharing. This means that you put ads on your videos and get paid for them. Sounds good right but what do you need to do to be a partner and is it worth it? How to become a YouTube partner, to partner with YouTube you have to meet some criteria before they’ll consider you for a partnership. There are four things that YouTube analyzes before they accept or reject your application, they are 1. Subscribers And Friends 2. Video Views 3. Daily Video View Count 4. Copyrighted content

How to get your YouTube videos to auto play on your website Depending on your site having your videos auto play can help your site stand out. When it comes to embedding your videos from YouTube however there’s no feature to set up your video to auto play. It’s important to remember before you enable auto play on your videos that doing so can actually harm your site. Many people don’t like videos or music playing as soon as they open a page, especially if there’s no way to turn it off that’s easy to spot. Look at your site to see if this is something that you want to do.

Unless you live under a rock you know well enough about the devastation that recently happened in Japan and just how fast a devastating earthquake can tear things apart. If you live in an area prone to earthquakes your emergency preparedness plan must encompass earthquake survival. So how do you prepare for an earthquake? In this first of 2 posts on earthquake survival I’ll show you what you can do to better prepare your home.

In my last post I listed some ways you can prepare your home for an earthquake. In this post I’ll show you some things you can do to prepare yourself and family for one. How you prepare for an earthquake will vary depending on where you live, how much space you have, how big your family is, and last but not least what your budget is.

If you’re trying to promote your website or blog one way to go about this is to use Twitter. In a very short time you can reach thousands of people quickly resulting in traffic back to your site. But just firing out tweets at random and hoping for the best isn’t enough if you’re serious about promoting your site. You need to know when to tweet, and that means knowing what the best times to tweet are.

Every SEO and web expert out there and their dog will tell you how important Google page rank is to your site and how it can help your site rank well in search engine listings. One thing you might not have heard about is trust rank. It’s important to understand what this seo tool is, and to start making changes now because this is the direction Google is looking at taking.