Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

Flickr is an excellent web site. I’m amazed by its elegance. That said, its search capabilities are too limited for my liking. What I wish is that I could use Google to search Flickr. You know how sometimes you can use Google to search within a web site? For example, if I type in to the Google box:

site:www.amazon.com fishing

Google is able to search Amazon effectively. Another perk is that I can use Google’s Advanced Operators to increase my ability to search.

This doesn’t work with Flickr. If I want to locate pictures that include the colors orange and pink but NOT the color blue, there is no way to do that. I can only use the advanced search page on Flickr, pull up the pink and blue pictures, then scan them to rule out blue ones.

I was complaining about this a few weeks ago, and Aaron (what with his big brain and endless desire to learn new things) decided to write a little code to accomplish this. It isn’t perfect yet, but it’s improving. The main limitations are the number of pictures it can process (if the inclusive tags are very common, then it can’t grab all of them) and the slow speed. It really does take a while, but I think that is mostly related to the things Aaron can’t control with code. It’s more a Flickr thing. Still, I can do the tag search I want, which is very groovy.

Eventually, maybe he can get it looking like this using this, and then we can stick ads on it and become multi-millionaires! That would be soooo glamorous!

It’s a wonder Aaron gets any work done. Me with all my big ideas. And I tend to have even more when there’s real work to do! (Like now.)

Give his Flickr search engine a try, see what you think, and get back to us! 

I found this fascinating. It’s rare that Americans get to see themselves from the outside. We live in such an American-centric world, not only here, but even when we travel. Our bubble seems to follow us wherever we go. Our borders are so far away from us. We almost never have to remember that there are other countries out there, and depending on where we live, we can almost forget other regions of the country. England is the size of Alabama. For me to drive from Memphis to Atlanta takes 7 hours. SEVEN HOURS, and I’m still basically in the same region of the country. No wonder we are so out of touch with the rest of the world, so out of touch that sometimes we forget it’s there!

I know most of you reading my blog are fearful of not savvy to RSS feeds, but MAN, you should be. I’m just saying. Bloglines is the coolest thing EVER. Seriously.

OK, now that’s out of the way. Drumroll please…

GMail has added RSS feeds as a new feature. Just add https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom to your RSS feed list. If you’re using Bloglines, click Add , then input that into the field. Usually, to read everything that’s current, I have to check three locations: Bloglines, GMail, and Tribe. Now that’s down to two. I don’t know how most of you actually remember to check blogs to see if they are current. What a pain! Really, learn about Bloglines. It will majorly simplify and speed up your surfing.

BTW, if you still don’t have GMail and you want it, let me know. I have TONS of invites. Many to spare.

‘Member how I was saying that there are certain food ingredients that, when included in a dish, mean I will be very likely to order it? As in "You had me at avocado." I was thinking that the same is true with music. If a song uses a Hammond organ, a slide guitar, or a great horn section, there’s a really good chance I will like it. There are certain types of voices and styles of guitar playing that fit the bill as well, although that’s harder to describe.

Note to self: Search out a list of great bands that use the Hammond organ. Why can I only think of the Doors, Medeski, Deep Purple,… My brain is tapped out right now. But the other day, I thought of loads. Maybe I should contact my uber-talented, much younger piano/organ prodigy cousin Patrick.

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Update: It’s been quiet here, but the people over at Ask MetaFilter have been chock full o’ suggestions.

So last weekend, Aaron and I decided to go to the Pink Palace Museum. I’d been years ago. It isn’t great, but that’s not the point of the story here. The point is that there is this completely disgusting exhibit at the museum right now. Maybe I’m overreacting, but blech.

OK, the exhibit is called CSI: Crime Scene Insects. You go in, and there are several little areas explaining different parts of why insects have a lot to do with forensics. At each station, there is a dead body painted on the floor with various demonstrations of how bugs are an important part of the decomposition process. The first one has a few fake morgue drawers with fake dead bodies in them. On the wall is an explanation of the various stages of decomposition: freshly dead, bloated, maggot-infested, etc. The names are prettier than that, but that’s basically the idea.

One of the floor pictures

Maybe it’s because of all the pictures I saw after the Tsunami. Maybe it’s because they found a dead body across the street in the park. Maybe it’s because this is Memphis, and there is a lot of crime. But I was really offended, and I’m not really one to get offended. Little kids were looking at these exhibits, standing on top of the parts of the floor with the photographs of the dead bodies on them. There was a woman there with a very young little girl (maybe 3) in her arms. The little girl was looking past her mother’s shoulder at us, and I kept thinking, “Why are you here, little girl? Why is this fun? Why is it cool?”

Needless to say, we left pretty quickly. Is the plan to appeal to what kids know? Sure, it’s interesting, but come on. So are many other things that are far less gruesome that teaching Memphis children how bugs help bodies to decompose. Who decided this was a good idea?!

If it were the same exhibit, but a little more advanced and for adults, I think it would be a pretty decent idea. But in Memphis, and with kids this young? I don’t know. Kids don’t even really have a concept of what death is yet… not like an adult. It just didn’t sit well with me at all.

Some links:

• The Official Site of the Exhibit
• An insane site that loads several auto-playing wave files at once. To watch them, close them all first, then play each one separately. (Did anyone even test to see if the site was working before loading it?!)
• A kid talks about what she learned at the exhibit.

I recommend not going!

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