Google Autofill: Poking and Prodding

Monday, 27 December 2010 @ 22:46 by raymond

 

Do you feel lucky punk... well, do ya? 

Sitting down tonight, while watching some Monday Night Football with the family, I got a little bored of the Saints beating Atlanta and decided to boot-up a web browser to search for random things online.  I use www.google.com as my default homepage and simply started typing in the first two letters of a word with the autofill automatically pulling up suggested sites on the fly.  This isn't news, this is a cool technology implemented on their front page for the past several months.  However, for some reason tonight, I was curious:  if I simply typed in one alphanumeric character into the search bar, what site would be first on the list?  So... After clearing my cache and confirming within two separate browsers, the alphanumeric characters pulled up the following websites: 

Alphabet 

  • a - www.amazon.com
  • b - www.bestbuy.com
  • c - www.craigslist.com
  • d - dictionary.reference.com
  • e - www.ebay.com
  • f - www.facebook.com
  • g - mail.google.com/mail
  • h - www.hotmail.com
  • i - www.imdb.com
  • j - www.jcpenney.com
  • k - www.kmart.com
  • l - www.lowes.com
  • m - www.mapquest.com
  • n - www.netflix.com
  • o - www.overstock.com
  • p - www.pandora.com
  • q - www.brainyquote.com (not a mistake - quote is what kicked this one up)
  • r - www.rpi.edu
  • s - www.sefcu.com
  • t - www.target.com
  • u - www.ups.com
  • v - www.verizonwireless.com
  • w - www.weather.com
  • x - www.xbox.com
  • y - www.yahoo.com
  • z - www.zappos.com 
Numbers
  • 1 - wbab.com
  • 2 - www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=2011
  • 3 - www.nbc.com/30-rock
  • 4 - www.4chan.org
  • 5 - www.foxsearchlight.com/500daysofsummer
  • 6 - www.677prime.com
  • 7 - www.7-zip.org
  • 8 - www.wgy.com
  • 9 - www.latino963.com
  • 0 - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(number)
For those who want to partake in looking at this themselves, I did the search on December 27, 2010, between 9:30PM and 10:00PM.  The search was completed in Scotia, New York 12302 on Road Runner's network.  I used a Mac using OSX's 10.5.8, Safari 5 and Firefox 3.
 
I'm curious what alphanumeric characters pull up for people.  Some sites are definitely localized due to Google's complex advertising/search engine; it maybe obvious which ones are, however, it would be a cool to confirm! 

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One quarter down and a new job...

Tuesday, 23 November 2010 @ 14:01 by raymond
 
Corinn:  AAAAAAAAA!!!  Is this a dream or reality?!?!?! 
 
Wow.  I cannot believe how fast everything flew by for my first quarter at RIT!  11 weeks felt like a long way originally, but that went by in a blink of an eye.  During this time, I got to know my classmates fairly well and even found time to hang out with them!  I even got to meet a couple cool people in the working world like Zhu Wen (Chinese Film Director), Leigh Rubins (Cartoon Artist - http://www.rubescartoons.com/), Paul Gasek (Executive Producer from Discovery who is known for his shows Deadliest Catch, Discovering Ardi, How the Universe Works, and many more) as well as Jon Shih (Technical Director at DreamWorks Animation).  My weight had managed to stay around the same which is a good thing considering my eating habits changed significantly as soon as I stepped through the RIT threshold.  I’m hoping not to gain the dreaded “freshman” 10, 15, 20 or whatever pounds it is over the next several years.

Talking about gaining weight, Thanksgiving this year was probably the most complicated planning we’ve had to do in McBe Holiday history.  I miss hosting T-day back in Vermont, but it looks like I’ll be cooking again this year (yay!) and for a lot less people.  Corinn’s family will probably be joining us as in previous years and a classmate or two will do the same.  I’m looking forward to hitting up Rochester’s Public Market tomorrow for some fresh goodies to prepare for Thursday’s feast!  However, I got to be careful as I’m not cooking for an army, so I have to be conscious of what to pick up and how much to make.  Again, about a 1/3 of what I normally prepare.  I’m just glad RIT gave the students this week off to enjoy with family and friends, especially after a long, stressful stint of sleepless nights working on projects for classes.

Talking about fruits of labor, I’ve been posting much of my stuff on Youtube!  If you’re intrigued and are interested to see some short animations and films, visit this link: http://www.youtube.com/user/spunkyddog.  I’ve been too busy lately to update my portfolio site (http://www.spunkyddog.com), but hopefully I can do that soon.  I usually link my stuff from Youtube which is why these videos show up here before they hit my website.  I also have a bunch of other photos and posters to post that I did in the past few months.  Maybe I can make that a priority within the next several days.
 
 
Sometimes, the home space was taken up by my need to finish projects on time.
 
 
Levitating tripods: A work of magic and a necessity at times. 
 
 
Working on putting together a scratch film for the class. 

Oh, and I got straight A’s during my first quarter at RIT!  I did not think that this was achievable, but now I’m starting to worry about the work for the second quarter as all experienced students say it only gets more difficult.  Frankly, 17 credits was pushing it.  I’m taking 18 this upcoming quarter and that’s only because the student body complained (with good reason) that we didn’t want to pay for the extra 1 credit of the 19 credits RIT wanted us to take.  So the school simply reduced one class from 4 credits to 3 credits, but this only is cosmetic, as we’ll still need to do 4 credits worth of work.  God help me.  I’m thinking straight A’s this upcoming quarter will be next to impossible… Either that or I achieve them by not sleeping at all.

In other news, Corinn finished up work at Geva, had a great experience, and then moved into another job and has been there for little over 5 weeks already!  She’s working at Constellation Brands (http://www.cbrands.com/), the largest national and international wine maker and distributor.  Needless to say, she’s enjoying the job.  The perks on the side of getting discounted wines or even free bottles from time to time has also been enjoyable.  However, we’re not big drinkers (or at least not yet) and so wine in our cupboards will sit for a while before enjoyed.  We might soon change that as we have SEVERAL CASES of wine sitting in many various rooms of our house.  Not to mention what we had when we moved, which wasn’t much to begin with.  Yes, it’s a little crazy and silly.  We did break down and bought ourselves a 21 bottle EdgeStar wine fridge so that many of our good wines don’t go bad or spoil.

Regardless of the perks, I’m proud of Corinn for not letting this move get the best of her.  It was a rough transition for both of us, and she never gave up pursuing something that would be right for her.  This is also the first job where she’ll have business cards, so I’ll have to figure out how to appropriately celebrate this achievement in her life.  It’s a big move from theatre, but it’s an important move she’s made, as it’ll continue to challenge her.  She works really enjoys a good challenge… That’s probably why she married me.  ;o)

Despite the crazy schedules, I’ve been making it an effort to be with Corinn at night at the very least.  This move has shifted my view on life quite greatly.  In three years time, I’m unsure where we’ll be.  In some ways I’m worried if I shot myself in the foot for not pursuing a more technical degree.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not regretting my choice for pursuing animation as it always was my dream to work for companies like Squaresoft (SquareEnix now), Blizzard, Pixar, DreamWorks, Disney, etc.  Actually, it always was my dream as a kid to become an animator… The tech side of things followed as a means of bypassing what others never supported while I grew up.  The lit path of this dream only came when I met Tim Comolli, a teacher at South Burlington High School, and was strengthened by Ann DeMarle, a professor at Champlain College.  I had no backing or support for my dream until I met these two important mentors in my life.

I still enjoy being the big Tech Geek that I am.  It helped guide me through some interesting choices I made for jobs and I got a lot out of supporting people and communities who needed help on a daily basis with technology and needs for solutions.  It was definitely time though to pursue an art path.  I’m just hoping that this path leads to some good things at the end of three years.  I’m constantly wondering too what my thesis will become.  I thought I had to enter into RIT knowing what I will be working on and during this past quarter, the idea changed at least three times.  Maybe I could look into the tech side of animation and do something with that…?  Installations?  Not sure if the major supports this, but maybe it can happen.  I guess I should just ride the wave for now and see where it takes me.
 
Literally labeling each individual frame... what a daunting task.  

I’m curious when the next time I blog will be?  Or maybe when we hear from Corinn?  Stay tuned!  :o)

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Wheelies!

Sunday, 4 April 2010 @ 21:43 by corinn

Easter Day dawned to everyone getting to sleep until whenever they wanted and an excellent breakfast waiting for us.  My mom had out done herself with french toast casserole, eggs, bacon, fruit and more Easter candy than any of us should have consumed!  After breakfast, we were back outside to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather, which was sunny and fantastic.

Ray, against his and my better judgement, decided he wanted to learn how to do wheelies, a trick my uncle was showing us the day before.  So Uncle Ed taught my husband how to ride the ATV on just the back wheels across the lawn.....

Bestill my beating heart.... I could only sort of watch....

He was exceedingly proud of himself and enjoyed it thoroughly! 

We spent most of the day just hanging out and chatting, which was great.  There was an large Easter feast to compete with breakfast and all the candy we had been eating...

 (my cousin Irene eats her peep in a civilized fashion)

.... and then everyone packed up to head home in the late afternoon!

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Photo of the Day: Road Trip

Friday, 2 April 2010 @ 23:55 by corinn

So here is Ray... late in the evening by the interior light of our car.

 

Tonight, after work, we drove down to my parents house where we will be spending Easter weekend.  We didn't manage to get out of Burlington as planned.... say, before 4:30.  I got stuck at work a bit, then had to run home for some things, and Ray got stuck in the office too.  By the time we were finally "on the road" we realized we needed to eat dinner before we got too far out of Burlington.  We stopped at Marco's in Shelburne, and I had some pizza while Ray opted for a salad.  We knew if we waited much longer, we'd be out in the middle of no where and totally starving.  Ray has had a super long week, so I did the driving, and he even caught a quick cat nap on the way down.  Now we have arrived (we are the first ones, the rest of the famn damily comes tomorrow) we have big plans to SLEEP!

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Photo of the Day: Taters

Wednesday, 17 March 2010 @ 22:08 by corinn

Even though today is St. Patrick's Day, it's a Wednesday, which means it's a Jazzercise day.  Jami, Tony and I went and worked our buns off, and then came back to Casa de McBe for the modern take on the traditional St. Patrick's Day meal.  Instead of regular corned beef and cabbage, Ray did a roast in the oven and made a carrot and cabbage slaw.  Ray and ladies loved it, and I was SUPER happy that the house didn't smell like cabbage... my least favorite part of St. Patricks Day.

 

Ray also did my favorite St. Patrick's Day thing... he made the mashed potatoes green!  Yeah!  Growing up, my mom would always made green foods for St. Patrick's Day: green milk, green shamrock shaped biscuts, etc.  Ray was so sweet to carry on the tradition.  Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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