Adventures with Google docs

Last week I had a presentation to do on my proposal for my major project. My initial plan was to use the facilities in the IOCT to create a simple presentation. Due to using Linux, I don't have PowerPoint and I didn't want the hassle of making something using OpenOffice or KPresenter and either having it not work in PowerPoint, or having to bring my laptop to the IOCT. Unfortunately, the IOCT was busy for the whole day, so I made for the library. On the way there, I came up with the idea that of trying out Google Docs, as this would solve any future problems I might have along these lines.

I created a simple presentation and while it doesn't have any kind of fancy animations or effects, it does everything I want. You can find it on my major project development blog.

After this good experience, I decided to use Google docs once more. This time I used it for my research essay on moderation systems in online communities. I worked on it at home and then I was able to simply go into the IOCT and download my document. I then cleaned it up a bit in Word (double-line spacing, page numbers, etc) and printed it off.

The final problem that Google docs has allowed me to solve is that I wanted to put my essay I did for my Digital Cultures module on here. I didn't want to simply post it as a blog post, as that would be obscenely long. I also couldn't attach it as a file as Blogger doesn't offer that service. That left me with only the option of having it hosted somewhere else. Thanks to Google docs, I'm able to simply publish it to the web and provide a link.

While I don't plan to use Google docs for everything I do in the future, it's still a very useful tool and will hopefully only get better.

Edgar Allen's search history

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 44: Early today, I found an image (linked as it's pretty long) on Fukung (a site where people post random funny images) featuring the keyword suggestions given when beginnings of questions are put into Google's experimental search (such as "is it easy to...", "why am I...", and "aren't you..."). When "why is..." is entered, it comes up with "why is a raven like a writing desk?" (as shown in the picture).

Congratulations and calculations

First things first, congratulations to Jess for getting her Doctorate this morning and becoming Dr. Laccetti! (as well as still being the most famous human Jess on Google)

I was looking yesterday at how many posts I'd put up here and how many Alice sightings I've made, so I did some calculating. As of yesterday's post:

25 posts with 26 Alice sightings over 93 days. Making 0.27 posts per day, 0.28 sightings per day, and 1.04 sightings per post.

Aren't statistics fun?

Alice in popular culture sighting no. 27: In Mr. Goh comic #140, Mr. Goh mixes up two parts of the Wonderland story. That of the Caterpillar (and his mushroom) and the "drink me" bottles.

I'm Batman

From Slashdot:

"Online Nicknames Google better than Real?"

I know mine certainly do. Well, obviously other than Alice, as that's rather common. It definitely doesn't help that there's a footballer with my name, as well as a character from family affairs. Hell, there's at least two people with the same name as me in Leicester, alone, according to Facebook...

I'm definitely nowhere near as high as Jess.