Mark Wilson's Blog

Blog stuff!

I was debating putting an entry up here about some political stuff earlier today. However, while I think I could manage to write entertaining stuff about the latest fracas on Capitol Hill, that's really not what I want this blog to be for. Maybe eventually, if I think I can sneak in a little post here or there, but not just yet.

I also thought about putting up something about being approached to aid someone in cheating for a course here at Case for the first time yesterday. That was a bit of a disappointment. On the other hand, everyone knows that cheating happens occasionally, so I guess I shouldn't be too downbeat; I made it nearly three years without encountering any of it.

However, one thing that I've been considering is a search-keyphrase roundup. A lately-defunct blog that I used to read would do occasional lists of some of the more humorous or offbeat search phrases that had turned the site up on search engines, and I usually enjoyed reading about them, so here goes:

• wilson mark kind am -- Similar to the wilson mark grand am, presumably? Into the "complete gibberish" category with you!
• how to build biorobots -- My advice is to see a venture capitalist or look into research universities. You'll need mechanical engineers, biologists, electrical engineers, perhaps the odd computer scientist, and lots of money. Or you could raid the kitchen cabinet for toothpicks and Elmer's glue.
• animating cockroach -- This makes sense from one angle but not from another. Who on earth is searching for "animating cockroach?" Is someone adapting Kafka for the big screen? I suppose the logical presumption is that it's somebody else doing what I'm doing, but there can't be that many of us.
• purple line animation -- So, any chance you were looking for this? (Popup-prone peril on that link.) Or perhaps you wanted Musings on sacred geometry and/or alchemy? No? Oh well.
• forward kinematics cockroach full -- Is your cockroach half full or half empty?
• how to write a screensaver -- You'll be wanting some knowledge of a graphics API, a copy of Visual C++, and this.
• mark wilson montana -- Nonononononono. Mark Wilson West Virginia.

In other metanews, I fixed the stylesheet so that text sizes the same way in IE and Firefox and added a link so you can e-mail me if you want to. Joy reigns supreme.

Edit: Okay, I haven't gotten the e-mail address. To avoid spam in my real e-mail account, I'm setting up another Gmail account... The problem is that "Wilson," as was pointed out by a friend, is the 8th most popular last name in the United States, and there seem to be a LOT of Wilsons out there naming their kids "Mark" and some middle name starting with "A." Still working out a combination that hasn't already been done here.