I was bored here in my student teaching seminar, and I was very curious looking at the gmail storage calculator. It increases at an unbelievably slow rate, out to the 6th or 7th decimal place. I wanted to figure out just how much it is really increasing.

I did a simple experiment. I measured how long it took for the counter to increase .0001 megabytes, which was 26 seconds. I then found the number of seconds required for 1 megabyte: 260,000. Translated into hours, that is 72.2 hours. Into days that is almost 3 exactly. That’s right, storage is increasing at the startling rate of 1 mb per 3 days. That seems super wimpy. I then found the percent increase over an entire year and it came out to a 5% increase, which is a little more respectable sounding.

I’m a nerdy math teacher now, so I do dorky math problems for fun! Any problems with my experiment Denise? I’m making the assumption that the rate of increase is perfectly constant, which it may not be. The number of subscribers also must factor into Google’s equation at some point. I do think it’s interesting that it comes out to a 5% per year increase…sounds like a company policy. Maybe that boils down to Joe Blow installing a new terabyte blah blah blah server every month. I’ll let Angelo tackle that one.

I saw this article over at google news about the whole Muslim cartoon issue. It’s written by a US hater, but I think it’s important to know your enemy. There were several statements that completely baffle me.

"It is, after all, Muslims who are overwhelmingly at the receiving end of Western violence." – Of course, gotta watch out for those US and Israeli suicide bombers. I’m sure people will point at the Iraq war, but the burden of proof was on Saddam, not us. Also, don’t forget the money he paid suicide bombers.

"…the controversy reveals a dangerous and virulent anti-Muslim racism that will almost certainly return to haunt us." – If by haunt us you mean "Muslims are going to continue suicide bombing," then you are correct.

"The debate on the cartoons tells us less about fanatic Muslims than about how Europe is choosing to deal with its ‘Muslim question.’" – Europe prints a cartoon, Muslims burn down embassies. Which tells you more?

"The hysterical tone of some free speech defenders comparing official apologies for the cartoons to a dangerous form of appeasement thus betrays a fantastic sense of delusion." – When people respond to something they don’t like with violence and demand an apology, I think the granting of that apology would in fact constitute appeasement. What the heck a "fantastic sense of delusion" is I have no idea.

You can read the article for yourself, but it amazes me how easily he brushes aside the violent acts being commited by Muslims both now in response to the cartoons, and also in the last 5-10 years.

We’re learning how to use NET MEETING! HAHAHA. This stupid program hasn’t been upgraded since 2000. There are tons of better programs out there like google talk. But most important of all, what the heck does this have to do with education technology? You are correct, nothing! Then we did mail merge, boring. He just said "Your gas bill, they do it with mail merge." HAHA.

I brought some math catalogs from work. I’ve got $200 to spend on stuff for my classroom, so I’m looking for stuff I could use. There are some cool things that can really help kids grasp different concepts. There are integer chips to visually show kids adding positives and negatives, overhead calculators, fun games, and a cool poster of Einstein sticking his tongue out. I’m going to buy a ton of small things so I can get lots! Yaaaay!

After a two-year hiatus Stacie and I have once again bought Disneyland season passes. Stacie loves the mouse, so as a belated birthday present we got passes yesterday. We went with her parents for the day and saw all the cool Christmas decorations they put up each year. Below are a few pictures.

That was my first time on Astro Blasters. I did some looking around on Google and found a guy that broke 150k. I plan on emailing our scores every game. I will reach Level 9! Anyone have pictures of their high scores?

Every now and then I like to examine my rankings on various search engines. I search for the word "blarg" and will only accept a link to my main page at http://www.theblarg.com.

                      Current     Old         Older
Google:             #9         #904       #16  
Yahoo:             #6           #40        #130
MSN:               #21*        #10           -
Ask Jeeves:       #9           #9            -
Altavista:          #6          #40        #115
Lycos:              #9           #8          #14
Dogpile:            #3            -              -

Couple interesting developments. MSN lists me at #21, but it’s not a link to the main page. I’m now listed in the top 10 on every other search engine on my list, a definite bonus to leaving blogspot. A new search engine I’ve included is Dogpile, mainly because they list me at #3. I’ve also decided that for the most part a high ranking for the search "blarg" is fairly pointless, but fun to track. I guess that is the statistician in me.

PS – And if anyone knows how to do tabs or columns, that would be nice.

Back in June I posted my current search engine rankings. I thought it was time to take a look and see how some minor changes have affected my rankings. The only valid results I will accept are www.theblarg.com or nathan118.blogspot.com. Old results in ( ).

Google: #904 (#16)
Yahoo: #40 (#130)
MSN: #10 (-)
Ask Jeeves: #9 (-)
Altavista: #40 (#115)
Lycos: #8 (#14)

Google has some issues. They list my OLD burn address at #26, which doesn’t even lead to a valid webpage anymore, but they don’t list my current one at all. I added msn and ask jeeves, which I think are more popular than altavista and lycos. I have three top 10 ranks, so that’s pretty cool.

Last dumb thing…google doesn’t index any of the individual pages on my site. That means I get absolutely zero click throughs from google. I’ve done some reading and it sounds like google is completely botching blogger sites, so who knows what is up. I’ll check back in a couple months and see where the rankings are then!

Update: Google also does something called Page Ranking, which is a number from 1 – 10. The higher the number, the higher “rank” your page is. I’m at 3 right now with a cool graphic at the right. Turns out google does list my site…at #904 according to Google Rankings.

A simple search for “blarg” does not bring my website up on some search engines, so I’ve set out to change that. I just added the word blarg to my “description” meta tag to improve my rankings, and several search engines rank my OLD site higher than the current, so I will set the old one up to forward people and see what that does.

Below are the current rankings on several popular search engines. After a couple weeks we can look back and see if they have changed! For a true ranking the search engine must list either www.theblarg.com OR nathan118.blogspot.com.The starred** listings point to the original www.theburn.com/nathan118.

Google: #16 (www.theblarg.com)
Yahoo: #130 (nathan118.blogspot.com) and #24**
Altavista: #115 (nathan118.blogspot.com) and #20**
Lycos: #14

Both Yahoo and Altavista confound me. They list my super old website and even things like my gallery address before my actual website. Ok, changes are made, now to wait.

…I am an expert on a few subjects. My site counter can also tell me where people were “referred” from, or what website they were at that led them to mine. Often times I see searches people have made, usually on yahoo.com. Frequent searches that lead people to my site are for “starburst commercial” and “cutting dog nails.” Yahoo is great and will find specific posts, but google is retarded and doesn’t do that.