27 February

Google is no longer a search engine

This is old news, but it’s a useful demonstration of what absolute garbage Google has become as a search engine. It is now an ad engine.

The scenario: I need to set up WordPress Multisite. I’ve done this several times, but since I only have to do the initial setup once every 2-3 years, it’s not something I have memorized. So… I google it! That’s what you do in the 21st century.

So, I went to Google and typed:

'WordPress Multisite installation' Google search

Now, the real solution to this that a smart search engine, which was designed for maximum usefulness as a search engine, would be to provide a link to the official WordPress documentation on the topic.

Is that what it returned? Of course not, silly! It returned four ads, which, depending on your window size, could take up the entire screen:

Google ad results
But then, the first “organic” result should be the official documentation, right?

Wrong!

The first organic result is a page from the dreadful wpbeginner.com, which is overflowing with the most verbose, poorly written, surface-level articles that are designed not to be genuinely useful but to ensure that Google’s search algorithm places them exactly where it did in these results.

Yes, of course, I did click the wpbeginner.com link, because I always do, and then I get annoyed with myself for falling into their trap. And multilingualpress.org is not much better… and also always near the top of the results.

Then, of course, before we finally get to the page I really was looking for, Google makes one last ditch effort to keep me from going where I want to go, by inserting its “People also ask” block, with quick answers scraped from real websites, designed specifically to keep you from actually venturing any deeper than Google’s search results page itself.

Thanks Google for doing your part to make the Internet suck.

P.S. What do you think happened when I clicked “I’m Feeling Lucky”?

How to get (Mac) Safari to stop showing Favorites and Siri Suggestions panel when clicking the address bar

Not only do I never use it, I scarcely ever even noticed it before, but in recent versions of Safari on the Mac, whenever you click the address bar, a large panel pops out under it, displaying Favorites and Siri Suggestions.

Like I said, I scarcely noticed it before, but I did notice it the other day when I was doing a screen sharing session with a client. Luckily I don’t have anything embarrassing in my browsing history for it to reveal, but my recent activity did convince Siri that I would be extremely interested in links pertaining to the Minnesota Twins. Which I was not at that particular time.

But then it occurred to me… I never — I mean never — click on anything in that panel, but it does add to the visual “noise” of my daily browsing activities. So there’s got to be a way to get rid of it.

Yes, there is. I hunted around for it, so you don’t have to.

First, let’s turn off Siri Suggestions. This is an insidious pathogen that has metastasized throughout macOS, so if you’re like me and never use anything Siri-related, let’s kill it everywhere.

Open up System Preferences and click on Siri

Then in the Siri preferences, click the Siri Suggestions and Privacy button.

I went through the full list of apps and unchecked all the boxes, but at the very least you’ll want to uncheck Show Siri Suggestions in App under Safari:

Now if you go to Safari and click on the address bar, you’ll see Siri Suggestions is gone, but the panel with Favorites still shows up. You can get rid of it entirely by going to Safari > Preferences and clicking the Search tab. (Which… uh… is that really the way its icon is supposed to look???)

Uncheck Show Favorites under Smart Search Field… and maybe everything else. Then put on your tinfoil hat, sit back, and relax!

I’m scrobbling

Last.fmWhat is scrobbling, you ask? Here’s your answer.

Now this probably seems like exactly the kind of privacy invasion that would make me totally paranoid, and you’re right. I’ve known about Last.fm for years, but I’ve avoided it like the plague, mainly because I was afraid it was either a trick by the RIAA to collect data on music pirates (which I shouldn’t really worry about, because 99% of my music is legit, and I don’t use P2P networks) or it was spyware.

Well, OK, it is spyware in a sense, I suppose, but I realize now that it’s a bit different if you know you’re being spied on, and you have total control over what the spy can see.

Mainly, I have wanted for ages to have a way to automatically display on my website what music I’ve been listening to, and with Last.fm’s scrobbling, and an RSS feed, it is now possible. So you will note that in the right column on all of my pages, in addition to my Twitter feed, I now also have “What I’m Listening To.” Dangling participles aside, it’s exactly what I had been hoping for.

I also have all of my recent (original) music up on Last.fm, including free downloads. Check it out!

And finally, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge Last.fm for WordPress, the excellent WordPress plugin I’m using for the feat of syndication you see on these pages. I futzed for an hour or so last night with various RSS feed plugins for WordPress, was disappointed with them all, and then I decided to just check and see if someone had written a plugin for this specific purpose. This plugin is fantastic — it does exactly what I wanted, and is a complete no-brainer to set up. Nice!

Microsoft! You’ve done it again

IE6, to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.Drat.

As I was assembling the current site redesign, I took extra care to ensure that this time around it would be compatible with IE6, as much as a I detest it. I got rid of all of the 24-bit transparent PNGs, opting instead for minor design alterations that could rely instead upon 8-bit PNGs, non-transparent 24-bit PNGs or JPEGs. I even tested the code for the navbar to ensure that it was properly floated and that the drop-down menus worked.

But then I must have gotten into a fine level of finessing the placement of certain objects or… something. At any rate, I’ve done something in the past few days that, now that I bother to check, apparently breaks the navbar in IE6.

I’ll have to futz some more and try to undo whatever I did (and hope it isn’t something that’s critical to the perfect layout in every other browser out there). In the meantime, my apologies to my one regular IE6 visitor. (You know who you are.) Oh well, at least I have a regular visitor.

Another new song in the works…

I’m working on another song for my new CD. This one’s in the bluesy/funky vein, with a working title of “Bluesy Groovesy.” (Hey, it’s only a working title.)

I realized while listening back to this that it’s actually somewhat reminiscent of latter-day Red Hot Chili Peppers. With a sucky bass player. :P

This is just the basic track right now… it definitely needs something over the top… to, uh… put it over the top.

Update March 2, 2007: I’m now up to version 0.6; more details are on the CD page. Still needs some keyboards and maybe some sax or other instruments but I’m waiting for my MIDI controller keyboard to arrive (which should be today if the snow doesn’t keep the FedEx truck away again… they gave up on trying to make the delivery yesterday; Tom Hanks would not be happy).

Note: To conserve server space, I’m clearing out older versions of the Hors d’Oeuvreture songs. Visit the album page to hear the latest available version of each track!