Its a bit silly, I know, but I've always been rather jealous of this kind of thing to be perfectly honest:
Kill Ten Rats: Recent Searches
In which Zubon uses Arcane Sorceries to magically divine what people have been typing into Google, to lead themselves to KTR. Its a popular format and often very amusing, (and/or worrying), but I've never quite had the wherewithal to actually do my own chicken-entrail readings successfully, and get out a list of strange things people type into Google, which lead them here.
For those with a technical bent, the sometimes elucidating ramblings of Van Hemlock, are brought to you using a largely unmodified installation of the SubText blog engine, itself a variant on the older .Text blog engine, neither of which I've seen anyone else use, so I'm either way out on the cutting edge, or doing something very wrong indeed. Lately, I've been using Windows Live Writer (Beta) to do the actual...er...writing, which comes with a built-in spellchecker that helps tidy up my stream of conscious 'rant-given-flesh' style somewhat, but which alas can do nothing to help my consistent and arbitrary substitution of 'from' and 'form', and, my, shocking, over-reliance, on, commas!
Nifty as these tools are, none of them give me the helpful search keyword summary that blogging is really all about, for me anyway; a kind of linguistic Roulette, played with Google as a ball. About a month ago though, my IT Support Hobgoblins added some kind of very clever Google-Based Ju-Ju to this place. I suspect this was mostly to see how much could be made by a sudden and shameless IPO or similar sale to some gold-selling portal network. Fortunately for all...er...hundred of you lucky loyal regular readers, we're worth nothing at all, so its business as usual!
Anyway, aside from a much needed reality check, the subsequent reports also had the Big List of Silly Search Results! Yay! All of which means I get to steal someone else's format today, and not have to write anything original! Double Yay!
Here's the top five from the last, and so far only month on record:
#1 - "van hemlock" - Well, makes sense I guess; moving on!
#2 - "doing hair games" - Bleh. So much for "cutting edge MMO journalist". This is probably about this post; a whimsical week in post-CU, pre-NGE Star Wars: Galaxies, as an Image Designer. Variants of this also accounted for #8 and #23. Got to go where the audience is; look out for a large unwieldy overanalysis of Barbie Online coming soon! Second Life is also a game where 'doing hair' is possible, although tends to involve more woodwork and texturing, than scissors and rollers. I do hope the EVE Online 'Ambulation' thing has hairdressing...that would just be super! Van Hemlock Sasoon - Virtual Stylist! Mind you, this one is a Google 1st Place entry; got to take the wins where you can get them! Turns out I am the Number One Authority on the Internet, on Hair Doing Games! Go me!
#3 - "eve online exploration" - Now this is more like it. Mostly in reference to this post; a look at the Exploration content added to EVE earlier this year. I was quite impressed with it all as I recall, and understand that its changed again since I was last there, becoming even more integral to daily life out in the void. Looking forward to returning to EVE again soon actually - probably when the Super Spankey "Revelations 3" Graphical Upgrade release goes in. Word is, my current corp now lives in low-sec, and Battlecruisers V has probably finished by now. Excitement!
#4 - "puzzle pirates" - In reference to some kind things I wrote about it in a long distant Op. Cheapseats run. I still quite like it, but rarely play it these days. I do not have any dubs - shoo! I recently gave 'Bang! Howdy!' a go, Three Rings more recent squad-based shooter java-game thing, but that turned out to be not nearly as good, with essentially just the one type of game replayed over and over, versus Puzzle Pirates' many different types of game to flit between. Not nearly as replayable or captivating, I thought.
#5 - "importance of advertising" - A victim of my own bizarre naming convention here I think (The Burden of OCD...); here is the guilty post, and a great many Marketing Professionals were probably made quite cross by it's lack of useful advice, pointers or 'Step 2: ???' tips. It is in fact me rambling about this invention I came up with in Second Life, and the subsequent attempts to sell it. I'm still not going to say what it is, but as it happened, advertising wasn't that important at all, and in fact it continues to do well, mostly via word of mouth; friends seeing one at a friend's SL place, tracking it back to me by referral and buying one too. Turns out a good idea can sell itself! It did well enough for me to be able to cash out the pretend Lindenmoney, and buy myself a moderately decent PC with it all, neatly undermining all the scorn I previously had for the world, platform, metaverse, whatever the hell SL actually is this week.
And here are some of the better One-Hit Wonders, in no particular order:
"hemlock life" - Ask me about my competitive full cover accident plan deals! Free clock-radio if you sign today!
"shadowbane why are newbie areas so empty" - Weeeeeeell, that would be because no-one new is joining the game, typically.
"damage types vs drones" - Frankly, any. For PvP, the trouble isn't doing the damage, its hitting them in the first place. For Rogue Drone Missions, looks like EM might be the best bet, but I've always found that Thermal is a safe enough bet for most things. Just use lots of Thermal!
"best weapon selection planetside" - Ahh...everyone has their idea of this. Me, I'd humbly suggest that the Bolt Driver is the weapon of a Gentleman, but a good cheap allrounder loadout would be Rexo, Rocklet Rifle, Empire MA, REK and Plasma Grenade Handhelds, plus ammo for those, including box of frags for the Rocklet, and a few first aid kits. Something for every eventuality there.
"attack teh interwebs" - I'm with you, Citizen! I've often thought my life might have gone very differently if the wretched thing didn't exist.
"free furniture sl" - Coming right up! Press Build, create a Cube primitive. Set Hollow to 95, Hole Type to Square. Path Cut to 0.125 and 0.875. Roll 90 degrees so the newly open face is pointing downward. Stretch lengthways to 2m, widthways to 1m, and heightways to about 0.5m. Voila! A free coffee table! Texture to suit taste!
"after getting 10,000 kurzick points what do you do?" - Go to House Zu Heltzer and talk to Count Zu Heltzer. He'll then send you off on the next bit of the story; The Eternal Grove. You even get to keep the 10,000 points to spend on Amber Chunks for Armour! Do not spend them *before* you've seen the Count, or you have to start over again. 'Befriending the Kurzicks' Primary Quest should give you a green star to steer by!
"design someones hair game" - Okay, okay...joke over...very funny...
"entropia sweat always fails" - I firmly believe it is supposed to. That's how they make their money - frustration!
"games doing hair" - No, really....enough!
"fur suit sellers" - Well, if you're talking about SL, try that in the Search -> Classifieds listing in-world. If you're talking about RL, I'd suggest Football Mascot Supplies - its much the same thing.
"gorean myspace layout" - I'm thinking lots of flame gifs, stonework wallpaper, and a whole lot of low-res and badly cropped Google Image Search'd Boris Vallejo. Probably a bad midi loop of "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana for good measure.
"how long do uo need to wait after full meal for exercise" - Oh, days...sometimes even months, just to be on the safe side.
"how to get armors from remains of sahlahja" - Any good at Pac Man? No really!
"indiana jones survival camp challenges" - I have no idea what this one is about, but hope the poor chap managed to escape this so called "survival camp" and contact the authorities.
"is vista a bit of a disappointment?" - Like much in life; Yes, but not quite disappointing enough to actually do anything about!
"make online a naked lord of the rings girl" - We make Sexy Time; is verrrr niiiice!
"mime artist listing" - Ahhh...Number Two, good... And when The List is complete, distribute it globally in readiness for Operation: "Mimepurge"
"online belly expansion game" - On second thoughts, maybe the whole 'doing hair games' wasn't so bad, I guess...
"pre-nge galaxies" - *sob*...
"psychedelic gnome layouts" - What? Where? I'm up for this! WoW? EQ2? EQ? Help me out here! I spent a number of months 'roleplaying' a one-gnome Mariachi band in EQ1 once upon a time...ah...happy times... "Ha-Ha-Haaa, He-He-Heee..."
"shield tank dominix eve" - Noooooooooo! I've blown up Dominix and I was doing it properly! Count the slots man! The most important piece of equipment on a Shield Tanked Dominix, is Platinum Insurance!
"tattoo statistics graphs" - 89% of all bicep tattoos feature the word 'Mother', or variant, but only 34% of those are Ironic!
"vista planetside" - A lot of these. I've not tried it since I got Vista, but first step would be to go to the actual file location (NOT a shortcut), and right-click 'Run as Administrator'. Seems to fix a lot of troubles with Vista gaming, I've noticed.
"why pick kurzick" - A number of reasons: You're a Goth, RL; You're German, RL; You like Petrified Forests; Some of the armour is quite neat, but mostly, Kurzicks have enough quests to actually get to 10,000 without repeating yourself, or resorting to PvP. Grr!
"world of warcraft sobs uncontrollably" - Quite an image, that...
"what happens to the hemlock when it is no longer useful" - Err...it puts the lotion in the basket or it gets the hose again? Actually quite unnerving, this one...
"games on doing hair" - grrr...
And the winner in the 'Avg Time On Site' category; a single visitor who got here via "mmo tales", and stayed for a staggering 3h, 49m, reading 65 pages of my ramblings. Whoever you are, I salute your fortitude! You're why I keep at this stuff!
Certainly don't plan on making a habit of this kind of post, but the big amusing search-term list is very compelling reading, if not writing. I tag everybody else, to either set some analytics going, or list up some humorous search keywords if they already have some! Meme me this, meme me that...
More typical garglings tomorrow.