To learn is to fuel wonder. I was late to learn to read, or so I am told. Perhaps I didn't see the use of it. All this changed when my parents introduced me to the public library. As a child, the concept amazed me. Row upon row of books, arranged by category, free for me to explore. The non-fiction section had a strong hold on me, and I grew to love the dewy decimal system [Dewy Decimal Categories]. I have a vivid store of memories with libraries as their setting.

Although I am still drawn to books and libraries, the Internet now provides much of the fuel for my sense of wonder. The following is a description of how I search and discover on the Net.

Simple Definitions

Answers.com provides a dictionary definition for single words, thesaurus listings, along with encyclopedic information (if available) gathered from various Internet sources, (including Wikipedia).

The easiest way to search answers.com is two query the word directly through the URL. For example, I would enter http://answers.com/who into the location bar of my web browser, to query the definition of the word "who". (Side note: Grammar nerds should read the who/whom usage note provided with the definition.)

Google allows you to search for definitions from around the Web. Enter the following into Google:

define:language

The returned definitions may vary greatly, but the results are often enlightening.

Encyclopedic Information

Taken from a previous post: Wikipedia is a "free encyclopedia made for and by the collective intelligence of the citizens of the Internet."

I've recently started using the Simple English Wikipedia in conjunction with the standard version. "[The] Simple English [Wikipidea] uses fewer words and easier grammar than the original English Wikipedia." The entries and clear, concise and written in Dunstan Ramsay's "Plain Style". ;)

Broad Topic Net Searches

Google is still king when it comes to general Internet searching. Reference the Google Cheat Sheet for more precise results. I rely on a mix of quotations and + and - symbols to narrow down my searches. Try to imagine the page you wish to find. Then, search for words and quotations present on this imagined page.

If you are looking for a specific category of information, try exploring DMOZ, the open directory project. It's reminiscent of an older yahoo, but like Wikipedia it's maintained by volunteers from around the world.

Noosphere Snapshots

The Internet is forever in a state of flux. Anyone familiar with the concept of Memes will be aware of the impact the Net has had on the transmission of cultural information. The Internet is a digital extension of the Noosphere [ChefQuix's thoughts on the Noosphere]. Much like the toughts processed by our brains, information and ideas on the Internet can be forgotten, archived, or reinforced through conscious use/retrival.

Picture the Net as external memory for humanity. Through our use of the Net, we add our individual consciousness to the consciousness of the whole. There are various tools that can be used to view a snapshot of our external consciousness.

For example, we can use blogdex to see what WE -a digital extension of the Royal We- are currently thinking about. As I write this, WE seemed to be grieving the loss of Hunter S. Thomspon. (OUR thoughts will no doubt have shifted by the time I post this entry tomorrow.)

For a glimpse of what information WE currently find fascinating, we can turn to the world of social bookmarking. Gone are the days when you saved your favorite sites locally on your browser. Tools like del.icio.us, Spurl, Furl, and Stumble Upon allow us to share our Internet finds with the rest of the commune. A visit to Spiderous reveals which pages are currently peaking OUR interest.

Because these tools allow us to categorize and tag our findings, we can narrow our snapshot to a specific category. By entering http://del.icio.us/tag/politics into our location bar, we can see how the Net is reacting to our present (or at times past) political climate. Likewise, http://del.icio.us/tag/music or http://del.icio.us/tag/philosophy can provide hours of quality reading material. (Quality, in the sense that at least one person within the Internet commune found the page worth bookmarking. The number of users who saved the page can be seen below the link.)

A visual example of information tagging can be seen over at Flickr: Flickr Red, Flickr Depressing, Flickr Abstract. Vimeo has started a similar service for video clips.

I use Spurl to save my bookmarks, which in turns submits them to del.icio.us [My del.icio.us]. The best part of Spurling a link, is that not only is the link itself saved, but a copy of the page is also archived. This opens up the possibility to search the WWWW (Worthwhile World Wide Web). No longer must I waste time hunting through the commercial sites and the information pollution returned by a regular web search. To search Spurl is to search an archive of information pre-sorted by the commune, information ranked by praise. (Cory Doctorow's free book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, explores the idea of applying praise ranking to people.)

***

Ok. Enough chatter. Here are some links I've recently discovered (aka MLP):

The Game:

• To know The Game is to play the game. One can never stop playing.


• To think of The Game is to lose The Game. Therefore, the object of the game is to forget that it exists.


• When one loses the game, one must announce that one has lost the game to everyone present (usually by saying "Darn! I just lost the game!").


• An optional (and often accepted) variant of the game: When a game loss is announced, all other players have an approximately 30 minute grace period which they may use to again forget about the game.

How very zen.

Mindfulness In Plain English

An online Font Editor via the new Font Leech Blog.

Hunt Roman - The Birth of A Type.

Learning to cook? How to cut anything, with instructions for lefties (handed, not political) too.

A Two-Worlds Model for Consciousness

Translation, the debate continues.

Colour Rules of Thumb

Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read

Long time blogger Jason Kottke has decided to pursue his blog as a full time job.

Congratulations are in order. Shannon has scored a job as a waitress at Hard Rock Amsterdam.

My mom and sister spent the past weekend in Paris, while my dad continued to scour the streets for treasure (read: garbage). His finds to date include, an orange leather couch, a few chairs, a collection of wooden frames, a small wooden cabinet, and a tram driver's button-up shirt unopened in a plastic case. He was especially pleased with the shirt. :)

I am now gainfully employed. I was hired by InFocus Europe as a technical support agent, and began working last Wednesday. The inFocus offices are located in the Amsterdam World Trade Centre, a ten minute walk from home. InFocus is a multi-lingual company. At one point today I heard Dutch, English, French, German, Norwegian, and Italian simultaneously. An interesting sonic treat.

The computer repair business is going well. The most successful means of advertisment has been the classified ad in the Amsterdam Weekly. Most of the work involves removing viruses and spyware, but I also helped spruce up the Natucin website. Their original page was done in Flash, and was therefore 'invisible' to most search engines.

Shannon had an interview yesterday at the five-star hotel Krasnapolsky. I have also submitted her CV to inFocus for a customer service position.

We live in the Oud-Zuid (Old South), a suburban neighborhood near the Amsterdam Olympic stadium. Within walking distance there is a grocery store, a fruit and veggie market, a butcher, a baker (I have yet to find the candlestick maker), a video rental shop, three of four pubs, along with a handful of cafes and coffeeshops. On Saturday night we discovered Vakzuid, a club one block away from our apartment. What more could we ask for?

We have been planning our trip to the Oxygene festival in Dublin. I just bought our plane tickets over the Net. The festival takes place on the 9th and 10th of July. We will be leaving on the 7th and returning to Amsterdam on the 12th. The U2 concert is on the 13th, so it'll be a busy music week.

Speaking of music, we are going to see the Chemical Brothers next Thursday, and I just found out that both Jack Johnson and Sage Francis are coming to A'dam.

My parents, my sister, and her boyfriend Moses spent the weekend in Germany. Moses has just opened a flavoured popcorn business in Frankfurt. It appears to be a success. It's always inspiring to see a great idea make the journey from mind to reality.

This was a fairly fractured entry. Forgive me, my neck hurts.

We bought tickets to see U2 in Amsterdam on July 13th. Because Shannon is a member of U2.com, we were able to buy these tickets as part of an Internet pre-sale. This was our second pre-sale attempt, the first round of pre-sale tickets were available on Jan 25th.

During the first round, tickets for the UK and Belgium concerts were available. Brussels is very close to Amsterdam, and the date suited us, so we attempted to buy tickets for the Belgium concert. Mass traffic events like this are never a pretty sight on the Net. Both the U2.com and Ticketmaster sites were hit hard. After receiving multiple time-out/error pages, our pre-sale authorization code was rejected. We were not alone.

Today, armed with a new code, we accessed the second round of the pre-sale. The code was accepted, but after we entered our credit card info we were presented with a page that instructed us to buy the tickets over the phone, an impossible feat as this was an Internet pre-sale. ARG! After some frustrated clicking and reloading we were finally brought to a confirmation screen, and supplied with a purchase reference code.

Our problems did not end there. During the purchase process we created a Ticketmaster account under Shannon's name. When it came time to enter the credit card info, we noticed that Shannon's card-type, an American Express, was not accepted. We used my Mastercard but were not given the option to enter the name of the card holder. Would Mastercard deny access to a charge bearing Shannon's name? A quick call to the credit card company calmed our fears; everything was copasetic on their end of the transaction.

Our final predicament: The tickets are being sent to the billing address on of the Credit Card. This is my parents address in Canada. Our tickets for the Oxegen festival are also being sent there, for the same reason. Only time will tell if this is troublesome.

For the curious: We got general admission, stand-up-and-jump-around at-the-front-of-the-stage tickets.

***

Last Wednesday I met my first computer repair customer. Friday night, I met another, and yesterday, a third. All problems were solved, (1: Ancient modem short-circuiting the motherboard, 2: Loads of spyware and viruses, 3: Webpage advice and instruction).

I designed a new flyer for the business, (the first wasn't as enticing, and included a spelling mistake) and posted a classified ad in the Amsterdam Weekly. The ad brought the second and third customers; the first found my number on the bulletin-board of our neighborhood grocery store. Each customer was supplied with some flyers for friends and family. The remaining flyers were distributed by my parents as they explored the city.

My quest for full-time employment continues, having sent my resume to many IT companies, and multilingual employment agencies.

Shannon was disappointed as she was not asked for a second interview with Boom Chicago. Fearful of employee turn-around, they were looking for a waitress with stronger ties to Amsterdam. During the interview they expressed concern with the amount of time we planned to stay in the Netherlands.

***

In September I posted this scan of a sticker from Ottawa. A fellow named James has posted a collection of Maki sticker on Flikr. Check it.

I have posted a short story about a weather man to my fiction blog, structured thought.

The wind here is strong, and the weather changes rapidly. The sun has just appeared, banishing the grey skies that have oppressed us for the past week. Time to head outside.