Owen's Pixie Wet Dream

Recently Meg was alerted to someone using her full name in a Google search for her blog. This is something to be concerned about because of the potential consequences should one of her students come across it (apparently there are numerous penis references and the like). It occurred to me that most people wouldn't have any idea how Meg came upon this Google search term information. Perhaps, they may even be freaked out by the equivalent invasion of their own privacy. So, being the computer scientist, I thought I would take it upon myself to educate you on the actual goings on during these internet transactions.

First I'll let you in on a little secret: all the wires and junk you see when you open up your computer is just a decoy. The real work is done by the pixies (often confused with pixels). This fact is obvious when you consider the temperamental nature of computers. Unpredictable behaviour is especially a problem with Microsnot computers, which use al-Qaeda-esque training camps to train their pixies. Anyway, these pixies need to talk to each other to get the job done (be it for good or evil purposes). When the pixies are corresponding over the internet, they use special mailing addresses called IP (Internet Pixie) addresses. The pixies are also very good (perhaps, evilly so) at remembering all this information. Many a person has got into trouble over the information relinquished by a pixie under torture (the Microsnot pixies, regardless of all their special training - or perhaps because of it - are particularly vulnerable to this type of attack). This is why there is a high demand for "clear history" buttons in workplace browers, which causes the pixies in your computer to undergo electro-shock therapy (this is why you need to plug your computer into a power point). Anyway, I digress. So, I get the pixies who maintain my blog page (a special pant-less variety of pixies) to remember the last 100 visitors. This is something very common on the internet, and you can bet your favourite pair of undies that a lot of the commercial sites (and, ahem, other types of sites) will keep this information also. There are also data mining pixies (who get to wear those cool hard hats) which specialise in "mining" the interesting information out of this data - information such as: where people are coming from (i.e. what link, if any, did they click to get there); what countries they are from; and what terms people use in search engines to find your site (hence, Meg's awareness of the usage of her full name). This is useful for sites who want to get first place on the Google search page listing, for Meg to get paranoid over, and for me to get a bit of a giggle.

I've started collecting some of the more interesting Google searches by which people have found my blog site. It occurred to me that these might make for a kind of reflective posting (now that I've reached the exciting grand total of 14 posts). I've had a few obvious searches, such as "Pants Optional" and "Philosophical Steakhouse", which would probably be people actually looking for my site. A bit of a strange one was "My boyfriend - I wear the pants", which may have been Jodi, linked to my first posting Pants Optional. I had a moment sharing the spotlight with a celebrity when a couple of people Googled "Daniel Kitson", whom I briefly referred to in the Table for One at the Philosophical Steak House posting, although, there was a conspicuous absence of "Hanson" searches for my MMMBop and Safety Head Gear posting. My favourites were linked to my The Gay Thing post. Apparently, I'd managed to tap into the more fetish-related aspects of the internet with search terms of "People think that I'm gay", "How I lost my virginity story" and "Gay peeing" linking to my site. I even had a totally bizarre "Twee Porn" search, which linked to my Tweemo posting. All this gives an interesting insight into how people use the internet. I could only imagine the types of searches people use to end up at Meg's blog, for example, check out this "horror porn" I found on Meg's site, affectionately dubbed "The Dildo-Cam":



Here's a fun activity for you all (and a way of getting revenge for all those click-throughs I got to my site after Meg linked me to the "blue balls" conspiracy) - try to figure out some interesting search terms that will get you to Meg's blog, e.g., "Meg the Petulant Teacher", "Meg's Lucky Dildo-Cam" or "Meg's Crazy Constipation" (Yes, these all got Meg first page listing on Google, at time of writing). Note that this only works if you actually visit the site (otherwise she won't know!), so click on through to her site and the pixies will be sure to get a bit of kick out of sharing your fun search terms with her.