As some of you may know, Suggest of the Day is a site I came up with last year, basically to record all the weird and often offensive suggests that Google brings up when you start a search. Despite just being a bunch of pictures, it gets a few hundred natural visitors a day – mainly people searching on the bizarre “suggested” keyword, and mainly Americans. I made Suggest of the Day for my own amusement, and I’ve kept it up this long because it’s so low maintenance, but I’m starting to wonder…what should I actually *do* with it?

I could….

– Write an opinion about each suggest. To fit in with the spirit of the site this should be really sarcastic, possibly offensive but always tongue-in-cheek. This may help to generate discussion, but unfortunately, as the comment thread on this post shows, some people don’t really get what the site is all about.

– Have some sort of voting plugin to encourage more interaction. The vast majority of visitors don’t leave comments, but clicking a “I like this” button takes a lot less effort.

– Have more obvious social buttons. There are social buttons at the moment but I doubt anyone uses them. Maybe a huge “Stumble This!” would work better.

– Have a Facebook group. This would take quite a bit more upkeep – I mean, you have to get people to join, get them to add content, etc etc. I barely even use Facebook any more so this would be difficult for me.

– Utilise Twitter more. There is a Suggestoftheday Twitter account but it’s following….erm…me and Frog. I do use Twitter but to be honest, I’m at work all day so maintaining another Twitter account would again be difficult. Unless I just made an effort to check it every few days…

– Make money off it. There are some poorly-targeted ads on the site at the moment…(how do you target adverts to such a random site anyway?) Unless I went for something like Firebox affiliate ads which, assuming all my visitors are the kind of people who use Firebox, may work better. Because the site is so random and, well, *pointless*, it’s hard to justify the extra effort to build it up. If I had a plan for monetising it, the effort would be justifed.

Those are my thoughts so far! The ones that just need a plugin installing will probably get done, but like I said, Suggest of the Day needs a goal. I just need to work out what that is :s

Since the unveiling of the new Apple iPad the other day, people have been fearmongering about how it’s going to challenge the Amazon Kindle…as a Kindle owner all I can say is “yeah, right”. For a more balanced view however, trip on over to Frog’s blog for an Apple iPad vs Amazon Kindle showdown.

Have you ever seen The Polar Express? Did it feel kind of creepy? It did for me – I remember the first time I saw it on telly, channel flicking to a scene halfway through where Tom Hanks is handing out tea to the kids on the train. After a few seconds of vague discomfort I said “eurgh! what’s wrong with them?!”

That weird feeling…of something creepy, something pseudo-familiar, something not-quite right, has a Name. It’s called the Uncanny Valley.

The term was coined by Masahiro Mori, a Japanese roboticist who apart from starting a robot-building competition in Japan, studied the relations of religion, psychology and metaphysics to the development of robots.

He was particularly interested in the relationship between humans and robots, and carried out a study into our emotional responses to ‘non-human entities’. His findings are shown in the graph above.

Mori found that humans are increasingly positive towards robots the more lifelike they become…that is, until they become TOO lifelike. Then robots elicit not empathy, but revulsion.

If you think that Tom Hanks in The Polar Express is pretty damn creepy, you’re in the Uncanny Valley.

Several theories have been put forward to explain this reaction, from our cognitive mate-selection ability repulsing us from robots, to our pathogen-avoidance defences kicking in when we see something that looks like it could be diseased. Whatever it is, it seems that thanks to the Uncanny Valley, robots won’t be infiltrating society any time soon.

Many thanks to unsupervised

As I sit here, waiting for a plumber to come and fix a water pump so unreliable British Gas “won’t touch it”, my mind turns to the year just gone and what exactly I did with the last 12 months. As it turns out, a fair bit was accomplished. This may go down as the year I finally did stuff that adults are supposed to do – the first year I actually felt like a grown-up, as opposed to someone pretending to be a grown-up.

In 2008, I did the four things that in my mind make you an adult:

1) Got a Job
2) Got a Car
3) Got a House
4) Got a Boyfriend

In 2009, I’ve done all sorts of things that were only possible because of these ‘Pillars of Adulthood’.

Upgrading Hercules and Experiencing Debt

My car (see Pillar of Adulthood Number Two), although full of charm and character (like a leaky and perhaps haunted 17th century cottage) was actually monstrous to drive. Foot to the floor, it reached a dizzying 40mph after a good half minute, and when it got to motorway speed – normally helped by a downward slope – the deafening rattle made me question its structural integrity and cross my fingers that the doors would stay on.

My job (Pillar of Adulthood Number One) was putting money in my pocket almost faster than I could spend it – an illusion I later realised was caused by Living at Home – so naturally changing Hercules for something a little more drivable was on my mind. I’d always hankered after a sports car and so, after a terrifying test drive in which I discovered Hercules was no preparation for driving a real car, I purchased a ridiculously expensive two-seater beast…on credit.

I couldn’t sleep that night.

It’s funny, the dramatic shift from having money free each month, to being so far in your overdraft you don’t even look at your bank statements any more. For the first few weeks I went from manic glee at driving something I never thought I’d own, to dark worry at the financial hole I’d dug myself, to hollow self-assurance I could pay it off in no time.

I stopped buying clothes. I stopped eating out. I joined LoveFilm because the cinema was too expensive. I started saying things like “oh look this is on offer” and “it’s cheaper to make it yourself”. I even stopped going to town because the shops were filled with things I couldn’t have – it was too depressing.

Now, after a year of frugality and debt, I’m just about in a position where I can look at my bank statements again. I don’t even want to buy loads of stuff any more. I’ve made my ridiculous purchase, I’ve spent a year with the consequences, and I have a far greater appreciation for money than ever before.

Going on a Proper Holiday and Needing It

My boyfriend (Pillar of Adulthood Number Four) took us to the Maldives this summer. I’d never been outside Europe before or to a fancy resort, so this felt like my first proper holiday. We were probably the youngest couple on the island, but we made friends with other couples there – people who a few years ago I’d have dismissed as ‘a different generation’. The difference between 23 and 33 feels a lot smaller than that between 20 and 30.

What’s more, I needed that holiday. This year I’ve discovered that work can be hard, holidays few, and that week in the Maldives was the most relaxing experience of my entire life. I never understood why people go to a faraway land to stay in a posh resort away from all cultural experiences – now I do.

Working, Still

My first job at a web company was sort of a fluke, but in 2009 I landed an upgrade and what feels kind of like a career. I’ve been working in the SEO field for over two years now – not long enough to know everything, but long enough to be responsible for things, and to know ’stuff’ that makes me (I hope) a useful employee.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been working so long that being a student is a dim and distant memory. Maybe it’s because even at weekends I wake up at 7am and can’t go back to sleep. Having a job is so ingrained in my life now, it’s starting to feel a bit like a career. This year I’ve realised that work is now a Fact of Life, and having a good job – that’s enjoyable, at a good company, with people you like – is very important.

Doing a Scary Thing

I’m scared of spiders. The kind of scared that makes me jump around and make incoherent noises until someone fetches a glass and takes the big bad spider away while I cower in another room.

I’m also scared of public speaking. The kind of scared that makes me feel a bit sick, makes me crazy with worry, and even now I’m not sure why I agreed to speak at a conference earlier in the year. It’s so far outside my comfort zone I was actually hoping to be struck down by swine flu, or a car, right up until the day of the event. The best way to describe how I felt is probably ‘abject terror’.

Even so, when the time came I got up on stage in front of a room full of people and talked about some stuff. All by myself. And I survived. Afterwards, I felt like I’d been thrown into the sea and managed to swim to an island – I wasn’t happy or elated, I was just relieved it was over and sort of disbelieving that anyone had enjoyed my floundering.

The thing is, I know now that I can do it, and I know what I did good and what I did badly. Public speaking was one of my deepest darkest fears, but next time (next time!) I’ll do it better.

Moving Somewhere I Like

In 2008 I moved in with my boyfriend to a house (Pillar of Adulthood Number Three) in Harrogate – a house and an area I never liked. It should have been so nice and yet, it wasn’t. It never felt like home, and after saying this for a good few months we took notice of the fact we were only renting and could leave whenever we liked. In 2009 we moved to a flat in Boston Spa and it actually feels like home. Just like the whole career thing above, I don’t know why it feels that way – it just does. It’s smaller than the house, not as fancy inside, but it’s cosy and warm and I like it here.

What about 2010?

I don’t know what next year will bring. I have some nebulous plans about travel, and some more concrete plans about Projects, but whatever happens I feel pretty well equipped to deal with it. I know there are things I still can’t do, circumstances I’m as childish as ever…but in a lot of ways, I’m all grown up.

(Many thanks to sk8geek for the Think Vis photo)

SFF Meta is a new meta-critic site for sci-fi and fantasy, and it has the potential to be my new favourite time-waster. It’s easy to navigate, covers the kind of books I like, and just a quick browse has given me half a dozen titles to go buy off Amazon.

Downsides? Well, so far each book only has a few reviews and they’re drawn from other sites. SFF Meta lacks user-generated content. I’m really hoping this accounts for such horrors as The Court of the Air being on the 2007 ‘low scoring’ list, and The Gathering Storm scoring 84/100, when tbh I would quite gladly throw The Wheel of Time series onto a bonfire.

Anyway, I’d like to see SFF Meta open up their site to user reviews instead of just drawing them from elsewhere. It’s a neat idea and even I of so little time and so much apathy would contribute. Like any good community it would moderate itself and the seriously good fiction would rise to the top.

Last night Frog asked me “what’s the difference between a font and a typeface?” and my answer was a long silence then… “I dunno!”. A font is the style of text that you choose in Word…like Times New Roman, or Arial, right? A typeface is also a style of text, right? So what’s the difference?

Frog explains the difference between a font and a typeface…

A Typeface Is: the design of the type – a set of letters and numbers in a specific style.

A Font Is: the digital file that tells your computer what the typeface should look like when you use it.

There you have it! My education is complete

While we’re on the subject, here’s something I found ages ago – you can turn your handwriting into a font through a service like YourFonts…pretty neat huh?

Edit: Here’s something even cooler – scans of the whole of Modern Alphabets, 1864 – on Flickr.

Mr. Hoot does not like underground places. We won’t find him in this dark, dank tunnel.

Mister Toast (foreground) looks particularly dapper this morning – perhaps Mister Snoot is feeling jealous?