Google tip

Google, a little while ago, started using approximate matches in their searches—the query [lover monkey] might return results with the words "monkeys", "loving", "love", etc. But, I recently discovered, if you put quotes around the individual words (["lover" "monkey"]) Google only returns exact matches—every page will contain the words "lover" and "monkey", as written.

Did everyone already know this? I work for them, and I didn't know it, but I am famously dim. I knew it worked for phrases, but didn't know it would lock individual words. Nifty.

While I'm here, I guess I'll mention, for those few who haven't heard of them, the tilde operator (~), which returns synonyms for a word, and the plus sign (+), which is the opposite of the minus sign—it forces a word to appear in the search results. (This is only useful if it's a common word Google normally ignores, like "the" or "I", since by default all words must appear on the page.) So the query [+a ~monkey "lover"] will return pages that must have the word "a", the word "lover", and a synonym for monkey like "ape" or "primate" (or "monkey").

Welshing on English/Scottish

Alas, it is looking unlikely that we'll be attending the English/Scottish Ball at Swat next weekend. adfamiliares is buried in work, and can't really lose a weekend of class preparation. I could conceivably hop a train (~$160), but I'm not sure my enthusiasm levels are up to it. There are people I would very much like to see, but I imagine they'll still be there later on.