The Start of a New Year

Happy New Year!!! It's January 6th, and I'm attempting to crawl out from under the post-holidays malaise that has engulfed me. The combination of seeming perpetual darkness outside and the 25 pounds I've picked up over the past three weeks (I kid...sort of) have slowed my efforts at productivity here at the start of 2011. I would set myself to tackling my list of New Year's resolutions, but I haven't had the energy to think of them and certainly not to actually capture them in written or digital fashion.

But no more of that! It's time to get in gear. So inspired am I that I have left the GoDaddy.Com Bowl behind to post my first blog entry of the year. Yes, I have handed over the remote to my wife and made my way to the computer. I am aware that the forward march of time and technology has produced devices that would allow me to keep my seat in front of the television while composing this, but I believe I've made it clear in prior posts that I am not what you would refer to as an early technology adapter. And in any case I can now hear the sounds of the latest episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, so proximity to the TV doesn't strike me as overly appealing at the moment.

I want to start of 2011 with a positive post. Specifically, I want to applaud Google's update to the functionality of Google Image search. Initially, the change annoyed me, but I have come to embrace it. Not because it actually works better, but because it is far more entertaining. Instead of typing what you're actually looking for in the search box, it is as though you type in "show me pictures of random sh!t" every time. Searching for a picture from Major League 2 (don't ask, this post was originally going to be about a different topic)? How about a picture of Jesus gently caressing a baby dinosaur instead?

My search for a picture from Major League 2 yielded this shot from a scene that apparently didn't make it through final edits.

They seem to have made it a game. With every search, in addition to (possibly) pictures tied in to what you typed, you are guaranteed a few scantily clad ladies and numerous completely unrelated images. Don't believe me? Check out this seemingly innocuous search for "Irwin M Fletcher", the main character in Fletch.

It's been awhile since I've watched Fletch, but I don't remember either of those two ladies (one of which I partially censored for my PG13 blog) being in the movie. Also, I'm not at all sure what Frank Poncherello or a well-groomed dog posing with his awards is doing there, and that's all just on the first page. The key is to find what you need without scrolling too far down, though. Not all the oddball pictures are of award winning dogs or sultry models. No, there are some very unsettling looking folks out there, and their pictures await you as well...whether you are looking for them or not.

I'm Back!

Well, after a fantastic week in Boston and Nantucket, I am back home and back on the blog. Permit me this Sunday evening to hole up and recover, and then I'll be back with more. I was going to try to post something more substantial, but I started off by going to Google image search. I see that even something that ran as smoothly as Google Images can't be left unchanged these days for too long. Thanks Google, it wasn't nearly challenging enough before when you could just type in what you were looking for and have returned to you pages with a manageable number of pictures and a brief description that made it clear why this picture might be relevant to your search. Far better, apparently, to barrage my screen with hundreds of pictures requiring me to scroll over them to understand what marginal similarity they might bear to my search. Things I don't enjoy- Sunday nights, change, and Google images.

My next post will have a brief trip recap and will be of a much sunnier disposition. I was going to close with some relevant- yet still humorous- picture but, ah you get the idea...