Google Speed-Search Lesson #5 – Case Sensitivity

Here’s part five of my Google Speed-Search series. This post answers the question, is a Google search case sensitive? What difference does case make? Some search engines will return different results depending on whether you use upper or lower case characters. So, for example, if you type apple you’d get results for the fruit or technology giant. If you typed APPLE however, you’d get results for the Association to Promote and Protect […]

Ramsay Ramblings 12/6/2007

There are a few things I’d like to ramble about this morning (2:30am!). The word “Half” – to allow it or not Mami and I were talking about what to tell Rikuto about the word, “half”. If you missed my post, Half-Japanese or Half-Blood?, this English word is used by Japanese people to describe someone who is only part Japanese. Foreigners despise this word because the English implications are not complete, impure, or even […]

Rikuto Wearing New Hat and Mittens

Here’s a lovely picture of Rikuto sat on the sofa, sporting a cute hat, mittens, and “I Luv My Mum” socks, courtesy of his Aunty Emma and Uncle Mark. The colorful clothes he’s wearing are part of Mami’s Yahoo Auctions haul. Mami’s online activities also won him a little Big-o-Ball to go with the larger version he got when we went shopping. Doesn’t he look like a couch potato? 😉 […]

Now You Can Learn Japanese Online

It wasn’t so long ago I looked at the possibilities for teaching English online, but never considered using my webcam and mic to learn Japanese online. Actually, I’ve always thought study materials for learning Japanese were far behind those for learning English. I remember being frustrated at how most English textbooks came with CDs, whereas books for learning Japanese still came with cassette tapes, even though tape players had long disappeared […]

Google Speed-Search Lesson #4 – Stop Words

In this fourth part of my Google Speed-Search series, we’ll take a look at stop words – words that Google ignores. What words does Google ignore?  There doesn’t seem to be a public list of Google stop words available (although I did find this), but words like the, is, are, that, on, in and with are very likely to be ignored. Numbers and question words, too, seem to be considered as stop words. […]