Web (server) log

Well the last few weeks have shown the usual people looking for names in the extended family, and the usual run of Eva related stuff — I suppose given I have an Eva fan-fic page that's Asuka-themed, it's not surprising that I get caught in searches by otaku looking for heartwarming fics where she falls into bed with the other female members of the cast, or occasionally Ikari-kun (the surprise of this bunch was the search for Kaji/Misato fics).

The oddities have been the "Ask Jeeves" results - questions about Andrews' Liver Salts; about gerbils learning mazes (Pete Windsor could never have expected that that would be an outcome of his 6^th form D&D) and, crazily enough, where a citizen of Massachusetts could take food aid for survivors of the recent natural disaster in the Indian Ocean. And I came top of the list for "how many graves can you fit in a graveyard?" with a page that contained no such information.

These show quite how mindless the pattern matching is for the search; and how misleading the natural language interface is. This is really one of the commandments - "thou shalt not give the user cause to needlessly anthropomorphize."