Thursday 1 July 1999

This issue of Scientific American had another interesting article about the Web. Some people at IBM had created a prototype search engine that tried to find the relevant web sites, not just the ones containing spesific words. It started with a normal search, then divided sites into Authorities and Hubs. Authorities were the sites that were often linked to, and Hubs were the sites that linked to several Authorities. Any one site could also qualify as both of the above. The idea has two intuitive rewards, which follows from the way humans work. One, the most quoted sources are probably those you too want. Two, sites that links to one relevant site probably also links to another. Now, as far as I know there is currently no search engine working on this principle. But it is possible to go to Altavista and get a list of the sites that link to a spesific site, such as your own. Of course, the web growing too fast for the search engines, the list will be half a year old, quite possibly more. Still, chances are that the sites that link to you, also contain other interesting links. Worth a visit, don't you think? ... Tonight I dreamt that the Norwegian newspaper "Dagens Næringsliv" was to be suddenly closed down. In fact, the last issue was the end of June, but they decided to publish one more issue on July 1st. Now this was only a dream, which became apparent because there was a prominent Dilbert comic strip in the paper; in our timeline, they don't have Dilbert. My interest in this common business-oriented newspaper started back when it was still white, not pink, and called "Norges Handels- og sjøfartstidende". A female friend of mine at that time was an avid reader of this paper, which I had never considered buying due to my working class background. But this girl and I had a lot in common, and so I started to see the paper in a new light too. She probably never knew it, but she was one of my best friends ever. Sadly we only worked together for a few months. Based on this, I interpret this as yet another dream about me "losing" my best friend, as our common interests fall away. Repeatedly during the last month I've been thinking about Dr Manhattan in the classic comic book series Watchmen. (Hey, I never claimed low self esteem or anything, did I?) "The so-called real world is to me like a fog, and the people in it like shadows. Just shadows in the fog." (Quoted from memory of the Norwegian translation, but I'm sure I got the spirit of it.) I've felt like that too, and I don't want to end up that way again. ... In completely unrelated news, the front and inside of my left thigh hurts today. The muscles are stiff and the skin is sore. It feels as if I had been hit by a pretty hard football or some such. That's the closest I can compare it with. No such event has taken place, though. Strange. There is no difference in color and texture either. It turned up as I came to town with the bus this morning, and has grown gradually worse since. Images of flesh-eating bacteria hover around the edge of my consciousness. For some reason Norway has much more attacks of deadly flesh-eating bacteria than other countries. Probably our standards of hygiene are so high that we don't need to build an effective immune defense during childhood. Even McDonalds here use first class ingredients and impeccable cleanliness.

SynchroniCity event of the day: Artists from Andes playing in the main street today on Trade Day. (Andes was my workplace music yesterday.) ... Useless factoid of the day: I got hypochondria by reading about it in a health magazine as a boy. ... Turns out i had ... uh, borrowed from the (parenthesis) website after all. Or at least it turns out I had visited it once before for some reason. I still think there is not much chance of people mistaking us, though!