h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Bye...

Since my homepage is H2G2, I can't log on to the internet without coming up here. So although this is primarily to check train times, here I am, back again for a few minutes. I think I'm going mad.

I think that counts as addicted

does it ever! More healthy than smoking, though.

Very true

And more rewarding... and its better than random browsing like I did last term; if I write entries on quantum mechanics it will help me to understand the concepts better myself, since you then get to discuss them.

Random browsing is far more tedious than this too. You first have to think of something to look for and then try and sift through all the dross to find the odd gem.

I usually have no problems thinking what to look for.... I got good at searching, well, relatively, because I could stay looking for stuff on one topic for an hour straight, and then look some more the next day. I think that any internet course should have lessons in persistance, and I am better at choosing good search terms, now.
Supporting my information addiction is much more fun here, though

And benefits from having a limited amount of information on any one topic and good editing.

Yeah... it doesn't all go mind bogglingly complicated after the first two lines.

A certain amount of simplicity for those non-specialists here

I just hate turning up research papers. Its like... you what? you did what? *hits the back button*

Or you get all the personal sites, and "General Relativity" turns out to be a dog.

LOL
If the first thing I see is irrelevant, I search using not whatever it was. Sometimes blocking out the .com extension works nicely, too.

And then there is the search that pulls up the seriously unexpected results.

Ask Jeeves is soooooo good at them!

I am going to need examples to understand those last couple of posts

Go to http://www.ask.com
ask anything, and look in the lists of things from other search engines. They seem to have stopped listing Infoseek now, which was the primary offender, but nonetheless, my query "Where can I find information on taking photos?" has as one of its answers from Altavista: Where can I find out more about the What's related button?

On Google, probably others as well, to block out anything with the extension .com type -com as one of the search terms. I find this useful for looking up things with, for example, the word star, because although I want astronomy, I get a ridiculous amount of Hollywood too.

Are any of those useful/interesting?

I didn't think so. I try not to get sidetracked, very hard.