Useful / cute googling

Inspired by a Coding Horror post.  Things that I would demo to an “Intro to IT” class if I teach one again.

• weather matakana
• air new zealand 19
• patent 5492301
• matakana new zealand map
• 2500 euros in new zealand dollars
• new lynn cinema
• population new zealand
• 182 cm in feet
• flu
• Orson Scott Card
• 5*9+(sqrt 10)^3
• time auckland

I don’t think you can get directly to NZE listings (i.e. “NZE:AIR” doesn’t work like “GOOG”) – you have to go via google.com/finance.  I don’t think UPC codes are used here, either.  Looking up a VIN number would be great, but I’m guessing that doesn’t work, and can’t be bothered going and reading my VIN at the moment).

Massey Weirdness

While looking through links for my previous post, I found this one – which caught my eye in particular because it has my old postal address (also weird – Google maps used to show the house, but now I can’t see it, even though the neighbours are there, and so is the lake.  Has the imagery got older?!). I’m not sure why I’m listed here (pretty much everything else seems to be a business, although I didn’t look thoroughly) – maybe from when I was providing theatrical services to Massey, although I did that under “Underground Services” (the theatre was named the Underground Theatre).

The information at the top seems to always be about veterinary products, but maybe that has something to do with the flashing (good grief!) “test site” at the top of the page.  I would think that Massey would have the skills available, somewhere, to make test sites (and, really, the purchasing system in general) hidden from the public and from Google.

Collective Knowledge

Dad asked me today who my teachers were at Pukepoto Primary School, which I could partially answer, with help (I think: Mrs Travers in J1 and J2, Mr Jones in Standard 1, Mrs Bellingham in Standard 2, and Mr Wilkins in Standard 3 and 4, and apparently someone else as a new-entrant).

This is an example of knowledge that Google simply can’t give you, of course.  Except now it can – or at least will be able to when this page is indexed.  When I remember, I’ll try this query again (161 hits at the moment, none of them with the required information, although in eight of the pages the “Tony Meyer” is me) and see if it works.

We wondered if Wikipedia would have an entry for Pukepoto School, and while it doesn’t, there is a mention in the entry on Pukepoto (a stub – if I had more knowledge I’d expand it, but I don’t really know what substance I could add).