In the mail today arrived an envelope addressed to my wife. We know not how the sender got the necessary name and address, but they did. Inside we found an offer: a bunch of greeting cards – ostensibly painted by people using their feet and mouths – for us to buy. The offerers of said offer actually included the proffered cards in the envelope, and asked that we please do not return them even if we don’t want to buy them….

Oh, well-played, guilt-mongering charity person. Well-played.

Except I’m not catholic, so I don’t do guilt.

I do passive-aggressive though, so we’re not buying the spammy unsolicited cards.

“…normal improvements such as

• making automatic spelling corrections
• personalizing your search by using information such as sites you’ve visited before
• including synonyms of your search terms (matching “car” when you search [automotive])
• finding results that match similar terms to those in your query (finding results related to “floral delivery” when you search [flower shops])
• searching for words with the same stem like “running” when you’ve typed [run]
• making some of your terms optional, like “circa” in [the scarecrow circa 1963]“

“Improvements”…

Deciding that some of what I type in is “optional”…

Basing the results returned on sites I’ve visited before…

Automatically “correcting” my spelling – from the obscure/technical word I wanted, to some meaningless and out of context foolishness…

“Improvements.” Ok…

Anyway, it’s not been just me complaining … well, maybe it has – until recently, when Google did away with the + operator, which previously could be added in front of a word to ensure it wasn’t “corrected”/modified – though that still left all the other “improvements”. Now Google has introduced what it is calling verbatim search, in which none of those “improvements” are made; it simply searches for the terms you type in, and returns the results.

Thank you, Google.

Oh, but … hold on a cotton-pickin’ minute. You can’t set it as default? You have to search, then when the results come up, click on more options or something, and navigate through to “verbatim search”? Sodding pleh.

So. I don’t like that very much. But it turns out I don’t have to. There is a little string, a few tiny characters, that when added to the end of your search string, can make all the difference:

&tbs=li:1

That, my friends, is all you need for searching win.

Update: I’m pretty sure I found that string at Ghacks; I also note that there’s now a userscript called Gooverbatim that adds a “yes, really” button to Google – which obviously performs a verbatim search.

Now, in Chrome, you can set custom search engines. I created one with this string at the end (it also includes another few characters that I added ages ago I think to stop personalised results; I can’t remember … I left them in anyway, though they might be redundant):

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=@search@&pws=0&hl=all&tbs=li:1

Of course you would make it whatever country’s google URL you’re in (or another if you want, I suppose). Set that as the default search engine, and then when you type something into the address/search bar, you’ll get a verbatim search by default.

So. That’s Chrome sorted. What about my other browsers? Atomic on the iPad is easy: custom search engine with that URL: done. Mobile Safari though doesn’t allow custom search engines. Enter Quix.

It can however, be even more betterer. By adding a line to the quix command list (I also deleted a bunch of commands I would have no need for – you can do all that with a simple text editor) you can have it search without having to type ‘g’ before your search terms. The line you need (again, change the country as you wish) is:

* http://www.google.com.au/search?q=@search@&pws=0&hl=all&tbs=li:1 Untriggered search

I would suggest, as well as adding this line, adding &tbs=li:1 to the end of the default search string for google search in the quix command list; that way you still get a verbatim search even if for whatever reason you use the quix command stem (“g”) before your search terms.

You modify the quix command list, upload it (you will of course need somewhere to upload it to), then – in Safari on your computer, not the iPad – go to the Quix extend page, and from there drag the bookmarklet to your browser bar. Synchronise with your iPad (either through iCloud or via iTunes), making sure the info from the computer goes to the iPad (you might need to tick that option in the iTunes “info” pane for your iThing (just realised the iPad isn’t the only iThing with a browser… Come to think of it, it’s not limited to iThings; this is just a JavaScript bookmarklet, so all of my wittering applies to any platform really), and you should have a nice shiny “Quix” bookmarklet in your bookmark bar. Click that, type your search into the box that pops up, and go. Just as quick as the default search box, and proper unmodified search.

I is happy.

Srsly.

Oh, and this is the photograph:

Again: srsly.

I could whine about how aesthetically bland and completely devoid of meaning or interest it is (indeed I have done so), but that’s not what I’m going to do today.

I could blither on about idiots with more money than sense buying crap because some other nong tells them it’ll be arty (indeed again, I have done so), but that’s not my purpose today.

Today I’m going to whinge about art critics. The piece that really got me annoyed was this piece of navel-gazing tripe. These twits simply make up crap in order to sound cleverer than the rest of us, and justify their positions. I know, because I’ve done it.

… In. High. School.

I still remember well: we had to do a “creative response” to the poetry of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Most of the class were planning frakking dioramas and posters and crap. Though I liked the poetry – especially Sexton’s – I was totally turned off by the assignment. So what did I do? I wrote and recorded a piece of music.

First, I threw together a bunch of riffs and fragments I had lying around in my head, in whatever order seemed to work. Then I went to my guitar teacher,s house and recorded them. While there, I played around with his guitar synth, and found some cool patches (a koto, a breathy flute thing, a weird chaotic mess of crashes and bangs and thumps…) and added those in. Just because.

Then, someone pointed out, or I realised, that I would have to link the music to the assignment for which I had supposedly produced it. So…

The opening section with its unconventional and dissonant harmony recalls the challenging – and at first read, abrasive – nature of Sexton’s and Plath’s poetry.

The second section is more melodic, demonstrating the beauty that can be found in their poetry, but its 7/8 time signature recognises that even then their work is unconventional. I probably said the descant lines of the koto and flute reflect the hidden meanings or something.

Following that the heavy, distorted, dissonant riff represents again the aggressive and challenging – and yes, unconventional – nature of some of their work. It then goes into a melodic harmony line which reflects the many-layered meanings in their poetry.

The final section, dissolving into the chaotic crashing and banging, without discernible rhythm or sustained melody, reflects the apparent chaos and aggression, buts fades out leaving a final haunting note on the guitar echoing the final beauty and sadness of these poets’ work.

Yeah. Right.

I threw together a bunch of disconnected musical fragments, added in synth bits when I stumbled across a patch I thought was cool, and then made up some complete crap about it.

And got an A+.

Because the teacher could “clearly see…” how I had represented the blah de blah blah…

LOLWUT?!

Art critics do the same damn thing – except I suspect many of them have actually bought into their own bullshit, and actually believe it. And then you get artistes who go around spouting all the same crap – that’s of course how they get critics to say “wonderful, daaaahhhhhling”, and sell their work for exorbitant amounts of money.

Bollocks to that. My mother has a simple criterion for whether she likes a bit of music: does it make you want to dance? Broadened a bit, and thinking about the likely origins and purpose of music, I think that makes a lot of sense. At least music should make you feel “moved” – physically and/or emotionally.

Similarly the visual arts: it either looks good, and connects with you, or it doesn’t. Gursky’s photo looks like utter crap to me, but I don’t feel the need to go into it in any more depth. It’s art, and I like it or I don’t. In this case I don’t; then I move on.

I’m not arguing against thoughtful photography (or any other art). Of course we should be mindful of what we are doing and why, and be thoughtful about our composition. But all of this navel gazing arse gets on my nerves.

Just go and create. Have fun. Make nice things. Share them with others. Have more fun.

/End blither