Funny Friday - Hidden Camera Bath Prank

Click here to see other Friday posts.  ▣

Happy Thursday - Dream Job Debt

Weird Wednesday - Mowing with Goats

Kelson writes

Google's Mountain View headquarters has fields that need to be kept clear of fire hazards. This year instead of mowing them, they took a low-carbon approach: they hired a herd of goats to eat the grass for a week. 'It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers,' wrote Dan Hoffman.

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Tip Tuesday - Dated Search Results

You've been searching for how to do this one particular thing, and right there on top of the 1st results page you get a match. You might as well have clicked on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, you think to yourself. Then you find out that the results are outdated.

Very few use Google's advanced search options, and specify a date range. But what if you don't want to specify a range, and you just want to see when the results were published?

The answer: Just add the following to the end of the URL of your search results:

&as_qdr=y15

But who's going to remember that? And to make matters even more confusing, Google's search URL could change like it has in the past.

Well, you're in luck ... A Greasemonkey script provided by filius, which some sites point out he's Stephen Gore (just trying to give proper credit), can be found at userscripts here. This is an awesome and well-written script.

However, as with all Greasemonkey scripts, this will run all the time. So what if you wanted to run it only when you needed it?

That's exactly how I wanted it too; and so I created the following bookmarklet (aka: favoritelet or favlet, for short): Google - Dated Search Results

Don't know what to do with a bookmarklet? Simply drag that link over to your browswer's toolbar. If you still don't know what I mean, check out this very short video.

The bookmarklet doesn't do any fancy URL checking beyond making sure you're on the google.com domain, it just tacks "&as_qdr=y15" (as mentioned above) onto the end of the current URL. Be sure to run it only on Google's search results page and it will prepend the results with the published date.

Whether this will display the date the "page" was first indexed or when it was edited is a point of contention, so be aware of that when you're searching. Still, it might be worth using.

This simple bookmarklet works on both of Google's search results:
New search is http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=ahmadism&btnG=Google+Search.
Old search was http://www.google.com/search?q=ahmadism

Happy searching.   ▣

Inspirational Monday - Stand By Me

This whole thing was recorded by completely unknown artists in a street virtual studio all around the world. It all started with a base track—vocals and guitar—recorded on the streets of Santa Monica, California, by a street musician called Roger Ridley. The base track was then taken to New Orleans, Louisiana, where Grandpa Elliott—a blind singer from the French Quarter—added vocals and harmonica while listening to Ridley's base track on headphones. In the same city, Washboard Chaz's added some metal percussion to it.

It went on from there: The producers took the resulting mix all through Europe, Africa, and South America, adding new tracks with multiple instruments and vocals that were assembled in the final version you are seeing in this video. All done with a simple laptop and some microphones.

This was pretty awesome. Amongst the best versions of Ben E. King's classic I've ever heard.
Here's another one I thought was very well done, and done so in the same manner.

playingforchange.com - From the award-winning documentary, "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music", comes the first of many "songs around the world" being released independently. Featured is a cover of the Ben E. King classic by musicians around the world adding their part to the song as it traveled the globe.

Order the CD/DVD Playing For Change "Songs Around The World" now at amazon.com!
tinyurl.com/c6mhgd

The Playing For Change "Songs Around The World" CD/DVD is now available at your neighborhood Starbucks and everywhere music is sold.

Order the "Stand By Me," "Don't Worry," "One Love," and "War/No More Trouble" videos and the new Songs Around The World album now at itunes!
tinyurl.com/pfcitunes ▣