Serendipity card and a musing

20/06/2011 by UKMA 2 Comments

First, the crafty bit.  I’ve still been playing with those circles, making good use of the smallest of scraps, and I managed a card out of one of them.  Might do nicely for a graduation card:

But actually I am more interested, almost, in what I can do with the leftover bit after I punch out the circles.  I’m sure there is a card in here somewhere, somehow, but I’ve not hit on the perfect composition yet.  I may not, but I am convinced I cane come up with something.

These are so easy to make and I love creating something from nothing.  I have another idea for my strips of scraps, but I need to sort it out in my head first and maybe do a little planning.

In the meantime, I thought I would mention something that has been annoying me for ages and now I know the answer as to WHY.  There is a new book due out called The Filter Bubble.  It’s subtitle has the clue: What the Internet is Hiding from You. I was happily reading a rather in-depth review and I discovered something.  OK, so I knew that Google tracked searches, but I didn’t know that since 2009 it has used up to 57 “data points” about me and my searching habits to personalize my future searches.  And that includes info on the computer you are using.  It was like a lightbulb going off – PING!

I have long been irritated by the fact that in the wee small hours, I might do a search on my iPad to find something crafty or scrappy.  I’ll find something that I want to explore further in the daylight hours and the next day I go to my desktop, do THE EXACT SAME SEARCH and do not get, in the first 25 hits (if at all) the thing I am looking for, that maybe was the top hit on my iPad search.  This idea of search personalization is the reason why.  So now I know – I thought it was ME.  It’s not, it’s THEM.  And I’m still mulling over the info and looking forward to reading the book.  At this point I’m not sure how I feel about that, really.  It annoys me that there is info out there, stuff I may have been searching for repeatedly, and can’t find, that maybe I am not finding because Google has decided, based on my past search habits, I don’t really want THAT answer.  Humphf.