Oolite Bulletins

I only just discovered that one can have a background image on google's main search page a couple months ago, now they're getting rid of them as of the 16th of the month. Even more annoyingly, trying to find a reasonable feedback form to contact google has proven impossible . I think I may have to switch search engines - any suggestions


Edit to add a screenshot of the background I use - very clean

CommRLock78 wrote:

I think I may have to switch search engines - any suggestions

Startpage.com Encrypted Google searches, with all potentially identifying information stripped from the query before it goes to Google, and no records kept of your searches. Results are returned to Startpage, who then forward them to you, so it's impossible for Google to track you. Also, they provide a free proxying service for opening the results, if you wish. Powered by Ixquick, the most privacy-conscious search-engine in the world.

These days, I won't use anything else..

The issue I have with startpage is that I can't always get it to connect on free public provided wi-fi connections.

For example - as I type this - I'm freezing my ass off in my car waiting for my daughter to finish her dance class - I'm using the school's guest wi-fi (which being a school has blocked by DNS things like Facebook and Twitter) but on this wi-fi I can't connect to my startpage tab and have had to drop back to using my standard iGoogle connect - which is also getting the can soon - which is also very annoying.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

The issue I have with startpage is that I can't always get it to connect on free public provided wi-fi connections.

For example - as I type this - I'm freezing my ass off in my car waiting for my daughter to finish her dance class - I'm using the school's guest wi-fi (which being a school has blocked by DNS things like Facebook and Twitter) but on this wi-fi I can't connect to my startpage tab and have had to drop back to using my standard iGoogle connect - which is also getting the can soon - which is also very annoying.

What about trying Ixquick direct? Much the same, except that it collates a bunch of search engines, not just Google.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Startpage.com Encrypted Google searches, with all potentially identifying information stripped from the query before it goes to Google, and no records kept of your searches. Results are returned to Startpage, who then forward them to you, so it's impossible for Google to track you. Also, they provide a free proxying service for opening the results, if you wish. Powered by Ixquick, the most privacy-conscious search-engine in the world.

These days, I won't use anything else..

I've been using Ghostery and No Script, but screw it, between the tracking, odd changes and lack of any feedback options, it's looking like I'm going to move to ixquick, (I like that they streamline the search ), thanks for the suggestions Diez

DaddyHoggy wrote:

The issue I have with startpage is that I can't always get it to connect on free public provided wi-fi connections.

For example - as I type this - I'm freezing my ass off in my car waiting for my daughter to finish her dance class - I'm using the school's guest wi-fi (which being a school has blocked by DNS things like Facebook and Twitter) but on this wi-fi I can't connect to my startpage tab and have had to drop back to using my standard iGoogle connect - which is also getting the can soon - which is also very annoying.

Dance class, huh, ballet? (we're hoping that our next one's a girl ) Anyway, I'll have to see how startpage and ixquick work on my school's wi-fi

CommRLock78 wrote:

...it's looking like I'm going to move to ixquick,...

I actually have settled, for now, on startpage, and I'm quite pleased. I have all the settings set, and have added the engine to firefox's search bar. I'm sorry I didn't know about it sooner .

Edit: quite pleased is an understatement - I'm elated - one can actually filter the results by age! No more having to look at the result details for a date - hurray !

CommRLock78 wrote:

Dance class, huh, ballet? (we're hoping that our next one's a girl ) Anyway, I'll have to see how startpage and ixquick work on my school's wi-fi

It used to be ballet, for the eldest now 11, from 4 to 10 (she already has the equivalent of GCSE in dance because of her grades at ballet), but she's the wrong shape for ballet now (precocious puberty starting at 9), so has switched to Contemporary Dance, with a side order of Street thrown in for good measure. Then of course, there's Theatre Group and Drama Group. = "DaddyHoggy Taxi Service"

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Theatre Group and Drama Group. = "DaddyHoggy Taxi Service"

Something to look forward to

CommRLock78 wrote:

DaddyHoggy wrote:

Theatre Group and Drama Group. = "DaddyHoggy Taxi Service"

Something to look forward to

Or not. It's strange how much our attitude towards children getting to their activities has changed.

30 years ago, when I was in my teens and engaged in all kinds of activities (sports, music, …), it would never have crossed my parents' minds (or mine, for that matter) that they'd be a "Taxi Service". I had a bicycle, and there was public transport for the rainy days. End of story. (Of course they would accompany me to the races on weekends (although not every weekend; there were other parents of other kids as well, and there was no need for every family to drive to every race), or to the concerts at the end of the year, and we'd use the car for that. But not for the weekly training.) The same for school: in the first week or so of kindergarden (I was 4, I think), my mother accompanied me to make sure that I knew the way. And that was it. From then on I went in the morning and returned in the afternoon all by myself, or together with the neighbours' kids, for whom it was the exact same story. Same again in primary school (although I believe the practice period was shorter then, once or twice on the weekend before school began).

I know that traffic has increased since, and it's generally considered much more dangerous now for children to be on the street, but still …

Commander McLane wrote:

I had a bicycle, and there was public transport for the rainy days.

[Monty Python voice]Thee were lucky, lad... we had to walk everywhere! [/Monty Python voice]

Commander McLane wrote:

30 years ago, when I was in my teens and engaged in all kinds of activities (sports, music, …), it would never have crossed my parents' minds (or mine, for that matter) that they'd be a "Taxi Service". I had a bicycle, and there was public transport for the rainy days. End of story. (Of course they would accompany me to the races on weekends (although not every weekend; there were other parents of other kids as well, and there was no need for every family to drive to every race), or to the concerts at the end of the year, and we'd use the car for that. But not for the weekly training.) The same for school: in the first week or so of kindergarden (I was 4, I think), my mother accompanied me to make sure that I knew the way. And that was it. From then on I went in the morning and returned in the afternoon all by myself, or together with the neighbours' kids, for whom it was the exact same story. Same again in primary school (although I believe the practice period was shorter then, once or twice on the weekend before school began).

I know that traffic has increased since, and it's generally considered much more dangerous now for children to be on the street, but still …

I too walked to school on my own from the age of 6 and I had a bike for getting to scouts and my roleplaying group once I was in my teens.

Yes, there's more traffic on the road, my 11 and 5 year old's school is 4 miles away on a major A-road (A343 between Newbury and Andover) and even I feel nervous about cycling along it (Cycle paths are a joke in Newbury, we once had the record for the shortest (slightly shorter than the length of a bike)) - so we drop them off at Breakfast club on our way to work and pick them from homework club on our way back into town from work.

Both the Drama club and Theatre group are based out of town and one of them is on an unlit country road. The 11yo is going to start going to Drama Club under own steam once the clocks go forward again and also cycling to/from school a couple of days a week when her and a friend are going to take a rather convoluted but safer route home when the nights are lighter together, but as for the theatre group, given the distance and location and how many trucks use it as a cut through to the A34... No, that's one she's always going to be taken to and picked up from...

Traffic has really increased, by large amounts, in the UK anyway. A 25% increase over the last 15 years:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ns-traffic

And it's mostly in lorries and vans, which are particularly dangerous to cyclists due to the slipstream: the first one drags you out into the path of the second one ... Partly this is down to the UK's hopeless rail system, partly it's down to things like the spread of out-of-town supermarkets, the rise of internet shopping, and the cutting back of in-store stock space and the use of just-in-time stock management - all of which means more and more trucks lumbering around the roads. Add to that the continual slashing of public transport, which means more people have to go places by car, which means more traffic still ...

Disembodied wrote:

Traffic has really increased, by large amounts, in the UK anyway. A 25% increase over the last 15 years:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ns-traffic

And it's mostly in lorries and vans, which are particularly dangerous to cyclists due to the slipstream: the first one drags you out into the path of the second one ... Partly this is down to the UK's hopeless rail system, partly it's down to things like the spread of out-of-town supermarkets, the rise of internet shopping, and the cutting back of in-store stock space and the use of just-in-time stock management - all of which means more and more trucks lumbering around the roads. Add to that the continual slashing of public transport, which means more people have to go places by car, which means more traffic still ...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I too walked to school on my own from the age of 6 and I had a bike for getting to scouts and my roleplaying group once I was in my teens.

Yes, there's more traffic on the road, my 11 and 5 year old's school is 4 miles away on a major A-road (A343 between Newbury and Andover) and even I feel nervous about cycling along it (Cycle paths are a joke in Newbury, we once had the record for the shortest (slightly shorter than the length of a bike)) - so we drop them off at Breakfast club on our way to work and pick them from homework club on our way back into town from work.

Both the Drama club and Theatre group are based out of town and one of them is on an unlit country road. The 11yo is going to start going to Drama Club under own steam once the clocks go forward again and also cycling to/from school a couple of days a week when her and a friend are going to take a rather convoluted but safer route home when the nights are lighter together, but as for the theatre group, given the distance and location and how many trucks use it as a cut through to the A34... No, that's one she's always going to be taken to and picked up from...

Commander McLane wrote:

Or not. It's strange how much our attitude towards children getting to their activities has changed.

30 years ago, when I was in my teens and engaged in all kinds of activities (sports, music, …), it would never have crossed my parents' minds (or mine, for that matter) that they'd be a "Taxi Service". I had a bicycle, and there was public transport for the rainy days. End of story. (Of course they would accompany me to the races on weekends (although not every weekend; there were other parents of other kids as well, and there was no need for every family to drive to every race), or to the concerts at the end of the year, and we'd use the car for that. But not for the weekly training.) The same for school: in the first week or so of kindergarden (I was 4, I think), my mother accompanied me to make sure that I knew the way. And that was it. From then on I went in the morning and returned in the afternoon all by myself, or together with the neighbours' kids, for whom it was the exact same story. Same again in primary school (although I believe the practice period was shorter then, once or twice on the weekend before school began).

I know that traffic has increased since, and it's generally considered much more dangerous now for children to be on the street, but still …

That's terrible to hear that traffic has gotten worse. As for us here, we had school buses to get us to school, but for any activities, it was usually up to the Taxi Service, unless it was close enough to bike. But then, this is the US, and a 'post-industrial city' (which means that it is even worse when it comes to being built around the automobile instead of the human being).

CommRLock78 wrote:

That's terrible to hear that traffic has gotten worse. As for us here, we had school buses to get us to school, but for any activities, it was usually up to the Taxi Service, unless it was close enough to bike. But then, this is the US, and a 'post-industrial city' (which means that it is even worse when it comes to being built around the automobile instead of the human being).

I lived in Beltsville, MD in '99 (was teaching at U of MD in College Park). Being a Brit I expected/wanted to walk everywhere and found it virtually impossible. From my apartment I could see the local multiplex cinema, but getting to it would have meant crossing a 4 lane and then 6 lane highway. There was theoretically a pedestrian crossing but 1) Turn right on red is a bonkers road law and means there's basically never a safe time for a pedestrian to cross 2) there wasn't actually a footpath to either of the pedestrian crossings on either side of the road so you had to walk along the road to get to it 3) there was a tiny island (base of a sign + crossing lights) in the middle of the six lanes as the mid point, I once stood there for 10 minutes with 18 wheelers thundering past on either side trying to get across. I sore never again after that - a drove everywhere...

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I lived in Beltsville, MD in '99 (was teaching at U of MD in College Park). Being a Brit I expected/wanted to walk everywhere and found it virtually impossible. From my apartment I could see the local multiplex cinema, but getting to it would have meant crossing a 4 lane and then 6 lane highway. There was theoretically a pedestrian crossing but 1) Turn right on red is a bonkers road law and means there's basically never a safe time for a pedestrian to cross 2) there wasn't actually a footpath to either of the pedestrian crossings on either side of the road so you had to walk along the road to get to it 3) there was a tiny island (base of a sign + crossing lights) in the middle of the six lanes as the mid point, I once stood there for 10 minutes with 18 wheelers thundering past on either side trying to get across. I sore never again after that - a drove everywhere...

Welcome to the USA . Seriously though, that is, sadly, a typical scenario here. We had a bike path along a 4 lane highway that we could use to get to the YMCA and sometimes (if the park was near enough to the path) soccer practice but a great many things required the Taxi. This being said though, I sold my truck in 2006 and have been riding my bike exclusively ever since (we were borrowing my wife's step dad's van when she was pregnant to get to appointments, but other than that I have had zero carbon footprint in personal transportation since 2006 ). However, I'll have to get another vehicle once I graduate, since by then my son will be getting close to starting school.