Web Pierat and First Mate at Lake Superior

On our vacation this week to the hinterlands of northern Wisconsin and Michigan’s upper peninsula, First Mate Brian and I stopped by Lake Superior to take in the sunset. As I hunted the shoreline for treasure and arty photo opportunities, Brian drew me a lovely effigy. I knew he was up to something because I paused now and then to capture the sunset’s progress and his silhouette. I’m a lucky girl.


Web PieRat logo.

Originally posted on Web PieRat.

Aarrgghh, Me Google Doodle Is a Pirate Turkey!

I was underwhelmed by Google’s Thanksgiving doodle … UNTIL I played with the personalization animations. Very cool, Google! Did you know that if you click the wing you get a slot-machine-esque changing of features that settles into a random configuration. And for the first time there’s a link to share your doodle to G+ (nice move, makes perfect sense) as well as a button to get the link to share to your other favorite social network or email around or scribble it on a slip of paper and stash it in the hidden drawer where you keep your toenail clippings. Hey, I’m not judging, everyone has their thing. I love the push pins in the corner of the doodle, too, because who among us doesn’t remember making a turkey from the tracing of your hand and decorating it? Of course, my favorite turkey doodle is a pirate! Check out my Pierat pirate turkey, make your own favorite version, and have a fabulous Thanksgiving!

UPDATE: Ohmigod I’m so excited! An anonymous commenter tipped me off to the all-black-feathers trick! Make all the feathers black and you get a KABOOM full-blown pirate with five extra accessories and a flapping beak: a parrot, captain’s hat, hook, treasure chest and giant black beard! SO Happy! Thanks for commenting, “Me!”


Web PieRat logo.

Originally posted on Web PieRat.

Our Geeky Engagement

On Friday 11-11-11, my geeky love Brian R. Brown proposed, the digital way. The Web Pierat well soon have a most seaworthy First Mate.

We were having a casual diner at one of our favorite local restaurants, Williams Street Public House, the first place we ate when we moved to Crystal Lake, IL. At the end of our meal, Brian took a picture of me and daughter Hazel with our gorgeous dessert to post to Facebook, and asked me to check my phone to make sure that it had uploaded to Facebook OK.

Instead of the photo, he had posted this amazingly eloquent and moving note asking me to marry him. Naturally, after reading with some slight disbelief and happy shock, I said yes. Emphatically. Of course we didn’t get a photo of ourselves in all the hubbub, so a photo of the ring will have to do. It’s beautifully simple and classic with a squared-off bottom so it won’t spin. He did very well.

Even better than the quality of the gorgeous ring, which he built himself online from scads of loose stones and settings on BlueNile.com, is that it is 1.01 carats. And guess what a 101 server header status signifies?

101 Switching Protocols
The server understands and is willing to comply with the client’s request, via the Upgrade message header field for a change in the application protocol being used on this connection. The server will switch protocols to those defined by the response’s Upgrade header field immediately after the empty line which terminates the 101 response.
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html

So basically, our engagement is a change in protocol. Perfect!

I had been hoping for a geeky proposal some day, and Brian delivered in spades. I’m the luckiest woman, to have found my geeky soul mate and to know that I am his. He’s my knight in shining armor and the smile on my face.


Web PieRat logo.

Originally posted on Web PieRat.

Competitive Research, the Web Piecat Way [LOLcat SEO]

Cricket the Web Piecat spying on the competitionCricket, the most neurotic of the Web Piecats, is not hiding. No, she’s spying, and was none too pleased that I was jeopardizing her cover. I tried to tell her that there are much more effective ways to conduct competitive research for organic search, but she wanted to do it her way.

Here are a couple of effective and free ways to spy on your competitors’ SEO tactics, all of which work much better than hiding under paper packing paper:

  • How about looking at their site for starters, silly kitty. What keywords are they targeting in the title tags and navigation?
  • Crawl their site to collect all the title tags and linking patterns quickly. See 8 SEO Reasons to Crawl Your Sites for more on using crawlers for SEO.
  • Check out SpyFu.com to see what terms they’re bidding on and winning in paid and organic search.
  • Scope their link portfolio with tools like Link Diagnosis or Open Site Explorer.

Like this LOL? Vote it up at http://cheezburger.com/jillkocher/lolz/View/5423868928.


Web PieRat logo.

Originally posted on Web PieRat.

Pie(Rate) Chart Tee on Woot, So Happy!

image

Woot’s daily t-shirts often amuse me, but until now I haven’t felt compelled to buy one. Lets count the reasons the Pie(Rate) Chart shirt is awesome, shall we?

  1. Pun on pirates featuring the word pie. Obviously awesome. (*cough* PieRat *cough*)
  2. Features a pie chat detailing stereotypical pirate attributes.
  3. Pie chart does not appear to add up to 100%, which will perturb friends and strangers.
  4. Pleasure experienced in explaining the joke to the unenlightened.
  5. Last but not least, it’s a geeky pirate math joke on a t-shirt. Come on, people!

If you’re still wondering what the punchline is, here you go. I love a geeky discussion thread even more than a geeky t-shirt.

From the shirt’s description:

“Well, ye blasted fool, did ye not notice that the circle has a great big patch in the center? Aye, lad, and that patch be coverin’ a missin’ 9%, most likely! And don’t ye be feelin’ foolish now?”

From a forum geek:

9% missing
“i” is the ninth letter
i = eye
Patch = to fill
therefore: eye patch fills in the missing value
It is a simple case of pirate math people

From the shirt’s creator:

haha, sorry the lack of 100 percent add-up has made some people jump overboard on this shirt’s purchase! There were actually two reasons/jokes we were going for here and both have been mentioned already:

1. 9 percent eyepatch!

2. Pirates ain’t no good at mathimacation, land lubbers!

As for some of the pie slices not matching up to their percentages perfectly, we felt melding the pie colors in a visually pleasing way was more important than aligning to the exact percentages. For instance, the red pie slice is supposed to vaguely look like a sideways pirate hat, as well as the peg leg placed around where the leg might be on a person, the squawk on the shoulder, and the booty…well, I won’t sink as low as our tee does on that front.

Thanks again for the love/indifference!


Web PieRat logo.

Originally posted on Web PieRat.