james mckay dot net

Now if you start getting symptoms that make your heart miss a beat, it’s tempting in these days of instant information to turn to Google. Or Wikipedia.

Don’t do it!

I’ve learned this the hard way the past couple of months. Some of the symptoms I’ve been getting during and since my recent particularly nasty bout of flu have made me wonder whether there was something serious going on.

So I went to Google, typed in my symptoms, only to be led to various articles that told me I could drop dead at any moment. I turned to Wikipedia, and the information it presented from Reliable Sources told me exactly the same.

Then yesterday I saw my doctor and he told me that this is unlikely. In fact, he was quite firm that he doesn’t think I have any significant, immediate, life-threatening concerns. He wants to do some tests, but he put me at ease about everything. He’s good at that.

If you’re worried about your health, avoid Google. Avoid Wikipedia. Go to your doctor.

Your doctor knows your medical history. He knows what you actually have. Google doesn’t. Google only knows what you think you have, and even then, it conflates that with things that your loved ones have, things you think your loved ones have, things you think your favourite celebrities have, and things that the characters in the novel that you’re trying to write think they have. Google will lead you onto discussion forums frequented by (a) people who actually do have significant, immediate, life-threatening concerns, (b) people who haven’t a clue what they’re talking about, (c) conspiracy theorists, and (d) spammers.

Google will present you with scare stories about misdiagnoses that make you mistrust your doctor. While these are tragic, they are very much the exception rather than the rule, and they only make the headlines because they are unusual.  Google will lead you to articles presenting worst-case scenarios alongside everyday ailments that can be treated with over-the-counter remedies. Google will present all this to you in a blunt, deadpan, just-the-facts-ma’am manner. You’ll end up diagnosing yourself with mutually contradictory disorders. And then, to add insult to injury, for the next three weeks, every website you visit will carry adverts for quack remedies for syndromes that kids you don’t have don’t have.

Your doctor, on the other hand, will filter out all the irrelevant stuff for you. He won’t tell you about incurable life-threatening diseases when all you have is Team Foundation Syndrome, which can be easily treated by switching to Mercurial. And because you are in a face-to-face interaction with someone who is trained to help worried people, and you have the non-verbal communication element, even if the news is bad or esoteric, it will be easier to handle.

If you want an online resource that can give you advice on what to do, go to a site such as the NHS symptom checker. It will ask you a series of questions about your symptoms, and based on your responses, it will tell you whether to call an ambulance, go to the chemist for an over-the-counter remedy, or see your doctor.

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Posted at 08:00 on 16 February 2011.
Tagged: Google, health

The answer: that someone reached my blog by typing that very question into Google. It’s been a while since I last went through my Google Analytics search results, but when I did recently, I also discovered that people arrived here by searching for curiosities such as “busker in kilt bath” or “cool stuff that ten year olds like to put on descktop” (sic) or “dentist torture” or “deliverance ministry in horsham uk”. And so, as another year has drawn to a close, here are some more particularly interesting searches from 2008, that I will take a moment or two to comment on:

“corporate dressing, corridors of power”

Does Google know too much about me?! When I came across this one, I had said almost nothing about my new job on my blog. But yes I am expected to wear a tie (except during recess and on non-sitting Fridays) — however, it doesn’t really bother me.

“curiosities of the number 23″

Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive list. Including, as ever, “in popular culture.”

“how not to look a prat in a cycle helmet”

Simple: don’t wear one. Obviously, if you are concerned about safety, or live in a jurisdiction where the law demands it, this is not an option. You’ll just have to put up with looking a prat.

“how do you pronounce mckay”

It rhymes with “eye,” not with “day.” Even Stargate Atlantis and the folks on the History Channel who interview a well known exobiologist who shares his surname with me get it wrong. Sigh. But talking of Stargate Atlantis, someone asked:

“what programming language do they use on stargate atlantis for the machines”

Hmmm, I don’t know whether Stargate Command use .NET and C#, as whoever searched for “stargate c# dot net” must have been thinking, but apparently, it turns out that the Replicators are programmed in JavaScript. It also seems that one visitor to my blog thinks that there is a “stargate near m6 motorway”.

You really wonder sometimes…

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Posted at 00:00 on 1 January 2009.
Tagged: Google, search terms

One of the fun things about blogging that the MySpace crowd completely misses out on is that people get to your blog through Google, and if you have a bit of techno-savvy, or a Google Analytics account, or both, you can see what people are searching for to get to it. It’s quite amusing to take a look at these from time to time, especially when you get gems such as this one:

“replacing a spleen with something else”

Don’t ask me why, but at the moment I am at the top of this particular Google search, despite the fact that my knowledge and understanding of, and interest in, spleen transplants is zilch. What exactly they were thinking when they typed that into Google, the mind boggles.

Here are a few others:

“windows live writer and myspace”

Windows Live Writer works very well with several popular blogging packages and providers, including Blogger, WordPress, Movable Type, and, of course, Windows Live Spaces. However, MySpace is not one of them. It’s totally unsupported, mainly because MySpace has never released its own API. MySpace is all very well for social networking and showing off your gratuitous absence of web design skills, but as a blogging platform, it is rubbish. Get a real blog.

“james mckay poetry”

I did try writing a little poetry as a teenager. However, the doggerel I came up with was on a par with William Topaz McGonagall or Amanda McKittrick Ros so I threw it out. Nothing to see here. Move along please.

“jim mckay world cup”

It seems I have a namesake who is a well known American sports broadcaster. Apparently, I also have another namesake who is an expert on ferrets, as I discovered when somebody from the Netherlands e-mailed me to ask if that’s me. Sorry, it isn’t.

“ideal microwave height”

Any height is fine as far as I’m concerned, as long as it doesn’t bring it into conflict with the wireless router…

“interactive swearing keyboard”

Why, oh why, oh why, do people search for things such as this? I’d hate to have a keyboard that swore at me. So would all my colleagues. So would everyone else I know. But then again, you get all sorts…

“unathleticism”

That’s my middle name

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Posted at 23:50 on 4 January 2007.
Tagged: Google, search terms