Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying out the Bing search engine instead of my usual Google. Bing is Microsoft’s revamp of Live Search, which was its revamp of MSN search.

I’ve never really liked Microsoft’s offering to the search engine industry, mainly because I don’t like its online presence. I hate MSN, I hated hotmail, I don’t like Live mail. I think they are all inferior products, and I really can’t understand why people don’t make the switch to Google’s online products. Up until now I would never have given Microsoft’s search engine another look, but I don’t like things staying the same for too long so I thought I’d give it a spin.

Firstly, I think Bing is much prettier than Google. They have a new background image every day, and the whole design is obviously more deliberate than Google’s 1990s colour scheme. I appreciate that. I never liked Google’s boring logo, nor its ugly results page.

Also, the images search function is light years ahead of Google’s. With Google you get 20 pages of about 100 image thumbnails that you have to laboriously scroll through. With Bing you get a sidebar of thumbnails which is refreshed with Ajax. You never have to leave the page, and you can still view all of the thumbnails it finds. I like the efficiency, convenience and cleverness of it.

They’ve copied Google’s novelty logo idea. Google puts up a special image for Christmas, New Years’ and special occasions, like famous scientists’ birthdays. There the focus is on learning more about, e.g., the famous scientist. With Bing, it’s more about you using their search engine, which I don’t like. It’s a sneaky way of promoting yourself by promoting someone else. It’s funny to see how deep that runs in Microsoft. They’ve resisted web standards, preferring instead to release their own proprietary codes, right up until IE7. I really hate this tendency in Microsoft.

As for what was going through their heads when they called it Bing, I can only hazard a guess. It’s a dreadful, awful name. Interesting to see that they’re stepping away from all their other branding (Microsoft, MSN, Windows, Live, etc).

I hate, and will always hate, multimap. This is probably irrational, much like my hatred of Yahoo. And there’s video adverts on the main page. I hate video adverts.

As for the quality of its search results — obviously the most important thing — I haven’t really looked into it all that much. I guess my expectations in that area are mostly unconscious ones, so I’ll continue to do side-by-side comparisons for a while till I find out what I prefer.

So far, Bing doesn’t feel like proper searching yet. I must confess I don’t really care. (It’s not exactly the most hugely important question in life, is it.) What wins is whatever works easiest. Bing is pretty and excellent with images and media, but has a dreadful name. Google has a boring design, but it’s familiar.

It’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out in the long run. My personal prediction is that in a year or so they’ll have another rebrand (they’re on their fourth as it is). We’ll be introduced to “Swish”, or some other equally silly name, but unless they do something fundamental to searching online muchbetter than Google it will fail to raise much interest.

Maybe pay people every time they use Bing. And change that wretched name!

Today I had my first dental appointment in … well, you read the title, don’t need to type it again.

It was really good fun! I booked it about a fortnight ago, and it made me feel grown-up and responsible. I encourage you all to take your diary right now and book in a check up! (I also registered with a doctor a few months ago, and I have just filled out an electoral roll form — I am all about the taking responsibility at the moment).

The appointment went much as I expected it. I used to want to be a dentist when I was about 14 (ha ha!). This came about because we learned about teeth in biology, and I found the whole thing blindingly fascinating.

Isn’t that weird?

Interesting enough that, when I had 4 pre-molars taken out to make space for my crooked teeth to move about it, I kept them. I still have them today in a film cannister (remember them, before the days of digital cameras?). They’re about an inch long, with the root, and I think they’re pretty cool. I’ll show you them if you ask nicely.

Anyway, I listened to the dentist reporting the status of my teeth to her assistant, and I mostly knew what she was talking about. I actually quizzed her at the end of the appointment. I’m like some kind of dental geek. I asked her about my wisdom tooth, because she’d said, “8 … watch” so I thought “Uh-oh dental caries!” and it turns out I have a small one forming that may need filling, but maybe not. (Teeth are numbered 1-8, 1 being the incisors at the front, 8 being the wisdom teeth right at the back).

I’m a little sad about that, actually. My wisdom teeth are only about 6 years old, and they’ve still got that new feeling to them. Kinda like when you buy a new pair of shoes, except they’re smaller and in my mouth. And sharper, on average, than my other molars. It’s a shame that one of them already has signs of decay.

Anyhoo, turns out I need two small fillings in tooth 6 or 7, I forget which, so I’ve got another visit coming up in October.

Hooray for NHS dental treatment, by the way! I walked past the practise the day after it opened. How lucky! I bloody love the NHS. Goodness me, thanks to Obama and all the American opposition to health care reform — and all those snide comments from across the pond about the quality of our teeth — I suddenly feel very proud of my country and its fraught-with-problems health service (a friend and I recently spent 7 hours in A&E). It may be inefficient, but it beats the horrors of health insurance. Just ask any American family on low income.

P.S. Isn’t it great? This is the first silly post on this blog in a long time.

Other people are probably the biggest cause of pain in our lives. It probably outweighs financial and career woes in terms of heartache. Maybe you have an unappreciative boss, or your parents never affirmed you much, or you have a lazy colleague who takes the credit for your hard work.

These things are truly painful circumstances to deal with. They’re burdens to carry.

The way to deal with them is to do just what you do with a burdern — bear it. Because these are problems that involve other people’s free will, you can’t solve them like you do other problems. Let’s not be lazy: you should try to solve them as and when you can. But do so with the utmost care, and recognise that A) it will take a long time, and B) it may never be solved.

So what do you do? Here you are with a big, emotionally costly problem that will be around for a long time.

The answer is to let the burden strengthen you, instead of weaken you. If your boss is unappreciative, stop trying to please him and just do the best you can, and count it all as generosity towards the company you work for. You end up being a bigger person as a result. If your friend is controlling and bossy, learn to stand up to it, and use the emotional pressure as a motivation to get some steel in your backbone. If your parents are critical, take the difficult but incredibly rewarding journey towards a more independent self-esteem.

Above all, learn forgiveness. Forgiveness isn’t for their benefit, it’s for yours. It doesn’t mean being a fool and staying open to the hurts, but it does mean refusing to see the other person as a monster and letting hatred eat you up on the inside. Twisting the knife only ever happens in your own guts!

I took a break from design for a while, but I’m back with this. It’s the best thing I’ve done so far! Still a few tweaks to be made, but any problems will be ironed out soon.

(If you’re reading on Facebook, check it out at beingmrkenny.co.uk!)

We worry about a lot of stuff. Money, family, jobs, school, university … whatever. Since we do it such a lot, it must be really helpful, right? Let’s take a look.

(Take a while to go through these questions, actually. It’s not just a gimmick I came up with.)

• Does worry help you sleep?
• Does worry help you solve problems?
• Does worry make you feel better about difficult situations?
• Does worry promote well-being in any important area of your life (relationships, finance, job)?
• Does worry help solve problems that you can’t really solve anyway (e.g. the recession)?

So does worrying have any kind of positive impact whatsoever in your life? No it does not! So why on earth do we do it so much? Genuine question! What’s the point?! Worry does nothing. You are not being irresponsible by refusing to worry about something. Worrying about a problem isn’t the same as trying to solve it, so it’s at best useless, and at worst, harmful.

I realised this one night when I was in bed. As ever, my brain sprung into action, winding itself tighter and tighter around a problem area in my life at the moment.

I suddenly realised that now was not the time and place to be trying to come up with solutions, much less make them larger in my head. It was the time for restful sleep! Since my brain was being naughty, I told it off.

Seriously, I literally told my brain off. “Listen up, brain, now is not the time for such rubbish!” And such like. Sometimes you literally have to prise thoughts away from your own mind, like getting a stick from a dog. It’s a sheer act of will.

Practical steps

When you take something away from a baby (scissors, screwdrivers, the cat’s tail) you need to make sure you give it something else or it will miss the thing it was holding before. Your brain is just like that. Stop the worrying with willpower, and then force yourself to think about something else. If you’re trying to sleep, think about the sea, or a summer’s day or whatever New Age-y imagery you want to use to help you sleep. For me, it has to be a pleasant day dream that develops naturally without much effort.

Writing down concerns is also helpful. It lets your worry-brain know that you’re taking its concerns seriously. Listening can be a really powerful tool.

If you’re worried about a job or some problem, I find a physical aid like a brainstorm is really helpful. It gives me something concrete to focus on instead of the formless crap inside my head.

Also, the more good stuff inside your brain, the more likely it is to come out. So fill your head with helpful books, films, TV, conversations, music. Then you’re more likely to produce positive stuff!

Read more

• Anxiety Culture
• How to stop worrying
• How to stop worrying and why

I had a pretty miserable time as a student. I was expecting it to open up my life, give me direction, answer all the questions I had, like what I was going to do with my life, who I was, etc. etc.

It didn’t!

Instead I found independence difficult, even though it was that funny kind of semi-independence where you went home at the holidays. I reckon most people don’t get a black-and-white “leaving home” experience, you do it (psychologically at least) over some years, I guess. But anyway. I found my student experience quite disappointing. I didn’t feel like I made the lifelong friends I had hoped I would make. I felt I’d left them all behind back at home. (In reality, I did make them, it’s just you don’t recognise them as such when you’re right there!) I didn’t get any epiphany moments as to what my career would be.

My student experience was one of confusing, half-formed feelings that melded into one another. It was hard to tell one apart from the other, despite my most strenuous analytic efforts.

And it just occurred to me, meeting up with a friend from those days, that not a lot has changed. Those feelings are still all mixed up and confusing, four years on. Now, there’s just more distance between me and them. I can look at them as an observer. It’s like visiting a museum.

I still have those same questions, too, but they’re not the menacing monsters they used to be. I have no idea how to answer, “Who am I?” but I’ve realised it’s not a question you can answer in words. Or not completely at least. Plus “I” is something that keeps changing, anyway.

Life is messy and refuses to fit into the boxes I try to put it in. But I like that. I guess I have always liked it, but back then “like” seemed to have a whole lot more pain in it. I don’t know. I haven’t lived life perfectly, but then no-one has, and I don’t believe that anyone really knows what “perfect” is anyway, so it’s effectively a meaningless question, but it’s funny how those questions we can’t quite answer are the most important. And enjoyable to try to answer! You have to answer them not just with thoughts thought, or words spoken (or written) but with life lived. You spell them out with the trail of the life you lead.

A friend recently asked me, “What would you do if someone gave you infinity money?”

Well, my first reaction would be the same as to his question. Laugh delightedly. Well you would, wouldn’t you? The biggest worry in life (for me, anyway) would suddenly evaporate. It would be like being promised that you would never be rained on again, even if it was raining, there would be little rain-free bubble around you keeping you dry. (Maybe also the rain-drops would sing little songs to you as they passed, but maybe this is just my imagination taking things too far, though you have to admit … it would be pretty cool.)

I guess the second thing I would do would be to walk around feeling like I was floating a foot from the ground. All those projects that would suddenly become possible. All the things you could fund. You could solve so many of the world’s problems at once. In fact, you would immediately become the world’s only bank. You could lend as much as people wanted, and never worry about being paid back. You could give everyone else infinity money too, since you can never diminish infinity.

If you take the question to its logical conclusions, your having infinity money would totally change the world. Economics would be turned on its head. All financial motivation would be forever eradicated. People would no longer work for money, they would work for love. Social barriers would come down, or at least be revolutionised. Wow, thinking about all the possibilities makes the mind boggle. Society would be deeply and profoundly changed, forever. Think of it, capitalism and communism would become the same thing. Greed would be irrelevant. What would happen to business and employment?

But then, I guess something else would become valuable. Money would no longer be used as money. Something else would become sought after — what would that be? Natural resources? Mental ability?

Zooming back in to the original intentions of the question, though (and with some quick reinterpreting of the question) what would I do with infinity money, if that money was somehow limited so as not to change the world, only to remove financial limitations on myself?

This is a damn good question. How long it takes for you to come up with an answer shows you what dreams you have, and how much of them are limited by money. Would having no money worries suddenly satisfy your every desire?

Hmmm. This was an offhand question, but it’s really got me thinking. What’s important to you? What would you do if money was no longer a worry (or a temptation)?