My “Day I Left Pennsylvania” led me to some archived website posts (before blogs were invented) I had written many years ago. I’m re-posting them now. Bear in mind that most of the content in this series is over 5 years old. I have left the content more or less intact. I have removed some links and added some others — but that’s it. Enjoy!

Being able to find information effectively has become a lot easier since Google has improved their search engines, but there was once a time when you had to use crazy pedantics to find stuff you wanted. Some of the techniques still apply.

The power of identity

Names are very powerful things. Names identify us, can label friend or foe, provide clues to origin, announce familial history, and much much more! And all for the low low price of 19.95!
When you’re starting your quest to locate some obscure little tidbit of information, a photograph, a song, CD, or 12″ vinyl that you’ve been hunting for months or years, it helps a lot to know the name. Sometimes simply finding the name can lead you right to it! Common knowledge says the majority of solving any problem is identifying it.

Starting Your Hunt

I’m writing this mostly in reference to internet hunts, but it can really be applied to anywhere; although on the internet it’s much faster, obviously.
The first thing to ask yourself is “what do i know about ____ already?” Consider what elements about it are significant compared to other similar things. For example, let’s say you’re looking for some songs by the 80s punk band that was fronted by Henry Rollins. Let’s also say your knowledge of them right now is very limited (maybe you’re doing a school report, I don’t know!). So right now we know 4 things about our target: (a) it’s music, (b) it’s a punk band, (c) the songs we are looking for are from the 80s, and (d) the name of the frontman was “Henry Rollins”.

Searching

So we do a search for: “Henry Rollins” punk band
The first link I looked at from the Google results had a picture, but no names. A few links down though, with some intense scrutinizing of the list, and we find one that has the name of the band! [You can check it out if you like]

So now we know the name of the band: “Black Flag.”

What to do with it?

What if we want songs by it? You could always go the internet ruffian way and download some of their songs on KaZaa. Or you could search on CDNow.com. Simply knowing the name has allowed us to now get virtually anything we need to know about them. You can find out the titles of all of their CDs by doing a search for +”Black Flag” +Discography , or you can try and find some of their CDs to buy either on eBay, or CDNow.com .

The Idea

What this all boils down to is this: you have to start somewhere. Knowing the proper place to look is the first part, and knowing what to search for is the second part. And patience is key. Even as fast as the internet is, you can’t speed up opportunity. There are some older techno and trance records that I’ve been searching for years, with no success past names. Their time will come eventually. Information is power though, and the more you have of it, the closer you will get to your goal.

The Toolbox

Have a bookmark collection, a mental collection, or some kind of weird database of places you consider to be good resources of information. They have to be somewhat specific too– going to the library is great if you want to find out information about something, but you still need to go to its appropriate department, right?

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