The question I didn’t want Google to help me with

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“The need to know the capital of Florida died when my phone learned the answer.” Chiveta

This is so true and, then again, so annoying. I find myself going online to find the answer for too much: imperial to metric conversion, place names, spellings, etc. It’s become too easy to rely on a search engine algorithm to get an answer that ordinarily I’d know, or at least be able to work out with a little time and brain power.

Which is why I am so proud of myself – this weekend I figured out something quite trivial without the help of Google. Yes, I finished the task off by using Google to find the name I didn’t know, but I used my slowly deteriorating grey-matter and did it myself.

Here’s why: 

I’ve started watching Daredevil on Netflix, and one actor that appears in the third or fourth episode looked familiar. It’s not a face I’d seen for quite a long while, but something about him resonated with me. After a further three episodes I was starting to remember the subtitles of the way he spoke and some other minor visual cues from how he held his head, frowned, speech and how he spoke, etc.

Wilson Fisk / Daredevil

Then it hit me … Full Metal Jacket! Private Pyle.

Private Pyle / Full Metal Jacket

Now I can use Google to find the answer –  the actor is indeed the same, and what’s his name? Vincent D’Onofrio (IMDB) and, as it turns out, has been working very hard between Full Metal Jacket in 1987 and Daredevil in 2015.

Here’s why I found this exercise important – I know I rely on online tools too much. There are too many jobs I could’ve worked out given time and energy, but I was lazy and searched for it. I may or may not be a typical Internet user and/or searcher, but I acknowledge my limitations here. I’ve also found search results to be frustratingly vague or, in some cases, wrong. You need to be good in analysing the results you’re shown in order to filter what you don’t need from the results you do. This can be difficult if you don’t know what you don’t know but sometimes, like above, it’s enough to figure it out for yourself.

For me this was as much about trying to work it out for myself as it was about doing something the hard way. yes, Google would’ve been quicker, but certainly not as much fun!