Re: OT: I need an Avatar
 

Hmm... I don't see any purpose to a wildcard search. A search for "adama*t" is pretty much just a search for "adama", but filtering out any page that doesn't have a t after it somewhere. It doesn't find things with "adamant" in them very well. A search for "adamant * mod" makes the results completely irrelevant compared to "adamant mod". Something like "adamant *" is pretty non-sensical, cutting out ~17% of the results without any apparent rhyme or reason.

Re: OT: I need an Avatar
 

So what would be a more effective way to search given the following: You want to find a modification for a game called Space Empires 4. You know this mod starts with “adama” that there are more letters but you are not sure how many more, and that there should be a “T” in it but you can’t tell if the t is the last letter or not. How would you advise someone to do this search? I have a computer class with the kids tomorrow and will include your suggestion. Naturally I will talk about looking up koalas or some other equally odd spelled animal like aardvark. Maybe I can talk about modding the koala and aardvark so you can mount meson blasters to them…mmm…

Re: OT: I need an Avatar
 

I don't know, probably search for a list of space empires 4 mods or sites hosting mods, and go from there? I can't think of a way to use wildcards that narrow the search down in predictable ways (at least with Google; maybe another search engine handles them better). Maybe someone else can?

Re: OT: I need an Avatar
 

I’ve never bothered to question this before. I hadn’t planed on talking about searches tomorrow so I won’t. What I will have to do is some research into effective search techniques.