As many Backbytes readers are hopeless romantics, we pass on the news of research from Drexel University in Philadelphia to show that, depending on the site you visit, you have a wildly different conception of what “success” is in an online dating experience.

We thought that guys had exactly one definition, but we’re meant to leave the smutty jokes until the end. So 84 per cent of users who reported successful experiences on eHarmony were referring to marriage, slightly under half of successful experiences on match.com were marriage, and less than one in four of OkCupid’s successful visitors were referring to marriage.

We’d point out that the clue is in the name, perhaps. You could try surveying whether successful online experiences on xxxhotcheerleaders.com led to marriage and get an even smaller figure – though it would be tricky to do the survey, because visitors tend to stay for no more than five minutes at a time. And they’re a bit distracted.

Just in time for the end of the holiday season we have discovered the web site Nerdy Day Trips, which has hundreds of ways in which Backbytes readers can bore their families.

Visiting the house where Alan Turing died to stare at the blue plaque might not take a whole day, but the UK holds many unsuspected charms. For example, if you’re in Greenwich, you might visit the Fan Museum, “the only museum in the world devoted entirely to every aspect of fans and fan making,” or the Hack Green secret nuclear bunker near Nantwich, or even to the outskirts of Bradford to see the Shipley Glen Cable Railway, “the oldest working cable tramway in Great Britain”.

Hey, Computing readers, looking for a belt buckle that says, “I’m in IT”? Probably not, but someone is, because retailer GettingWeddy is selling belts with computer mice as buckles for $20.

It really makes a statement about your sense of style. Whether that’s a statement you want to make in public, we’ll leave to you.

Disappointment for fans of bad Wikipedia pages, as this week the Château de Versailles
appointed its first Wikipedia intern. Benoît Evellin, who (according to Wikipedia, so this might not be true) likes role-playing games, trains and the cuisine of Brittany, will organise contributors to improve the pages about Versailles.

In case Ben wants to include us, we’d point out that Louis XIV was a regular contributor of helpdesk anecdotes to Backbytes, and once submitted an amusing Haiku about Ethernet cabling. That’s “fact” as in “not true”, but that’s why Wiki­pedia can be better than truth.

If you want to play a computer game, but don’t know if you should, we have the game for you: http://quiz.worldofuncertainty.org/.

Queen’s University Belfast has created the prototype of a game that helps us to make decisions when faced with uncertainty: should you run for a train that’s just about to leave? Is it worth reading Backbytes every issue? The game teaches us whether we tend to be overconfident or underconfident in situations like this, and so teaches us to overcome our natural biases. It’s cheaper than the best test of these abilities: online poker.

And, in case you were wondering, the answer to the Backbytes question is “yes”.