How not to make a technical blog userful

It may seem like a good idea to put a tag cloud or index of every technical term and topic ever used in your blog in the margin of your main page, but I contend this is a false, pernicious practice.

Why? Suppose that the tags, "hydrogenated", "rootabaga", "cancer", and "cure" occur in your blog, but all in separate posts. Their presence in the index now means that some desperate person searching for "hydrogenated rootabaga cancer cure" may well find your blog instead of the page they actually want. Making your main page more visible to searches by putting more words on it is not the same thing as helping people to find what they want.

In other new, I'm thinking of adapting this:

http://www.neatorama.com/2012/03/27/robotic-water-gun-shoots-squirrels-off-birdfeeder/

to keep kids off my lawn.