Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like.
I chose to upload my PhD thesis 🙂
click here for larger version
Following the recent YouTube films showing popcorn being popped by mobile phones a discussion arose as to whether this was possible. Some argued that they had been able to replicate the films while others cried hoax! Thankfully the Guardian Online conducted the following experiment:
In search of the truth we gathered all the phones in the G2 office, placed some freshly purchased uncooked popcorn in the centre of them and simultaneously dialled them all. The result?
Absolutely nothing.
Which is probably not surprising as the popcorn kernels has to be heated to over 230 centigrade before it pops…
Via Boing Boing I came across J.K. Rowling’s Commencement Address at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association. Her address was entitled The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination (online with video here).
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
We focus much too often on success, believing that it will teach us something we study success. Unfortunately we are too quick to ignore failure, despite the fact that failure would probably teach us more. Even on a personal level failure teaches us more than success. We learn more from unpleasantness.
Photo: band – failure is not an option by Leo Reynolds (CC by-nc-sa)
A new podcast from the University of Bath. This time it’s Professor Allan Kellehear from the Centre for Death & Society at the University of Bath talking about the point of death and organ retention in a lecture called The science of death. From the blurb:
The research literature about ‘brain death’ is characterised by biomedical, bioethical and legal writing. This has led to overlooking wider but no less pertinent social, historical and cultural understandings about death. By ignoring the work of other social and clinical colleagues in the study of dying, the literature on the determination of death has become unnecessarily abstract and socially disconnected from parallel concerns about death and dying. These circumstances foster incomplete suggestions and narrow discussions about the nature of death as well as an ongoing misunderstanding of general public and health care staff responses to brain death criteria. I outline these problems through a review of the key literature on the determination of death.
T-shirt from Despair Wear 🙂
A colleague, photographer and fellow flickr abuser has just joined the blogosphere and I am looking forward to seeing the blog grow. If it is anything like her photography it should be well worth following. Check out her work at Homespun and why not drop by her Flickr site.
Busy writing trying to catch a deadline that has way too much of a head start. Every time I need cheering up I listen to “Ken Leee” with the fantastic lyric “Tulibu dibu douchoo”. If you have not checked out this YouTube recording of the Bulgarian attempting to sing Mariah Cary do so now!!!
I think I am going to have to make a t-shirt with Ken Leee on the front and Tulibu dibu douchoo on the back…
Talk about pushing life to the extremes. There are those who feel that a marathon in itself is not enough of a challenge and choose to run the in extreme. Naturally they are not alone. The North Pole Marathon is an annual event…
Photo: North Pole Marathon 2008 by Mike King
Once you have got over the shock, an intense desire to participate is natural 🙂 And why stop there? The organizers of the North Pole Marathon also hold the Antarctic Ice Marathon.
Spent the morning doing hamster work – it’s the handling of emails and administrative tasks each so small that they do not really require much thought but taken collectively they can destroy any attempt to carry out real work (writing, researching etc). It’s called hamster work because after a day carrying it out you go home without having produced anything. It feels much like a hamster must feel after running in the treadmill. Lots of movement but no distance.
Photo: Cholate Loving Hamster by Steve_C (CC BY-NC-ND)
After two hours of attempting to empty my inbox, it now contains 92 essential emails (from the original 224). It isn’t fun discovering things have been forgotten but now at least I am (almost) on top of my email again.
By the way have you read Knuth on email? Here is a short quote:
Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration. I try to learn certain areas of computer science exhaustively; then I try to digest that knowledge into a form that is accessible to people who don’t have time for such study.
The first time I came across the concept of vuxenpoäng was when a friend of mine bought new plates and since then the idea has been developing. I am not sure if it is a real concept but it is something that my friends and I tend to use. The basis of the concept comes from the realization that we are getting older but not necessarily growing up.
Vuxenpoäng is translated inelegantly as adult points and there are certain actions in life which give a large amount of adult points. These are not the typical, semi-inevitable, moments in life like getting a real job, having children or buying a car but the more subtle actions which could be avoided and were, earlier in life, seen as unnecessary acts of adulthood.
Here are some examples of what the concept of vuxenpoäng entails. It is however important to note that all of these acts must be carried out voluntarily. Being forced into an act by partner, friends, parents, family pet greatly diminishes the whole value of the act. Adulthood comes from within.
Buying a large new sofa, but not from Ikea (or similar discount store) is an action which will earn you a mass of adult points. As trivial as it may sound many of us go through a large part of our lives without buying a new sofa and are not stigmatized by this. Therefore the act of buying the new sofa is not social pressure or basic necessity, but is, in a word, adult.
Spending money on certain objects is very adult. Deciding that hard earned cash should be used to invest in new plates and/or cutlery is adult. You have plates to eat off. You don’t need new plates and yet you decide to invest money in this instead of new technical stuff, clothes or vacation.
Moving house/apartment within the same region and still using professional movers. The realm of friends helping in the move and rewarding them with beer and pizza afterwards is one of the bastions of anti-adulthood.
Curtains. Curtains are generally a vaguely adult concept but there are two areas which make curtains particularly adult. The first is spending more than 15 minutes on deciding which curtain rails you would like to have. Curtains exist. Even the immature have them. But spending a large amount of time deciding upon the style in which they should defy gravity is an act filled with adult points.
Curtains: The Sequel. Having and using extra curtains. Lots of vuxenpoäng in this activity. Actually any activity besides drawing and opening the curtains once they have been installed will probably entail vuxenpoäng.
This reminds me, have you seen this one from XKCD?
So do you get the concept? What about you? How adult are you?