Sorry for being slightly blog-happy today but Tom points to Sternest Meanings – an anagram chat engine. It’s not a Turing engine (which I thought it was to begin with and very rapidly worked out otherwise) – but is good for a laugh. Apart from anything else, you can type things in like:
I’m Armand David.
And have it say:
Rid avid madman.
Which I think is quite insightful, really.
‘Sternest meanings’, of course, is an anagram of gem transientness. Obviously, I mean d’uh!
Have had to bring home some work this weekend (argh!), due in part to looming deadlines and the fact that I go on holiday next week and have quite a bit to mop up. So, what happens? The weather turns nice, after a week of rain, cold and misery – and I lose all ability to knuckle down, and spent half the morning watching cooking programmes on television.
MAN. I need to reclaim my Saturday and soak up some sunshine… as you can see from my new masthead photo, my tan is fading somewhat ;)
Had a great day at the races with Matt, Marion and Louise, as guest of Cisco Systems. Cisco sponsored the track, and also did a considerable amount of work building the all-pervasive unified IP network to support Ascot’s communications infrastructure, wireless and otherwise.
Had only been horse racing once before, and not to Ascot, so didn’t quite know what to expect. The venue was awesomely impressive, a lot of glass, steel and concrete; modern, yet quietly tasteful. The drinks were priced for the extraordinarily wealthy (or perhaps just those who managed to place successful bets), and the races were fully entertaining. An excellent day, in short, even if I did come up £14 down on the races… clearly there’s a knack to it I haven’t quite picked up!
More photos on Flickr, which, thanks to a new plugin from Joe Tan, is now pseudo-hosted on Division6!
Saw ‘Fray Bentos’ tins in a large, large Asda that Marion took us to today. It’s such a good concept, if probably unhealthy, and, erm, unhealthy. Ok, maybe not *that* good a concept, but I like it… ;)
(Thinking about it, this makes me sound like a FrayBentos Noob – I’m not, of course – have sampled the delights of their cans in the past, although not, I hasten to add, their meat puddings. Those are an as yet undiscovered country).
My results:
You are Superman
| You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.  |
Charles points to Stuart Bruce who points at the Juicy Studio readability test. This handy little beasty tells you how readable your website is, based on some criteria that Messrs. Gunning and Fog presumably came up with at some point when such things were important (where were they when Jane Austen was writing, I ask you!? Mind you, they don’t do anything about the word:event ratio).
In any case – Stuart, on his sample of about 15 blogs, determines that PRs are less readable than journalists. My score of 9.74 stands me in the cateory of “most popular novels”, though, which I can live with, even if it is marginally higher than Charles, Gary and a few others…
I’ll read someone else’s blog for a little while, I think…
According to this website.
And the below test:
The exercise was
I was surprised when representatives from several major airlines informed me that the period between kitchen prep to passenger consumption is usually one day..Airlines reduce the journey time of meals from the kitchen to your tray by contracting with catering companies all over the globe.You typed
I was surprised when representatives from several major airlines informed me that the period between kitchen prep to passenger consumption is usually one day. Airlines reduce the journey time of meals from the kitchn to your tray by contracting with catering companies all over the globe.Your speed was 81 WPM with 1 mistake (adjusted speed 80 WPM)
I type faster than Charles Arthur, technology editor of the Guardian. Which gives me, erm, no sense of satisfaction from the feat in itself, but did give me a chance to test out Google Notebook, which seems to work quite well (its kind of a web-based scratchpad, probably tying into the Google desktop tool of that name…
It is cool – although very much a limited beta, I think. You can’t even right click on it; I mean, come on! But it works with the same kind of Ajaxian javascript that Google Talk (web) does, so I guess right clicking would be much to hope for…
…but do now seem vaguely poetic.
Do all writers have unkempt hair? Tom Clancy?
Are all my thoughts worth sharing? Doubt it…
Random writing thoughts: trick arrows/explosive sheath/fuse?/pocket flint/patent law/brands
Literary lords? High.
Nightschool?
Ruins?
Ancient antiseptics?
Selecting one from the crowd for drama.
Old mercenaries like to wake up early
Do I want to be a teacher?
Meniscology @ the cafe
Have had a number of conversations with people about Earl of late – probably at least in part due to frustration about missing it this week when Sky was down. There is a consistent agreement that the Way of Randy is a reassuring and calming path to walk. Although I always bring it up as a joke to explain to people what the show is and why I like it, a remakarable proportion of the people I’ve mentioned it to who enjoy the show have developed their own empathy for Randy.
What a guy.