I blog like an old fuddy duddy. But a happy one...

The urlai website analyzes blog text and evaluates it according to gender, age, mood, and tonality. Here's the verdict on me:

luminosis.blogspot.com is probably written by a male somewhere between 66-100 years old. The writing style is personal and happy most of the time.

There isn't a heck of a lot of detail about how the evaluation is done, but presumably it is based on word usage analysis. Based on the words I use, this algorithm thinks I am mostly happy, but possibly because of the formality of my sentence construction, thinks I am between 66 to 100. Well, it got the gender right.

Turning this lens on some other examples -- Michael and Jill's Second Draft, as well as Madeline's Escaping The Trunk gets exactly the same evaluation as me, except for the gender -- the algorithm correctly identifies Madeline as female, and believes that the combination of Michael and Jill is also female. Maybe because Jill posts more? The analysis is dead on for Dave -- male, 26 to 50, mostly happy. But for Peter, it gets both the gender and age wrong -- female, 66 to 100, mostly upset. Looking further afield to the blog of a complete stranger -- the age problem and "mostly upset" rating also applies to Pharyngula. Maybe the "mostly upset" part is a marine biologist thing?

These results are dynamic over time, since the analysis is based on the latest articles in the blog. It is possible that I could change the tone and character of my blog and get a different result, so if you are reading this article years after it is written, and you run the same analysis on my blog, you might not get the same result.

You likely can derive information about an author from lexical analysis of their writing, including statistical frequency analysis of their word usage. But these (admittedly limited) results show this analysis needs to used in context with other information. In the meantime, I need to go find some kids so I can yell at them to get off my damn lawn. Because that's what us happy old fuddy duddy bloggers do.

Catchup

...or maybe ketchup. The latter would be what you slather on hot dogs, the former is for bloggers who who didn't do anything since late April.

April and May included a couple of events at the Merril Collection, the 11th birthday of N1S (10th birthday and 8th birthday reported previously), a party to celebrate Peter Watts' freedom, as well as the anniversary of the adventure in marriage that Jill and I embarked upon eighteen years ago. Pictures of all of this and more to follow in the next few days. Or weeks. Or months.

Ketchup on hot dogs and catchup in blogs are both tangy and sweet, one spicing up food, but the other -- ah, the other -- the catchup in this blog is like adding texture to memory. But let's be clear that I am not anxious to reread this blog through the veil of the hopefully hypothetical Alzheimers of my incipient dotage...

Hardware

Around here, we think of hardware as equipment, often useful, which is electronic and which often contains internal microprocessors, or is designed to be connected to other devices which contain microprocessors. In short, computer equipment. Geek stuff.

But there is an older definition of hardware -- nuts, bolts, nails, screws, mysterious stuff made of wood and metal and plastic, an enormous assortment of utilitarian goods, tools to manipulate these things in the physical world. Hardware is sold in hardware stores, places sacred to those who would build or make or fix or otherwise affect the sharp corners and shredded splinters of reality.

Which brings me to the point of this post: a big recommendation for the blog of Howard, a hardware store worker who has a penchant for hardware haiku. Howard's view of people and the world, filtered through the lens of the hardware store, provides some interesting, indeed fascinating, reading. His recent post about the musician is a flash of insight into how need and misconception juxtapose and result in incomprehension and anger:

A musician accosts me by the glue
at least I think she's a musician
judging by the two guitars she has on her back.
"I just need a small piece of wood cut for me."
I explain that we're a hardware store and not a lumber yard.
"Lumber yard?" she's distressed.
I do my best to explain that we can't just carry one type of wood,
if we have the piece she needs then we need to carry the piece
everyone needs
and we're a small hardware store.
She doesn't understand the concept
so I put it in its simplest terms:
In for a penny, in for a pound.
She doesn't seem to like my answer and leaves in a huff.
I hope she writes a song about how hardware stores break hearts.

Full disclosure -- I know Howard and see him a number of times a year. Therefore, I am not unbiased. But I ask you this -- how can you not respond to something like this?

A guy walks into a hardware store
with an incredible black eye.
"I need a pair of safety goggles."
Er, isn't it a little too late?

Blogging Mistakes

Michael Hyatt, who has a great blog on management and leadership, has a list of 10 Blogging Mistakes. I am clearly a poster child for almost every one of them, but especially the first one -- I don't post enough. But then, that ensures that my readers aren't bored with what I have to say...

Guess Who Started Blogging??

OK, so perhaps it isn't momentous news in the grand scheme of things, but I think it is pretty cool.

My wife the author -- and now, blogger!

UPDATE - I added the link to Second Draft in "the Usual Suspects" section with a "Jill Lum" description, and in the "Skiffy" section with a "Michael Skeet and Jill Snider Lum" description.