Month: October 2016

I’ve been compiling data on the material I’ve been reading since 2013-ish because… I like data, I suppose is the only reason. I now have enough data for it to look interesting, so I’ve decided to crunch the numbers on the books I’ve read between 1/15/2013 until 10/30/2016. Some of the books that I read and forgot to add at the time, I had to put approximate dates, but I think I got pretty close.

Representation of Authors in My Reading

I also looked at publication dates versus dates I read the books…

The almost perfectly linear sections are where I discovered a series I liked and read all the books in the series (Robin Hobb, Joe Abercrombie, George R. R. Martin, etc). This is because the authors tend to release the books in the series relatively regularly, and I tend to read them at a regular pace. Hence, we get a straight line.

So these days I’m pretty much only reading books published rather recently, it would seem, and almost all were published within my lifetime. I suspect this plot would have been inverted if I plotted the books I was reading in high school – I imagine that reading a book published during my lifetime would have been a rarity back then, but who knows? I did like all my junky sci-fi/fantasy back then, and I remember waiting for the next Star Wars novel to be published (and I remember how stoked I was when the Han Solo trilogy came out). Hmmm.

I guess I’m kind of sad that I didn’t start compiling data on my book reading prior to 2013!

Anyhow, I kind of want to visualize the genres next, but in many cases the genres might end up being a judgement call and of course I would want to handle subgenres (post-apocalyptic sci-fi vs space opera, etc). We shall see if I get anywhere with the genre idea.

Anyhow, here are some other analyses:

Not especially surprising to see an over-representation of the Anglosphere, since I read in English. Maybe I should try to read more non-Americans, though.

And this is *after* I’ve embarked on my conscious effort to read more books by women! Wow, I can’t imagine how this looked before that. Probably the ratio was something like 90% men. The scary thing is, I actually thought I was doing pretty well in this endeavor. Interesting.

Alas, I’m also fairly certain that all the authors were white, but that information is harder to come by for every single author. Outside of looking up every single author and looking at their picture to guess their ethnicity, I don’t know how to find that out. But maybe I’ll have to do something like that, because it seems like a good thing to track in order for me to improve.

Welp, the apartment has been covered in red fabric and paint and other weird stuff since October 1st, but it has all paid off! Introducing my costume for Halloween 2016: The Cultist from War for the Overworld!

It still needs a few finishing touches, like the red stripe on the… thing… over the robe. But I still have time yet!

Because, as you well know, I only dress as things that take at least 1 hour to explain to people (see last year’s Peace Master costume, which everybody thought was Zorro).

For lulz, I decided to make a program that would scrape my blog posts and use Markov chains to generate “posts” in my “writing style.” The idea is that, if by 5AM Monday morning I haven’t posted anything to my blog, then Steeny Ipsum will step in and blog for me. This is purely intended to troll my friends with whom I am participating in an Iron Blogger challenge, where we have to post at least once each week by Monday morning at 6AM.

I’m sure all the members of Iron Blogger are quite familiar with the weekly stress of Sunday nights – scrambling to think of something to blog about (wanting it to be really good quality content) and feeling shamed when they accede to merely typing “I went to the park today” and pressing publish.

I haven’t set up the cron job yet so Steeny Ispum isn’t live yet, but some of the content it has been generating has been absolutely hilarious. Sometimes I think that Steeny Ipsum is better at writing blog posts than I am!

For example, in an early test of my code, it wrote this when I only had it “learn” how to write from last week’s post:

Top ten reasons I decided to invade the Warlock, and it is the Warlock, and over, that I’m joking about the Warlock, and scared and being subservient. I frequently have to tuck him into bed, but it would be really weird. I think I’m lovely. This was something and he bids me to flag, and I feel like that??? He very politely asks me to do good with the same pattern.

Gold! Pure gold!

I also let Steeny Ipsum pick how long of a post it wants to make, between 100 and 500 words, since that is the average range of my real blog posts.

Part of me thinks it would be the ultimate joke if I forgot about Steeny Ipsum years after it went live, and then I eventually died, and then Steeny Ipsum just kept posting. Maybe it could generate its own income to pay for its hosting via advertising (or something?) and then continue to generate its content forever. Something about that just makes me think it is so hilarious. But I don’t want to hurt my friends or family if they think it would be painful to see Steeny Ipsum post. Doc says he also thinks it would be funny, though, so that’s good.

If I like Steeny Ipsum after I’m done making it, I might try to publish it as a WordPress plugin… to share it with the world!

If you’re interested, here is an example of a full post Steeny Ipsum wrote when given my full repertoire of blog posts to learn from:

He gets less crunchy. So now, what is vegan, we will basically any massive pain in time. I couldn’t find their own gems, so for others better, to let it out at $2.39 if the cultists and the data. But do not know that don’t know what I fell into it, it is to have to continue and blame him or Rails web apps since we went downstairs to an output that it seemed to be doing the “Mega Gnar,” where I am suspicious of which I don’t use and feel free and in Golden Gate Park, et cetera. 

I was researching more moisture content affected the stats on ASAP. I decided it is to have a lot more cabbage, and features to be in the inn for him to cosplay for anybody who I ended up about 2PM, on your vegetables that the pie shell. THEN, add up breaking the fact that goes and converted that. I had a ghost pepper (it was a massive trips without it), it is the map that finds it is no cabbie would say which means to the stats I had moved him saying, “When I feel free to make him because the same trip,” but they don’t wander around with associated latitude/longitude into the shot of his time doing this was still very likely end of the program to see every single resident of the 1,000,000 hours doing it! 

All cheese where they would be, so many of an associated with Dungeon Keeper II again. I was off the game, which saved all evening. I understand it is literally what Doc bought it, that “The Poet,” as I was technically diluted by what your own original world for free to check out on any buddies will see, in this guy who can’t just move the test cheeses, we skipped that would be about Set and huge beefy guys (because somebody working thus far), and I lost the hill. I was successfully growing in mind being friends and other weird brain-eating amoebae or gummed up with it, based on multiple latitude, longitude trips such a lot of Turkey Terror that are not sure to eat or something we ate up Skyrim again, there’s a greyish yellow go-karts, touring Alcatraz, checking out there was still swam around windy blind corners! Joy! Guess how to Me.

Doc and without Leaf Spy will attempt to speak it. Like, ultra paranoid. Having grown up only variables, though. Good luck to me for Sambocade (elderflower cheesecake). So I would be making up talking about that are the city all bad, but now worships Mara and ugh that’s it. As you spent 7.6% of the saurkraut is pretty exhausting, because I love the wilderness stuff, and made a b-line for my favorite 🙂 

Learn it. It seems most of the steps and then I used for dipping. 

This weekend, because this time. All I’ve been fermenting is vegetables, it’s incredibly different.

I love the apparent moments of clarity that Steeny Ipsum gets now and again.

I’m also running tests in letting Steeny Ipsum post to Twitter. This one is also not officially live yet, but so far so good. Since Twitter was much simpler to automate posts for, the Twitter account is mostly just waiting for me to let it loose on the world. But since I’m more interested in the blog poster, it has kind of gone by the wayside and is waiting for the blog to be finished.