Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Roundup

I saw on the Yin Blog that there's a new Iowa City blogger, Iowa Matters.
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Law #1 of interpersonal relationships is posted on Side Notes and Detours.
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I'm a little sorry I was out of town and missed Riverfest last weekend:
One 100-pound llama made for a wild time at RiverFest on April 23 as 30 fest-goers feverishly chased the four-legged animal named Brownie through Hubbard Park after he escaped from his petting-zoo cage. The escape even caught the attention of "Unyted Naytionz," a hip-hop group performing in the Battle of the Bands, whose leader shouted out to Brownie after he was safely returned to his cage.

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Sounds like the Hitchhiker's Guide movie may be a dud. Crap.
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ICCT is going to play the Englert next year. My only comment: despite the reduced rate - pray for funding. Real hard.
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From Dave Barry:

A bra that makes your boobs look like implants.

Remote-control flies. I can think of lots of uses for these. No practical reasons. All of them evil. But lots of uses.

Speaking of useful things, he also links to this great timewaster: Name that Gizmo. For example, I learned that this is a fish counter.
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Blawg Review #3 is up. Many, many good posts there.
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Wired has an article about all the Blogger glitches.

But I saw something even better linked on Law, Life and Libido - I think this says it all.
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From Iowa Geek, I learn I'm living in the wrong place:

American Cities That Best Fit You:



60% Austin

55% San Diego

50% Denver

50% San Francisco

45% Miami



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From the Blawg Review, I also found this blog readability testing page, using the standard readability scales. My rating:

Readability Results for http://randommentality.blogspot.com

Readability Results Summary Value
Total sentences 2,441
Total words 24,605
Average words per Sentence 10.08
Words with 1 Syllable 16,075
Words with 2 Syllables 5,131
Words with 3 Syllables 2,425
Words with 4 or more Syllables 974
Percentage of word with three or more syllables 13.81%
Average Syllables per Word 1.52
Gunning Fog Index 9.56
Flesch Reading Ease 67.64
Flesch-Kincaid Grade 6.33

Interpreting the Results
Philip Chalmers of Benefit from IT provided the following typical Fog Index scores, to help ascertain the readability of documents.

Typical Fog Index Scores Fog Index Resources
6 TV guides, The Bible, Mark Twain
8 Reader's Digest
8 - 10 Most popular novels
10 Time, Newsweek
11 Wall Street Journal
14 The Times, The Guardian
15 - 20 Academic papers
Over 20 Only government sites can get away with this, because you can't ignore them.
Over 30 The government is covering something up


Looks like I fall somewhere between a novel and Newsweek. But is "readable" to some extent a back-handed compliment? After all, a first grader uses very easy words.

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