Generate me

[sigma7]

A little late, but at least it's still November: I'm linking to the NaNoWriMo Random Data Output Generator. If I was more clever and less exhausted I would've dreamed up a clever acronym or slick-sounding name for the thing. I'm not calling it NaNoWriMoRaDaOuGen, as that sounds more like an attempt to recap the Battle of the Bulge using voice-generated sound effects.

Still, here's whatever this stoopid thing does: It creates names for random cities, company names, drugs, Harry Potter books, superheroes, universities, and Wu-Tang Clan members. It also makes semi-plausible and barely-technically-correct haikus and US postal addresses. It can create random-esque names for American men or women, and it can create them with their frequency dependent on their occurrence in the 1990 US Census -- so that a "Bob Smith" is more likely to occur than a "LaDainian Tomlinson," for example.

Also generates "mission names," the random-adjective/random-noun combos I adore so dearly, like Operation Boring Deflation or Operation Degenerate Sucker.

Am taking suggestions for more. Especially for you NaNoers (God, that just looks obnoxious, I can't imagine saying it aloud) people writing your novels now -- what do you wish you had at your disposal?

Comments

[begstodiffer.livejournal.com]

Cool! I'm not looking for anything in particular - it was mostly conjecture. I considered writing a script that would flood retailers with millions of bogus registrations in the hopes that they would get a flood of snailmail returned-to-sender. Unfortunately, I have first-hand knowledge of how those outfits clean and verify their data, and I know that the bogus info would never make it through to a mass mailing. And, spammers already deal with a massive number of bounces.

The haiku program is still very clever - I see that you classified each of the parts of speech by their number of syllables, so that the haiku always comes out right. Perhaps that says more about the true degree of intelligence in human speakers than that present in the haiku program....