sigma7: Sims (Mr.Doubt/Mr.Certainty)
( Nov. 2nd, 2006 09:55 pm)
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?
sigma7: Sims (Default)
( Mar. 22nd, 2006 03:50 pm)
Lore's new column is up, this one in the form of a changelog, no less. Starts good, gets much better.

Version History for UltraSolve Online Assistant

1.7

"Accept" button now grays out when appropriate.

Improved support for multiple users.

Added keyboard shortcut for "Publish" command.

Removed "bellowing moose" alert noise.

No longer displays middle finger image at system startup after free trial period is over.

Spell-checker now less "snotty."

Now fully compatible with iTunes.

1.6

Now remembers preferences settings correctly.

Lowered volume on "bellowing moose" alert noise.

Removed Easter egg displaying Photoshopped image of Lisa J. Pavenston apparently enjoying coitus with Dick Cheney and The Three Stooges.

Code merge with Online Assistant Deluxe Edition.

No longer plays "Conjunction Junction" every time you hit a function key.

...

In other news, I have a rampaging migrane. Must go home soon.
sigma7: Sims (ranch tooth)
( Nov. 1st, 2005 08:27 am)
At the moment I have 17.81 MB free on the phpNonsense page. This may be gone by the end of the day, and God knows what'll happen after that. My traffic has reset, so I'm back to 9.8 GB available. Whew. According to BlogPulse, the Hallomeme was the most popular blog link Sunday and Monday, showing up on 1.2% of all blogs yesterday. Not bad for an LJ-only meme. I can die in peace. Thanks for the propagation, ev'ryone. (Edit: I had to empty the friends-cache, as my storage space of 300MB only had 7MB left. Some people taking the test might've experienced a blip, but it should be up and running 100% again.)

Maybe next month I'll have another application for phpNonsense, but for the next 30 days I'll be all reclusive-like for the usual reason: NaNoWriMo. Forgive me if I'm less vocal. I'm with y'all in spirit. And I gots mah cough syrup. Oh, yeah.

This morning, crows. Dozens if not hundreds. Cawwing. Neighbor: "It's like Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds -- is this normal for Kansas?" Ma'am, you're assuming there is a normal for Kansas. Our daily weather patterns are straight out of a D20 roleplaying random weather generator table, our people range the gamut from the mindbogglingly brilliant to the most cretinous mouthbreathers who schlorped their way from the primordial soup -- there is no normal here.

I love how, amid the Katrina calamity, the N'Awlins Saints could've become the new "America's Team," but despite the newfound goodwill toward the team, the owner seems hell-bent on moving them to San Antonio (managing to stay quiet to avoid breaking league rules that forbid discussing moving a team mid-season) and also has taken to beating up the media. Just die.

New SCOTUS nominee. This one's actually a judge. Already a quantum leap.

Yes, I rooted for the Bolts, to keep them in the running, and yes, I felt a little guilty. Get better, Priest. The Vikings need you.

Dude, Brett Favre is a class act, even -- no, especially in defeat. You are not. Die.

Hallomeme third most popular blog link yesterday, behind Technocrati and How Much is Your Blog Worth? At one point yesterday 26,265 people had taken it. This is me agog. =:O Storage space: 187.04 MB used, 112.96 free. Traffic: 1433 MB used, 8567.08 MB free. Looks like I just might make it after all....

Edit: One of the instructors stopped by and talked to me for a second, and after talking to me immediately afterwards charged into her classroom and announced "I think the quote of the day is 'I'd feel better if I had more cough syrup,'" to which one of the girls in the class announced enthusiastically "I would!"
sigma7: Sims (beagle)
( Oct. 29th, 2005 03:23 pm)
I'm considering the Hallomeme done, as I've added the one thing that sparks the most comments: when determining the number of friends to invite, you can now specify to invite "all of them." That guarantees no blanks, no hurt feelings, no accusations of being overlooked. It actually took more programming than I'd expected and that was the reason I'd put it off for so long. Right now the templating engine is a lot less efficient than I'd like it to be, but I'll stick to one of Murphy's Laws of Combat: "if it's stupid but it works, it's not stupid."

And I'll see if I can't update my FreeStartHost plan. It'll set me back nine bucks and provide a little more stability, so I think it's worth it....

Am almost half-way to my traffic/storage caps, but I think turning off access logging will solve one of those problems (access log: 32.8 MB). As of this moment, 10,478 people have taken the Hallomeme, including 37 who don't exist on LJ. And yes, I feel embarrassingly happy whenever I see it work its way through the "latest posts" list....
Reflected here.

Updated the "Haiku" option -- added some active verbs to the mix. Also changed the output so the 5/7/5 splits are actually new lines which makes 'em much easier to read.

Added the "Superhero" option (data from Lee's Useless Super-Hero Generator) and "Wu-Tang Name" option (data from...a page I can't seem to find at the moment)....

Also, don't miss today's Cellar Image of the Day: the Cat Bib. It's real and it has a purpose. Complete with pics of deeply peeved felines.
sigma7: Sims (Tiredkitty)
( Oct. 26th, 2005 01:37 pm)
Or as done as it's going to get. Enjoy. I'll be adding to/tweaking the data as the day goes on, but the basic functionality should remain solid.

[livejournal.com profile] sigma7's Halloween party:

Cut for being memey )

Throw your own party at the Hallomeme!
Created with phpNonsense
Still growing. Still taking suggestions. Adding options, fixing randomizers. Changed the nonsensical "color" pull-down into a "what's your costume?" textbox for greater randomness.... But I had to share this, just for the Izzardness of it all, using the new 30-guest option.... Roll the bones.... )
sigma7: Sims (vampire bee)
( Oct. 23rd, 2005 05:30 pm)
Note: this is the product of my first pseudo-meme-generator, and I'd like any/all feedback you have, including content. Because my imagination's suffering after the Eagles/Bolts game today. Grr.

One small meme for man.... )
Inspired by the Harry Potter Story Title Generator, I wanted to see how long it would take to roll my own using phpNonsense. As it turns out, about half and hour, with most of that time being copying-and-pasting possible protagonists' names and debugging the CSS.

You can find my contribution here. I tried to give it the flexibility to occasionally renderer some pretty plausible-sounding titles ("Viktor Krum and the Alliance of Flame", "Cedric Diggory and the Wizard's Hammer") and yet still have the capacity to spit out a few atrocities ("Harry Potter and the Rotting Monk", "Harry Potter and the Porcelain Justice") as well.

If you're interested in the data files, click here. )
sigma7: Sims (HarryPotter)
( Jul. 22nd, 2005 05:57 am)
You thought I'd forgotten it; hell, I thought I did, too. But I've managed to get phpNonsense to a point of stability and harmony, with all known bugs finally squashed and a host of new features added. About the only complaint I have at the moment is that the debugging output is grotesque, but it errs on the side of information overload.

The phpNonsense homepage is here, and phpNonsense itself is here. The great thing about the new version is that if called without specifying a template, it lists all templates in the data directory and their description with links to them. My favorites are still the new Collegian template and the Slashdot template (which was packaged in the original Nonsense distribution in 2001, so some of the links/images are broken, but it's a beautifully-structured template)....

It's not meant to be overly profound or even sensical. It's just...there.

I still have a few things to add to it, but it's at a nice plateau of stability, so I think I'll move on to my second personal programming project ("Kane") for a bit, in hopes I can get it transferred to VP for some stability and alpha testing off my home server....
.

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