Some Blog Site

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2024 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2023 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

It is almost Mother’s Day, so the SSA released the name rankings for 2024. Last year’s champion, Liam has repeated as the most popular boy’s name in the US, for the second year, so the trend is official. Liam and Noah and Oliver repeated as the top 3 and with large gains, whereas Jackson is on the decline.
No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again, and by a similar margin as last year.

Some Stats

• In the top 11 names for the boys, names 4 and 5 switched spots, and then 6-11 have a bunch of shakeup except name 11 stayed in place, and Lucas and Luca switched spots.
• The top 9 names for the girls are the same as 2023, and in the same order for the first 5. Then 6-9 get all mixed up.
• Again, Liam has the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 1.
• Again, Emma is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 4.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (248/1000 vs. 176/1000 alternates)
• Kayson once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 9.
• The girls finally don’t have a tie for most spelling variations – Kehlani gets top honor with 6 ways to spell it.

2024 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

Since I’ve been tracking them, the baby names have been released by the Social Security Administration on the Friday before Mother’s Day.

It is the Friday before Mother’s Day and the names have not been released. Note that it appears the SSA does have the list and let People magazine see it. Why not just let the rest of the world see it too? I’m hoping it will go live this weekend and I can have the baby names updated early next week.

I did not have another blog post planned for this week, and now I’m out of days for this week, so I’m posting this to say why there’s no blog post this week.

For my PT Cruiser, I have a set of summer tires (all-seasons, not actual summer tires) and winter tires. They each have their own rims for easier swapping.

The difference is that my summer tires are on the PT Cruiser rims and the winter tires are on Volkswagen New Beetle rims, so the PT hubcaps don’t fit on the winter wheels.

The problem with that is that with no hubcaps, the axle nut is exposed to water and dirt and salt. Here in Michigan they get rusty and corroded enough even with hubcaps, leaving them exposed is just asking for trouble next time you need to pull the knuckle or axle. So I wanted to cover them up.

So I measured the axle nut and I already knew my bolt pattern (5×100, same as VW New Beetles and Toyota Prii), so I got to work in Tinkercad.

I came up with these thingies. The center bump needed to be large enough to accommodate the axle nut protrusion. And the mini hubcap needed to be large enough to fill in the concavity containing the lug nuts, to effectively keep splashes of whatever from trickling into the axle nut. No, it’s not perfect, as stuff on the outer rim can trickle into the middle. But it’s a spinning wheel so in theory anything viscous enough to drip into the middle would have already been flung off the wheel during driving. Ideally.

I also wanted to lower the print time, so I was going to reduce the material used. I started to make extra holes in the outer skirt, but then that would have allowed stuff to splash in. So I made the material thinner in spots but not holes all the way through.

It did take me about 3 iterations to get the size of the lug holes right (hard to measure well with that taper so it sits snug against the nuts but doesn’t get pinched enough to crack) and to account for the cotter pin variance on the side I didn’t measure.

I printed it in PETG instead of the PLA we normally use. The main reason behind the PETG is better UV resistance. These hubcaps are going to be sitting outside the whole time, lots of sunlight exposure, so UV stability is good.

The end result was this:

And for those of you who are interested enough to print your own, here is link to the STL file for the mini hubcap.

Enjoy!

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2023 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2023 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

It is almost Mother’s Day, so the SSA released the name rankings for 2023. Last year’s champion, Liam has repeated as the most popular boy’s name in the US, for the second year, so the trend is official. Liam and Noah are still heading upwards, but Oliver and Jackson are on the decline.
No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again, and by a similar margin as last year.

Some Stats

• In the top 9 names for the boys, names 3 and 4 switched spots, and then 5-10 have a bunch of shakeup except names 6 and 9 stayed in place.
• The top 11 names for the girls are the same as 2022, and in the same order for the first 4. Then 5-11 get all mixed up.
• Again, Liam has the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 1.
• Again, Emma is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 4.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (238/1000 vs. 167/1000 alternates)
• Kayson once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 9.
• For the girls, there is a 7-way tie for most spelling variations. Madelyn, Layla, Kehlani, Charlie, Aria, Adeline, and Aaliyah all have 5 variations.

2023 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

I had some spare sheet metal, so I thought I’d make some driveway decorations.

In theory, you could make these out of cardboard or plastic sheeting or whatever.

I made a set of 3, because that’s how many Mario Kart gives you at a time. Here is what they look like in progress – one finished, one mostly painted, and one not painted.

Please ignore the ugly welds.

The goal was to make them “life-size” if you were to have Mario Kart items in real life. They could be a little larger, but I went with this size because the 10-inch width of each strip was what a bunch of my sections of sheet metal were.

Here is the end result:

I have not tried it, but I doubt they would make you spin out like they do in the game. At best they would scratch the paint or scuff the tire.

In case you do want to try this at home, here is how I made them.

One of my daily mini-diversions is to play Waffle.

Waffle is a word game, over at wafflegame.net

You are given a grid of letters and you need to swap letters until they form the expected words. It’s quick and simple, and the solution is rarely elusive.

What is challenging about it though is that it gives you between 10 and 15 turns to find the solution. The best solution is in 10 moves, which gives you 5 stars.

You’re able to play the daily waffle only once, so give it your best shot there. But if you’re short of the 5-star ranking, you can play it later in the waffle archives.

I go back and try to get 5 stars on them if I miss it the first day. And most of the time I’m able to get it. But some of them I was not getting – I was stuck on 4 stars no matter what I tried.

I thought a brute-force process might find the optimum solution, but of course I didn’t want to do that myself, so I wrote a Python script to find the way to solve it in 10 moves.

But the output was to the console, and thus not user friendly to the general public. So then I wrote a Python script to generate the image showing the moves, trying to get it to match what someone would see on their screen when they’re playing the game.

And then I wrote a Python script to grab the other puzzles from the waffle archives.

Then I put the results on Some Fun Site, so you can go there to see the best solutions to the waffle game.

I was using all that for my Python training. I hadn’t used Python before, but people at work were using it for certain scripts so I thought I’d see what the fuss was about.

Overall, I’m not a fan of Python. It can be useful, but it’s awkward to me. I much prefer PHP.

Anyway, go play the Waffle game and if you get stuck then go over to Some Fun Site to get some help.

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2022 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2022 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

It was just Mother’s Day, so the SSA released the name rankings for 2022. Last year’s champion, Liam has repeated as the most popular boy’s name in the US, for the second year, so last year was not an anomaly. Liam gained a little bit, but Jackson is really falling off now.
No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again, and by a similar margin as last year.

Some Stats

• In the top 9 names for the boys, 2 and 3 switched spots, 4 and 5 stayed the same, then there is more shakeup with Aiden dropping fast.
• The top 14 names for the girls are the same as 2021, and in much the same order. The only difference is that Amelia jumped ahead of Olivia for 2nd place, and Isabella moved up 2 spots, jumping back ahead of Charlotte.
• Again, Liam has the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 1.
• Again, Emma is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 4.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (255/1000 vs. 172/1000 alternates)
• Kayson once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 9.
• For the girls, Adaline once again took the prize for the most spelling variations at 6.

2022 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!