Some Blog Site

Here is a series of book titles and cover art that I’ve put together for what would happen if a famous boy wizard were an old-school pen plotter instead.

Book 1: Harry Plotter and the Sources of Toner

This is the most technically-incorrect title of the series, as a pen plotter does not use toner. And astute readers might notice that Harry Plotter is trying to catch containers of ink, not toner. But you get the idea.

And this is the book for American readers. British readers get “Harry Plotter and the Philosopher’s Toner”, which is not an engaging a plot as his search for the sources of toner. Spoiler alert: there are rivers of toner under the school, hidden under a trapdoor and guarded by Fluffy.

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For those of you who enjoyed the heyday of the Magic Eye posters, whereby focusing your eyes at a depth that’s not the surface of the paper you could see a hidden image, I have used my considerable knowledge of spreadsheets to produce a 3D image.

Behold, the Magic Spreadsheet:

Uncross your eyes until the letters align; unfocus your eyes until the double image matches up with the image next to it.

What I did here was put the bottom row with the same indentation of 0, the middle row gets an extra space each cell to the right, and the top row gets two extra spaces each cell to the right.

The shading was just for fun.

For your next presentation, try hiding some cheap stereograms. If you’re presenting your screen from a work-at-home situation, no one can see you cross your eyes.

I noticed some people were trying to use the German accenterator to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. The problem is that Arnold is not German, and he doesn’t sound like the stereotypical German.

So I went ahead and created an accenterator page for everyone’s favorite Austrian farmer. Go visit the Austrian accent page to try the accent.

One thing I noticed is there are many similarities between The Ahnold and a Boston accent. Try each of them with a phrase like ‘smart park your car in Harvard yard’ and see how close they are.

So why doesn’t Arnold sound like he’s from Boston? I think it’s mostly the tone of voice. That’s one of the drawbacks of written English – no tones. Say that phrase with a lower, more even tone and it’s Arnold. Say that same phrase with a higher, brighter tone and it’s Bostonian.

A while back I posted some information about Tree Climbers Guild, although they might not appreciate that I capitalized their band name here.

I’m taking this opportunity to point out that their songs are now on YouTube. Feel free to enjoy some of the sounds of my college days.

Tree Climbers Guild album

One upside to being sheltered in place is that there are now some new accents on the Accenterator.com site. You can now train yourself how to sound like Elmer Fudd, Scooby Doo, or Mark Wahlberg. Oh, and there’s Beaker.

And it seems the German accent code went missing. I’ll have to re-write that one, as the only other place a backup might be is on a laptop that’s in a building that is closed due to fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Officially it’s closed because it has been deemed a non-essential business, but I’m thinking liability is a factor too.

Anyway, Elmer Fudd was the easiest to write. It took longer to find a decent picture of him than to code his accent. And the Boston accent (“smaht pahk”) took much longer to write than I expected. It was supposed to be just replace the Rs with Hs but it turns out to be more complicated than that.

My kids like to tease me by playing Christmas music before Thanksgiving, even though I am trying to raise them in the truth that the Christmas season does not start until after Thanksgiving. But we got snow here on Halloween, so it’s easy to see why they felt like it.

Anyway, Christmas is a very popular time for Pachelbel’s Canon in D. If only he were around today to collect royalties…

I figured I might as well add a contribution into the mix. Here are some links to the song in various file formats, as I didn’t want to go through the hassle of setting up an audio player within this blog. I’m assuming your device will know at least one of these formats and can play it. Note: the MIDI format is the worst of this lot, at least on my computer.

Pachelbel and Soul in MP3 format
Pachelbel and Soul in WAV format
Pachelbel and Soul in MIDI format

And here’s the score, in case you’re, umm, keeping score.
Pachelbel and Soul in PDF format

I started trying other parts of the song too, and everything worked well together. I just didn’t feel like spending more time on it, but there’s a lot one could do with this combination.

As a bonus, I finally have an ending to Heart and Soul that I like. I’ve heard a couple different endings and I never could remember what the official ending to the tune was. Now I’m going to stick with this amalgamation.

Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2018 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 2018 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 2018. Last year’s champion, Jackson is again the most popular boy’s name in the US. Aiden is losing popularity fast – if it were a stock I would say sell now (or rather, you should have sold last year).
No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again.

Some Stats

• The top 6 names for the boys are the same, but Noah and Aiden switched spots in #3 and 4.
• The top 6 names for the girls are the same as 2017, it’s just that Amelia jumped 2 spots from #6 to 4.
• Again, Liam has the title of the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 2.
• Again, Emma is the highest-ranked girl’s name that has no spelling variations, at number 3.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (275/1000 vs. 186/1000 alternates)
• Kason once again took the prize for the most spelling variations for the boys at 8 (and Kayson overtook Kason as the more popular variant). And Aiden lost a variation so now it has only 6.
• For the girls, Adaline lost a variation so it is now tied with Madalyn, Layla, and Amaya at 6.
• Sophia is still the runaway favorite for the girls, but the gap is closing. Sophia is on the decline. In fact, all the top names, other than Amelia, are on the decline.

2018 Improved Baby Name List

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