Sunday, 27 January 2008
Thing #16: Done
For two weeks I have counted the number of bad words and I am happy to report that paying yourself the princely amount of 10p per bad words does help towards reducing your swear footprint on this planet. On average I used half of my available quota and with an average of 6.4 bad words a day I should award myself £19.2 pounds for the whole month. It seems I shot myself on the foot as this is £14.2 less than the average pocket money. So I propose (and I am sure you agree) that for Thing #51 I should give myself a bonus and double the difference, i.e. spend in one go 14.2x2+19.2=£47.6. I now need to decide what I will be getting for myself!
Saturday, 19 January 2008
The brain: a powerful thing
The brain is a powerful thing - that can make you or break you. You get to learn to think in a certain way and that may often may be very different to how others think. Your experiences, the environment you live in, the people around you or away from you, will affect you, either contradicting or more often re-enforcing how you think. It's all in the process and bias. Bias gives you the building blocks: assumptions and 'rationale'; process puts them together, like the scaffolding that creates the structure for the bricks to follow or like puzzles pieces that come together to create a picture. Why all this totally unscientific and fascinating simplistic approach to neuro-science?
Well, it's been a long week of counting swear words. I estimated 11 a day and to my surprise I found that on average I use(d?) fewer words than that. This is good news, as I have to put 10p in my swear box for each one of them, but still... it got me thinking. Is it really the absolute number of words that matter. Is really my set target of 11 words a day that difficult to achieve? 'Yes and no' is my answer.
For example: assume you sleep 8 hours on average that leaves you with 16 hours with a quota of 1.45 words each. That's sounds difficult, especially if you take into consideration that when we use bad words they are more than one in a phrase!
What about the % that bad words represent of our total spoken words a day. I found a page that concludes that males use about 6000 words per day and females use 8800 per day. I am sure you were not surprised! There are other estimates that show the same trend, albeit with a larger gap. In anyway lets assume females use more words than men. With 300 words per page, that's 20 pages for a male and 29.3 for a female. With an average of 4-6 characters a word and 70 years of average talking life-span one can easily calculate the amount of storage space required to transcribe everything one said in a lifetime and save it on a PC, which I roughly calculated to be less than a gigabyte of data. Sad - my phone has enough memory to keep everything I've said so far and will say in my remaining days. Anyway returning to my previous argument 11 words a day is only about 0.2% of what males say and even lower for females. That makes you feel better eh? Perhaps, but this should not be an excuse to start using more bad words. In fact, that reminds me of a song that says "those who swear do so, because they have not learnt to talk".
Returning to the actual Thing in hand I've tried to count as accurately as possible and I found that counting was a good obstacles to using bad words. Often I found that I started replacing them with something less 'offensive'. You could perhaps use something totally irrelevant, like apples or oranges. That can even be a good ideas as saying oranges so many times a day may create the desire to eat one. Vitamins are good after all.
I will keep counting for another week - more counting will increase the validity of my experiment and perhaps will help me rewire the hardware in my brain and prevent me from using bad words in the future.
Well, it's been a long week of counting swear words. I estimated 11 a day and to my surprise I found that on average I use(d?) fewer words than that. This is good news, as I have to put 10p in my swear box for each one of them, but still... it got me thinking. Is it really the absolute number of words that matter. Is really my set target of 11 words a day that difficult to achieve? 'Yes and no' is my answer.
For example: assume you sleep 8 hours on average that leaves you with 16 hours with a quota of 1.45 words each. That's sounds difficult, especially if you take into consideration that when we use bad words they are more than one in a phrase!
What about the % that bad words represent of our total spoken words a day. I found a page that concludes that males use about 6000 words per day and females use 8800 per day. I am sure you were not surprised! There are other estimates that show the same trend, albeit with a larger gap. In anyway lets assume females use more words than men. With 300 words per page, that's 20 pages for a male and 29.3 for a female. With an average of 4-6 characters a word and 70 years of average talking life-span one can easily calculate the amount of storage space required to transcribe everything one said in a lifetime and save it on a PC, which I roughly calculated to be less than a gigabyte of data. Sad - my phone has enough memory to keep everything I've said so far and will say in my remaining days. Anyway returning to my previous argument 11 words a day is only about 0.2% of what males say and even lower for females. That makes you feel better eh? Perhaps, but this should not be an excuse to start using more bad words. In fact, that reminds me of a song that says "those who swear do so, because they have not learnt to talk".
Returning to the actual Thing in hand I've tried to count as accurately as possible and I found that counting was a good obstacles to using bad words. Often I found that I started replacing them with something less 'offensive'. You could perhaps use something totally irrelevant, like apples or oranges. That can even be a good ideas as saying oranges so many times a day may create the desire to eat one. Vitamins are good after all.
I will keep counting for another week - more counting will increase the validity of my experiment and perhaps will help me rewire the hardware in my brain and prevent me from using bad words in the future.
Poll
The poll is now closed and the results are:
- Old 1 (4.34%)
- Boring 4 (17.39%)
- Old and boring 4 (17.39%)
- None of the above 14 (60.86%)
Many thanks to all 23 of you who voted. For those 14 of you who voted none of the above - mid-life crisis is yet to come!
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Happy new year!
It's 2008 and I have another 78 things to! No hurry; in 2 years time I will be there.
So, let's get started. My first Thing to do (16) will be to make a swear box and fine myself, if I say a bad word. Hmmm, that's semi difficult to keep track of, but I will try to put 10p as suggested in a box for every single word. Then, I will spend it all as Thing 51 suggests.
It actually suggests saving pocket money, but as I don't get any from myself, my swear-box will do. Interestingly, the average pocket money given in the UK is 8.35 pounds, i.e. 33.4 pounds in a month. By starting today, I will finish on the 13th of Febrary. I guess, the question here is whether I will swear more than 334 times until then to collect more money than the average pocket money. That's a bit more than 11 words a day! Easy!
So, let's get started. My first Thing to do (16) will be to make a swear box and fine myself, if I say a bad word. Hmmm, that's semi difficult to keep track of, but I will try to put 10p as suggested in a box for every single word. Then, I will spend it all as Thing 51 suggests.
It actually suggests saving pocket money, but as I don't get any from myself, my swear-box will do. Interestingly, the average pocket money given in the UK is 8.35 pounds, i.e. 33.4 pounds in a month. By starting today, I will finish on the 13th of Febrary. I guess, the question here is whether I will swear more than 334 times until then to collect more money than the average pocket money. That's a bit more than 11 words a day! Easy!
Sunday, 16 December 2007
Merry Christmas!
I think I am done for this year! 35 Things and 86 posts later I will wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. You may be older when I next see you, but do make sure you have a great time during the holidays!
1
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32333536394
3454660627072
808687889093959
9
Thing #86: Sing in front of an audience
I like singing (whether that applies to those around me, that's a different question) which is handy, because this is what I had to do to complete Thing #86. Today's performance in front of a loyal audience is put forward as evidence for the completion of this Thing.
PS: If you are a world-wide known band and you are looking for a lead singer, then drop me a line.
PS: If you are a world-wide known band and you are looking for a lead singer, then drop me a line.
Friday, 14 December 2007
Thing #31: Host a party
If you are a member of the secret society you attended the great party I organised. If you are not, please apply within. Every member of the society gets a free ball of crisps.
Thing #39: Be a genius
How appropriate is this Thing for me! Most of my friends think I am a genius and (of course) they think right. They will also testify of my modesty any day! That's me: a modest genius. I am sure you have figured that out anyway by following this blog. You choice of web sites to visit indicates readers of higher intelligence, so well done to you too.
Anyway, to complete the test I decided to take an online IQ Test. Not the best thing to do when you have a headache, but it's a good way to treat insomnia, as IQ test put me to sleep in exactly 26.8 seconds.
So I entered 'IQ test' in Google and selected the first test in the list. After all, I needed an unbiased test (i.e. I did not pick one based on personal preference). Despite the fact that I hate IQ tests, I decided to see this test through. So, I completed it (without falling asleep) and it seems I have an IQ of 126. This ranks me at the top of the above average scale, just 3 points below gifted (2.3% of test takers). Click here for the scales.
Try it if your self and post a comment with your results: http://www.iqtest.com
Anyway, to complete the test I decided to take an online IQ Test. Not the best thing to do when you have a headache, but it's a good way to treat insomnia, as IQ test put me to sleep in exactly 26.8 seconds.
So I entered 'IQ test' in Google and selected the first test in the list. After all, I needed an unbiased test (i.e. I did not pick one based on personal preference). Despite the fact that I hate IQ tests, I decided to see this test through. So, I completed it (without falling asleep) and it seems I have an IQ of 126. This ranks me at the top of the above average scale, just 3 points below gifted (2.3% of test takers). Click here for the scales.
Try it if your self and post a comment with your results: http://www.iqtest.com
Thursday, 6 December 2007
Thing #93: Build your own web site
Hello?!? You are already to my web site! What's the point in building things from scratch? Not to mention that this is a good opportunity to be part of the Web2.0 movement.
In anyway, I have built more web sites in my life than I care to remember, so I consider this Thing D*O*N*E.
In anyway, I have built more web sites in my life than I care to remember, so I consider this Thing D*O*N*E.
Saturday, 1 December 2007
Stay awake - Update #3
Time until Saturday, 1 December 2007, 07:40:00 (London time)
It is 0 days, 1 hour, 31 minutes and 32 seconds until Saturday, 1 December 2007, 07:40:00 (London time)
It is 0 days, 1 hour, 31 minutes and 32 seconds until Saturday, 1 December 2007, 07:40:00 (London time)
Stay awake - Update #2
Good news! I double checked the book and it does not say that I have to stay awake between 7pm and 9am. It actually says: "Tick the box if you have stayed up later than..." and boxes from 7pm to 9am. So technically, staying up all night does not necessarily mean until 9am. In fact, in London today sunrise is at 7:40am (sunset was at 3:55pm). If you don't believe me then visit http://www.sunrisesunset.com/. Hence, to stay up all night I need to stay awake until 7:40am. That is only 292 minutes or 17k seconds away, i.e. about 5 hours. (countdown) Piece of cake!
Stay awake - don't try this at home!
I am trying to keep myself awake tonight to complete this Thing. If you 'try', then it's more difficult than it actually is. Anyway, to help time pass I watched an ice hockey game, and then played cards until 1:30am. I have another 6 and 1/2 hours to go. Lets hope I can complete this Thing in one go.
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