Today I’m going to be running all over the data center handling my BWEEEEEEEZNASS (my businassssss), so I don’t have the necessary block of time to sit down and write something coherent. (As if anything I post is coherent . . . har! I’m killin’ me.) So instead I’m going to periodically jump on here and post some bloggish type stuff. I won’t be posting it as individual posts, though, since that would artificially inflate my post-totals, and also I don’t want this site to actually turn into a blog, since it’s definitely more of a “one post per day” kind of jam, even if it does fulfill the “newest stuff at the top” paradigm.
Wait . . . got lost again for a second. Okay, I’m back. On to the randomness:
- 11:30am – The other day I was reading this post over at Sneaking Suspicions and it made mention of a variety of “readability” calculations that you can use to figure out how hard it is to comprehend something you’ve written. I did a little googling on the subject, and found this handy dandy php program that will calculate the readability of a document according to three standards: Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, and the Gunning-Fox Index.
For the first, higher numbers indicate better readability; for the second and third, LOWER numbers do the same.
For example, I entered the phrase “I am rad.” A relatively short document, it scores high for readability: 92 (out of 100) on the FKRE (60-80 is ideal for web documents), a FK Grade Level of 1 (meaning the average 1st grade student could understand it), and a GFI of 6 (11-15 is ideal; anything over 22 is post-graduate level textbook stuff).
To take another example, this column by Bill Simmons, ESPN’s funniest mofo, scores thusly: 62 on the FKRE, 8 on the FKGL, and 15 on the GFI. Everything right where it should be. Hence: he is awesome.
I bring this up because I ran this post of mine from Tuesday through the readibility calculator, and got the following scores: 46 on the FKRE, 14 on the FKGL, and 21 on the GFI. My stuff is downright unreadable. (Yesterday’s silly short story fell right within established norms, though.)
Either I’m waaaaaaaay smarter than everybody else, or I’m completely insane. Or it could be both. I dunno. Either way, I’m scurred (scared).
- 12:30pm – I’ve had two songs stuck in my head today, alternating back and forth:
O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get the up into the high mountain!
and
Many a lassie, as everyone knows, ‘ll try to be married before 25.
So she’ll agree to most any proposal, all he must be is a man and alive.I’m gonna snap soon.
- I feel I should note that my birthday is 2 weeks from today. I will be 27 years old. I am awesome. That is all.
