John O'Laughlin's Journal

7:33pm: cowpods
KY#
KYNE#

ZO#
DSO#
DZO#
DZHO#
JOMO#
ZOBO#
ZOBU#
DSOBO#
DSOMO#
ZHOMO#

YAKOW#

COWHEEL#
COWTREE#
KILLCOW#
LADYCOW#
COWGRASS#
COWHEARD#
COWHOUSE#
SUPERCOW#
WIRRICOW#
WORRICOW#
WORRYCOW#
COWFEEDER#
COWFETERIA#

BOVATE#
OVIBOVINE#

NECKBEEF#
SEMIBULL#

OXGANG#
OXGATE#
OXHEAD#
OXHIDE#
OXLAND#
OXSLIP#

MOOI#
MOOVE#
MOOLOO#
MOOLVI#
MOOLVIE#

5:44pm: olaugh vs cwac (csw)
Trying to deoxidize before my big match with dugy1001. Not a bad game, just lucky so little # came up in my racks.

http://www.cross-tables.com/annotated.php?u=5001#0

4:55pm: !
MISTBOW + E = WOMBIEST
WOMBIEST + S = MISBESTOW#
WOMBIEST + HIY = WHITEBOYISM#

3:07pm: QUEP#
At some point before each of my WSCs, I've looked up unusual high-playability # words and leisurely checked their definitions etc. QUEP# is one I've always remembered this much about:

QUEP# is "erroneously" meant to = the interj. def of GUP# (GUP# takes S due to another unrelated definition, but QUEP# does not). GUP# expresses remonstrance or derision, and is a corruption of "go up".

I never cared to learn more until now. QUEP# has two citations in the OED, both from the same author, and Google-able:

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/scott/walter/betrothed/chapter9.html
http://www.archive.org/stream/fortunesofnigel02scot/fortunesofnigel02scot_djvu.txt

So the oath is really "Marry gup!" and it has many other forms, like
Marry guep
Marry gip
Marry gyp
Marry go up
Marry come up

The wordiest form and likely the original is "by Mary of Egypt".

I'm rarely one to complain, but QUEP# is a supremely bad Sowpods word, perhaps among the worst of the pre-Collins era. As far as I can tell it was used twice by the same hack 200 years ago, and even then it was part of a multi-word phrase! I'll always love the Crackpods no matter what, but if I could go back in time twenty years and convince those high-score playing gits that Chambers isn't the best choice for OSW, marry quep I would.

10:52am: words
There's a six and a seven letter extension to METALING (both TWL). Kind of cool.

2:51pm: just saw this
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2009/5/1hahn.html
(Kate Hahn for McSweeney's)

X (8 POINTS)

Dude, I was on a roll a few years ago: pulling Scrabulous dividends, making major bank on real-estate investments way out in the corners of the board. I was so flush I paid some venture guys to do a cost-benefit analysis on the playability potential of "x-treme" and "x-factor." We were all set to introduce the hyphen tile when the crash hit. This "8" tattoo on my pec? Meaningless. Got it in Bali. All I got left of my high-point days. Now I'm just trying to keep up my payments on the condo and get motivated to use the Wii, you know? Follow me on Twitter.

12:51pm: old landau gui
The first GUI toolkit I ever used to make an application was FLTK. It was used in one of my classes in college and it's not very powerful, but it was very easy to use. Back in 2004 when I got my iBook, I made a Scrabble study program, similar to Letterbox, and a GUI for the pre-Quackle Scrabble program I helped Brian Wickman write, and I used FLTK for both. At one point I actually had a Clabbers-playing program using this interface, but I've lost both the code and any screenshots.

http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~o-laughl/screenshots/landau.jpg

I made all the tile images for this one manually in Photoshop! I kind of like the red squares around the blank letters, but generally it was probably too busy and shiny in the board, and the board grid's border and the move history are a mess. I posted this somewhere back in 2005 and someone pointed out that ZOO left (AITP) which is out of alpha order, which made them think that this was just a mockup where I'd made a typo, but this was an actual program with a silly bug.

11:00am: tiles
I've been working on Lisp Scrabble code a few minutes at a time lately. Have created some of the basic data structures for tile distribution, board layout etc, and written some more wordgame# utility functions, but it doesn't find plays yet (though it will soon and I'm looking forward to rewriting that much more cleanly and efficiently).

I was sidetracked last night after I remembered xach's Vecto library, which he uses for his wigflip toys. I wrote some very simple code to make images of Scrabble tiles. I really like how the tiles look in Quackle (jasonkb's doing) and so for a default tile set, I wouldn't want anything too different from them. Here are a few as they look now:



The font used above is Bitstream Vera Sans Bold and I'd welcome suggestions for the default. Optima is notable for its resemblance to Mattel's Scrabble font. I'm not sure what's best to do for digraph tiles and double-digit scores, and I think some of the letters are worryingly ransom-note-ish, and I'll have to think about whether/how to center them. I also favor a subtle radial gradient for the background similar to what Jason did for Quackle, and/or bevelling. I'll experiment with that soon.

Would love some comments, especially from the artists and designers among you.

12:03am: csw sevens that look like woadwage plays
( # )

11:55pm: british bologna
( Read more... )

10:58pm: bologna
( Read more... )

12:53pm: two # extensions from the ride in today

_______CLASH
__AIRBORNE

12:55pm: wordmonger


Nothing fancy yet, but this is further than I got with making an iPhone anagrammer.

next:
colors
implementing other searches than anagram
showing definitions, extensions etc. (probably should store this in a SQL database? I've somehow avoided doing almost anything with databases my whole life)

If it ever does everything that Letterbox/Zyzzyva do, maybe it would be fun to run WM on a PC too:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/26/canonical-giving-ubuntu-the-gift-of-android-apps/

Would be cool to have the same app at home as on the phone and have it sync.

3:41pm: WordMonger
I'm extremely happy with my G1 so far. Gmail and Gtalk are especially good. The browser feels more robust than the iPhone's, but scrolling and zooming is a lot choppier. I've made more use of onscreen keyboard out of necessity, like while standing up on a busy train or holding coffee, and I think it's better than the iPhone's.

One thing I'm really missing right now is CheckWord, so replacing that with a tool of my own is a high priority. I played around with the Android SDK this weekend, mostly just playing around with layouts of interfaces.

Here's a mockup of the basic word search. Since that was taken I added "Spinner" (like a dropdown list, but it fills up most of the screen to make it easier to read and touch your choice) widgets for selecting the search type (Anagram, Build, Pattern, or Steal) and lexicon (for the sake of space and discretion, I'm thinking of calling them "US '06" and "UK '07"). The latter might not get switched often enough by most people to warrant being on the main screen, and I think it should at the very least it should disappear while holding the screen upright in portrait mode.

I scribbled a picture of a custom onscreen keyboard while waiting for a meeting to start, and it was very easy to make it actually work.

Ideas I've had for the word search:
optionally coloring/marking words for #ness or newness
coloring blank letters
somehow displaying anamonics and definitions
some "hint" mode where instead of giving the words in the result, it just says how many results there are, or which letters the blanks are, how long the shortest steal is, etc
words appear in fixed-width type in columns and scroll left to right

And for other functionality:
word judge (full-screen with instructions and lexicon setting displayed)
"views" for words, like Bob's Bible-style anagrams and hooks, or flipping through dictionary pages
Jumbletime/Aerolith grid quiz mode (might be tolerable with a physical qwerty keyboard like my phone has)
Zyzzyva/Letterbox-style study mode

11:30am: letter strings of the random interval
WUKKAS# (Australian slang) in the phrase no wukkas, no worries (no wukking furries) [n]

8:42pm: letter strings of the random interval
CHASMY is twl but only compares in Collins
CHASMY + ? = CHLAMYS, YASHMAC

CHASMIER# = CHIMERAS/MARCHESI
CHASMIEST# = MASTICHES/TACHISMES

2:11pm: letter strings of the random interval
APHIDES/DIPHASE + S = (only) PISSHEAD#
TRIPHASE + S = (only) PHRASIEST#
MONOPHASE#/MOONPHASE# + S = MOONPHASES#

8:25am: clojure swt stuff
I've really gotten to like Lisp (especially SBCL), so much that it's what I'd like to use for almost everything, and so for some new projects I've experimented with various Lisp GUIs.

First was McCLIM, which is an impressive and admirable effort, but doesn't seem to have had much activity lately, and I had trouble getting started with it due to a relative lack of examples.

Then the Clojure buzz hit me, and it promised everything I wanted. Extremely modern, fast enough, and libraries for everything via Java interop. I could even use Qt!. But there were only a few examples online, and I really struggled figuring out how to get signals and slots to work, and basically I gave up.

I tried again this week using SWT instead of Qt/Jambi and I've had a much easier time. Just as an example, here's some code for a simple Clojure REPL in a StyledText widget. Nothing fancy or exciting, but I hope it's helpful to someone else getting started.

2:52pm: nyc bingos
New York was awesome as usual, and as luck had it, five double-blank wins were enough to pull it out.

me:
sIALOID CAREENS
GALLONS
(IT)iNERATE FLES(H)iNG (L)INGUICA
TIttERS AIR(L)INES
WEEVeRS MEMBERE(D) TERI(Y)AKi
--
(U)nSTOWED# (D)ELATION

them:
TINCTED
(R)EMiNTED ArDUOUS
HERI(T)ORS
--
DISUSED FAITH(I)NG
bLINDED TR(A)BEATe
G(R)OWLIER

7:39pm: a-hook language shootout
Inspired by tolarjev's Python program from yesterday, here's the same thing in a few languages with approximate timings from my MSI Wind.

0.203s Common Lisp
0.254s C++
0.678s Python
1.716s Clojure
1.928s Ruby

None of these are perfect, just thought I'd share them to show the different flavors of languages.

2:19pm: 2009 wsc
2003 WSC (Kuala Lumpur) announced 08/14/2002
2005 WSC (London) announced 01/03/2005
2007 WSC (Mumbai) announced 04/18/2007
2009 WSC ?

I don't know anything. Just looked back to see how late the announcement is getting compared to past years. Forgot how insanely late the news about Mumbai was.

http://www.scrabbleassociation.com/tourneys/2009/wsc/usa/qual.html
http://www.scrabbleassociation.com/tourneys/2009/wsc/can/qual.html

11:21am: PANAMAGUZZLER
Woadwage is the Scrabble variant where the dictionary includes concatenations of two words.

WOADWAGE is one of eight Woadwage anagrams for itself, so WAGEWOAD and six more, or removing simple transpositions, three more:

ADAGEWOW AGAWOWED AWAWODGE

GYOZAHOG anagrams to HAZYGOGO, etc.

Now try these (and hope my program isn't messed up):

AEIOU (1) (or 2 including the transposition)
AEIOUB (3) (or 6)
AEIOUBC (2)
AEIOUBCD (11)
AEIOUBCDF (12)
AEIOUBCDFG (4)
AEIOUBCDFGH (7)
AEIOUBCDFGHJ (1)

The last one is really tough. There's a funny one in AEIOUBCDFGH too. Hint is it's 9+2 (not the only 9+2 though).

2:30pm: wpc
This was a really great event, hopefully the first of many. It's fantastic to get to see some of the Sowpods-land folks more than once every two years. I apologize if I was cranky, whiny, or nasty to anyone during the tournament. I drew the worst tiles I've ever had in a multi-day event and I really didn't take it well. The biggest disappointment was that I didn't get to play more cool words. WARZONE# was a nice thrill, and I'm glad I played ARRIDiNG# which I wasn't 100% sure of instead of GRANDsIR for 20 fewer. There was clearly no shortage of great plays by my opponents, like how about Nigel's ooomveltz!?!
( bingos etc. )

3:31pm: 10+
  9-15 Jim Kramer
 12-10 Marty Gabriel
 10-10 millcake16
 11-9  gijoel666
  8-10 Mark Kenas
  9-9  Tim Adamson
  9-8  Lisa Odom (two ties)
 10-6  Bob Linn
  6-10 bricap
  5-9  skin_it_mahatma
11½-2½ jonbosco
  8-5  Steve Pellinen
  8-5  lordiceman
  8-4  axolotl8
  6-5  Vincent Van Dover
  6-5  Chris Cree
  8-2  magratheazaphod
  8-2  Alan Helfgott

6:00pm: i guess the american dream means hardly sacrificing ever
http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/24/magazines/fortune/tully_henrys.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008102623

I usually check money.cnn in the morning to check S&P futures, and occasionally I read the fluff articles that are sometimes like

Meet some family. Things have been tough since they both lost their jobs and Jim got cancer. They emptied their 401ks, and after taxes and penalties, they were broke in three months.

But I had no idea how tough things were for America's richest 1%.

There are absurdities everywhere, like that there's anything "mini" about a $1.5M house, but my favorites are these people:

Selden, the North Carolina dentist, and his wife, Kym, a pediatrician, spend $1,680 a month for day care for their two children, ages 6 and 3. That number will rise by $1,000 when their third child arrives early next year. They're also putting away $750 a month per child - that will be $27,000 a year - for college. John and Kym want to send the kids to her alma mater, Duke. They figure it will cost a total of $500,000 per child when their kids are ready to attend in 2020 and 2023. "I had no idea I'd have to accumulate that kind of money for college," says Selden. "I thought that money would be going into savings."

Duke runs about $48,000/yr now. I don't think it's going to increase at >6% annually. That's way ahead of the already high rate it's been going up, and it's ridiculous to think that it can continue to increase so much faster than inflation forever because there are only so many stupid rich assholes in the world. Overshooting or not, the Seldens are willing to put up $500k/kid. Have they really considered this and decided it sounds like a good deal? Is there any upper limit for them?

Without scholarships or very substantial financial aid, my kids will be going to state universities, hopefully instate. I was thrilled to go to UW, and I'm very grateful to my parents for putting me through it. I've made a really good life on that degree and a little ambition. Besides being a good value it also happened to be the best school that would admit me, but if I could have gone somewhere private and prestigious, I'd have hated for my family and I to have paid so much for so little advantage. My parents would have had too much sense anyway.

I do sympathize with their childcare costs, which maybe aren't as far out of line as they seemed to me at first, but their ideas of "modest" homes are a lot different from mine, and $15k/year for high school is such a waste. I went to a private school for grades 9-11 after having a rough time in middle school, and my experience there was mixed. Public school for senior year wasn't that much fun either, but the academics there were far superior (not that I really partook). The only highlight of going to a small private school was getting to play varsity sports. They had a really nice gym and a beautiful green campus. I can't think of anything else. It'll keep your little ones away from poor kids, if that's your thing.

I'm a long way from what this article calls "take this job and shove it" money, but hopefully I'm closer than these families to fuck-you common sense. I'd like to think that they're mostly reasonable people who've just had a few quotes picked by authors with an angle to sell the lie that anyone in the top ~2% of this wealthy nation is getting squeezed, and the other one about the American Dream not being negotiable. Why can't it be a little bit negotiable when it's obviously the smart thing to do and you're screwing yourself to stick to your guns? With these folks' incomes (and without kids, with my household's) it takes such minimal restraint to be on the right track financially. I don't blame them for wanting a little more, but how dare they complain?

Extra bit:
"These folks aren't America's hedge fund managers, investment bankers, or CEOs..."

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0810/gallery.tully_henrys.fortune/3.html
Kelly Lynch & Jill Fenske
Redondo Beach, Calif.
Household income: $400,000
CEO, maintenance company; chemical engineer