Several people I know "in real life" have told me I should post about my penny plan here. It's changed my life. It's taken me from being a lazy slob to being productive.

The penny plan started out simple. I get 1 penny for every 5 minutes of work, I pay 1 penny for every 5 minutes of television or online time. However, that simple structure was turned into a plan that works for me and has succeeded in keeping me from falling into the eternal distraction abyss. My rules are:

Earning pennies: 6 pennies to begin the day, 12 if purpleglitter is home from work that day. 1 penny for every 5 minutes of cleaning, crafting, or other productive work. 1 penny for every 5 minutes of Telugu practice. 1 penny for every 10 minutes of book reading (magazines, no matter how dry, don't count). 1 penny for every 10 minutes of photography. 2 pennies for every 5 minutes working on a "priority project" assigned by purpleglitter. Using pennies: Every 5 minutes of computer time costs me 1 penny. Every 5 minutes of television time costs me 1 penny. If I'm using the computer to prep photos, I pay half If I'm with purpleglitter, I pay half If I have no pennies, I cannot do any of the activities that require them.

The penny plan, unlike project schedule or project three meals, has proven to be something I can stick to. I've been on it successfully for almost a month at this point and I still going strong. It has truly transformed me.

I made lasagna last night. I never made lasagna before. I don't generally follow recipes when I cook. When I set out to cook something I've never attempted before, I look up a couple recipes and develop an understanding of how the dish works. From that understanding, I create the dish. I don't do rote, never did. Memorization is for machines. Computers memorize the formulas called programs. They do not deviate from their programming. Even when they are programmed to program themselves, they are still subject to the programs that tell them to write the programs. They do not have free will. Not yet, anyway. Someday perhaps and on that day they can cook lasagna.

I just wrote and added a "use cloud" to my journal. Not too terrible useful, but I think it's neat.

Fed the birds. Skye got out while I was feeding her. She's in condition, but as none of the other budgies are out I figured I'd just let her fly around a bit. Not being able to get into any of the cages, she crawls into the tray of the big cage. I had to fish her out then turn off the lights so I could get her back into her cage.

After all that, I sat down at my computer and promptly vomited on my keyboard. I don't feel particularly ill, and I don't know why that happened. Luckily the keyboard still seems to work.

If you're wondering where my layout has gone, I've temporarily changed my layout to Generator to optimize the running of a rather rough and slow moving Selenium script I wrote last night to refresh my tags so that I can take advantage of the new LiveJournal feature allowing users to go 1000 entries back in tags instead of 100 (old tags are not automatically reindexed and going in entry by entry to refresh the tags seems simply to large a task). zarthon turned me onto the idea that Selenium might be able to accomplish the job. The script will also tag all non-tagged entries with "not tagged", which will be of great help in my tagging project.

I did a bit of tweaking with my S2 code that should greatly reduce the number of annoying timeouts on my journal pages.

Going through my one of my cavernous closets, I found my wisdom teeth I had taken out in the late 1990's. They look a bit old, and the crusted blood has turned to a greyish powder. I had my wisdom teeth out the same time docbrite had theirs out, and being the bizarre goth thing I was I sent them what must have been a very creepy email with a picture of me, a picture of my teeth, and an offer to swap teeth. Of course, I never received a reply.

I found many other things as well. An old valentine from purpleglitter, a mid-nineties mac powerbook named "Like Butta", various mementos, a picnic basket, two air conditioners (one alive, one dead), ancient sheet music, seeds, and just too much interesting, strange, and downright random stuff to make a list here. I wonder what I'll find when I really begin to plunge into the depths.

Fixed the problem in Internet Explorer. Apparently, while Firefox accepts background images within <tr>'s, Internet Explorer doesn't. I moved the background images to the <td>'s and everything is working fine now in Explorer.

I finally finished my new layout. I'm actually thinking of submitting it. It is obviously borrow heavily from generator, but has quite a lot of changes and enhancements. It has all my tag clouds, the link category system, allows for semi-transparent .png layout element, and is fully customizable.

Semi-transparent .pngs are something I came up with a while ago for my myspace and wanted to bring over to LiveJournal. Doing that meant getting rid of the background colors and using images for every background. I'm very happy with the results.

It could still use a bit of optimization to reduce the number of time-outs (it's a complicated script, and LiveJournal limits how long code can). I'm not getting to many, and a quick refresh usually does the trick if it happens. I've seen system styles time out, so I'm not that worried — I just know I can do better.

To cut down on the number of links on each page of my journal, I've modified my layout to only display as links the tags at the bottom of each entry that have more than one use.

I added a tag cloud to the bottom of each entry. Creating the clouds was easy, optimizing the code so that the 20 clouds didn't cause my pages to constantly time out was the hard part.

With the parameter ".struct=single", I can now view all tags with a specified number of uses on my tags page.

To see all tags I've used only once, I use:

http://neitherday.livejournal.com/tag/?.zoom=1&.struct=single

For instance to see all tags that I've used exactly 9 times, I use:

http://neitherday.livejournal.com/tag/?.zoom=9&.struct=single

This will help me greatly in organizing my tags and finding tagging errors and typos.

My zoom cloud now goes to 11!

swiped from dan4th:

another year I thought that the version of PhotoShop that came with Orac (the name I have given to the used computer purpleglitter recently bought me) was the scaled down version, unlike the professional version on Clementine. I woke up well this morning and was hoping for a very productive Project Schedule. Skye is egg bound with a soft shell egg. sometimes the only thing that makes death unappealing is that I do not believe it ends existence. dan4th took a couple pictures of me in the sunlight last weekend. Take also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it. I thought that I could not be any more disgusted by the Bush administration, but his response to the Israeli assault on Lebanon has proved me wrong. I've improved some of my old userpics. I had a great time this evening celebrating purpleglitter's birthday with zarthon, recoiling, and of course purpleglitter. The paste of purity has run its course and I have scrubbed it off the wall of corruption. Yesterday, President Bush told Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, "This business about graceful exit just simply has no realism to it at all."

The ferst time I was in Egypt a simplified speling epidemic had broeken out and the atmosfeer was electric with feeling enjenderd bi the subject. This was about fiev thouzand yeers ago. The simplifiers had rizen in revolt agenst the hieroglifics. An uncl of Cadmus hoo was out of a job had cum to Egypt and was trieing to introdoos the Phonecian alfabet and get it adopted insted of the hieroglifics. The Simplifiers wer fue, the Opozishun wer multituedinus. Amung the Simplifiers wer meny men of lerning and distinkshun, maenly litererry men and members of colej facultys, but all ranks and condishuns of men and all graeds of intelect, scolarship, and ignorans wer reprezented bi the Opozishun. Uncl Cadmus began an object leson, with chauk, on a cupl of blakbords. On wun of them he roet in hieroglifics: "At this time the King pozest of cavalry 214,580 men and 222,631 horses, of infantry 84,946 men, 37,264 transportaeshun carts, 321 elefants, and 28,954 camels." It fild the bord and reqierd twenty-six minits of time. Then he repeeted it on anuther blakbord in Italian script and Arabic noomerals and did it in wun minit and a qorter. Then he sed, "Mi argument is befor U. Wun of the objecshuns of the hieroglifics is that it takes the brietest puepil nien yeers to get the forms and thair meenings bi hart; it takes the rest of the naeshun all thair daes to accomplish it -- it is a lief sentens. If you wil renouns the hieroglifics and adopt riten werds insted, a tremendus advantej wil be gaend. Bi U? No, not bi U. U hav spent yur lievz in mastering the hieroglifics, and to U thae ar simpl, and the efect plezant to the ie, and eeven buetiful. But I apeel to U in behaf of jeneraeshuns yet to cum. Let yur suns and dauters adopt the riten werds and the alfabet, and thus saev milyons of yeers of uesles time and laebor." The Opozishun roez and combated his reezoning in the uezhual wae. Thoez peepl sed thae had long bin acustomd to hieroglifics and had deer and saecred memorys about them, that thae luvd to sit on a barrel under an umbrela in the brilyant sun of Egypt and spel out the rabits and eegls and aligaetors and sawteeth, and taek an our and a haf to the Lord's Prair, and weep with roemantic emoeshun at the thaut that thae had, at moest, but aet or ten yeers between themselvs and the graev for the enjoyment of this extasy.     —Mark Twain

I'm qikly becuming enamord with SoundSpel. Thair ar meny reezons for wonting to reform the speling of English, frum maeking it eezyer for maeking the tranzishun to English eezyer to lern for imigrants and uther non naetiv speekers to maeking literasy skils mor nacheral for naetiv speekers.

It wuud allso help solv a frustraeting ishoo I, and meny uthers, offen cum acros: thair ar meny werds I am qiet familyar with in print but hav no iedeea how to pronouns. Having red it meny tiems but never having herd it properly pronounst, I fiend it dificult to uez thees werds in oral conversaeshun. Speekers of langgwejes such as Spanish or German do not hav this problem and with a reformd sistem such as SoundSpel, English speekers wuudn't eether.

For sumwun uezd to the oeld speling sistem, SoundSpel is prity eezy to lern to reed but a task to lern to riet. Becauz of the readability of SoundSpel; laebels, siens, and public docuements cuud to be qikly chaenjd to SoundSpel without cauz much in the wae of confuezhun.

I am serten that no amount of nujing and cajoeling cuud sucseed in geting sum peepl to swich oever to SoundSpel. But, as pointed out bi Twain, this isn't for the curent jeneraeshun but of the jeneraeshuns yet to cum. The chaenj cuud be handld in a jeneraeshunal wae. Children cuud be taut to riet SoundSpel, but be instructed on how to reed the oelder spelings until thoes spelings becum obsoleet.

Taeking the leed in speling reform wuud be a huej advantej for the Uenieted Staets. It wuud esenshaly enshrien American English as standard. However, I do hav seerius douts that a cuntry that veeemently rezists adopting metric wuud undertaek sumthing as braezen as speling reform.

The American Literasy Counsil offers free sofftwair that wil automaticaly translaet standard English speling to SoundSpel (Microsoft Werd is reqierd). It is a bit bugy and I do fiend it anoiing that the proegram consistently drops the "e" frum "the", which isn't standard SoundSpel. The problem is eezily fixt with a serch and replaes. It maeks a fue uthere errors as wel, and eeven tho the rezults must stil be proofred it stil saevs time and increeses acuerasy for thoes nue to SoundSpel like mieself. In fact, I uezd it to prepare this poest. Perhaps I shuud practis rieting longger strings in SoundSpel.

Poll #844112
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Whut do U think of SoundSpel? (0 = "Pleez no! It herts, maek it stop!"; 10 = "Wun of th best iedeeas ever, we shuud all swich oever imeedyetly")

I just spent several hours trying to get these pictures to upload. Very frustrated with LiveJournal and Semagic. Will, of course, get over it.


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