Jordy Blog

Well, it’s new New Year’s Day, and it’s also time again for some more cyclical search pattern fun. So here’s today’s search term:

And what region wins per capita searches for “hangover”? Why none other than Ireland. Really.

Other fun New Year’s searches: “Weightloss“, “Auld Lang Syne“, and “Taxi“.

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My brother Luke sent me a link to a cool online favicon maker he used to make a favicon for my new company, Izeni. It’s pretty easy to use, so I made one for my blog as well. (Yes, it’s that same ugly pic, just smaller). Anyway, it’s kind of fun. If I’d known it would be that easy to do, I would have made a favicon forever ago. :)

I was listening to the Nightside Project on KSL when one of the radio hosts (I don’t know his name) said he hates it when he sees people wearing the “I voted” stickers. He listed a number of reasons, but the one I got a kick out of was basically that the people who don’t know it’s election day are the last ones you want to remind to show up at the polls. Funny, but true.

So anyway, I came up with these sometimes humorous “I voted” sticker parodies as pleasant way to guilt trip sheeple who show up at the polls without doing any homework:

In case it wasn’t blazingly obvious, my overall point is that voting is NOT your civic duty. Voting smart is your civic duty. Voting smart takes a lot of time, thought, and research. Voting just for the sake of voting is quick, effortless, and counter-productive; it skews the numbers away from dedicated citizens who really did do their homework.

Hopefully these tongue-in-cheek “I voted” stickers are fun way to remind people to do some serious research before hitting the polls. Feel free to forward them to friends and family, or anyone you feel may be just flying by the seat of their pants! :)

And no; watching Oprah, SNL, and Fox News does not count as research.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for Voting Smart!

UPDATE

Some others I have thought of:

I (unwittingly) voted for more of the same (change vote)
I voted for a socialist in mainstream clothing (major-party vote)
I voted because it was on my way (convenient vote)
I voted exactly how the MSM wanted me to vote (sheeple vote)
I voted and all I got was this lousy sticker (freebie vote)
I voted without ever having read the constitution (public ed vote)
I voted how the source code made me (Diebold vote)
I voted to reinforce the illusion of liberty (depressing vote)
I voted for the guy who worships like me (blind faith vote)
I voted because I’m better than you (ego vote)
I voted because it makes me feel good (insecure vote)
I voted because some people don’t have maps (hot chick vote)
I voted based on one issue only (one-dimensional vote)
I voted for all the candidates (Florida vote)
I voted despite being dead for 50 years (electoral shenanigans vote)

Please post your own funny or poignant “I Voted” stickers in the comments!

This is who I’m being for Halloween.  :)

Ron Paul was dead right about the economy. If you haven’t watched his videos on YouTube, you should. He was calling the bursting of the housing bubble well before it happened. And the credit crunch? Yep, he’s warned of that too.

Ron Paul would have smoked Obama in the debates, especially on questions regarding the economy. Anyway, there certainly wouldn’t have been any bantering about who didn’t support the bailouts enough. Good grief!

Sadly, the way things are looking I think we’re in for more of the same at best, no matter which major party candidate wins. Now that’s scary.

Happy Halloween!

Warning: Big-time nerder alert! If you find overt nerdyness offensive, zone out now or just click right on through.

I’m neither a computer scientist not a mathematician (and it probably shows), but I’m curious enough to poke around a bit. Lately I’ve been having fun with combinatorics.

One of the programs I often write as I’m learning a new programming language is a cryptogram maker. A cryptogram is basically it a word puzzle where each letter of a piece of text has been replaced by another letter according to a randomized substitution cipher. Here’s an example:

BEFORE: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.
AFTER : QGF JKHDY ZESRP WSV CKUIFN SOFE QGF BMXL NSTA.
LETTER : ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
CYPHER : MZDNFWTGHCYBUPSIJEAQKORVLX

Anyway, I’ve long known the total number of possible cypher keys (supposing that any letter can be replaced with itself), but I’ve spent several boring church meetings thinking about another simple combinatorics problem. Of course, it’s probably pretty basic to one who has studied combinatorics, but I’ll put it to you just the same.

The question was:

How do I process any given cypher key so that an ordered ’solution number’ can be derived from it (or vice versa) without iterating through the possible cyphers (or solutions).

After having the answer suddenly dawn on me the other night, I now put you to the test. And to make it only slightly more interesting, the first person to comment with the answers and an accurately described algorithm (complete with the basic math behind it) wins a whopping $5 cash prize mailable by me. Note that just writing a script to cycle through does not count because the whole point is not to iterate through all the cyphers. Also, I shrunk the alphabet to make it nicer on you. :)

Solution Number	Cypher
1	ABCDEFGHIJ
2	ABCDEFGHJI
3	ABCDEFGIHJ
4	ABCDEFGIJH
5	ABCDEFGJHI
6	ABCDEFGJIH
7	ABCDEFHGIJ
…	…
?	HDICAGEJFB
…	…
3096542	?
…	…
?	JIHGFEDCBA

Show your logic!  (Hint you can easily do the math on half a sheet of paper once you know the algorithm.)

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Aside: This is not a particularly problematic problem (since I really had no need for a solution), but the math is fun just the same. I tried to think of a story problem that would make the math more compelling and less numerically intensive (without truncating the alphabet), but I sort of got bored of writing it. Maybe I’ll share what I came up with later.

King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is a documentary about a rivalry between two classic gaming champions (one of whom sports a sweet mullet). Check out the trailer. Can you say awesome?

King of Kong was directed and produced by some of the same folks that did New York Doll.

I hate to do this to you again, but I just find these cyclical spikes in search traffic way too interesting. (I’m a big-time nerder, I know.) Anyway, here’s another cool keyword volume chart for today, “Friday the 13th”.

This trend for “13″ by itself is also kind of interesting. I didn’t expect this, but I guess there must be some people out there who Google for current dates, as evidenced by minor peaks near the middle of each month.

It’s officially July 7, 2007 — 777 — and I have a distinct impression that today might be the best 777 this millennium. Except for the obvious esoteric number fun, I don’t attribute meaning to it –unless the rapture comes, in which case I’ll quickly edit my post. :)

What I am interested in, however, are search trends. I think Gabe said it best: “It’s interesting that ideas come in and out of the public conscious in a predicable fashion, but more interesting that those trends can be quantified by search trends.”

My prediction: searches for the term “777″ will spike, but not near as much as “666″ did. Besides being a less emotionally charged keyword, “777″ is landing on a Saturday — which means that search volume won’t be nurtured by corporate-sponsored slacker surfing.

Still, I think searches for “777″ will bring Boeing a small share of Google love (think about it), and Amazon may even sell a few more copies of “777 And Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley“. We’ll have to wait a bit for Google Trends to catch up and give us the full picture though –again, pending no rapture.

If you’re nerdy and find any of this keyword search trending talk interesting, check out my similar post on cyclical search trends.

As a side note, there are lots of SEO tools out there to analyze keyword popularity and search volume (WordTracker, Overture, and Google Suggest to name a few), and knowing how to use them can make website owners a lot of money. I’m generally more interested in the volume changes rather than total volume (slope vs hight), but you can make money (or get eyeballs) with either.

If keyword search volumes were stocks, I’d be buying “Daylight Savings” right now. I’m pretty sure it’s just about to hit the J curve.

I’m not too sure how long I would keep it past Sunday though… :)

Did you know that Daily Savings Time was Benjamin Franklin’s idea? Here’s the essay where he introduced the concept. Just think how many hours of sunlight you owe to our founding fathers! Not to mention freedom from tyrants, etc.

On a side note, I don’t know why, but I really like cyclical data. Other fun cyclical (seasonal) Google Trends searches:

1. Why I’m so busy at work
2. Why autumn and winter kick butt (statistically speaking)
3. Why my wife is hyper-susceptible to advertising during Q1 & Q2
   
4. Why druids party all year long

Local chef geek extraordinaire Joseph Hall spent several days making an awesome custom cake shaped as Tux the penguin (the Linux mascot). The killer cake, part of the PLUG’s 10th anniversary celebration, was not only attractive, but super yummy. Joseph also provided a full Tux Cake HOWTO for Linux-loving food-o-philes around the world.

Anyway, check out his recipe, and be sure to give it some sweet Digg love if you like it. (Joseph certainly deserves it.)

Here’s the mirror for his page, which is getting Digg-slammed already.