Some Blog Site

There are some hymns that were great back in the day, but don’t necessarily translate to modern life.

For example, Count Your Blessings.

I’m sure the hymn writer didn’t imagine the days of social media, with Pinterest showing what is possible and Intragram showing what people are doing. And it’s always much better, cooler, and more fun than your dreary life.

So we need to update that hymn.

And I have.

I present to you: Count Your Neighbor’s Blessings

(Neighbor is taken in the modified Biblical sense, in that it is anyone whom you come in contact with, or can read about on the internet.)

Also, if you’re having trouble reading the music, right-click on it (or whatever you have to do) to view the image – the blog page scales it down.

Verse 1:
When upon life’s billows you are tempest tossed
When you are discouraged thinking all is lost
Count your neighbor’s blessings, count them when you’re bored,
And it will surprise you what they could afford.

Frain:
Count their blessings, list out all their stuff;
Count their blessings, you don’t have enough!
Count their blessings, list out all their stuff;
Count your neighbor’s blessings, your life is so rough.

Verse 2:
Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your neighbor’s blessings, happiness will die,
And you will stay angry as the days go by.

Refain

Verse 3:
When you look at others with their lands and gold,
Think that riches passed you by, you’re getting old.
Count your neighbor’s blessings, keep your eyes on things.
Aim for temporary joy that money brings.

Refain

Verse 4:
So amid the conflict whether great or small
Try to be disheartened, others have it all.
Count your neighbor’s blessings, envy will attend;
Bitterness will fill you to your journey’s end.

Refain

In case you want the music in an editable form, here is the music for the Count Your Neighbor’s Blessings hymn in ABC notation.

Our central air wasn’t working, so I had to fix it.

The furnace and thermostat were working fine, because warm air was blowing throughout the house. After a couple of minutes and it still wasn’t blowing cold air, I started looking around.

First step, walk outside and see if the fan was running.

It was not.

Second step, look up “central air outside fan not working” on the internet. Also, “how to check air conditioner” and “troubleshoot central air”.
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Subtitle: in which I improve the government’s records

Allow me to introduce to you the 2013 SFS List of Baby Names that Combine Similar Pronunciations. That baby name list is the place to go in case you are wondering what are the most popular baby names in 2013 regardless of how they are spelled. The Social Security baby name list does not adjust the rankings based on alternate spellings (like Catherine/Katherine), but SFS does.

It’s was just Mother’s Day, so the SSA released the name rankings for 2013. For yet another year, Aiden is the most popular boy’s name in the US. Rather, the name that is pronounced the same as Aiden is the most popular boy’s name in 2013. No controversy for the girls – it’s Sophia again.

Some Stats

• The top 4 names for the boys are the same as 2012, even in the same order except (what the government said was the most popular name was actually fifth).
• The top 6 names for the girls are the same as 2012, it’s just Isabella dropped 2 spots (the government got the first 5 places correct).
• Noah is the highest-ranked boy’s name that has no spelling variations, passing Ethan, which fell behind William from last year. Either there’s a resurgence in reruns of ER, or else that Russell Crowe movie is more popular than I thought.
• Girl names still have more spelling variations than boy names (300/1000 vs. 207/1000 alternates)
• The boys still have the name with the highest number of alternate spellings (Aiden with 9 vs. Liliana and Carly with 7 each)
• There are so many Sophias, it’s not even a contest any more. There are about 50% more Sophias than the next most popular name. It’s like the name Linda in the late 1940s, particularly 1947.

2013 Improved Baby Name List

Click on the link above and peruse to your heart’s content!

Regular readers of this blog will recall that every May I enhance the Social Security’s list of popular baby names during the previous year.

That should happen next week, pending release of the Social Security data.

What I have this week might be more interesting to most people that just a list of names. It is an animation of the growth (and decay) in popularity of the names.

I’m not putting the animations here on SomeBlogSite; rather, they are at SomeFunSite, with the rest of the baby name information. Go view the animations.

Here are some still images though:

This is how I made them:

First, I collected the top 25 names for each year from 1900-2012. Then I combined them into a list – the superset of top 25 names. For boys, this list was 103 names long. For girls, this list was 175 names long. Apparently girl names go in and out of fashion more quickly than boy names.

Next, I went through each year and got the number of babies born with those names, and put all that information into bubble charts.

Finally, I combined all 113 bubble charts into one animation file.

And then repeat the steps for the other gender.

How long did that take?
Not as long as it sounds. The longest part was figuring out the colors to use and the size of the text for the names and the pattern/placement of the circles.

Once that was in place, it’s easy. Thanks to PHP and SVG, it takes about 1 minute for that second step (generating 113 images). PHP also got the first step done in about 3 seconds (after I took about 15 minutes to write the script).

The last step is a little time consuming. I used GIMP to create the animated GIF. I had to drag and drop 113 files (one at a time) into the program. Maybe there’s a batch import function, maybe there’s a way to script it, but it wasn’t too bad by itself so I didn’t bother trying.

The funny things is that this project succumbed to the problem that the baby names site fixes for the Social Security list of names. That is, duplicate spellings of names are not combined. So the charts have both Aidan and Aiden, or Michaela and Makayla. I noticed this late enough in the process that I didn’t feel like redoing things.

We hope to move into a new house soon. Inspired by some things on the internet, I started sketching proposals for arrangements of the boys’ bedrooms.

Here are 4 of them.

Sunken Bed

The purpose of this is to prevent injuries for the child who rolls out of bed often. The raised floor can be used for extra storage, with lids to access the space.
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For an upcoming project of sorts, I wanted to find some hymns in a file format that was easily readable by both people and computers. I found the Open Hymnal website, which provides a lot of hymns in ABC format.

To repay Brian J. Dumont for his services, I encoded When I Survey the Wondrous Cross with three different tunes. I picked that one because I noticed the version he had on his website was the wrong tune. Or rather, a tune unfamiliar to me. So I put together an ABC file with it in the right tune. And our hymnal has it set to two different tunes, so I put together the second ABC file. And, while researching the hymn, I saw that it is commonly set to yet another tune. So I setup that ABC file too. I sent the files to Mr. Dumont, but they are not on the website yet. Until then, here are links to the files:

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross (Hamburg)

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross (O Waly Waly)

When I Survey the Wondrous Cross (Duke Street)

I recent built a potato cannon. For those who remember my post from last month about potato cannon attachments: no, I did not try any of those.

In the past, i.e. before I had 4 kids, I would have taken photos of each step: raw materials, prepared but unassembled parts, partial assemblies, then finished product. But today you aren’t getting any photos. There are plenty of photos and step-by-step instructions already on the Internet. In case you’re wondering – I used the plans from Instructables.

I couldn’t follow the instructions exactly, because the big-box stores didn’t have 3″ solid-core PVC. So I had to go with a 2″ combustion chamber and a 1.5″ barrel. Smaller displacement means less power, but it still worked.

I was somewhat surprised when the potato cannon worked on the first try. Right Guard for the propellant initially. That was noticed by my brother-in-law because that’s what he uses for his deodorant. I told him not to get too close.

After that, I tried WD-40. That didn’t produce any combustion. Maybe my can was too old. So then I tried half Right Guard and half WD-40. That worked pretty well, but I think the Right Guard did all the work and the WD-40 didn’t contribute much.

After about half a bag of potatoes, the cannon started misfiring. One side of the electrode was a bolt with a nut, so it was secure. The other side was held in place by tape. That was not so secure. It wore out, came loose, and the pressure from combustion started coming out the side of the cannon instead of pushing the potato out.

I was going to take the cannon home to add another bolt and nut to fix the problem, but after much spraying of Right Guard and WD-40, the cannon was greasy and smelly. So I left it at my parents’ house.