Basic method:

1. Export tweets
2. Process into words
3. Count word frequency
4. Upload to Wordle

Wordle accepts data input in the form:

word1:55
word2:23
...

First output was:

This was a little skewed towards the various travel and weather related feeds I follow (@SEtrafficnews, @nationalrailenq, @NRE_SEastern, @SEplaying, @KentWeatherObs) so I then excluded them…

And finally… a Wordle of my TwitteringsRamblings:

Actual method:

sqlite3 save.db "
  select text
  from tweets
  where substr(created_at, 27, 4) = '2011'
      and user_screen_name not in
         ('SEtrafficnews', 'nationalrailenq',
          'NRE_SEastern', 'SEplaying', 'KentWeatherObs')
" |
perl -e '
my %d;
while (<>) {
    chomp;
    s/http:\S+//g; # exclude links
    my  = split(/\W+/);
    for () {
        $d{ lc $_ }++;
    }
}
for ( sort { $d{$a} <=> $d{$b} } keys %d ) {
    print "$_:$d{$_}\n" if $d{$_} > 250 and $_ ne "";
}
'

It then occurred to me earlier that I didn’t actually know how many tweets I read in two months… the answer appears to be over 40,000.

Posting this fact on twitter, the first reply I got was “how many are about sandwiches?” to which the answer is 39. Wow. What wonders

I thought about the only useful thing I could probably do in the short term was make a pretty graph of the rate of tweet flying past my friends timeline per day… so here it is:

Raw data

Other interesting facts:

• @TelegraphNews accounts for 6% of the throughput
• 62 tweets contain the word “argh”
• 350 mentioned “facebook”

I may get around to thinking up new and more interesting stuff to do with this data later… maybe

UPDATE:

As it’s rather old (2001) and doesn’t have much memory in it (128M) and is only a 450MHz G4 (slow!) I thought I’d try the “alternate” XUbuntu. After some effort, I got this installed (trying off a USB stick cos the 9.10 installer is just over 700M and wouldn’t fit on my CD-Rs just didn’t work) so I went for the 9.04 xUbuntu installer which was only 650M… much nicer.

This installed ok, but then I couldn’t log in. Bummer.

Broke into the system (init=/bin/bash saves the day once more) and tried resetting root’s password… failed.

Turned out (after a lot of anger and two reinstalls with various extra flags to the installer) that PAM doesn’t like having a date set before the epoch … 1904. It looks like the PowerPC had reset the system clock before to time began.

Then X … needed some extra hand-holding as I was just getting a blank black screen… http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=772808 worked for me.

Having forced the time to be correct (2010 — over a hundred years in the future!) it all worked fine.

Dist-upgrading to 9.10 then “just worked”. Well, I say, “just worked” — it thought I was using ATI rather than the Rage 128 driver for X.

So now I have a reasonably nice looking (it’s Apple, after all) system, albeit old, but still useful

Woo!

Sent to my MP today:

Dear Julian Brazier,

My apologies for taking up yet more of your time, however our
Government seem to be leaving me little choice but to do so. I wish to
draw your attention to a story breaking in the Daily Telegraph today
(Saturday 14th March, 2009) regarding so called “e-borders”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4987415/All-travel-plans-to-be-tracked-by-Government.html

This would seem to be, if accurate (and I can find no cited references
to active or pending legislation), a HUGE step into the surveillance
culture which campaigns such as NO2ID are opposing and trying to publicise.

I don’t know if it is “too late” to do anything about this but, even if
it is, I would ask why this is necessary (to fight international
terrorism?!) and how it will help… surely the checking of persons on
“watch lists” can be done without the need for such a tracking database
of the general public at point of entry/exit.

What will be next? Will travelling outside your county (or perhaps into
London on a “sensitive” day) require written permission from a
bureaucrat before you’re allowed on a train?

This yet another appalling regime being apparently pushed in sideways
hoping law abiding citizens will roll-over and take it without any
question. I don’t have anything to hide about my whereabouts, but I
find the whole idea of registering my movements with an agency and
having that retained for a decade disgusting.

Once again, I’m sorry to have taken up your time but this is an issue
which is often overlooked and needs more attention.

Yours sincerely,
Me

He’s usually quite good about replying to emails so I will await the response…

I’ve set up a webalbum for you to oggle

Famous Victorian engineer Robert Stephenson will be at the Museum of Canterbury this Saturday (10 May) to chat to visitors and enlist their help in a series of fun experiments.

Well, who’d have thought it… a man who died in 1859 will be receiving guests next weekend at a museum

The people who wonderfully host this website for me are Dreamhost. By clicking that link or entering the referral code FOO82 you will not be charged a setup fee! (It’ll also help keep this site running!)

Rays

Originally uploaded by fooflington.

Near Culnacraig, Highlands looking towards the Summer Isles.

Really like how this one came out (after tweaking a bit)

One of my recent personal favourites.

No, I didn’t stick them there

I swam to get it and Lo and Behold it was a coconut! I threw it up the beach to foo and it cracked the outside shell – foo prised it open (Cue squelching noice) and we ate half each The milk was still inside (until foo found it.. ) ) and it was very yummy.

We think it must have escaped from Herne Bay before it got used on a coconut shy – any other ideas?