Thousand words and more

I thought looking at the results of Google Image search for a few 'abstract' words would be interesting. So I wrote a screen scraping script in Ruby (this language is just great - the force is definitely deep with this one) that reads in search terms from a file and collects the searched images and their links from the first page of the image search results. The images were subsequently resized using ImageMagick. My list was:

Always, Bliss, Blossom, Blue, Bubble, Death, Delirium, Destiny, Dreams, Eternity, Fantastic, Happiness, Hilarious, Hope, If, Liberty, Life, Love, Nothingness, Rainbow, Smile, Sunflower, Sunshine, Time

And below are some of the results. The images are clickable - they lead you to the www links Google obtained them from. Note that Google returns 21 search results(images) on its first page in its default setting. In some cases I could'nt retrieve the images due to various technical snags that I was too lazy to spare any attention for. I am just putting up 5 or less per search word, in no particular order - ones that appeal to me or stand out in some way (and post censoring :) ) - you could ask me if I were a tyrant and I would say 42. So lets just get going:



Always:






Bliss:






Blossom:






Blue:






Bubble:







Death:






Delirium:







Destiny:






Dreams:






Eternity:






Fantastic:






Happiness:






Hilarious:






Hope:






If:






Liberty:






Life:






Love:






Nothingness:






Rainbow:






Smile:






Sunflower:






Sunshine:






Time:






And, finally, on a lighter note, can you believe Google turned up this while searching for 'bubble'?:

Alphabot

A friend of mine had put a this link up in Google Talk status message:

http://playfreeonlinegames.eu/playonline/typethealphabet.html

and his record of 2.84 seconds. In an exhausted state, after having spent a day running after some compatibility issue in some code, my first shot earned me 6.89 seconds.

Huh?!


Deciding to take matters a wee bit more seriously I decided to ... umm... cheat. I wrote this Java code:

import java.awt.AWTException;
import java.awt.Robot;
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent;

public class alphabot {

public static void main(String[] args) {

try {

Robot robot = new Robot();

robot.delay(5000);

robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_A);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_B);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_C);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_D);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_E);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_F);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_G);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_H);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_I);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_J);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_K);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_L);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_M);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_N);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_O);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_P);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_Q);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_R);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_S);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_T);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_U);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_V);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_W);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_X);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_Y);
robot.keyPress(KeyEvent.VK_Z);




} catch (AWTException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}



This is an awt robot which can be given the control of your mouse and keyboard. This particular one waits for 5 seconds to let you click or focus your mouse someplace, and then "types" in the letters of the English alphabet.

I compiled it and ran it (as such things go), and before my 5 seconds were up, went to the Webpage to click on 'a' and wait. And , lo! 0.03 secs. Not bad at all ...


This is where I should have ideally finished my post and not written this statement and the few that follow it had I not remembered a puzzle I recently read:

Place 50 balls in 9 boxes so that each box contains an odd number of balls.

At first glance this seems impossible since the sum of an odd number of odd integers cannot be even. Its, however, achievable if you place a box inside another. Talk about a puzzle that forces you to think outside the box to only lead you back to inside one.

Yawn!

Binary Sudoku

After a busy day, while I was way into a hectic night , I came across this. I really was in no mood to be humored, but then I looked away and chuckled. Hilarious!


(The above pic is from http://xkcd.com/74/)

Coffeeproof

Coffee doesn't affect me anymore - this is not a recent discovery, of course, but people around me who are discovering it find it very surprising - and I find that amusing. So when I drink coffee these days its more like a force of habit (when its 'normal' coffee) or a whim of indulgence (if you happen to spot me in a Barista/Cafe Coffe Day/Qwiky) - never, anymore to stay up in the nights, since I can make it to the deep slumber zone after a mega mug with consistent success, in a couple of minutes flat, effectively competing with the well advertised 2-minute Maggi preparation time. Thats a hard earned skill too - came about after repetitive coffee hogging many times a day when I was working as a software developer, or the many times a week outside my office when I would walk into one of those coffee outlets with a novel in my hand, in a pitted battle against ennui clawing at my life.

And so there was this time, when one of my roomies was leaving for good, and we decided to stay awake and chat till late in the night - and they decided that downing a few dregs of the strongest coffee would facilitate that (I was smirking inwardly). So we go to a Cafe Coffee Day, we return, and while they begin their anticipated chat session, I leave them to gape at me as my lights go out almost instantaneously after I lie down for a while.

And while I am here about coffee, heres a Turkish proverb in context:

"Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death and sweet as
love."

(Not that even that would work for me ... )