Before you watch these videos, I’d like to point out a few facts related to this footage:
#1 —  I don’t still run like this.
#2 —  Only my cousin Aaron is allowed to call me Mickey.
#3 —  All of my soccer dance moves were taught to me by Michael Jackson himself.

and finally…

#4 — Eating mud will make you a better soccer player.

Enjoy the clips!

                          

If you want to get updates each time I press a new blog entry, then you have several different options:

1. Email subscription (see the form in the upper right of this page).
2. RSS feed (also in the upper right); however, it requires a feed reader.
3. Google Reader

Don’t like any of those options?  Well then, your simply stuck with returning to this page every day to check for updates.  Let me know if anyone has problems getting one of the options above to work and I’ll help you out.

                          

Bye Patrick Swayze!! Thanks for one of the greatest movies of all time… Ghost.

                          

“Cna yuo raed tihs?” (p. 102)

No problem, right? That’s because your brain is processing the words individually and repackaging the characters into an order that would make sense given the context. Fascinating.  Oru abiltiy to ientrerpt centoxt at all is faaicnnstig, btu to go boeynd taht by re-irpretninetg rdnaom inupt into snesbile inupt is slpimy a ctaunmopiotal mlcarie.  Just imnaige teh moremy adn caompuaotnitl poewr nedeed to mcath ecah grnpiuog of lreetts to a pirmutaoeun taht hsa mnnieag in a gevin context…  It wuold be iimpssbole to srtoe teh wrod contbimniaos into memroy on most merdon coputerms, even if we liietmd wodrs to a mmiaxum of 10 leterts.

Cna yuo bilevee that just haepnped!!??!  All these years your brain has filled in the blind spots with interpretations of what it thinks should be.  Words, sight, hearing, taste, feelings; everything is interpreted.  With that being the case, I’m not the least bit surprised that our world is constantly at war with itself when the first event we are given to interpret is a painful eviction followed by a stern smack on the ass.

As a tribute to Andy Hunt’s example, I baked up some fresh python code to create this effect from a text file. It’s also what I used to create parts of this blog.  Enojy!

# file: scramble.py
# poet: Michael Wade
# idea: Mix up the characters of words, but keep the first and last the same.
# The effect should be something along the lines of:
# Cna yuo raed tihs?  -- Andy Hunt, Pragmatic Thinking & Learning
import sys, getopt, random;

# scramble()
# Post: Randomizes the ordering of characters between the first
#       and last letter of a given input word.
def scramble(word):
    if len(word) <= 2:
        return word;
    elif len(word) == 3:
        word = word[0] + word[2] + word[1];
    else:
        # Need to leave any punctuation in place..
        last = len(word);
        end = word[len(word)-1];
        if end in "!?.,;":
            last = len(word)-1;
        else:
            last = len(word);
            end = '';

        # Hyphens are a special case..
        if "-" in word:
            splitWord = word.split("-");
            return scramble(splitWord[0]) + "-" + scramble(splitWord[1]);

        # Randomize the middle part
        middlePart = str(word[1:(last-1)]);
        middlePart = ''.join(random.sample(middlePart, len(middlePart)));

        # Bring it all back together.
        word = word[0] + middlePart + word[last-1] + end;

    return word;

if __name__ == "__main__":

    # First arguement MUST be a filename.
    if len(sys.argv) < 2:
        print "Please specify a text file like so:"
        print "python scramble.py myFile.txt"
    else:
        inputFile = ""; # Default to a blank filename
        try:
            inputFile = open(sys.argv[1],"r")
        except IOError:
            print "Error opening file:", sys.argv[1]
            sys.exit(2)

        # Each line in the file needs to be broken into words.
        for line in inputFile:
            scrambledLine = "";
            words = line.split(" ");

            # Each word needs to be scrambled.
            for word in words:
                scrambledLine += scramble(word) + " "

            # Each line needs to be reprinted
            print scrambledLine

        # Close the file
        inputFile.close();

                          

It’s cool.  In fact, it’s better than cool.  I’ve left a trail of accomplishments a mile long, made several lifelong friends, and picked up a new hobby.  Feels like things have just gotten started, and I can only capture my excitement using the words of a new friend: “I’M STOKED”!