Bloggers Obsessed With Porn

Having set up a new blog, I've spent some time seeing what the world has to say about attracting visitors. There seems to be a commonly shared set of methods.

Among others…

• Create good content, often.
• Write strong and specific titles.
• Link to heavy traffic sites.
• Porn.
  
  This entry is just testing to see if porn makes me popular. Although, then I'm that guy who says he has porn, but actually doesn't... If you really want it, get yer fix here (no popups!).

Creative Juices

I don’t know how much orange juice you can get from one single orange, but we know it's not that much. Squeezing an orange that’s no more than a couple of inches in diameter yields a surprisingly small amount of juice. You end up with the peel, some pulp, a lot of air, and a bit of juice. And the juice is the good part – you don’t squeeze the juice out so you can have a juice-free peel. The juice has the sugar and the water and the citrusy goodness.

There is only so much creativity that can be squeezed out of any 24-hour period. There are too many opportunities available to avoid creative thought. That’s my creative thought for the day.

Oh. And what the hell's going on in Lost?

Moola.com

If you have not heard of moola.com, you’re missing out on the opportunity to earn money for free (well, not for free, but for simply watching advertisements and playing two-person games). Easy enough, eh? At the moment, the site seems to be invite-only. I have a handful of available invitations, so post here if you’d like one. If you don’t want one of my invites, you can probably search around for a moola-dedicated site where you can grab someone else’s invite.

If you have heard of moola.com, have you developed a strategy for their Gold Rush game?

I have a two-pronged strategy that had, up until a few weeks ago, been incredibly effective – it got me up to level 16. Basically, I developed a C# console application that uses the minimax algorithm to ensure that, when a winning move is available, I take it. Second, for each user, I kept track of when that user started moola, whether that user was a known human opponent, and how each game against that user played out. The application was able to use this information to determine, when minimax couldn’t, what numbers were in general most effective. This was/is quite helpful against those users that play 2 first every time, for example. The effectiveness of that second part has been greatly reduced as of late due to an influx of players as well as moola’s no longer reporting the specific join dates for player opponents. I considered adding a neural network into the mix, but I don’t know enough about them to know if it would help.

Thoughts?

A Word Challenge - You Won't Beat Me

Without repeating any letter, what's the longest, understandable sentence you can come up with?

CP won a filthy, red, bug!
-- That's 18 letters.

Removing the CP (my initials), you still have 16 letters, and an understandable sentence: "Won a filthy, red, bug!"

Or perhaps...
'Filthy, red, bugs own camp.' (20) or
'Pam won filthy, red, bugs!' (19)

A helpful link: the Internet anagram server.

By the way, if you like word puzzles, check out the puzzles board at www.englishforums.com/.

Diminishing Marginal Utility of Life

#1. If you knew that tomorrow the world would end, what would you do today?

#2. What's it say about you if you can't answer question #1?

Frankly, I don't have an answer. I'd probably spend the day with family and friends, but does that matter with one day left? If one day doesn't matter, do two days? A week? A year? A lifetime? I could imagine having the impulse to go do something crazy like steal a sports car and drive it full speed into a brick wall, or attempt to free all the animals from the nearest zoo, for example. But I don't have those impulses now. However, if each day supposedly had the same value as if the world ended tomorrow, shouldn't I have those impulses now?

#3. Is there a diminishing marginal utility on life the further you believe you are from death?

(For information on diminishing marginal utility, click here.)

Get More Time Out of Your Day

I believe that the amount of creativity, however you personally define it, expended by an individual during any activity is directly proportionate to that individual’s temporal perception of that activity. The more creative you are, the more satisfaction you feel from the given activity; the more satisfaction you feel from that activity, the happier you are doing that activity; the happier you feel, the faster each minute flies by and ironically, the longer, in retrospect, the day seems – it all has something to do with increasing the number of positive memorable moments throughout the day.

Like most everyone else, I have a morning routine during the work week. The alarm buzzes, I click snooze, and then twelve minutes later it kills that cool dream that happens during snooze time. Grabbing work clothes for the day, generally the same outfit I wore seven days prior, I go do the bathroom spiel. Awake, showered, and dressed, never more than twenty minutes after the snooze, I leave the house and get into the car. I always take the same route to work and always park in the same spot at work.

This routine has become a near reflex. Often, I preemptively wake seconds prior to my alarm’s buzzing, I’m amazed sometimes that my unconscious awareness while driving doesn’t lead into an accident, and “my” spot at work is always available. (I imagine everyone else in the building goes to their same, usual, though undesignated spot.) And first thing at work without fail, I check the clock on the computer to see how many hours and minutes are left in the day.

The proceeding work day requires varying levels of intellectual thought, or, gradations of consciousness, if you will – most of which lie at levels above the described morning routine, though usually only marginally so. At no point throughout, however, do I feel fully conscious or aware. The day just drifts away and I follow along, as though following a preconceived set of actions and thoughts. Each minute drags on, yet in retrospect, the day happened in the blink of an eye.

So, I’ve started a blog. I haven’t yet answered for myself whether self-validated creativity is as effective as externally-recognized creativity. Regardless, perhaps this blog will make my day seem a bit longer.