MikeBrum.com

I have just under 9 vacation days (70 hours) that I need to take by the end of the year. If I don’t, then I’ll lose that time… which would be dumb of me to let happen.

To help combat that, I just booked a trip at the beginning of December to visit my Mom in North Carolina. I’m also going to be booking a trip to Portland, OR a bit after that. I just need to make sure the days work well for everyone before buying the ticket.

I would have spread it out a bit more, but I’m going to be busy pretty much for the entire month of November, so that’s out. And if I wanted to do something soon, I’d probably end up spending a lot more for a ticket than I want to – so December it is.

Luckily, I’ll be back in plenty of time to finish up any running around before Christmas.

Today I received an order of Power Functions components from Lego and the order was a bit messed up. I had ordered two of the following:

• Power Functions XL-Motor
• Power Functions M-Motor
• Power Functions IR Receiver
• Power Functions IR Remote Control
• Power Functions Extension Wire 20”

Instead, I received the following:

• 0x Power Functions XL-Motor
• 3x Power Functions M-Motor
• 1x Power Functions IR Receiver
• 2x Power Functions IR Remote Control
• 2x Power Functions Extension Wire 20”

Whoops!

So I’m missing 2x XL motors and an IR Receiver, but have an extra M motor.

I called up Lego and talked to a very nice customer service rep that got everything square and is shipping out the missing pieces straight away. She asked if I needed expedited shipping, but I don’t so I told her it wasn’t necessary. She also told me to keep the extra M motor — which they would probably only barely break even on if they paid for return shipping and packaging (I only paid $6.37 for each), so that makes sense on a few levels.

Despite the mix-up, it was a very easy call to place and get things sorted. I was only on hold for maybe 60 seconds, which obviously made the whole ordeal that much less of an issue. I was also pleased to see that I wasn’t given any sort of harassment about trying to “prove” that the order was packed incorrectly. I was simply taken at my word and the issue was resolved. We’re not talking about a ton of money, but I’m sure there’s some vendors that would give you a hard time.

All-in-all, I’m rather pleased with the response of Lego Customer Service.

Years and many site revisions ago, I used to have a very basic haiku page on my site. People could submit their own haiku and bring up random haiku that were submitted previously.

The only problem that I had was that either people couldn’t count or they had a different idea on the classic haiku format (three lines with five, seven and five syllables, respectively). Thinking that there was no meaningful way to check the number of syllables in a word via code, I never pursued it any further and just left it as-is.

For no real reason beyond random inspiration, I revisited this idea and came up with a pretty decent function that will take a word and simply return the number of syllables.

Here’s what the code looks like:

function count_syllables($word) {

$word = strtolower($word);

// Regex Patterns Needed
$triples = “dn\’t|eau|iou|ouy|you|bl$”;
$doubles = “ai|ae|ay|au|ea|ee|ei|eu|ey|ie|ii|io|oa|oe|oi|oo|ou|oy|ue|uy|ya|ye|yi|yo|yu”;
$singles = “a|e|i|o|u|y”;
$vowels = “/(“.$triples.”|”.$doubles.”|”.$singles.”)/”;
$trailing_e = “/e$/”; $trailing_s = “/s$/”;

// Cleaning up word endings
$word = preg_replace($trailing_s, “”, $word);
$word = preg_replace($trailing_e, “”, $word);

// Count # of “vowels”
preg_match_all($vowels, $word, $matches );

$syl_count = count($matches[0]);
return $syl_count;
}

It works based on the following assumptions:

• The number of syllables a word has is equal to the number of “vowel sounds” in the word
• A “vowel sound” can be defined largely by series of consecutive vowels (greater than or equal to one) with a few exceptions
• There are certain instances in which a “vowel sound” doesn’t indicate a new syllable

The letter groupings defined in $triples, $doubles and $singles (which get concatenated into the pattern in $vowels) are the summation of these assumptions. To handle the third point, I remove trailing “s” and “e” letters from words. Since I’ve removed any “e” from the end of words and the suffix “-able” is two syllables, I look for the pattern “bl$” to account for these discrepancies.

Also, to account for contractions, I’ve found that the string “n’t” preceded by the letter “d” typically should count as a vowel sound. Just finding the string “n’t” in a word doesn’t necessarily count as a vowel sound by itself. This allows us to properly differentiate between the contraction such as “can’t” and “couldn’t”.

For the most part, I’ve matched up any two-vowel pair with the exception of “ia”. This allows us to treat “i” and “a” as single vowels in words like “pliable” where they’d be otherwise be treated as a single vowel sound if the pair “ia” was added to the regex pattern.

I’m sure there’s all sorts of additional edge cases that I’m missing. And additionally, any non-English word has a chance of not abiding by these rules. The good thing is that if there’s any glaring holes, you can add new vowel sounds to the patterns above. Since preg_match_all() “short circuits” on a successful match (meaning that it will start at the next character after a match is found and start at the beginning of the match string), be sure to add them at an appropriate spot in the list. This also explains why the “larger” patterns should probably come first.

All-in-all, the function is fairly tight and small for what it does. With a minor caveat that there may be exceptions to the results it returns for weird edge cases, this should provide sufficiently accurate and efficient results for most casual use.

Something very exciting is happening in 2010. While that’s a very open-ended claim, I’m just going to jump to the chase — Lego is reintroducing pneumatics in their Technics line.

Lego 8049 Log Loader

After many years of requests from consumers and fans, the Lego Technic Log Loader 8049 will include pneumatic components in a mainline Lego set-

• 2 pneumatic cylinders
• 2 pneumatic switches
• 1 pneumatic pump
• a bunch of tubing

There’s also the possibility of some T-junctions because there’s mention of the option to add an auxiliary air tank to the set:

Add compressor function by purchasing 8293 Power Functions Motor Set

At only $60 (and available for pre-order on Amazon.com now), what’s most exciting is that with this being the highest-priced set of the first quarter of 2010, there’s still room for a really big set to incorporate even more pneumatics later in the year! Maybe we’ll see something epic like the amazing Lego 8455 Pneumatic Backhoe.

Only time will tell… but this is a great restart of one of the greatest sub-sets that Lego has ever put out. Add these to the Lego Power Functions and and Lego Mindstorms sets, and you have a really large set of amazing tools for the creative designer!

We ran to Target yesterday to pick up some kitty litter and other random household necessities. While heading to the cash registers, we happened past the rest of the pet stuff can saw a section for “pet costumes”. There were plenty dumb ones, and I had no intention of getting any, but then we saw a small chicken cat hat “costume”.

It was so hilarious, that we had no choice but to get it. Knowing that Sabine wouldn’t be a fan, it was totally spec’ed out for Doctor Lovington.

Here’s a couple of shots I took with my phone (click for larger):

I think the third one is my favorite.

If this isn’t one of the funniest things you’ve ever seen, I don’t know what’s wrong with you!

Corinne just sent me a link to the World’s Largest Gummy Bear.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

The commercial is even kick-ass…

Just a note – my birthday is coming up. Surprise me.

I just placed a quick call to a vendor to check up on the status of a repair that’s being done. All-in-all, very mundane and basic.

The interesting bit was that when I hung up the phone, I received a message saying that I had 4 new voicemail message. Four. Seriously. And I was only on the phone for two minutes!

I’m not claiming that I’m super popular. The contrary is closer to the reality of the situation. The deal is, the oldest one was from September 20th. That’s over two weeks ago — and I’m just NOW getting the alert that I have voicemail messages.

It’s not like I’ve flown or been in any out of service areas in that time. There’s simple no excuse for not receiving a notification for four voicemail messages for over two weeks.

I’ve already been considering moving away from Virgin Mobile — this is just one more big push in that direction.

For anyone interested, the only reason I’m on Virgin is because they bought out Helio, who I was a customer with by choice.

I spent the weekend at the Boston Tattoo Convention, which I’ve attended every year since it began except for one. While this year definitely felt slower than previous years, it wasn’t without entertainment. Take the following photo for example:

What idiot can't spell the word for what they do for a living??

How scary is that?

Not only does this person roll up and try to screw every other piercer at the convention by underpricing (and likely selling really, really shitty jewelry), but they don’t even spell PIERCING correctly.

Positive Image Tattoos, you’re a real class act.

I happened to look out the window while making lunch and noticed that the sun was backlighting what I believe to be a Yellow Foxtail — which is just a common weed of the family Setaria.

I put everything down and grabbed my gear (switching out the 35mm for the 100mm macro) to shoot a few frames. A few minutes after taking the shot the sun disappeared behind clouds not to be seen for the rest of the day and the wind kicked up just for fun.

I’m glad I acted on the impulse and opportunity.

I’ve been quite obsessed with Lego in the recent past. Frankly, I’ve been obsessed with Lego for more than 20 years, but the recent past has seen a resurgence in that obsession.

Not that long ago, I shot a time-lapse of a Lego 8294 Excavator build. It was a fun learning experience (the shoot), but more than a little work.

I currently have a new Lego 8265 Front Loader sealed in its box sitting just behind me that I need to assemble. I haven’t been able to pull the hours and work through it. I want to do another time-lapse because the first one seemed to be well received. However, the time logistics have me wondering if it’s worth putting off the build (which I want to get to because I’ve had it for a couple of weeks now!) to shoot the time-lapse or not.

I guess I can always go back and shoot a build later — I just hate having it sit there ignored, but I don’t have a ton of free time right now.