I was at work by 7:40 a.m. today, which may not seem early to some people, but when you bear in mind that, to get to work, I have a 25 minute train ride followed by 15 minutes of tram/walking before I’m actually in the office I’m sure you can imagine what time I had to get up. To cut a long story short (too late?), I am tired and therefore incapable of typing up a proper blog post. So instead, here are some random things I discovered on the Internet.
First up is this tool that claims to be able to analyse your writing style and tell you which famous author it’s similar to. I was intrigued, so I decided to give it a go.
First, I analysed my post on Mainz and was told I write like Douglas Adams (of Hitchehiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame – ooooh!). Fair enough. I then wondered whether that one is really representative of my writing style? A post about visiting a place is slightly different to my usual rambling posts about every day life (if only because all the photos in between mean short paragraphs), so I tried analysing a few other blog posts (including one from 2010) and got this three times:
My reaction: Who??
So I looked him up on Wikipedia and was told “Cory Efram Doctorow (/ˈkɒri ˈdɒktəroʊ/; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the weblog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licenses for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.”
Boing Boing? Post-scarcity economics? I’m not 100% certain this result is a compliment…
Another Internet find today was this list of nine strange things that people have found while searching for Wally (or Waldo). Everything from lions queuing up to use a urinal to someone being sacrificed by the Aztecs (and this in a kids’ book!). It makes me want to get hold of a copy of a Where’s Wally book and see what other weird pictures I can find lurking on its pages…
Confuzzledom 
Oh Jake got one for Christmas will have a look 🙂 got to try the other thing too 🙂
David foster Wallace?! Who?
LOL, I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s never heard of my author!
My kids school are having a where’s wally day soon, I hope there will be Aztec sacrificing going on!
Let’s hope the books haven’t given them any ideas 😀
Love that writing analysis website! I am reading a Cory Doctorow book right now – I came across him recently because of a manifesto he wrote about sharing creative work on the internet. The book I’m reading is, appropriately, available for free 🙂 And I LOVE that Waldo article – have read it before, and it really shocks the childhood right out of you. You have to figure the artists needed to have a little fun and put some “grown-up” jokes in there.