More readable gobbledegoop

On a lighter note on this wee project of mine, I have had some traffic from search engines to my blog from people searching for obscure words that have turned up in the gobbledegoop.

Project details:
Name: Readable gobbledegoop
Aim: Initially, to generate something that has been generated by a computer, but would be physically possible to read. This has taken a tangent somewhat into attempting to get closer and closer to real words.

I scanned a book of G.A. Henty hoping to get letter frequencies.

Approximate ratios of letters of the alphabet as they occur.
233,43,60,120,364,69,60,191,177,3,23,108,64,183,220,42,2,172,181,273,82,31,68,3,54,1

As my program has ‘qu’ rather than ‘q’, i subtract all occurences of q from u to get a more accurate quantity of ‘u’s. Sadly, doing it like this, and being too tired to rewrite code to scan for ‘th’ and ‘ch’ I opted to take them out of my list of characters as individual characters. They will probably find their way back in some time soon.

I fiddled around, and it was quicker to generate a big list of all possible letters, with them occuring as many times as they would (compared to ‘z’ occuring once). This is more processor intensive than assigning proper weightings, but at 1am, I’m much rather the processor does the hard work rather than me . Besides, my computer is somewhat above average speed and has more than the average memory.

For any possible critics who believe this not worth the effort, I immediately tried to generate something, obtaining the following:

sanurum noda yetadeyofe kerafer rihe sarew hirawahete secono mibubo sine sotocifet huyare desa sim cafihohit ronote sahay sitegu lanud norome lito yoneh vocil rihime hof sane legorodob wuheyo ninode ropifo nehofe hileto dehop ferera miriy hunode cohokeni cidayen lorol.

Obviously I’m not at the capitalisation/punctuation stage, but that is a definite improvement on my last attempts with their gross proliferations of zeds et alia similis.

To do:
Find proper weighting for wordlength. Same for sentence length. Sentence structure would be good if I could get hold of seperate dictionaries of nouns, verbs etc.
Get th’s and ch’s and endings such as s,es,ed and ing in somehow.
I may write a program to search all possible two letter combinations and find which letter combinations are most common.

Another attempt:

ror sen pude sonehat raridatoso wipec meyuni vat mam vetel tira webe datag soneke widoh sesecat tetuceter detirewad dal fedirefo dalel soder hel cadifas mar tuwerom raveye seseto wesen tew

With this run, I drastically altered the word length weightings in favour of shorter words.

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER by Mark Twain

THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
BY
MARK TWAIN

A choice quote.
‘”Now it’s all done, Becky. And always after this, you know, you ain’t
ever to love anybody but me, and you ain’t ever to marry anybody but
me, ever never and forever. Will you?”

“No, I’ll never love anybody but you, Tom, and I’ll never marry
anybody but you–and you ain’t to ever marry anybody but me, either.”

“Certainly. Of course. That’s PART of it. And always coming to school
or when we’re going home, you’re to walk with me, when there ain’t
anybody looking–and you choose me and I choose you at parties, because
that’s the way you do when you’re engaged.”

“It’s so nice. I never heard of it before.”

“Oh, it’s ever so gay! Why, me and Amy Lawrence–”

The big eyes told Tom his blunder and he stopped, confused.

“Oh, Tom! Then I ain’t the first you’ve ever been engaged to!”‘

Quite a good read, not too long either. ~70,000 words, easily readable in a day being written in a manner that once you’re used to, it flows well.

I spent a minute or two trying to work out how much I have to read so far saved onto my computer. I estimate 40+ million words from the writings of only R.M. Ballantyne and G.A. Henty. Plus another 20-30 books from The Prince to The Cossack to The Art of War to War and Peace to 3 Men in a Boat.

Ebook link.

Prayer

Prayer, what it is and why it can be difficult – by Rev David Silversides.
Highly recommendable!

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

121519 Words
621208 Characters

At my first sitting, of 4 hours, 29 minutes, I read the first 103368 words. At the second sitting of 48 minutes, I completed the rest of the book.

A very very enjoyable read! Highly recommended. I believe there is a film of the same name, but I have not seen it. I doubt its as informative as the book. My agricultural knowledge is somewhat increased . It doesn’t go into the same detail as ‘On the Pampas’ does in explaining precisely how to grow and manufacture tobacco and sugar, but goes more into the learning process and seasonal processes.
Robinson Crusoe
Checking project gutenberg for the link for this, I found a book titled ‘The further adventures of Robinson Crusoe’! I will need to find the time to check this!

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

I first picked up The Count of Monte Cristo at the end of 5th year of secondary school. Managing 40% over a few weeks, I’d lost track of the story and so left it, and left it, and left it, until a few weeks ago when I decided to try again, and going from the start. I remembered much of the early story, but noticed an awful lot that I’m sure I never thought much of the first time round and so forgot! I quickly realised I’d have to read with more ‘effort’ than other books. Being 870 pages, I wondered how I’d cope, but was determined to finish it this time.

The story is a gripping read. Not by today’s standards, where you read late into the night intending to read to the end. That’s not possible, however the storyline twists and turns deeper and deeper drawing you in, and all the time also tying up loose ends with one paragraph, and creating more with the next!

The hero of the story, is one Edmond Dantès, who wrongly arrested and thrown in jail on the day he is to be married, rots for 14 years, and all the while his former ‘friends’ are making their fortunes one way or another and move to Paris and its high society – them being from southern France and various countries around the med.

Escaping jail, having received an education of the highest order in all manner of things from a fellow prisoner, he makes his fortune, and buys the title, ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’. Travelling the world for years, making many friends and many more who are indebted to him, he arrives in Paris, and enters high society.

Edmond’s quest after revenge, as the way of things goes, also creates him an unknowing agent of fate (A peculiar term I found on the back cover, but quite fitting to the story).

A good read, but one I highly doubt I’ll ever attempt again. At least three weeks reading, probably close to 20 hours a week.

—

I’ve also started a spreadsheet making note of which books I read. Hoping to fill it up quite a bit.