Words that are easy to spell on your phone

When you're spelling words on your phone keypad, you have to press the same button multiple times to get most of the letters. Like you have to press the "1" button 3 times to get a "c".

When i lived in Matawan, i noticed that you could spell the word "Matawan" on your phone pressing each button only once, right up until the last letter, "n", which was the 6 button twice. I thought, "there's an interesting property of a word".

So, i ran a simple program to figure out all the words that have the property of being easy to spell on the phone keypad.

Here's the script, and the longest few words.

cat words | grep -i '^[a,d,g,j,m,p,t,w]*$' | awk '//{print length($0),$0}' | sort -rn

pawpaw Tampa papaw mamma magma madam gamma adapt Watt watt tamp papa Matt matt mama data damp Dada Adam

If i extend the criteria to include words that are good up until the last letter (like "Matawan"), i get

cat words | grep -i '^[a,d,g,j,m,p,t,w]*.$' | awk '//{print length($0),$0}' | sort -n

Matawan wattage pawpaws pajamas Tampax papaws pampas mammas mammal mammae madman madams madame Jamaal gammas damage Addams adapts

It's surprising to me that Matawan is one of the longest of such words. I really did stumble onto an interesting word.

Last Beach Trip this summer

We went to the beach about a month ago now with Sydney and Maria and Isaac, their 2 year old son. It was our last day at the beach for this summer. I took this picture with my cellphone camera of Gan with Syd and Isaac with the Atlantic Ocean in the background. I was pleased with the picture. It almost looks like one of those pictures they use to sell frames.

dilated to meet you

This music video captures our feelings as we wait for our baby girl to arrive.

New Tattoo

Well, it's only a temporary tattoo, but i think it looks pretty cool. It came as an ad in a magazine, so i gave it a shot. Man, temporary tattoo technology has really improved since i was a kid. I dampened my arm and put this thing on for 10 seconds with a wet paper towel behind it, and damn, it turned out pretty good. I remember always being disappointed by those things when i was a kid. I guess my daughter's going to have a lot to be thankful for being born in this day and age.

I thought i'd capture it before i have to take a shower. Gan thinks it looks stupid...i thought she'd have gone for it.

New Bicycle

I bought a new bike, made by a company called Breezer. It took me a while to find the bike i was looking for. I guess that most people want a bike that's good for riding on a nice day, but not worried about riding at night, or in the rain. So most bikes don't have a light, or fenders. This one's even got a bell and a rack, which i love.

It's called a "commuter bike", which is exactly what i use it for. I am fortunate to be able to ride to work, so i am taking advantage of that, while Gan can use the car.

Playing by ear

I've been trying to figure out how to play the piano by ear. I tried for years when i was a teenager, with absolutely no success.

But lately i have been poking around at it and surprisingly, without really trying too hard, i am improving. Normally what i do is play along with whatever's playing on the stereo. My goal is to figure out what key the song is in. If i can do that, i'm happy. Now i can usually figure that out before the song is over. (In the last couple of years, Bob Dylan in concert seems to be using all the black keys, maybe that's why he's playing the piano instead of the guitar).

Today, i was playing around with chords. Chords are hard for me to figure out. Too much going on. But as i was stumbling around, i figured out the main riff in Tom Petty's "Freefalling". Just like that..then i put it on and it was even in the right key. That could have been luck, i suppose. But it sounded perfect. That was a major breakthrough for me. Maybe i'll figure out more stuff one of these years.