Friday Forays in Fiction: Plot Points Punning

Literary Plot Points in Pun Form

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Let Me Lego Like This

James May’s Lego house

I saw this in this PCMag slideshow featuring ten amazing Lego Projects.  I then followed the link to the topgear.com article about this project and saw a slideshow walkthrough of it.

Among the other projects featured in the PCMag slideshow are a working mortercycle, Van Gogh's Starry Night, models of Hogwarts, Taj Mahal, and the Game of Thrones castle. I hope to return to follow the links to each of them to see more pics and read the stories.

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A Bit of Silliness...

Brudders-in-Paw Until the Thaw

...is good for stress relief.

I giggled when I first had the thought for this dialog as I gazed at the picture.  But as I was looking it over for errors before clicking publish, I had second thoughts.  It seemed ridiculous.  Too silly for words.

But, my other me argued, it made me giggle.  True that.

So I went for it.  Maybe it'll be worth a few giggles for a few others having a rough week like me.

Truly a giggle is worth an hour of meditation.

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Written? Kitten a Writer's Word Count Wooer

Written? Kitten Screenshot

There's a site called Written? Kitten which rewards the writer with a fresh picture of a cute kitten for every ____ words typed into the form.  You can change the number of words required to get rewarded.

If your browser supports local saving your work even gets saved though I'm sure I wouldn't depend on it for anything important.

Anyone who's visited Joystory and seen my obsession with LOLcats would recognize this as a good fit for me :)  I could see myself getting hooked on something like this but I'd prefer it to be  neither browser nor web dependent but rather a feature of my word processor.

I took the screenshot after earning my first kitten with 100 words.  It's not my NaNo novel.  Just a throwaway off the cuff ramble.

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Fish: Feeding My Ravenous Muses

I'm busy feeding my muse today. Reading and daydreaming and such. Want to help feed my fish? Just click anywhere in the water.

Hat Tip to Bonnie Jacobs for pointing me to this gadget.

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Fooling Around

Super Text Twist
Make as many words as you can with the letters you're given and still beat the clock.

Or it could be said I'm exercising my vocabulary.

SpongeBob Collapse
Use jellyfish, stars and colored bubbles to match squares before they pile to the top.

My eye/hand coordination.

Super Collapse Puzzle Gallery 2
Remove all the blocks from the screen in the fewest possible moves.

My problem solving skills.

OK so, that's all a bit of a stretch.

And I suppose that I can't post about three games I've recently spent time with while claiming that I'm too busy to do a 'real' post today.

No. Didn't think so.

Would you believe that before Sunday night I had not been to a single game site since I got here before New Year's? Before Sunday night I had played an occassional game of Spider or Free Cell. So, in spite of it still being hectic here and feeling chaotic and crazy more than half of every day, there must have been a sea change that I hadn't quite noticed until now. There is a glimmer of light in the distance. I think maybe I can invest some hope into the idea of being home by Easter.

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Incremental Improvements

Oh, did you think this was going to be a continuation of yesterday's round-up of Mom's post-surgery progress?

Nah. I need to throw up a quick post tonight. Not much thought is going into this. Not much story. It could even look a bit like bragging. Maybe it is.

The theme of improvement is on my mind after preparing yesterday's post. And that led me to think of the improvements I've made in my typing speed and accuracy since the last time I posted my results with this site's fun test sometime last spring or summer. I've been practicing.

When I first discovered the site, I was appalled at how badly my skills had deteriorated. I was getting wpm speeds in the 5os with three to six incorrect. I wouldn't even use the embed code the site provides for bragging I was so chagrined. Not until I reached the high 60s error free. I'm too time pressed. (or lazy; unmotivated) to hunt down that post and link it here.

Well I have been working toward 80 wpm error free. I'm not there yet but I'm closing in and this week got a score I don't mind sharing:

308 points, so you achieved position 183894 of 2338262 on the ranking list


You type 390 characters per minute
You have 78 correct words and
you have 0 wrong words

78 words

Speed test

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What Kind of Flower Are You?

I am a Nigella What Flower Are You?

"Many people think you are just a little bit odd, but you consider yourself just a little eccentric. You find new experiences exciting and fulfilling."

Actually I know i'm more than a little odd. I am also change phobic and except for rare exceptions the only new experiences I find fulfilling are those in books and movies.

I've never heard of a Nigella. It's pretty though. Cuz it's blue!

I've no idea how these quizzes calculate their answers from the questions they ask but I still find them irresistible. I don't always post them though. This time I thought the site was worth looking at. Especially if you are interested in gardening.

Plus I just needed something quick and easy to post tonight. I've gotta get ready for that Read-a-thon.

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Let Me Count the Ways...

I'm slowing down.

I once typed 80 words per minute on a manual typewriter. Many many moons ago. LOL. I was timed in a high-school typing class but I'd been typing since I taught myself on my Mom's typewriter at age eleven and then was given a used portable Underwood that was older than me for my 13th birthday. So I'd been typing for years without ever worrying about speed before I took that class.

Around age 30 shortly after getting my first PC, a Tandy 1000EX, I timed myself at just over 100.

Neither rate was anywhere near competitive with those who pushed the boundaries, won type-a-thons etc. But I was content.

I knew I was slowing down. But really!

67 words

Speedtest

Maybe my typing teacher was right to harp on posture--I'm sitting bed with the laptop balanced on a box between my legs and Ed's back is pressed against my right elbow. Hmmm. Maybe it isn't as bad as this seems.

Plus I have been typing a lot today and am fairly fatigued.

Actually I had to make four tries before I got over 60 words. I decided to go with it for this post because it was the only one in which I got zero errors. So at least I had accuracy going for me. In one of my tries I managed nearly double the number of keystrokes but typoed 16 times and thus got a 37 word score.

I noticed too that it is difficult for me to type words in a list and out of context. I'm sure I'm faster when typing paragraphs.

I think I'm going to try this again when conditions are more favorable.

H/T Joely Sue Burkhart

Update: I went back and practiced at the site this morning--Wednesday. After several warm up tries I began getting scores in the sixties with either 1 or zero wrong words. Then I got this one over 70 with zero errors and thought I'd just update this:

73 words

Speedtest

If I ever work it up into the eighties with zero errors I think I will just post again to celebrate.

It is accuracy that I need to work on!

The two most common mistakes are transposing left-hand and right-hand keystrokes and not hitting the space bar hard enough to take.

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