In life, you are either responding in love or reacting out of fear. There is no in between.
Wordle is a new word game that is the current viral sensation. Wordle is a mashup of MasterMind and word unscramble. The game combines letter position strategy and five-letter word knowledge.
The Wordle player has six chances to guess the correct five-letter word. The program will tell you which letters you’ve guessed correctly and whether the letters you’ve guessed are in the correct order. Each guess must be a valid 5-letter word.
The game’s unique premise is you can only play it once a day. This limitation prevents the game from being a black hole of time. The once-a-day time limitation for Wordle requires people to come back daily to play.
The fundamental strategy of Wordle is to cover as many letters as possible in the first couple of word choices. Your first word choices must always use five distinct letters and multiple vowels.
The Wordle requirement to use five distinct letters and multiple vowels requires looking at letter frequency in 5-letter words. Dr. Drang calculated the letter frequencies focused on 5-letter words. Based on his work, the top 20 letters used by 5-letter words are A, E, R, O, I, S, T, L, N, U, Y, C, D, H, M, P, B, G, and K.
The key is to find a series of Wordle acceptable words that cover most letters.
The one limitation of this approach is multiple letter usage. If the answer is a word like “LOOKS,” the use of a single O will not indicate the numerous use of the letter.
My Wordle word attempts are the following words: ADIEU, SNORT, and LYMPH. These words include 15 of the top 16 letters, with the one exception of the letter C.
Here are my choices for the Wordle game from Saturday, January 22.
What are your favorite words to play Wordle?
My stand-up desk is a catch-all. It is a quick and easy place to place things. I know I need to get to it, so it goes on the desk. And then the piles begin to grow.
It is like an archaeology dig of procrastination as I look at the piles—all the things and stuff I did not want to handle. The stacks of letters, papers, and miscellaneous items distract me from focusing on essential.
The challenge with a stand-up desk is the lack of drawers or cabinets. Everything is either on the desk or the floor.
So let’s get started. Oh, and get a garbage bag. The goal is to remove clutter and clean up that stand-up desk. That will involve throwing stuff away.
Remove everything from your stand-up desk.
Yes, remove everything from your desk. When I cleared off my desk, the only items were my monitors, two laptops, and a desk lamp. I then sorted each of the items into two categories:
- Essential Items – Pen holders, calculators, reading glasses, phone charger pad, coaster. keyboard, mouse and mouse pad. With just the essential items, my desk had over 10 items.
- Office Supplies – What office supplies do you actually use? My desk had 5 post-it note pads. In all honesty, I can only use one at a time. If I am really honest, I really do not need any of them on my desk. I can’t remember the last time I used a post-it note as a post-it note. I am actually using them as a very expensive pad of paper.
Look for the hidden clutter areas. I emptied my pen holders and found a tire gauge, mini flashlight, 2.4Ghz wireless USB adapter, Stylus from a Compaq iPaq, Apple 3.5mm headphone to lightning adapter, wall switch screw, and money. Not enough money to retire, but the coins are now reunited with their long last comrades in the coin jar.
Only put things back on your desk you have used in the last 30 days. If you have not used the item, give it to charity.
Beloved Items versus Sentimental Clutter
I realized one of the areas of desk clutter was mementos of projects, items acquired over time, and gifts from old coworkers. These items, over time, become a part of my desk landscape. They just existed. I never planned on them being on my desk. They just materialized one day from another multiverse and never left.
I needed to examine each item and determine whether it was essential to be on my desk. For each item, I asked the following questions:
- Do I love it unconditionally? Does the item need to be on my desk and view for 8 hours a day? If not, I probably do not love it.
- Do I use it reguraly? I have an Iron Giant action figure. It is one of the items I fidget with while on the phone. I have a smile face beanie from a project building a Dell ecommerce website. I never touch it.
- Was it a gift I never wanted? Over the years, I have received gifts from people that sat on my desk. When I changed offices, the items moved from work to my home desk. Many of the items I do not remember who gave it to me. It is time to regift to the local charity.
Beware of the Sentimental clutter. When I examined every item on my desk, only three things made it back on the desk: the Iron Giant figure, a fidget spinner, and my Rubik’s Cube. I play with all three while on the phone.
Paper, What to do with Paper?
Papers are one of the things I have struggled with while using a Stand-up desk. My answer was to use a plastic banker’s file storage box. I have one file box that sits on the shelf behind my desk. The banker’s box allows me to organize my papers and projects. It has also forced me to keep only one box worth of paper.
Go Digital
Quit using paper. Our postal system is fantastic. Well, until you realize the environmental impact of transporting a letter cross country in planes, trains, trucks, and automobiles. How far did your printer paper travel to end up at your office? The less paper you use, the less clutter you have to remove from your desk the next time you clean it up. We will have a future article on how to declutter your digital world.
Ways to gain stand-up desk space
It is essential to gain desk space. One of the items I use is a monitor stand. The stand I use is an Oasis Dual Monitor Stand. I like using the monitor stand to act as a hidden in-box. I can place my current working papers under the monitor stand. The central part of the desk remains clutter-free.
Repeat on a Regular Basis
Set aside time regularly to clear your desk surface. Video conferences are a great time to clear your desk. Just turn off the video, so the team does not see you being distracted.
The key is to dispose of items you no longer use. Once you have decluttered your stand-up desk, it will be easier to meet the crazy deadline you just received from your customer.
I am starting a journey to declutter my life. From the physical world to the emotional world; and everything in between.
The journey will start in the physical universe. What can I declutter or simplify in physical space? We will work on specific areas within the house. The next step on the journey will include facilitating my time, mental, and emotional aspects of life.
Physical Decluttering
- Things cause stress.
- Things require maintenance.
- Things require care.
- Things require space.
- Things require money
- Things require [Fill in the blank]
Things are gremlins. While the “thing” is an object, it can create challenges in life.
It is amazing how fast something as a tool drawer can become something to avoid. It was easier to put stuff into the tool drawer. And now the tool drawer is not useable. Where do I find the tools I need. Why do I have a drawer of sockets in a giant pile? What is wrong with stack management?
Stuff takes energy. I will be tackling each area of the house and my life to figure out the best way to declutter. I hope to document my journey and findings as I travel down this road.
This is my journey for 2022. I do not know where it will take me. We will see how it goes. I hope you can follow along.
When you are developing an extension for phpBB, you will have to setup your own version control. Once an extension has been approved for the customization database, phpBB will handle the version control.
To manage the version control require changes to your composer.json file and the creation of a version xml file. The version xml file will need to be stored on a webserver that is publicly available.
Version File
The version file is an xml file with the following format:
{
"stable":
{
"1.0":
{
"current":"1.0.0",
"download":"https:\/\/www.yoursite.com\/folder\/folder\/folder\/extension.zip",
"announcement":"",
"eol":null,
"security":false
}
}
}
As you can tell the xml file is pretty self explanatory. The key values are the stable, current and download. This file will need to be hosted where it publicly available on the internet.
Composer.json file
The composer.json file will need to tell phpBB where to look for the version file. The following lines should be in your composer.json file, but are probably blank. The xml code needs to look like:
"extra": {
"display-name": "Extension Name",
"soft-require": {
"phpbb/phpbb": ">=3.1.0-RC2,<3.2@dev"
},
"version-check": {
"host": "www.site_version_file_hosted.com",
"directory": "/directory/structure/to/file",
"filename": "filename.xml",
"ssl": "true"
}
}
The SSL flag will need to be changed based on your sites requirement to use https or regular http.
Hope this helps.
As a member of a commission for the City of Allen, I am required to lead the Pledge of Allegiance to the US Flag. This had me thinking.. (I know this is dangerous ground.) Do we have a Texas Flag Allegiance. Well of course we do. The Texas Pledge of Allegiance can be found in Texas Law. The Pledge is:
Honor the Texas flag;
I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.
What was more interesting was the text of the ceremony to retire a Texas Flag. Here is the text. If reading this does not get your pulse up, you are not a bona fide Texan. Continue Reading…
What started out as a simple car wreck at the beginning of the night, ended up as a car with no windows, doors, roof or B pillars. Extrication Night or how do you remove an injured person from a damaged car. I called it, Wow, this is a lot of fun chopping a car into pieces. Continue Reading…
Solr5.0 has been recently released with several new features. One of these is a service install to use with Redhat based Linux systems. This install will walk you through an install and create two example cores to test with.
Many of the Solr install instructions include the installation of Tomcat. This is not required. Solr 5.0 will run with the base OpenJDK. The server also does not need the Apache web server. Continue Reading…
Make Address Data Work for you.
If you need to convert addresses from postal to latitude and longitude, I would suggest looking into Texas A&M Geo Services. If you have a need for these type of services, please consider Geo-stuff provided by Texas A&M University GeoServices.
I am using the service to map voting history to changes in geography. By having the lat/long data allows much faster use of various mapping tools.
Wearing all the gear.
It was bunker gear night. Bunker gear is the system of outer protective clothing for firefighters. “Bunker Gear” is derived from the fact that the trousers and boots are traditionally kept by the firefighter’s bunk at the fire station to be readily available for use. We were outfitted with the complete set of Trousers, Coat, Boots, Nomex Hood, Helmet, Gloves and Eye Protection. Continue Reading…