Victory is Mine!

Around 7:15 CST, the last root was severed and the stump was removed from "the pit". Workers all had a Dr. Pepper to celebrate.

Here are some pictures of "the pit" minus the stump:







All that remains for the project is to fill in "the pit", clean up the area around "the pit", dispose of the stump, and write about five more blog posts on the project.

Stump Project Update 6:45 pm

The stump project has suffered a major success. The above picture shows the large rock that was recently removed from "the pit". Could it be that the project is coming to an end tonight? Check back for updates!

Live Blogging From the Stump Project

I'm very excited to be able to post this update from the stump project. I know a lot of people are interested in the outcome of the project.



Pictured above are tools being used in the stump project. The gloves are to protect the hands of the workers who normally only do "office type" work like typing. The saw is a new tool for the project. It's small, curved, and cuts on both pushes and pulls. It's for getting into tight spaces. The pick was used early in the project to dig the initial hole. Recently, excavation has been done with a water hose, the blue cup, and pulling rocks out by hand.



Above is a picture from deep inside "the pit" (the workers are calling the hole that now). This is what the underside of the stump looks like. To right is a fresh cut all the way through a root. To the left is a huge rock that is going to be removed next. It's thought that removing that rock will reveal one more large root that must be cut before the stump can be removed.

The goal of the project for tonight is to remove that large rock and locate the last remaining root that must be cut.

Expect more updates as need be.

Stump Project Pictures

The stump thinks it is winning. However, it doesn't know I can dig the hole as deep as I need to. Holes can be made quite large.

Abbreviation Project/Scheme

Ok. All of the following is true even if you don't think it is. I wouldn't lie to you. No, not to you.

Right now, I'm learning the following scheme for abbreviations (it's pretty clever and useful):

http://www.eskimo.com/~oak/abr/Wil.txt

Under this scheme:

• only the most commonly used English words are included
• the more common a word, the shorter its abbreviation
• abbreviations can be extended using a set of characters that are added to the end -- for example, 'g' attached to the end of an abbreviation generally means 'ing'

Now, you might ask "Why are you doing this?".

I'm going to use this scheme to:

1. Type faster with fewer keystrokes
   
2. As a shorthand system for taking notes (I take a lot of notes)
3. As part of my note obfuscation scheme (I have a system for taking notes in code so they can't be easily read -- I sometimes do this when prying eyes are near and I don't want people to know what I'm thinking -- I've been doing this for years, since high school at least -- it's awesome -- my mom doesn't understand why I do it -- I can write most characters in 3 to 5 different ways -- some symbols can be used for multiple characters -- etc)

Further, you might ask "How will this allow you to type faster?".

Well, this scheme and a text editor with a feature known as "abbreviation expansion" will result in much faster typing and fewer keystrokes.

The best text editor I've found so far for this purpose is emacs. It has an abbreviation mode which allows for abbreviation expansion.

I wrote a perl script that produces an abbreviation list for use with emacs. Here is that file:

http://greglange.com/abbr.txt

So, when I fire up emacs and hit "k[space]" the "k" is magically replaced with "and" and when I type "bc[space]" the "bc" is quickly replaced with "because". If I type "Rt[space]", the "Rt" is replaced with "Right".

Also, you might ask "How are you learning this abbreviation scheme?".

1. Slowly
2. I'm using my flashcard system (written in Java) to learn all the one and two character abbreviations (later I'll move on to the longer abbreviations)
3. At home, when I transcribe notes or work on one of my writing projects I use emacs and this system (at times it's slower going than my normal typing but I'm gradually getting better)