Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, August 2, 2004

-- Comment()
Dan Gillmor's new book, We: "Dan Gillmor's new book, We the Media, has hit the shelves. I was asked to read this earlier for a blurb, and was completely taken with it -- it's the sort of book that I will be encouraging others to read for years to come..." [Boing Boing]

How readable are my writings? -- Comment()
I installed the Unix tools diction and style to analyze my English writing. Here are some ratings for selected writings:

Forestry of the Future readability grades:
Kincaid: 6.4
Lix: 32.8 = below school year 5
Normal or Hypertext? readability grades:
Kincaid: 6.8
Lix: 37.5 = school year 5
The Last Rebel Coders readability grades:
Kincaid: 9.7
Lix: 46.2 = school year 8
Weblogs on the borderline of control and chaos readability grades:
Kincaid: 9.8
Lix: 45.3 = school year 8
Can we trust computational results? readability grades:
Kincaid: 10.6
Lix: 49.1 = school year 9

So, it seems that my level of writing varies a lot. Probably the subject matter affects the results.

-- Comment()
Unlocking Human Potential Through Social Networking: "The paper entitled Smarter, Simpler, Social - An introduction to online social software methodology is an absolutely brilliant and well referenced resource to understand and appreciate the forces at work in our communication efforts." [via Gurteen Knowledge Log]

Rainy summer in Finland - reading 12 books in 16 days -- Comment()
My two-week holiday is over, back to work. I read 12 books in 16 days, probably a new record for me. Though I might have read as many books per day during the summer vacations when I was a schoolboy. But since then I have not dedicated as much time to reading books. The reason? The summer in Finland was rainy, and I managed to fing a lot of interesting books from bookshops and the library: detective stories, science fiction, fantasy, and short story collections. Now I'm about finished with reading for this summer.