Log Your Computer
This week's assignment was to log your computer, as a way of gaining insight about yourself through the time you spend with the machine. I installed a key-logging application on my computer, which stored all the keys I hit over the course of one week. I then used a Processing applet provided by the prof to count the number of instances of each word I used during that time.
I found the results of this experiment somewhat interesting, but not really as fascinating as I'd hoped. Since I was looking for patterns, I didn't track words that were only used once, so interesting but infrequent vocabulary words didn't make the cut. Below is a list of all the words I used 5 times or more during the week (excluding very common words like "the" and "an," which I programatically excluded.
The most interesting things I notice in these results are that I do seem to talk about myself a whole lot (i, me, and my all appearing in the top 10). I found the same counts of certain words amusing as well, such as its/up/don't/have" (am I saying "I don't have a clue, its up to you?" more than I realize?) and make/more/love (about which I won't comment...). As an aside, based on the relatively low word count I generated during the week, it made me realize a behavioral trait I hadn't noticed: i do most of my personal correspondence and social networking on my work computer these days.
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i: 94 you: 81 if: 25 me: 25 was: 25 my: 21 your: 19 be: 18 don't: 17 have: 17 its: 17 up: 17 about: 16 are: 16 can: 16 from: 16 |
know: 16 just: 15 this: 15 like: 14 not: 13 so: 12 they: 12 think: 12 we: 12 what: 12 you're: 11 sure: 10 do: 9 he: 9 one: 9 that's: 9 |
when: 9 all: 8 an: 8 by: 8 how: 8 i'm: 8 it.: 8 let: 8 should: 8 were: 8 I'm: 7 been: 7 get: 7 no: 7 s: 7 didn't: 6 |
go: 6 got: 6 haven't: 6 help: 6 her: 6 his: 6 i'll: 6 pretty: 6 probably: 6 really: 6 still: 6 tell: 6 there: 6 back: 5 definitely: 5 ee: 5 |
f: 5 had: 5 hte: 5 into: 5 love: 5 make: 5 more: 5 our: 5 them: 5 time: 5 way: 5 who: 5 will: 5 |