Idle Loops

Like Hamlet, all about words, words, words.

- Bo Burnham

Words

Words are important.

Words shape how we think.

I like words.[[1n]]

[[1n]]: ook-ook

Here are some of the classes of words I find interesting.

An Abbreviation is a word that has been shortened, ex Attn (Attention), Ex (Example), Bae (Baby), while an Initialism is specifically an abbreviation of a phrase based on the first letter of the words in the phrase (FBI, USA, RSVP). Acronyms are similar to initialisms, but are instead read as a word in and of itself, ex ASAP (As Soon As Possible), GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), AWOL (Absent Without Leave). A backronym is an acronym where the acronym came first, and the phrase itself later. Ex. Save Our Souls for SOS, and a recursive acronym is, well, recursive. Ex. GNU: GNU's Not Unix.

A mnemonic is any memorization technique, some of which are abbreviations. Common ones include PEMDAS (Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally), which signifies the order of operations for arithmetic (Parentheses, Exponent, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction), and EGBDF (Every Good Boy Does Fine), which delineates the notes on the lines of the treble clef in sheet music.

Diminutives indicate either smallness or familiarity, ex doggo for dog or Maggie for Margaret. The opposite augmentative is more commonly achieved by using prefixes (overlord, grandmaster, archangel) or suffixes.

A palindrome is a word that doesn't change if you read it backwards, ex level. Names can be palindromes too, e.g., Bob or Hannah. The biggest crime linguists ever made was not making the word palindrome itself a palindrome.

A semordnilap[[2n]] is a word that means something else if you read it backwards. E.g., dog/god, or stressed/desserts. Semordnilap is itself a semordnilap, since backwards it reads.. palindromes.[[3n]]

[[2n]]: jesus christ

[[3n]]: nvm, this is the biggest crime. To the gallows.

I've lost my train of thought; let's skip ahead.

CPUs

A computer's CPU still draws power when not in use, let's say ~10x less than maximum power, but more than zero. This is because even if no process has asked for clock time, the OS assigns a fallback task: the idle loop.[[4n]] This can be compared to a cashier in a store when the line of customers ends, and they're waiting for someone to check out. While in the idle loop, a given core basically constantly checks if there is any work to do, which means code is still running, which means transistors are changing state, which means power is still being drawn.

[[4n]]: This is a simplification, I know, don't @ me

This is, of course, inefficient, so modern CPU architectures support various levels of deeper idleness by what's called C-states, which puts the core further and further "asleep" by increasingly cutting off parts of a core's functionality, which reduces power draw but increases wake-up time when there's work to do again.

The Game

I also have an idle loop. Every single day of my life, without fail, I play a mental word game with myself. It pops into my mind without my even thinking about it; I'll realize halfway through a conversation that I'm doing it. Or when I'm out for a walk, or cooking, or anything else. It seems like an activity my brain defaults to when not fully occupied with other things.

It goes like this

Pick a word, any word. Let's use one of my favorites as an example: Apanthropy.

First, assign values to each letter based on its position in the alphabet.

A (1) P (16) A (1) N (14) T (20) H (8) R (18) O (15) P (16) Y (25)

Now re-arrange the letters, with the objective: make two groups of letters where the sum of the values in each group is equal. If an exact split is not possible, divvy it up as evenly as possible. Pro-tip: it's usually easiest to start by splitting the high-value letters on opposite sides, then use the smaller ones to balance, but feel free to use whatever sorting algorithm floats your boat.

Can you split it?

You might end up with:

apahpy / ntro - 67/67

Wow, a perfectly balanced split!

This is the main point of the game: to see whether the word's letter values can be split into two halves cleanly.

Now, take the halves and sort them so the highest-value letters are at the ends.

apanthropy - ypphaa / nort - 67/67

Okay, now the word has been completely processed. This is the point where I can move on with my life again.

Now you can play for yourself :)

Bonus: the two halves have the same number of letters on each side. Ex:

calculus - ulla / ccsu - 46/46

language - nlga / aegu - 34/34

or apanthropy itself, split differently: - tppna / ahory - 67/67

Double Bonus: The word is already in a perfect state and doesn't need any rearrangement. Ex:

utmost - utm / ost - 54/54

shades - sha / des - 28/28 😎

Almost all perfect words are 4 letters or shorter. Out of the most common ~20 000 words in English, only four 6-letter words are perfect.[[1]]

[[1]] Can you figure out the other two?

I have no clue why the rules are what they are; it's just something I made up ~20 years ago.

Story of my life

Now let's do some more examples, because that's usually how it goes for me. At any point during the day, my brain will fixate on some new random word, usually if I'm out walking or biking, but also pretty commonly in the middle of a conversation.

• brain - rba / in - 21/23 (unbalanced)
• random - rma / dno 32/33 (unbalanced)
• piano - pia / no - 26 / 29 (nice that it's already arranged correctly, but not balanced)
• rocket - roc / ekt - 36/36 (score! Also even!)

The whole point of this is so you can also get involuntarily addicted to this stupid game, but if you are feeling lazy I made a script for you.

Also like words and want to discover new ones? AWAD is great: https://wordsmith.org/awad/