Category Archives: Miscellaneous Posts

Did you know you can make an article on WordPress and publish it from your phone?

That’s right, with the app “Jetpack – Website Builder” (from Automattic, Inc), you can make an article and publish it without ever needing to access a personal computer! Honestly, publishing this post was so easy, it might be the thing that gets me back into blogging.

Anyhow, this isn’t a paid ad or anything, I just wanted to try out this app and announce that there might be more posts because it’s fairly easy to make them.

Time between searching “does wordpress have an app?” to publishing this article: ~15 minutes

Why can false positive test results be both more and less likely than false negative test results?

I had a friend say that he heard the following from a source he trusts: “the BinaxNow [COVID-19 antigen self test] is 85% accurate for identifying you have COVID and over 98% accurate in determining you don’t have COVID. So… if it says you are negative there is less than a 2% chance you actually have COVID. If you test positive there is a 15% chance you might really be negative.”

This is the exact opposite of what my own research had found, which said that false positives should be trusted much more than false negatives. Who is right? Well, it turns out there are two ways to look at this sort of problem, both of which are correct.

The first way is to look at how likely a given test is to give a false positive or false negative. For example, all the sources I’ve seen (I’ll quote from this one the FDA published a week ago: https://www.fda.gov/media/147253/download) say that “If you have a positive test result, it is very likely that you have COVID-19” because the antigen tests are very specific to covid proteins. On the other hand, the article says that “It is possible for this test to give a negative result that is incorrect (false negative) in some people with COVID-19,” with the reasoning that, if you take the test too soon, too late, or are asymptomatic, there might not be enough proteins for the test to detect. This aligns with what I’ve been consistently hearing for roughly a year: don’t trust negative results, especially if there are symptoms, but do trust positive results.

Now for the other way to look at it, which is the way I suspect my friend’s source was looking at it. Instead of looking at the likelihood of a specific test giving a false positive, look at the likelihood of a specific person receiving a false positive test. Even if false positives are very rare, if the vast majority of the people taking the test don’t have Covid, then even very rare things can become pretty common, to the point something like 15% false positive rate isn’t unheard of in the medical industry. That also would drive the percentage of false negatives down because most people testing don’t have covid, so most tests that are negative are correct. As such, a 2% chance of a given negative being a false negative makes sense.

Finally, it’s also possible that my friend’s source has more up to date information than I’ve found, or that the source has false/misinterpreted information. I don’t know. Either way, though, even if there was only a 85% chance of a true positive, that’s still too high to be ignored in my opinion, especially if the person is symptomatic. Whether or not it’s covid, who wants to get sick with anything?

Anyhow, I find it interesting that both viewpoints are correct; it just depends on your perspective. Simultaneously, there can be a test such that it is more likely to give a false negative than a false positive, but false positives from that test could be more common than false negatives. Statistics can be weird sometimes, lol.

p.s. I’ve learned this concept from a number of sources, but explanations are usually buried in a book or podcast. If you know of a standalone explanation of this concept, post what you find in the comments!

Some other resources:

(Photo taken by me, George, of a BinaxNOW COVID-19 Antigen Self Test kit)

This is not a post about COVID-19

Like the title says, this post is not about COVID-19. It’s not going to be about how boring it is during quarantine, or how I now have so much free time that I can just spend hours and hours working on the old family blog. It’s not about that because I’m actually pretty busy and have lots to do. However, I’ve been wanting to start making (infrequent) posts for a while, and the right combination of events has led to me making the first post to this blog in years. Hopefully you enjoyed it, despite it simply being an attempt to be more interesting than the typical “I’m back!” or “I’m sorry I haven’t posted in so long!” posts. If nothing else, at least it isn’t yet another post about COVID-19 :).

Have a good one!

~ George

p.s. I don’t actually have anything against posts about COVID-19. ‘Tis just another level of the (very) dry humor that permeates this post.

Change Log from November 18 to January 31

Special note for this change log: This change log is HUGE because it’s been so long since I’ve done one. I want to get back into it and maybe make it a weekly thing, but with school coming up I don’t know. The problem with change logs is that they take a lot of time to do, but hopefully that time is outweighed by the convenience of all the information it’d have. It’s a fine balance between spending my limited time on change logs and actual posts, but I’ll try to find it.

______________________________________________________________________

Every few days I make a post that highlights all the changes and/or posts that have been made since the last change log. This way I can update previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus readers will be able to get easy access to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post may be the last thing I post on a given day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New Posts:

Major Changes:

Minor Changes:

    • I’ve changed some stuff, but I can’t remember what it was. This is why I need to make the change log often!

Of Special Note:

    • none

Certified Incredible:

    • Wow…

~ George

100 Words for 100 Days is finished!

From September 15th to December 23rd I participated in the 100 Words for 100 Days challenge from goteenwriters.blogspot.com. It’s a website meant to help teens write novels, but I didn’t have any book that I wanted to write at the moment so instead I worked on this blog. The rules were that you had to write 100 or more words every day, but you could miss one day a week and one week in the total 100 days.

I am glad to announce that I finished the challenge and did so with 19,063 words written. Now, over the last few months I haven’t posted anywhere near 19,063 words, but there’s a reason for it. If you had to write 100 words each day, which would you do: start a new post and quickly get to 100-300 word, work on a previous post (which involves re-reading it) and probably get to 100-300 words, or publish a post and get maybe 10-20 words in as you edit stuff and clean everything up? Clearly the first and second one, and more often the first than the second. The result is that I have over 30 drafts waiting to be read over, added to, polished, and published.

The contest is over, but I have decided to continue the challenge. However, I have revised the rules a bit; the new rule is that everyday (with one day a week off) I can either write over 100 words, or I can publish a post. For example, I’ve written this post today, getting 278 words in, and tomorrow I’ll review it, polish it, and publish it. Despite probably not getting 100 words in, I’ll still count the day off because I published something. This way hopefully I’ll be able to start making my way through that mountain of drafts that is waiting for me, and you’ll get more content.

Thanks for reading!

~ George

(p.s. I got 49 words out of revising this the next day, and 24 of them are in this sentence. As I said, not very many.)

101st Published Post!

This post gets us passed the landmark of 100 posts!!!!! Whoo Hoo!!

It’s fun to write these, and thanks to whoever is out there reading these for, well, reading them. I write in hope that someone else finds what I have to say is interesting, so even if it was fun I might not write if I didn’t think there would be readers. Of course, I’m not the only one writing posts. My dad (Steve) also writes, despite not being able to commit as much time as he would prefer. Nevertheless, this whole site is thanks to him. Thank you Dad! Now we just need to get my sisters and mom writing… 🙂

Up Next: 201 posts!

Merry Christmas!

~ George

(BTW, if you could post something in the comments it’d mean the world to us. A special occasion like this deserves a comment, right? Right? Right????? Good, I thought so 🙂 )

Change Log of November 1-17, 2014

Note: I haven’t made a change log in a long time, but I’ve started working on one. Hopefully I’ll be able to get one out again.

Every few days I make a post that highlights all the changes and/or posts that have been made since the last change log. This way I can update previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus readers will be able to get easy access to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post may be the last thing I post on a given day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New Posts:

    • George’s:
    • World Idea: No Passing This Point – Instead of categorizing all my “story ideas” as just “story ideas”, I decided to specify it a bit; in this case it’s a “world idea”, meaning that the main thing I touch on is the setting rather than other stuff
    • How to do tan^1 on a calculator is based on my reply to someone asking me that very question. As I am prone to do, I got in much more detail than I think the asker intended, but in this case I think it was better to over-explain than under-explain
    • Rose’s Birthday Gift: Lyrics Book brings one of my real-world projects to the blog; as said in the title, it contains a download of what I printed off and gave to Rose for her birthday
    • Steve’s:
    • How to pass-through connections on an intermediate Riverbed SteelHead is Steve’s thorough and understandable (to those who know what a Riverbed SteelHead is) answer to the title’s question

Major Changes:

Minor Changes:

    • I changed the description text of this change log to make reference to the fact that I won’t always be posting a change log the day of an update to the blog, because it’s hard enough to write 100 words a day without making a change log for everything I post.
    • I fixed some typos in wish two of The Ultimate Wish: Part 1 of 3 – The Wish

Of Special Note:

    • Just wanted to mention that I am now 10 weeks into the 100 words for 100 days activity! As of now I written over 10,000 words for this blog in the last 9 weeks 🙂

Certified Brilliant:

~ George

Rose’s Birthday Gift: Lyrics Book

Rose just had her birthday, so I needed to come up with a birthday present. About two 2 months ago I realized that she likes singing all the time, but rarely knows more than a few spots of a song. So thus the idea of a lyrics book was born. I copied the lyrics to 28 songs that she enjoys singing into a single document, categorized them, and added page numbers. I got almost all the lyrics from www.azlyrics.com, although a few of the lyrics are from other sites. If you use it, I’d recommend printing it in booklet form (or at least double-sided) if your printer has that function, otherwise you’d use a huge amount of paper. Also, there are some known errors in the transcription of some songs, so it is likely that most of the lyrics aren’t 100% like the actual lyrics of the song, but in general they are correct. Here’s the download: Song Lyrics

Also, here’s the Table of Contents (copied from the first page of the document):

 

RADIO SONGS:

“Happy” – Pharrell Williams – page 2
“Demons” – Imagine Dragons – page 3
“Radioactive” – Imagine Dragons – page 5
“Really Don’t Care” – Demi Lovato – page 6
(feat. Cher Lloyd)
“Brave” – Sara Barielles – page 7
“The Monster” (Clean version) – Eminem – page 9
(feat. Rihanna)
“Counting Stars” – One Republic – page 10
“Roar” – Katy Perry – page 12
LEMONADE MOUTH:

“Somebody” – page 14
(performed by Bridgit Mendler)
“Determinate” – page 15
(performed by Bridgit Mendler & Adam Hicks)
“Here We Go” – page 17
“She’s So Gone” – page 19
(performed by Naomi Scott)
“Breakthrough” – page 21

 

TAYLOR SWIFT:

“Shake It Off” – page 23
“Our Song” – page 24
“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” – page 26
“You Belong With Me” – page 27
“Love Story” – page 29

 

OF MONSTERS AND MEN:

“Little Talks” – page 30
“Dirty Paws” – page 32
“Mountain Sound” – page 32

 

FUNNY SONGS:

“Where’d My Wood Go (500 Chunks)” – Element Animation – page 33

“The Saga Begins” – “Weird Al” – page 35
“Everything Is Awesome!!!” – Tegan and Sara – page 37
(feat. The Lonely Island)

 

RIGOLETTO:

“The Melody Within” – page 39
“The Curse” – page 39
“The Melody Within/The Curse” – page 40
“April Child” – page 40

 

~ George