Archive for the ‘Tools’ Category.

Creating fake words: a pseudoword generator

I was trying to figure out how to create a word that's not a word. What I ended up doing was creating a way of generating a random syllable, and then simply appending 2 or 3 of them together. It seems to work well enough. Here's what I got in Python:

import random
 
vowels = ["a", "e", "i", "o", "u"]
consonants = ['b', 'c', 'd', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'p', 'q', 
              'r', 's', 't', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z']
 
def _vowel():
    return random.choice(vowels)
 
def _consonant():
    return random.choice(consonants)
 
def _cv():
    return _consonant() + _vowel()
 
def _cvc():
    return _cv() + _consonant()
 
def _syllable():
    return random.choice([_vowel, _cv, _cvc])()
 
def create_fake_word():
    """ This function generates a fake word by creating between two and three
        random syllables and then joining them together.
    """
    syllables = []
    for x in range(random.randint(2,3)):
        syllables.append(_syllable())
    return "".join(syllables)
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    print create_fake_word()

The first four functions are for generating an individual type of syllable (V, CV, or CVC) and then _syllable() just chooses one of them at random. Finally, create_fake_word() calls _syllable() a few times and joins them together. Here is some example output:

hojocina
eliphaa
deaketyed
ciboa
tiuzi

I haven't a clue whether or not there is a better means of generating words that look somewhat real. If you know of a better method, I'd love to hear it!

CovertClick - finished!

I spent a lot of today and yesterday night working out the final details for this tool. What CovertClick does is allow you to create links which don't send the referer to the website being navigated to. It is another tool in the fight for Internet anonymity. You can learn more about it at the CovertClick website, http://CovertClick.com/.