So I set out provide Nilofer- oops, I mean my friend- some insight with only google at my disposal. I also realized there was context to my friend’s question:

1. She was unaware that sheep and lambs were the same animal: so she probably would believe anything I said
2. By “sound” she meant the human manufactured sounds attributed to animals as we grow up: so basically, don’t take this too seriously
   

So after journeying for a long and terrifying 10s through the interweb, I came across my answer: While the noises between sheep and goats are distinguishable by an experienced ear, goats also make a “baaa” sound in addition to a “maaa” sound. Goats also tend to be slightly higher pitched.

All this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise as goats and sheep are closely related species, outside of number of chromosomes, stomachs, horns, etc… See chimeras.

For more goat sounds go here.

sidebar: a shout out to Gertrude Stein

Actually, anyone who knows me knows that I generally have a few ambitious (and equally deficient) projects swirling around me at any given time. This past summer, I stayed away from anything that looked like a project for the first time since my early high school years. In some ways, I don’t regret that, but I’ve come to the conclusion that these silly ideas/projects are what keep me going. Over the years, the projects have generally been startup ideas, the majority of which are entirely valid and useful tools that:

1. happen to be created by the time I get around to it
2. suffer from over complexity due to my wild aspirations
3. suffer from lack of development support
4. suffer from lack of expertise in critical areas
5. suffer from my financial limitations

In some ways, I hate valid project ideas. The first few days, they keep me up at night and my mind on overdrive. They also distract from day time gigs, which, however welcome, is not a good thing. But then again, I hate when the idea I’ve been waiting so long to implement suddenly already exists. It also sucks when they’re undoubtedly better than what I could’ve cooked up or when they have a lively community.

For example, I’ve been waiting for the past year to create a workout logging/analysis site. Basically, for a while now, I’ve been using Google Spreadsheets to track my workouts and personal physical measurements over time. Throw that in some goals to create pretty graphs, you have a way to see your progress and some motivation to keep up with your goals. I won’t go into much detail, but I was all set to start on this, until I discovered gimme20.com, which, for the most part, does what I want. I do feel there are some missing features that are essential (mainly in visualizing your progress), but it’d definitely be easier to submit a feature request than to build my own system.

But, through each and every project, I’ve learned something new, and I think I’ve become a little better at controlling excitement until I prove an idea worthy of my attention. Free time is not as readily available, and the most important thing is to try to maximize what I do with it.

Anywho, while writing this article I realized I don’t want development related posts on this blog, so I think I’ll create another. I have two small projects I’m developing (semi-helpful open source add-ons to CodeIgniter) which I hope to release soonish, and I’ve also re-entered the world of Fanatasy Basketball, so stay tuned to finally seeing something tangible from my NBA stats db.

side bar: Could I have just labeled the post Twitter? Yes. But what fun would that be?

back to the main stage

So, yeah, there isn’t much to say aside from the fact that producing truly private posts is more difficult than it should be, and is not sustainable from a development standpoint.

side bar: Lily Allen is annoying me right now, so if I seem cranky, there you go.

So Twitter? Yeah, Twitter. Leo made me sign up for it the other day, and although I’m still going through the motions (honestly haven’t used it much at all), I think it’d be an interesting way of capturing daily events. The obvious gotcha being privacy, but meh. Anyways, between that, and possibly making use of the Facebook status message, I think there’s a possibility of harvesting that information for self-development purposes. I’m contemplating turning this into a larger scale project so I’m holding back on details.

I guess you came all this way for nothing. Huzzah! Disappointment…