Tagging My Blog

Jealous of all those tagged blogs out there, I decided I wanted my own. We'll see if I like it in practice...

Categories: tags

Ginormous Confuzzlement

At the top of Merriam-Webster's Top Ten Favorite Words (Not in the Dictionary) are the following:

1. ginormous (adj): bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous
2. confuzzled (adj): confused and puzzled at the same time
3. woot (interj): an exclamation of joy or excitement

I regularly use ginormous and woot in my everyday speech, and I know my sister uses confuzzled. Wonder how long before they get enough usage to be added into published dictionaries.

Categories: language, fun

Up is North, I say!

If you've ever talked about driving directions with me, you have probably heard me grumble about people who talk of driving "down" north or "up" south and how confusing I find it. Apparently I'm not the only one who doesn't like mental directions meddled with.

That blogger, John Cowan, was the guy in charge of the Conlang-L mailing list. I wonder if it's only linguistically sensitive people that are troubled by direction-mismatch? Need a larger sample size...

Categories: maps, language

Breaking 600 Visitors

Breaking 600 Visitors

A new record for my site: 600 visitors in one month!

Before this, my record in a month was 476 unique visitors. Two thirds of this traffic is even going to my conlanging section (the other third goes to my tech support page).

I wonder what the threshhold is before my ISP notices?

Categories: internet, images

Mmm, Cheese

Jhor'imadh t'jhelle. Veni imadh grelle. Nagovni ne imadh. Nagov esa në imädh'ë? ... Gamavenil. [explanation]

Or, in English:

Cheese is good. I like cheese. I eat cheese. Do you eat cheese? ... I should go to bed.

Categories: Asha'ille

Faster Loading of Posts

After switching to using Bloglines for my blogroll links, I noticed that it would take a while for my posts to load because they had to wait for the Bloglines server to respond first. I've moved the sidebar to after the posts in the HTML source and hacked around with the CSS until it's mostly back in the same visual position as before.

The CSS isn't as nice as it used to be, but the layout should still work for a few font sizes plus or minus the default. It appears to work in both Firefox and IE. If it's unreadably broken for anyone, holler and I'll poke it with a stick for you.

Categories: CSS, webdesign

Comforting Lemon Bread

That is, the lemon bread is comforting, not that I am comforting it. "Shh shh, lemon bread, I'm only going to slice you into little pieces, nothing to worry about..."

House of Bread's Tuesday lemon bread is yummy, just the cure for KDE frustrations. And, family members, House of Bread is apparently coming soon to a city near you! May I suggest the lemon bread? Their challah, rye, and "Grandma's white" are also worthy of snacking on.

Categories: food

Dodging Perils from the Computer Demons

So it's late, I'm working on implementing semaphores and correcting my midterm answers, and my computer decides to freak out, though top showed nothing obviously weird going on. I had quit Gaim but it crashed as it was closing, or some such. In the course of events, I restarted X and tried logging in again, but KDE gave me issues — default wallpaper and kicker settings, like before.

Switched to a console login, mucked around, then tried starting up X again. I did this sudoly, KDE slapped me for having root-like privileges, and I dutifully logged out. Reran startx as myself, and now KDE gripes that it has "no write access" to some of my KDE dot-files, "KDE is unable to start," and it "could not start ksmserver. Check your installation." At least for the write access issue, it tells me which file it wants, so I can actually track down the problem without Google or a guru. Would that more error messages were as helpful to the end user.

So was it sudo startx that changed ownership of my .Xauthority and .ICEauthority to root? Why the hell is that a reasonable thing to do? Maybe there is a reasonable explanation, but I don't find it amusing at 4 AM when I'm doing homework due tomorrow.

Of course, this could have just been a trial sent by demons to test me. Why won't they take the hint and leave me alone when I tell them I'm atheist? IMHO, you shouldn't go pestering people if you don't exist.

Categories: KDE, tech_problems

Sith Lessons

Spoiler warning! But once you poor souls who haven't seen the film yet catch up, wander over to lessons learned from Revenge of the Sith and be amused.

Vedi Plungi Vici

Toilet 1, me 1.

OMGWTFBBQ

Hehe, the latest Bash quote is gir'amusing. (Hey, if it's fine to call something tres amusing, why can't I use other languages to stress things, too? And I don't want to hear that lame "But some people actually speak French" excuse.)

Serenity Comics

JHEI! Goldav... layeduth naeshen... eg viken! [explanation]

Or, in English:

WOOT! Need... summer address... now!

Biya Sharídim

layedu [lA'jEdu] summer. from layev, duna.

naeshen ['neSEn] address. from naea, env.

Limerick Dictionary

I'm really impressed by the OEDILF, the "Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form." People submit definitional limericks for English words (which look like they have to be approved, so that should keep up the quality). Quite cool, and a friendly site, too.

Olya? You interested?

Translations

Vik'najiv edh emaen ne das chi'emaenim seni e'kath llasháv ne Asha'ille. Asardavpeni ne shalthanim e'kath edh emaen ne etás chi'emaenim, kret'jhiye kr'jheruv n'om, yet jhor'no t'e nedarnith kachol e.

Chenil, vel'dotréshad chat'mov. [explanation]

Or, in English:

This page now explains all my posts that are written in Asha'ille. I added that page's links to the previous posts, but I didn't fix them if they contained grammatical errors.

So go look at the translation.

Biya Sharídim

dotréshad [do'tr\ESAd] translation. from dotréshariv, –ad.

kachol ['kAtSol] error.

najiv [nA'dZiv] to explain.

Practice

Pas'ni kr'emaeliv ne asha'ille, vek'daishén, vae'saea. Én'i ne chi'shola. Éjhni ne chin'llav 'ne dasharídim. Va'llavni ne en'llavyi ne dafrasae, vep'lla shavejh Tim n'o eg chi'nagh kep.

Kret'te ves ovenil eg yiréb... [explanation]

Or, in English:

I haven't written here in Asha'ille recently. I feel a little bad about it. I enjoy practicing languages. I'm thinking about possibly learning French, since Tim speaks it a little bit.

And I should also do my homework...

Biya Sharídim

dafrasae [dAfr\A'se] French (language). from *dy-, Francés.

Social Facilitation

I finally have a name for why I hate it when a certain professor paces near me while I take an exam: social facilitation. This is briefly explained by Jeremy Dean as follows: "When people are watched carrying out a task that they find easy, their performance improves. In contrast, when watched carrying out a task they find difficult, their performance declines."

I swear I spend 50% of my time on his exams tracking where he is, so I can work on my paper when he's on the other side of the classroom... Arrrgh!

That's Reverend, TYVM

I am not to be outdone: I, too, am now ordained.