Wednesday, 31 December 2003
Not here
You shouldn’t be seeing this. If you did, it means you followed an old link as I was just checking something out, or I forgot to fix something up. The new address is http://zsau.firespeaker.org/blosxom. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.
Monday, 29 December 2003
Yummy food
I somehow managed to make the best-tasting food I’ve ever had yesterday, apart from the fact that it’s ever so slightly too tomatoey. Essentially chilli-con-carne without the onions, because we had none and I was too lazy to go to the shops. But it has exactly the right amount of spice, exactly the right amount of vinegar, and so forth. Just that the tomato’s a bit on the strong side. Though I find tomato too strong at the best of times, which is when it’s cooked into something like bolognese or chilli con carne.
Just thought I’d say is all.
Saturday, 27 December 2003
Paragraphs and the gap
I have noticet and fixt up a Bug in Internet Explorer’s Rendition of this Site: It made the Separation between Paragraphs very difficult to determine. This has made the CSS for this Page that much less Elegant, but made it that much more Useable. This notwithstanding, I still strongly suggest you use a mozilla-based Browser to view this Site; by Using Internet Explorer, you may not be able to see all Abbreviation Expansions, or all Quote marks, or all Italicisation (e.g. foreign Terms), and the Separation between Sections in an Article will be Noted only by the Small caps used for the introductory Word, and the Contents will look uglier. If you use Opera, unless it’s fixt [UPDAE: Which it is, at least in its latest Linux incarnation (7.5 beta)], you may not be able to click on Links (a Bug whose Cause I have no Idea of).
Secondly, I finally workt out what caused the Gap in the Border by the Search box, and it is gone (in mozilla-based Browsers). This has been bugging me since I first added it.
Pedantry and books
Q. What’s one Pedant at the Bottom of the Sea?
A. A good Start.
I have been lent a Copy of Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver, volume one of the Baroque Cycle. One might be surprised (based on the Author) or less than suprised (based on the Series Name) to learn that it is a Piece of historical Fiction (the Portion I’m reading is alternating between the late 17th and early 18th Centuries). It is, I am assured, a good Book; and Neal Stephenson is a good Author. Nevertheless, I feel like whingeing not about the writing Style, or anything else, but about some pedantic Points, based on the british (trade) Paperback.
Firstly, on the very first Page, they somehow managed to let slip a Typo: The project would not have happened it [sic] all were it not for serendipitous conversations several years ago with George Dyson and Steven Horst
. This could be ignored if it were on the second-last Page. On the first and one has to wonder whether they relied on a Spellchecker for the Proofreading. To their Credit, I don’t think I’ve noticed any others.
Secondly, whoever did the Italicisation has no idea how to do it, and in a List of Titles italicised the separating Semicolons etc. I would not care about this if it was just a Webpage or a Word Document or something, but I expect better of published Books. It would be a pity if the Knowledge of Typography and Punctuation was lost to the Ravages of Time, because we have them for a Reason.
And thirdly, Stephenson has often used historic Words and Spellings (for instance, Clubb
for ‘Club’ and phant’sy
for ‘fancy’). I’m not exactly sure of the Authenticity or Accuracy of all of these. Yet at the same Time, and in the british Edition, modern-day american Spellings have been used, which is a horrible Mixture of the modern and the archaïc. I would not care if he hadn’t used the Archaïsms. Also, he has a Couple of Anachronisms: The most interesting one is using the Word silhouette
in the Speech of a 1713 recollection of an old Man’s Childhood. Silhouette
, from french silhouette, comes from the Name of the french Finance Minister of 1759, M. Etienne de Silhouette (1709–1767); he would have been 11 at the time and so I sincerely doubt that anyone, much less an old Man in America, would be making use of the Term. A much better Word would’ve been shadow
. (De Silhouette drew Silhouettes on his Walls as a Hobby; his Name, in turn, is a Fankification of the basque Surname ‘Zilhueta’, which can be decomposed as zilo ∼ zulo ‘Hole’ + -eta ‘Abundance of’.)
Anyway, after this Diversion I shall get back to reading.
Wednesday, 24 December 2003
I feel like a new .sig
‘the “animal pity”, which is based on proximity and an awareness of the victim’s suffering, is easily overcome by a “civilized” organization which places the victim at an immense distance and diffuses the responsibility for his destruction across as many people as possible.’ (Wallace, J. (1996, November). Hobbes was wrong. In The Ethical Spectacle, 2(11).)
A random personal update
Having had a Dearth of Content posted here recently, and feeling like being a little Different, I’ve decided to post a Bit about my current Life. It isn’t especially interesting, but you might care anyway, and the original original Intenion of this Blog was to provide Information on this Topic (as well as others), so I feel I might as well post.
I got my Results sometime last Week. Or maybe the Week before. I think last Week though. I also got a Letter from the Head guy of the Maths Department congratulating me on my Mark of 90-something in Discrete Maths (a first-semester Subject for which we had one Lecturer who spoke English something like the Sveedish Chef from the Muppets, except a little less comprehensibly, and another Lecturer who didn’t realise that we could go through Examples mindlessly in our own Time and that he really ought to present us with Information; in short, the Subject everyone doing a Computer Science Subject hated). My first-semester Results, of course, were nothing new; I’d got them at the end of First Semester. On the other hand, I felt I’d done less-than-spectacularly in my second-semester Exams. Indeed, I was convinced I had failed at least one Subject (most likely Psychology), and the few Days leading up to the Results reminded me very much of Year 12. Not at all helped by Trevor telling me the Results were out a Day before mine were (they’d staggered the Release presumably because they didn’t want to overload the Servers. Anyway, my Fears were, as always, ill-founded in Reälity.
The Letter from the Maths Department invited me to continue studying Maths in Second Year, highlighting especially Discrete Mathematical Structures and Mathemetical Topics for Computer Science, Subjects which, unfortunately, sound Interesting. « Why, you might ask, would someone say that they unfortunately sound Interesting
. After all, wouldn’t you want to do something sounding Interesting ? » And of course, you would be right. But the Problem is, my Course is a Double Degree done in four Years, an Activity which doesn’t leave much Room for Electives, unfortunately enough. In Fact, a recent Change to the Course Structure has removed the sole first and second year Electives, replacing them with the first-year Subjects Calculus and Linear Algebra and Systems Programming Using C and C++ (I’ve done the later and hence will do the former next Year). Calculus, though, is the least interesting Part of Maths. Apart maybe for Statistics. Again in third Year, I will be hard-pressed to choose amongst Subjects like Automated Reasoning, History and Philosophy of Science and Psychology and the various Linguistics Subjects on offer. Really it makes me wonder if it’s possible to take the Degree over five Years and do these subjects, as well as Maths (which is not an Option at all in my Course; the Maths Subjects are either compulsory or stricken). I probably scare people with my actual Desire to learn; the rest of yas scare me with the absense of same.
On the Subject of my Course, only four People look like they’ll be doing it next year; two of them have pulled out and one’s deferred with no intention of continuing. Given that there’s a second-year Subject which is only offered to People doing a Bachelor of Cognitive Science/Bachelor of Computer Science Double Degree, this Subject looks like it might be very Interesting. It makes me wonder how many People usually do this Degree, and I’m avidly awaiting the Release of Offers to see how many noobs will be doing it next Year. Throwing Words as Diverse as Psychology
, Computers
, Logic
and Philosophy
around together seem quite likely to attract me, but few others besides.
Recently I have spent much of my time reading on the Web. An unfortunate Source of way too much information. Mostly political/current affairs (though none so far this week), some computery, and recently I wandered into an interesting Site with lots of Essays on Ethics (one of which I posted the other Day). This has mostly been by Way of procrastinating from the Tasks I intended to be doing this Month viz. finding a Job and writing the ROX Mail Suite (though much of the computery Readings have been related to the latter).
Finding a Job has so far been unsuccessful. I’m presumably doing something wrong but I’m not sure what. On that Note, though, I did find a very interesting-looking Job (part-time System Admin Assistant), though I don’t expect to hear anything back about that till after the Christmas.
The ROX Mail Suite, or perhaps more accurately the Mail Suite for the ROX Desktop Environment (because it isn’t actually included in ROX, so I feel uncomfortable branding it thus) is a Triplet of minimalist programs designed for viewing, reading and sending/receiving Emails designed to integrate well into ROX, a Desktop Environment focused around ROX Filer, with a Philosophy of Program Design expressing the Virtues of simplicity (many Programs each doing one Task well is better than one doing many well) and Conservation of Screen Space (for instance by abandoning Menubars in favor exclusively of Popups which allows Programs to interact more closely) among other things. Currently I’m slowly working on the Viewer, not sure of the best way to attack showing the appropriate headers. Going through the Source Code to like Programs will probably help. Free Software is most useful.
I am, of course, continously working on my Site. Making random and often unnecessary changes. The more astute of you will have noticed that I’ve changed the Colors here. Actually, that’s probably not all that hard to notice. The Justification is, I guess, that the Colors no longer bore the intended (but never achieved) Similarity to my Computer’s Theme, so I changed it to something totally different. Or maybe the Justification is that I Felt Like It.
But I have also been contemplating converting my Blog to Blosxom (‘blossom’), mostly because it has better URIs than MovableType, and it’s Free Software, which is always a plus for those of us with Senses of Ethics prohibiting theft-via-copyright. I haven’t because I want to convert these Pages over and haven’t quite got around to it. Even in the Holidays, there’s too much Stuff to do, not enough Time.
Anyway, perhaps that’s been long enough. Even if it weren’t, it’s late enough. Have fun.
Sunday, 21 December 2003
Just as I've often said...
(For visitors who might stand around fretting that I’m some sort of fascist or authoritarian who reckons that I should be able to limit free speech, that’s not at all the implication; read the linked article. You will then also detect the irony in my statement. I am not an authoritarian; in fact, I despise any authoritarian relationship and, for instance, could never join the army.)
Wednesday, 10 December 2003
Latham has a blog
The good thing about blogs is that you can express yourself however you want. One particular gentleman, for instance, chooses to express himself thus:
Fuck! They make me out to be some sort of touchy-feely wuss, or something.
What I meant by
unfortunatewas that Bartlett’s attack was piss-weak. Me? I would’ve decked the old cow.
and:
It has come to my attention that many of the bonzer people of this pearler of a country think I have some kind of anal fixation. Well, that’s crap, and I’ll be working my bum off to prove it!
…
But there was a difference. See, Howard grovelled totally, but I just reaffirmed our ties with that nation while retaining the right to disagree.
This is all well and good and totally up to him. And if it were just anyone, I wouldn’t care less and wouldn’t be commenting here. But it isn’t just anyone, it’s Mark Latham, Leader of the Opposition.
He’s aiming at a very particular demographic. I am not in this particular demographic. I don’t think I know anyone that is. For his sake, I hope than a large amount of the few million people I don’t know are, because his party has certainly lost my preferences.
Monday, 08 December 2003
Notification
I added a pointless little feature to this site the other day: Whenever someone visits it and I’m online and the site providing the service is working, I get a message via AIM telling me someone’s visiting it. (Also gives me your IP address and your referrer, but if you’re concerned about this, you out to be using an anonymiser; you have to give this info to every site you visit. Well… You can disable referrer stuff if you have a decent browser…)
Saturday, 06 December 2003
People have complained
Someone has complained that I don’t write enough here. You may blame this on him.
On Fri, 5 Dec 2003, John Cowan wrote:
I got a spam with a subject line of "Set up ywm fegghig". Now plainly
Ywm Fegghig is the name of a conlang; what conlang is it?
Clearly pronounced /win fEdZi/, it is the new form of Lam Fegghig (Old Fegghig), and in dire need of a spelling reform.
In Lam Fegghig, ywm, ‘clean’, was pronounced /yu:m/, but a series ofsound changes (turning the y into a semivowel, velarisation before the velar vowel, followed by fronting and subsequent derounding; finally, the distinction of length was replaced by one of tenseness). The change of from /m/ to /n/ actually represents a change of phonemics, but phonetically it’s still [m]. In Ywm Fegghig, ywm means ‘new’.
In Lam Fegghig, there was already a tendency to palatise non-geminate velars in palatal areas, so it was not uncommon to see a h placed after the geminate velars. Later, the palatalisation spread throughout, though attacked geminate /gg/ different from non-geminate /g/. /ij/ eventually simplified into /i:/ and then /i/.
The language is spoken on Crange /krAJ/, a planet populated by aliens with a ruling elite consisting of Welshmen who fell through a wormhole at just the right time to take advantage of the coup and the fact that this planet is almost exactly like earth, except that it’s populated by aliens and ruled by Welshmen. Somehow they managed to remain dominant these past 800 years (which is about 1100 earth years). These days, though, they’ve allowed much of the remote northern hemisphere to rule themselves, and they’ve formed a relatively eco-anarcho-socialist society. For much of the rest of the northern hemisphere, they’re content to have a rule something like Mrs Windsor’s in Australia (i.e. they don’t care what people do in their name, but they’re not necessarily democratic). The much more habitable south, though, is still under an authoritarian regime.
(Ywm Fegghig is spoken in the northern hemisphere.)
