Softwares, teyl

A good while ago, I wrote a blog post called Softwares, where I laid out my basic workflows for a lot of different applications and why I liked them. I figured I'd revisit that topic now, more than three years later.

Sadly, looking over that post, it seems like very …

4

In the spring of 2004, Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic congresswoman from Evanston, Illinois, told me a funny story about startling President Bush during a visit to the White House. She was wearing a big, blue "OBAMA" button. This was in the early days of Barack Obama's …

Missing

When George W. Bush took office in January 2001, he aimed to make a clean break from all things Clinton. The acrimony, much of it stemming from the 2000 Florida recount and the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore, apparently went both ways. Reports of office …

Stephen Fry, it is well to hear

I won't lie; for all his delightful erudition it has sometimes been a slight pain for me that Stephen Fry has tended to evince a somewhat snobbish attitude towards language. The sword of diction cuts both ways, of course; the schoolboy pleasure with which he (and I as …

Powell Endorses

But also, maybe more importantly, makes a point long overdue in the comment on this race, and which deserves reprinting.

"I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say, and it is permitted to be said. Such things as 'Well you …

Flaming Tusk is What I

One topic I haven't touched on much in these pages is the metal band I play in, Flaming Tusk. We formed, as I recall, around February of this year. It was me on drums, Don Blood on lead guitar (It was my idea, as a sort of lark, but he was the one foolhardy and stubborn …

EF14

Man, Eaglefiler 1.4 is gonna rock.

A thought on Yiddish's

So, I've been studying Yiddish for nearly a year at this point, and it continues to hold my interest; that fact itself is something of a novelty. It's an interesting language.

And one of its many interesting features is its orthography. Like many, but certainly not …

The Game That Doesn't

I've experienced a major upswing in roguelike activity lately. Turn based strategy games are really the only ones that ever held my attention, and of those the most enduring love affair was always with ADOM and its brethren. I pretty much haven't consistently played …

The Stress of Giles

The blogosphere has been faintly tittering over British critic's profane and public excoriation of the sub-editors at his paper over a word that they excised from a review of his. It's mildly entertaining, though I have to say I think it appeals more to the allegedly …

New Phone

So I just got a new cell phone, and I've got a new number too. I think I was pretty good about SMSing or emailing anyone whose contact information I had, but if you didn't get a message and you think you should have, please message me directly and I'll let you know what …

Hollenthon - Opus

So I have finally gotten my hands on the new Hollenthon record, and it is fucking great.

I've been a huge fan of Hollenthon for a long time; they put out two records, one in 1999 and one in 2001, that were just thoroughly fantastic. Really groovy, well-written death …

Charleston

???????? During a tour of Germany in 1958, Marx, accompanied by his then wife, Eden, his daughter, Judith and Robert Dwan, climbed a pile of rubble that marked the site of Adolf Hitler's bunker, the site of Hitler's death, and performed a two minute charleston.

wikipedia

Should I die,

Leave my remains

To the corps of Marines.

I've got a company to

When, exactly, did 'hacker' become synonymous with 'startup founder'? It's a strange internet we've got when the folks doing all the talk about technology have a cursus honorum in mind that consists of either: becoming a beloved and widely read blogger, or founding a …

NGD

More than just a clever rearrangement of a previous Apodion post title, you might have seen Language Log or Language Hat comment on Nathan Bierma's column about National Grammar Day, one of these tiresome celebrations of pedantry by the sort of people who get their …

Good

Another Language Log quickie.

On the way back from the LSA meeting, having finished the light reading that I had brought with me, I bought Steve Berry's The Alexandria Link. At pp. 418-419 we read:

These words were chiseled into the granite below.

…

The Dead and Dying

Another Language Log post! This one quotes a review of a textbook, the review questioning some of the conventional wisdom within the field of linguistics about dying languages:

Much of the problem is apparent in the rhetorical stances of many of the authors in this …

Strange

So I finally went through one of my old and full notebooks and transcribed all the interesting parts onto my computer. I think of an entire Moleskine there were ten bits worth reading. I guess that's not a terrible ratio, all things considered.

Anyway, among them were …

I had a Jaeger Bomb tonight--specifically, Jaegermeister dropped into Monster energy drink. It tasted like the interior of a glowstick. It tasted like it was designed by a six year-old wino. It gave me an enduring case of the hiccups.