codes

I’ve come to find through my life that I like codes.

This thought came to me earlier today when I was reading Broken Days (the book isn’t really important, but meh). I was looking at the chapter titles. (They bug me, because the first letter is so much bigger than the rest of the word. The difference in type size wouldn’t really bug me, except that the ascender of the lowercase H in both Chapter and Thirty don’t reach up as high as the bigger initial letter. Also, the weight of the character looks heavier than the rest of the word, just because it’s bigger. It should all be the same!! [Omigosh, Monk-ism. o_o] But anyway, enough about typography.)

The titles are set in italic, but the typeface’s italic style is subtle, so I was inspecting it to make sure it was italic, and not just oblique.

That made me think about the words italic and italicized. My teacher told us the words are based on the country’s name Italy, where the swooshy letter styles came from. (Versus Germany’s Blackletter, which is angular and straight and strict.)

I’d never, in all my life (from about elementary school, when I learned how to use Word Perfect [I’m so old] and that there was something called italic), thought about the similarities of the words italic and Italy. But I love it! It was like a revealed mystery to me!

And then I thought, it’s like a code! Language is like code, and other languages are like other codes. Sometimes they can translate, sometimes they can’t.

Reminds me of when I was a kid, and loved codes. Like 1 is for A, 2 is for B, and so on. I’d go off of that and make my own codes. They were simple. I’d reverse the numbers (like 26 is for A, and so on), I’d leave out vowels, I’d stick the vowels at the end (like A is 21, E is 22, and so on), other variations. I even came up with my own written language, or code. It’s based on the English alphabet, so it isn’t anything special.

I think it ties together a lot of my interests. Languages (not really the grammar so much though :x), words, coding, binary and hexadecimal. I just find it so fascinating how something can mean something else, how it can be expressed in a different way.

more comment spam, and comments on words

I now have 16 more spam added to my Akismet hold. I forgot to delete the ones that were there when I wrote my last entry…

But I’m moving on!

My site has now been declared lucky by one comment spammer. Is that lucky for spammers, or lucky for me? Or lucky for visitors? (I think that would be the best way to increase traffic, don’t you? “Visit my site! Click three times and your wish will be granted, guaranteed!”)

Another comment read “what percent of people born here are illegal and legal”

I can answer that right here: none! That’s because you can’t be both at the same time. The comment should have read “What percent of people born here are illegal, and what percent are legal?” Break up the classifications of legal and illegal. Even “What percent of people born here are illegal or legal?” would have made a bit more sense. People just can’t be “illegal and legal”!

Argh, typos and grammatical errors. It’s getting harder and harder to be a closet grammar nazi.

The first shocking instance I saw was a local political print ad using a newspaper headline with a typo. I don’t remember the typo. Something involving an apostrophe. I just thought it was sad that not only did the newspaper editor miss it, but the political ad designer missed it as well — or saw it but decided to use it anyway, which I find even more sad.

Then I saw a typo in a storefront. I don’t suppose this should have shocked me much; people can’t spell nowadays and your average minimum wage worker isn’t exempt. Can’t remember what it was … argh. It’s probably better for my blood pressure that my mind is nice enough to wash away memories of typos.

After that I read a comment somewhere on songmeanings.net … which I can’t find. Probably for the best. But oh man, was it painful to read! It seemed like the author was purposely mangling the English language. It wasn’t even “leet speak”! (Sorry, won’t use the numbers.) Shouldn’t it be obvious that if you want to communicate, you do it so that the intended audience can understand you? (Or maybe it was, and the intended audience was himself.)

The final kicker was an improper use of it’s/its (can’t remember which one) in one of those links that appears on top of Gmail. Noooo! Even Google is infected! The world is doomed! Dooomed, I tell you!

[comments closed to, ironically, combat spam on this entry]

current state, a review

I feel like my blog has become some review site for random things. Mostly books, though.

All the entry ideas sitting in my head (or on my desktop in a Sticky): 3Musketeers Mint review, Burt’s Beeswax lip balm review, Across the Wall review, pixel size vs. point size vs. em size, Scarlett Johansson’s new album review…

Even as I list the topics I find it hard to call them “reviews” because, well, I’m no professional critic (yay for that), and a lot of the things I comment on probably never even crossed people’s minds. I don’t talk about writing style (in books) or acting ability (in movies or on television) or storyline or anything.

I guess it’s not that bad, since I’m really not interested in those things. If I like something, I like it. I don’t … argh, stupid brain, that word where you inspect why you like it or not, what are good and bad parts, like in literature classes … which I generally can’t stand, by the way. But anyway! Getting off track.

If I were to not post reviews, then there would be virtually nothing new on this blog. And if I were to scrap the posts that contained vitriol (not the sulfate. *blink* word dork popping out again), then there would be literally nothing new here!

I could go back to recording my life daily, like I did a year and a half ago. But nothing interesting goes on in my life at the moment. Today: went to lecture, had an impromptu critique of our sketches for newspaper design, and took a class photo for the cover of our magazine. Am now considering a nap, but should really be working on my newspaper (uuuugh, even less interested in than magazine) and washing the dishes.

Yesterday, went to class, had a lecture about happiness (in an Estimating class *grin*), went to other lecture, learned about the Manhattan Project and saw a video on the uber secretive pilots who flew the bomb to Hiroshima. (Why doesn’t the History Channel, etc./Discovery Channel, etc./TLC show cool history shows like that anymore? Well, I guess the History channel is going through a Hitler phase right now.)

Most interesting thing from the video that I remember now: the B29s (planes) made regular flights to test dropping one bomb, solo or in a group of three (planes), so the Japanese grew accustomed to seeing them. :O Although now that I think about it, Laurence Yep wrote in Hiroshima that planes were not an uncommon sight. Scary.

Some other things I remember: the group of pilots (forgot the military term XO troop? division?) that was training for this mission didn’t know what they were training for. I think only one official there knew what was going on. They were told often, if you don’t want to live under all this mysteriousness and secrecy, you’re free to leave. Also the other pilots on Tinian would make fun of that group, because all they did was fly short missions to drop one bomb (versus the many, many bombs that others dropped), and it was thought that the other B29 pilots were carrying a much heavier workload to make up for what the special group wasn’t accomplishing.

Um. Back to original thought. If I can remember it … I think I was going to quickly review what I listed. But this entry is quite long as it is (history is so interesting!), and you should know that I can never write short entries no matter how hard I try. So I might write another entry. Maybe.

Oh, now I remember. I wanted to comment on spam that I’m getting on this blog. The other day I deleted 600-plus comments from Akismet’s hold. Today I’ve got 34 in there, and since there were so few I decided to read through them. These aren’t as bad as they used to be, with dozens of links to porn or sex pills. I have two or three comments pushing those, but there are only a couple links.

Most of the comments are on my entry where I complained about mixing paints. A lot of the comments say, “Great site!” Oh yeah? If you really think so, wouldn’t you comment on the latest entry, not a really mundane, old one?

Some comments add stuff like “Keep up this great resource.” and “…a lot of useful information” and “Found invaluable information. Just what I was looking for :-)” (Oh look, a smiley face! They must be really earnest!!!) So … paint mixing is a hot topic nowadays, is it? It’s replacing all those knitting and crocheting sites out there? To think, I got in on this trend from the get-go! And don’t forget, Yellow-Green should never be mixed with Magenta-Purple, because they’re not exact complements! lololol!

One comment read, “I would love to hear more about this …” So, an update. Since I wrote how I felt about the results in the entry following that one, I’ll show some pictures. Here’s a photo of a towel I used to clean off my brush while working on some project. And here’s a photo of my brush after one project. Then here’s a photo of all the masking tape I pulled off of one part of the last project. And finally, the project.

Now can I stop getting spam on that entry? Or at least write a real, constructive comment. I have no problem with allowing real comments even if they are just writing to get a link to their site. My blog doesn’t have any sort of Google pagerank to ruin, much less a substantial one.

net geek

woo, two posts in one day…

I’ve been on the internet too long. Year-wise, not hour-wise. I dunno …

Someone on the radio said, I forget, but they said “…you’re…” The person said it like yor so I seriously thought they said “your” and I was about to correct them, “No, you’re.”

… yeah, I’ve spent too much time online … or I’ve gone to the next level in grammar nazism.

I upgraded WordPress! Woo! Easiest Upgrade Ever. haha. But I found out there’s an import Greymatter included IN the blog itself (ehehe), so I decided to find out more about it, maybe even import … but I guess it’s hard to do in 1.5. I was willing to try it with 1.5.1, but then I found out it needs to import from a Greymatter install (duh?). Dangit! I don’t think I’m allowed to install Greymatter on this server. I forget where I read that. I wonder what would happen if I tried anyway … >b It’s not like I’m actually going to use it or anything …

(Oh, it’s under their TOS. Pooh.)

flimsysilence favicon and ofTen

Yay! fs.net has a favicon! I don’t know why I decided to do it. I don’t know where the idea came from. But there ya go. I just used the ƒ character (whatever that is … I don’t know what it is >_> has an ALT code 0131) and drew an s around it. woo.

*dork* :)

I kinda wish I could make it transparenty-ish though. I could make the background that normal grey color, but then what about the people who change their color settings, huh, what about them??? … Okay I’m just being weird and happysatisfied. New favicon. Or is it really new, considering there wasn’t an old one? … *moves off the subject*

I have this nagging feeling that I just lifted the idea off some other trademarked logo, though … I’ve done things like that before. If anyone can tell me where I got it from I’ll take it down. ^^;;

- - - - -

Today I have been enlightened one tiny little step. When I was in the sixth grade my social studies teacher had this one student read off words on a side board, and the student read “often” pronouncing the T. For a split second, I thought, ‘Oh no, I’ve been pronouncing it wrong all my life?! How stupid am I?’ But then the teacher corrected the student, saying that the word “often” was mispronounced a lot, and that the T is actually silent. So I spent a few more years thinking that …

Lately, though, I’ve been hearing ofTen so much, and it was driving me nuts. Today I heard some guy on the radio pronounce the T, and in a fit of … frustration? I went to m-w.com to see if I could figure out why so many people pronounced “often” that way. m-w.com says both ways are correct though. So then I went to the lovely, handy-dandy Bartleby.com, and found out pronouncing the T has “come back.”

I don’t know, I just thought that was interesting. ehehe.

[edit: WP doesn’t save triple carriage returns line breaks?]
[edit2@4:41: Maybe I’m thinking of ƒx. ^^;; Yeah … in Microsoft Excel or something?]