Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

Better not be. At least not if you live in Scotland.

Hospital bans cooing at babies 'to protect their human rights'

She said: "We know people have good intentions and most people cannot resist cooing over new babies, but we need to respect the child. Cooing should be a thing of the past because these are little people with the same rights as you or me.

Apparently, there's even a sign, with a doll that says "What makes you think I want to be looked at?"

Yeah! After all, who likes people paying attention and showing affection? Exhibitionist freaks, that's who, and thank heaven for bureaucrats and their zero-tolerance policies. Without them, people might have to use their own judgement, and that could be a disaster.

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Today, I found myself attempting to describe something as simultaneously tiresome and tedious. Though the two words are similar, they are subtly different. The former suggesting that the thing is irritating/exhausting, the latter suggesting that the thing is boring and repetitive.

I began to wonder if there is a single word that could convey both subtle meanings, and I was unable to find one.

As such, I hereby propose the creation of a new word:

Tirious (Teye-ree-us)

I find that combination superior to something like "tedisome", because of the possibility that the word would be confused with "teddy" which suggests all the wrong images, or with "tedium" which, of course, would only convey the aforementioned boredom/repetition without the irritating/exhausting.

It has the additional advantages of sounding simultaneously sophisticated (Probably the Latin-sounding -us ending) and childish (Tiry evokes a toddler's droopy-eyed proclamation). Furthermore, I assert that it is fun to say.

Tirious: As in: "Wading through hundreds of industrial glass-washer program cycles in order to document each parameter is very tirious. Can I go home now?"

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Don't be forgettin' International Talk Like A Pirate Day, me mateys.

Only one day a year come a day where it be incumbent upon all o'ye, whether ye be salty dog or seasick landlubber, to call upon the pirate wi'in ye, and to keelhaul the agents of conformity.

Rebel! Rebel, ye pirates! Even if it only be by talkin' funny fer a day.

Arrrr!

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Remember Das Keyboard, the keyboard for Communists?

Well, at last, there's a special keyboard, made just for pirates.

What's happening a week from now, you ask?

Well, Monday, September 19th is the Official Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Be sure to wear your eyepatch and brush up on your "Arrr's".

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Okay, I just downloaded the newest version of the iTunes software and though most of the updates seem rather uninteresting, a couple of the changes are pretty cool.

As for the less interesting changes, the software now has the ability to use a parental lock for songs with mature content, which I suppose could be handy for anyone with young children, but I don't have much use for it myself.

Also, the software now has the ability to save song lyrics along with the song info. But unfortunately, it doesn't search them out and add them automatically or anything, you have to actually type them in yourself, or at least to cut and paste them in to iTunes. Also, though the Help feature suggests that some models of iPod would be able to view the lyrics, I wasn't able to figure out how to do it with mine. All in all, though I think it would be neat to be able to view the lyrics, the feature is not, as of yet, useful for much of anything.

However, some of the changes are interesting. For example, the Shuffle feature now has a slider bar that lets you bias the random shuffler toward putting similar songs together or breaking them up even more.

I've sometimes wondered how the shuffle algorithm works, because it sometimes seems like you'll get three or four songs from a single album all played close together when there are thousands of songs to choose from.

Well, now you can make that happen less, or you can make it happen more. The middle of the bar is completely random, and you can slide it either direction to produce shuffles that are more or less homogenous.

The second handy new feature is a Search bar. If you're like me, then you have quite a collection of music saved on your computer, into the multiple thousands even. So one of the occasional frustrations is having to scroll and scroll and scroll to get to some specific song that you want.

Well now, the main screen has a search bar that will sort your songs based on your search string, updating automatically with each letter that you add. For example, if I type "M" the list automatically shortens from 1875 to 1566, not that much difference, but then all I've asked for is every song that has an "M" in the name, artist, album or genre. If I add an "I", the list drops to 371 songs, if I add an "S", 17 songs. If the search string is "mist" then the list narrows to just four songs, as follows:

"Mister Cellophane" from the Chicago Soundtrack

"Who? Wu?" (Dialogue from Al Swearengen and Mister Wu) Deadwood soundtrack

"The Feminine Mistake" from David Sedaris: Live at Carnegie Hall

"Mister Mental" from the Shaun of the Dead Soundtrack

Neat, eh?

I did have a glitch during installation though. After installing the new version, attempting to load the program just gave me an error message saying: "The ordinal 21 could not be located in the dynamic link library MAPI32.dll"

Very frustrating, as you might well imagine. However, it was easily solved, as a little surfing led me to a blog called Loose Wire, which had an easy solution posted right here.

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Okay, so no one guessed where that "found poetry" I posted yesterday came from.

Well, it came from some spam emails. Presumably, this particular spammer is using some sort of computer-generated text to fill out the non-ad portions of the messages, attempting to bypass spam filters.

(It didn't actually succeed in this, I found them while checking the Bulk Mail folder on my Yahoo address.)

But anyway, I couldn't help but be struck be the almost-coherence and interesting sentence constructions. I particularly liked "Object red ready, fish send."

It reads like short-hand written by someone who doesn't speak English. Or perhaps some sinister code.

Anyway, found two more interesting ones.

Paint surprise surface eat, material, other. Until note together
wonder great only. We travel finish send fine and. Figure farm
plan had. Property pass form. Matter soldier set, finish. Ask
wall sentence my store yes just. Minute ready the, she. Plant
laugh cook, own. Milk world throw could, raise major. Did shoe
face plain during.

Song, or, egg. Climb dry, does, during point suggest. Matter
stand is usual. Glass, yes, where year white. Lift both story.
Fun back, cry, farm dark well. Play name, flat over, turn
country. Thought be one fast got one. Gentle usual man. Say verb
toward those toward over.

So how about all of you? Find anything interesting in those digital piles of spam?

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John Howard has got a post about something he discovered at www.legos.com.

Apparently, the LEGO Group Companies would like you to stop saying "LEGOS" and are encoraging you to say "LEGO® Bricks and Toys" instead.



Apparently, they have "LEGO" copyrighted, but not "LEGOS", so in order to preserve their brand name, they have decided to ask the entire world's English-speaking population to stop referring to their products in the obvious plural form.

Hey, maybe we could just stop referring to their products altogether. How about that?

Or, more likely, we'll think that they haven't got a prayer of getting anybody to stop saying Legos, and so then we'll move on with our lives, chuckling softly to ourselves.

At least, that's what I'm going to do.

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Kevin has some very sad news about Lance Armstrong.

Lance...

Say it ain't so!

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And I quote:

State home way order your white we. Move often, interest body
long cut. Heard, real new read. Our heat him said young. Does
love winter. May produce final, travel. Eye, my result out.
Value sense, pull. Remember, so lost travel rather your an.
Third is equate, past fine week. Object red ready, fish send.

50 Christianabucks to anyone who can guess where I got that from. (Hint: it's "found" poetry.)

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Hemingway:

To die. Alone. In the rain.



(Gleefully stolen from Ilona Gordon, though in all fairness, I don't think she made it up either.)

I also would have accepted: "Becase it was too long to go around."

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Especially ones so powerful they could kill you!

Link thanks to Dave Barry.

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Blah blah To Be blah blah Question...

Poor Hamlet. Nothing ever happens in his quiet little mountain town.

Except for this.

Hee hee. Literary funniness. Hee hee

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