I thought my little brother was the only person who thought the expression “for all intents and purposes” was actually “for all intensive purposes”, but it appears not. TNH, in a post that follows on nicely from the Guardian article I linked to yesterday, has a giant list of such mistakes, in what is clearly an attempt to make my… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
Must See Movie Meme
Han Q Duong, one of the SK8Jesuits, points me to Jim Emerson’s List of 102 Movies You Must See Before You Die. It’s an interesting list. I’ve meme’d it up below, bolding the ones that I’ve already seen. Read more →
Beer Exploration
Presenting the top five beers I want to try, but as yet have been unable to secure tasting samples of: Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout from North Coast Brewing Goose Island Oatmeal Stout from Goose Island Beer Company (and I wouldn’t turn up my nose at a chance to try their Bourbon County Stout either!) Cadillac Mtn. Stout from the… Read more →
Some follow-ups…
After the jump, four pointers to things following up on previous posts on praising idleness, smart SF authors, currency wonkery, and unhappy grammar nazis. Read more →
Well…
…I guess you can see how that went. I made two big discoveries during this past week: 1) Full time parenting of a 20-month old is a lot more tiring than full-time parenting of a 6-month old. Sarah’s been in day care since she was six months old, and this is the first time she’s been with us for 10… Read more →
On Vacation
I am off work all week, to spend Trish’s last week before the PhD crunch begins hanging out with her and Sarah. This will either mean lots of blogging (if I get to sleep in) or no blogging (if Sarah wears me out.) Read more →
Adaptations
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the nature of adaptations, in particular adapations to film, but also to other media. Partly this was brought on by my reflections on Wodehouse and how first person works necessarily lose something in the translation to filmI’ll probably, at some point, write up my thoughts on how the ideal medium for Jeeves &… Read more →
Living “Up” To Stereotypes
So, some concerned parents in Gwinnett County, Georgia are try to get Harry Potter taken out of school libraries. Sigh. It’s like they really want us to think of it as Jesusland…. Laura Mallory of Loganville filed an appeal last week to get the best-selling book series out of the schools’ media centers. She is an evangelical Christian who has… Read more →
A Wednesday Miscellany
Let’s close some tabs in Firefox, shall we? First, I am just loving this story about the big mafia don’s encryption scheme. We live in a world where essentially uncrackable public key encryption is freely and easily available, and this guy–the “boss of bosses”–is using a substitution cipher that my 20 month old daughter could crack. It’s not the simplest… Read more →
Some Software Links
Three sets of links today to useful software lists. First is the eConsultant.com list of free software that solves common problems. This list is going to be useful to every level of computer user–at least for Windows users. If you can’t find at least a dozen things on here you can use then you aren’t really using your computer (or,… Read more →
A Couple Of Articles I Wish People Above Me In The Org Chart Would Read
I don’t often do job blogging, but these articles are worth pointing out. Let’s start with the latest essay from the always interesting Joel on Software: The Development Abstraction Layer. I’m going to pull a very tiny segement out of this article, and the emphasis here is mine: Your first priority as the manager of a software team is building… Read more →
Jealousy
Man am I jealous of Walter Jon Williams–not only is he a great writer, but he has one of those adventurous lives that I always wish I was living… But I’ve seen a lot more than a solar eclipse. I’ve seen the Dervishes whirl. I’ve flown in a balloon over the lunar landscape of Cappadocia. I’ve seen Our Lady of… Read more →
Culture of Debt?
It’s been a while since I’ve gone on about U.S. economic policy and currency issues (although I’ve certainly talked about the currency thing enough over the years). Partly this is because the story isn’t changing: the value of U.S. currency keeps dropping–even against ours, which is so tightly integrated with it. Here’s the long term chart: (I’d like to take… Read more →
Artificial Life and Competition
I’ve always been kind of interested in Core Wars. (See also the main Core Wars page, and the King Of The Hill page.) Not enough to actually compete, you understand, but enough to run a local server and let some of the more “famous” programs battle it out, and maybe to throw in one or two of my own. I… Read more →
An Open Question To The Universe….
How is it that I can be married to a woman who, even after being married to me for five years, can’t tell a porter from a stout? Read more →
