Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Some Random Crap Bouncing Around In My Head (Where There's Apparently Plenty of Room To Maneuver).

First up: Maneuver just looks funny. The internet tells me that's how it's spelled, but I'm leery.

Next: (Defenestration - noun: the act of throwing a thing or esp. a person out of a window. From the Latin fenestra meaning a window or opening.) How many words do you know that are that damned specific. I mean, really -- how often do you really need the word defenestrate? I love this word. I want this word to come live with me so I can cuddle it and feed it snacks and have it giggle with me as I defenestrate various objects and/or (esp.) people.

Third: I've got a couple of new regular lurkers. One is in the UK, the other is local. The local one appears to work at a well-known publishing house. C'mon guys -- delurk! (Note to the one at the publishing house: I swear I won't bug you to publish me before I actually finish writing something, so you're in little danger of me ever bugging you to publish me. Really.)

D.) I'm still dying of curiosity to find out why the E Street Band wasn't in the house for Springsteen's Kennedy Center Honors. Am I the only one? I can't find any mention of it on any of the Gossip sites.

5.) As some of you know, I'm having Jeff and Vince build me a professional website. Vince sent me the "skeleton" for the photo hosting portion of the site for me to play around with a little and see how I like it. It's flexible as all git-out and I've got a lot of choices to make about how I want it to behave. I got it and was a little bit overwhelmed by how much is there. So I sent Vince an email asking for a little tutorial.

He sent me a 31-page PDF explaining all of the arcana of the site. It was highly detailed. Highly detailed. So detailed, it was a little beyond the progress I've made so far. I suppose the equivalent would be if I'd bought a new Flat-Screen TV and queried the manufacturer about some difficulties I was experiencing. The manufacturer (if it was an extremely responsive manufacturer), might respond by telling me about light to dark ratios, length of time (in nanoseconds) it takes a pixel to turn on or off, compatibility with European standards...stuff like that. To which I might respond -- Uh, how do I change the channel?

Vince -- How do I change the channel?

And finally: I absolutely had one more thing on my mind...but it's gone. Pfffffft. I'll let you know if I think of it.

8 comments:

vince said...

I'm writing the channel changing instructions as we speak. Or as I type. Well, not right now as I type, but I am typing the instructions complete with 27 eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each is.

Warner (aka ntsc) said...

Representing, as I did, the tv broadcasters of America (I was the only one in the room) to the tv set manufacturers of America (who of course aren't in America). We don't want you to be able to change the channel, just leave it tuned to the logo with the big ears and all will be fine.

Vince, there is some evidence he is blind.

Jenny said...

Over here it's manoeuvre, is that any better? Pretty sure I'm not your new UK lurker, but if I am blame it on a change of location as I'm at my parents for a bit, I was here on and off in the summer too so I doubt it's me. Also I'm pretty much silent but I have commented twice in the past (if I'm remembering properly).

Nathan said...

Jenny,

I'm not sure if it's you or not. For some odd reason, I had a flurry of overlapping visits from the UK this morning (from all over the place!) and none of them show a visit to this page.

Go figure.

Anyway, if you are or your aren't, chime in any time. The truth is, I felt a little guilty about posting that bit yesterday...as if I was outing people and creeping out the internet.

And manoeuvre? No offense, but that looks even more retarded. :D

Jim Wright said...

I'm pretty sure that I'm not your UK lurker either.

As long as we're talking spelling, for some reason I always want to spell it "calibre" not "caliber." The American spelling just looks weird to me. Also, I think we'd have less resistance to the metric system in the US if we'd just use the British spelling of "metre" for meter. It just looks cooler.

Hmm, maybe I am your UK lurker (lurkre?) after all

Jenny said...

I think we'll just have to disagree about manoeuvre, I think it looks better than maneuver. To be honest I'd probably want to spell it manouvre or manouver if I had a choice.

I did flit around your blog this morning (my afternoon) while trying to figure out when I first started reading your blog, think it sometime in March/April. Don't worry about your comment, sometimes it's nice to sort of be asked to comment, I don't mind if it's me you are on about. When you say you had visitors from all over the place how exactly does it work? Is it a map showing where the views came from? If so I've found them to be very unreliable. There is a forum I am a member of where you can see who is online with markers of where they are. Every time I've looked at the marker attached to my name its been in the wrong place! At the moment it's put me out by about 230 miles. I put it down to living in the countryside. When I'm not here but where I work the "show my location" function on googlemaps works but when I'm here it just knows I'm in the UK and can't pinpoint me.

By the way I liked your number/lettering/wording.

Jim - maybe the 're' instead of 'er' has probably helped a bit but there is still resistance to some metric measures, I guess less so than where you are though. Obviously a lot of things are metric but I can't see miles becoming kilometres or stones becoming kilos even though I prefer the metric measurements.

Nathan said...

If I search my sitemeter 'by location', it shows a town, state and country. It also shows longitude and latitude, what 'page' a visitor came in on, what search brought them here (if any) and length of time visiting as long as they actually navigated from the page they arrived on.

The location is (I presume) where the server is, not the person. In your case, it seems to be coming from somewhere just east of Glasgow? (If that's correct, I shall endevour to pronounce it Glez-go instead of the Americanized Glass-gow.) :)

Oh, and I did want to spell it manouver. It still looks better to me except for the damned red underlining.

MWT said...

Well, occasionally my friend in Croatia shows up in my stats as being in the UK for some reason...

Also, I use "defenestrate" as often as possible. ;) There are many chat situations where it can be made relevant. I also know someone who was thrown into a window last year, but it was from outside to inside so it might not count. And he didn't go all the way through, kind of landed in the middle so that all the glass shards could come crashing down on top of him... (he's mostly all better now.)