Mdrn Spk.

So with the advent of the cell-phone and the sms, a new form of english was born.

Ppl strtd drppng vwls, l8r +ed nmbrs to denote words, and made sms-speak a form of communication unintelligible to many.
Then came the blackberry craze, and with the inclusion of a full qwerty (love typing that) keyboard, it seemed that there might be a return to spelling words properly.
I welcomed it as an opportunity to have capital letters and proper punctuation at my fingertips, taking the slog out of typing proper messages.

But no, it was not to be.
The generation that spawned sms-speak merely moved their missing vowels and punctuationless messages to the new tech.
OMG, I cn type so mch fstr! LOL!!!!

So yesterday Apple launched the new half an iPhone, the 4S, which runs a bit faster and has VOICE RECOGNITION!!!!
Now this will soon become standard across the BB/Andriod/iMarket, and I shudder to think that sms-speak might leap another logical barrier like it did with the qwerty keyboard.
Imagine a room filled with people saying “Lol” into their phones. (Shudder)

Microsoft is upholding the proud American tradition of pillaging and raping the english language.

So I’ve been an active SharePoint admin for half a year now, and amongst the many things about the product that make me wonder is the capitalisation of SharePoint.
Yes. Capital S, hare Capital P, oint, one word.
MS spellcheck will even bitch at you about bad spelling if you dont capitalise the P.
I put this down as an anomaly until I started investigating PowerPivot today.
And there it is…Capital P, ower Capital P, ivot, one word.

I think that the de-generation of American kids that actually believe that kewl, ossum and skool are real english words have grown up enough to get jobs naming products for Mister Gates.
They dont even have the decency to put a hyphen in.

Mein Craft – U gotta love da Lava

Last night I died from playing with Lava. ☹ 

I spent an hour collecting diamonds and red sparkly things and gold,

I was trying to find my way back out of my mine, and I came across some underground water, so I tried to isolate the source block, when I placed a block, the water rushed over and flushed me deeper into this great cavern, my torches glistened miles above like so many little stars. I thought, let me just explore a little, and then I will try get home again.

 

And lo, I came upon another little underground river, which I successfully captured. When I reached for my bucket I realised I had left in my chest, back home. So off I went to get my bucket, and saw a brightly lit area, so I thought, ooh, I must have been here before. But it was a little 2 x 3 pool of lava. So I decided to trap the source block, just like I had just done with the little river, and I will come back with a bucket, and the start of my Lava farm ☺. 

First block in place, Yatta.

Second block, not so Yatta!

And as the Lava flowed over my body, I knew it was all over.

 

From a distance I looked down upon my smoking pixelated corpse, let out a big sigh and some expletives, and clicked respawn.

and thus sayeth simon!

how’s your grammar?

I came across a totally interesting question this week, what’s the difference between an idiom and a proverb? The really interesting part is, I had no idea how to answer that, no clue.
After a bit of googling I think I found out, still not 100% sure on this though,but that’s not really the point of this post.

Idiom
a group of words in a fixed order that have a particular meaning that is different from the meanings of each word understood on its own:

Proverb
a short sentence, etc., usually known by many people, stating something commonly experienced or giving advice

It’s still a bit vague… But accorcing to these definitions, a proverb must be a SENTENCE while an idiom is just a phrase (a group of words)???

A proverb is a saying such that almost everybody knows and you understand easily what it means. For example “Necessity is the mother of invention” is a proverb.

An idiom is a phrase such that almost nobody knows why it means so. “Kick the bucket” is an idiom to mean “die”. Do you understand why it means so?

The point is that I learned this at some point in my english grammar classes, as well as tautology, spoonerisms, and a host of other super interesting grammatical devices. However, I have forgotten this, most of it anyway. And that makes me sad, and thus shall I blog about it.

I would like to issue a challenge, that we all keep our eyes and ears open for cool grammatical happenings. Let’s try re-learn some of the ish we learned in high-school.

Borg

Electronic contact

So my gorgeous girlfriend has been in Germany for two weeks, and has another there before she comes back to SA.

She left me behind to run off to Europe to expand her education through a studio for her new Urban Design course. If that sounded bitter, I appolgise, it wasn’t supposed to. I’m fully behind her studying and it’s Uber-cool that she could do some of the work overseas. It’s really awesome … but it does make my life harder.

All I can say is “Thank Tim Berners Lee for the internet!!!”… not solely the internet actually. I find myself very appreciative of the whole plethora modern communications technology. Without SMSs, GChat, Skype and Facebook, I think I’d be a gibbering wreck by now. As it is: I’m not wrecked (any more than before anyway) and there has been scaresly a gibber at all.

Electronic communication is no substitute for physical presence, but it certainly takes the edge off. I feel privileged to be able to make such mundane use of abilities that would have been the greatest of magical powers a century ago.

So the next time you’re chatting to someone on the other side of the world, take a moment to appreciate what a truely massive accomlishment that is for the human race.

I miss you, gorgeous… and can’t wait for your return: but you must have oodles of fun in Germany and tell me all about it when you get back.

-Odd

“Language… has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.” – Paul Tillich

Word of the Week

Jeremiad – noun

1. a prolonged lamentation or complaint.

In The News

Swiss scientists design a turbine to fit in human arteries – this little gizmo could create enough power to run pace makers and other suck bio-implants… as long as they figure out a way to mitigate the turbulence it causes.

Laser used to transfer data at 26terabytes per second – now that is FAST! and unlike similar projects, this one does it with a single multi-colour laser. So it’s cheep(ish).

Is Graphene a miracle material? – a great article on a new wonder material… watch out for this stuff, it’s going to be making a big impact.

Grand Co-operative driving challenge – building smarter driverless cars that can communicate with each other to make better use of the road. Cool.

Teaching robots to read – It’s not quite at a human level… but this sort of research is what is going to make personal robots possible. Keep up the great work!