Friday, April 29, 2005

Passionate about punctuation

Among the blogs I regularly follow is one called Blogslot. It's written by Bill Walsh, a copy editor at The Washington Post. The blog evolved from his website, The Slot.

This guy is passionate about punctuation. I mean really passionate. Gotta respect that. At least I do. I don't always agree with him (although I often do), but I always respect his conviction.

I knew I was going to like The Slot when I first read his rant about people who incorrectly use hyphens in place of dashes ("What is not acceptable to me is the use of hyphens as dashes."). I couldn't agree more, Bill. Improper use of hyphens drove me nuts when I worked on a student newspaper years ago. Before each issue went to print I would personally go through the entire newspaper and correct the hyphens and dashes. I wouldn't let it out the door until this task was done, even though no once else either noticed or cared about the dashes.

With much difficulty and with much distress I have had to relax my dash work standards due to the prevalence of electronic communication. Text based email programs and some browsers have trouble dealing with proper dashes.

Today Bill expressed his excitement and amazement about parallel construction in a Wal-Mart TV commercial. The commercial was about their digital photo processing services and contained the following line.

"It's quick, it's easy, and the price is terrific."
This is indeed quite amazing. Well done Wal-Mart.

Monday, April 25, 2005

TomeRaider update

I was pretty happy with the TomeRaider trial I installed a couple of weeks ago so I purchased the full version. There have already been numerous occasions where somebody has said "I wonder who...?" or "I wonder what...?" and I have been able to whip out my iPAQ and look up the answer on the spot. Pretty cool hey!!

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Pope Benedict XVI loves cats

Apparently the new Pope is a cat person. Check out these quotes from a news article Peter sent me.

"I went with him once," said Konrad Baumgartner, the head of the theology department at Regensburg University. "Afterwards, he went into the old cemetery behind the church.

"It was full of cats, and when he went out, they all ran to him. They knew him and loved him. He stood there, petting some and talking to them, for quite a long time. He visited the cats whenever he visited the church. His love for cats is quite famous."

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

ActiveSync via IR

I had some trouble setting up ActiveSync over IR the first time I did it, and again a while ago after a hard reset of my iPAQ.

So, I turned to Google for help. As usual, Google was able to find me something useful. I followed the instructions closely and... VoilĂ ! ActiveSync starting syncing over IR!

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

TomeRaider

When reading Jenneth's blog the other day I was reminded that I wanted to check out TomeRaider. I installed the trial version to my iPAQ and the IMDB database to check out TomeRaider's features.

Imagine having the IMDB database in your pocket! The next time someone says "who was that actor, y'know, the one in that movie?" or "what other movies has so-and-so been in?" I will be able to whip out my hx4705 and look it up! Pretty cool, hey? And it's not just IMDB, there's heaps of other great stuff available for TomeRaider, including Wikipedia. Yes, Wikipedia! Imagine having Wikipedia in your pocket. Talk about impressive! I'm glad I bought memory cards for my hx4705!

Monday, April 04, 2005

Cube disco light

My friend was at an 80s bar the other night. Check out the cube disco light she saw!


cube disco light in an 80s bar

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Prolific cubers

Stefan posted some interesting statistics the other day on the speedcubing discussion forum about the most prolific posters. Turns out that I was number 5 for the year up to 26 March 2003, and number 5 overall. I didn't make the top 10 for the year up till 26 March 2005 so I must have been posting a lot in 2002 and 2003!

solved people scrambled people

Friday, April 01, 2005

Jade and Ajax - Part 2

These little furries are just so cute that I thought I'd post some more.

I'm coming to get you!
I'm coming to get you!

Hey, where did you go?
Hey, where did you go?

Jade and Ajax
Time for a snooze?

Jade and Ajax again
Definitely time for a snooze