Double Vision
One of the things that is supposed to be avoided in writing, and spellcheckers freak out over all the time, is words written twice. The obvious reason for this is of course detecting against mistakes, especially constant double words at the line break that are almost completely unnoticeable except if paying careful attention. A word on the end of a line, and the same word at the beginning of the next line. I know I've found many occurrences in well proofread media where double words have slipped through the cracks.
The problem with English, however, which I end up hitting a lot, is when I do it on purpose, something which as I mentioned, should be avoided. I use it to form my sentence because that is the natural flow of my writing, specifically because the words have two different meanings. Particularly in two cases: "that that", and "on on". Their actual use is reversible in the sentence, but can happen together. In the case of the "that that", one would be a conjugation, and the other a reference of object, such as in "Did I mention that that is a type of cheese?" In the case of the "on on" one is used as a location, and the other is used as a state, most often referring to a light, such as in "The indicator light is on on the dashboard." Actual valid uses because they are in this case two different words, but because of the complexity of English it looks wrong to the spellchecker so it just outright reports it as incorrect.
Mind Lapse
I've had a few things that have come to mind that I have wanted to talk about on here, but I can never remember them when I actually come here to write them. I've been somewhat busy recently with some projects, so I haven't really had much free time to sit down and just do whatever. What free time I have had I have spent watching a few movies, such as Wargames which I saw for the first time yesterday, and a special Batman Begins broadcast that had a bunch of new preview footage for The Dark Knight.
I've got the next book I'm going to read, after I finish Otherland. It's a Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer. It's a vampyre novel, the first in a series, I don't know much about it beyond that but apparently it's a bestseller. What particularly caught my eye about it is the author is LDS, and I don't often see things from LDS authors aside from church-related books. I'm sure there's some more out there, but I never hear about them.
Of course that means first of all I have to remember to start reading the last Otherland book. Somewhat amusingly, in my mind this Twilight novel, a mere 500 pages, is "light reading", compared to the Otherland series.
Lock Released
For whatever reason, some time ago Google changed their AdSense policy and I needed to reverify my account settings or it would be disabled. Until this was confirmed, my account was running Public Service Announcement ads. Supposedly, when they did this they sent out an e-mail with this notification, and also a card in the mail with a PIN code that needed to be entered. I received neither, until I got one of the "final warning" e-mails. I had to request another card at that point.
Finally it came, and I got it in. So now my account is fully unlocked again, and the ads should go back to normal.
Firefox Day
Hurry, it's the day of the Firefox 3.0 release. And they're trying to set a world record for number of downloads in the first day, so get on over to GetFirefox.com and download your copy!
Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:00:00 -0500Tagged
I rely heavily on the use of Last.FM for tracking my music. For that reason, I need to have my music properly tagged. The latest plugins don't let me do it anymore, but the older Audioscrobbler plugins used to let me filter out folders. I keep a folder in my music collection called simply "Unsorted" for this purpose, I used to have it blocked from being uploaded to Last.FM, because I would put music in there that needed to have their ID3 tags created or corrected or filenames changed. Everything goes into this folder that I acquire, except for full albums, which get their own folder and so I leave named as they are to preserve order.
I haven't sorted through this folder for a while, so that's what I am doing at the moment. When I started there were over 300 files in this folder. I dropped the whole folder into Winamp and I am playing down the list one by one. Currently I am on entry 86 in the list, and have reduced the folder down to 252.
Limited or No Connectivity
I don't have wireless in my desktop, so since I haven't gotten cable yet here at my apartment I've been using Internet Connection Sharing from my notebook over a crossover cable to connect my desktop to the internet. This hasn't been working so well, however. The sharing itself works, but my notebook got some update or something that has broken things for the last few days and Internet Connection Sharing hasn't worked. I was going to try to System Restore, but it wasn't turned on, because apparently it didn't properly recognize it when I set up the dual boot with linux, and it didn't realize the C drive was the same C drive that was turned on. So I haven't been able to use it for a couple days. Now I have it as a bridged connection, so it is working again.
Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:00:00 -0500Skin of My Teeth
May is a cursed month.
More specifically, every 3rd May. May of 2005 I quit my job, hoping to take a few months off for personal projects and get a job in September. But what ended up happening was I didn't get a job until January, got laid off a few weeks after that, and then didn't get a job again until October.
The significance of this is it mirrored my previous tenure. I started at almost the exact same time, doing pretty much the same job, and I had it sitting at the back of my mind always that history would repeat itself. It always does, Halloween is also a cursed day, I have computer problems every other Halloween.
But I wasn't going to let a cycle start, especially since I was planning on moving out. I wasn't going to let May curse me. Near the end it took one final shot at me, making me sick since last Wednesday, but I have done it. I have made it into June, employed, and moved into my new apartment. Sick, but out of May, ready to continue on.