all things me

This is really really really spooky. I’ve been quoted in the Language Log… I commented on a list of John Doe names (at Carob (a blog)) in different languages where the Finnish version “Matti Meikäläinen” was spelled wrong. Now when I was reading LL my name was there! (And a LINK to me!) *faint* From a post by Mark Liberman:

Minna from all-things-me added a more complete and believable correction of the Finnish name:

just letting you know that the Finnish version is a bit “off”. It’s actually Matti Meikäläinen

Minna should know, being actually Finnish, but the fact is that I should have see (sic) the vowel harmony problem too.

This is like… I don’t know… Robbie or DD said (not past tense, just an “if”) my name… *happy shivers* If I had foreseen this I would’ve made my comment more linguistic and elegant.

I just installed a WordCount plugin I found at False Hopes. I’m tempted to put the total words in posts somewhere but that would require lots of queries to the database, I think, and I don’t want that. [edit]Oooh! It doesn’t add loading time nor queries considerably! I added it to the menu there, under Blog Archives[/edit]

On Tuesday I’m going to my aunt’s for the rest of the week. Had to change my WP configuration or I would’ve ended up with a blank index page by the end of the week. I had the setting “show posts from previous 7 days” and it’s not a smart one like on Greymatter but it’s actual, “physical” 7 days. I noticed that when I had only 4-5 entries on the front page (I’d been a lazy blogger!) and it seemed really short. Anyway, now I set it at “7 previous posts“. My behind’s covered.

I also deactivated the Condensed Content plugin after getting tired of having to view each post’s individual page when looking for quotes to decorate with a nice left hand side dotted line. Now it’s still paginated but posts are shown in full.

Thought of the Da…Night Every post categorised as something else than Miscellany is yet another victory!

Today I got back from my prolonged trip to Godson & Co. I was supposed to leave on Sunday but my aunt lured me into staying over Monday cause I’d get to be alone all day. Well, eventually, I ended up taking care of the kids (aged 6 and 8 (this coming autumn)) — the choice was mine.

Now, let’s see.
First of all, I read two books (only two! Gasp! But I’ve only got about 50 pages left of From a Buick 8 ): Cujo by Stephen King (***), and Suomen kieli — who cares? by Pirjo Hiidenmaa (****). The latter is about the presumed corruption and deterioration of the Finnish language because spoken language and foreign languages (especially English) affect written, standard, language enormously: spoken language causes lack of inflection (you know how much I hate lack of inflection…) and words borrowed and modified from foreign languages rarely get a Finnish equivalent.

Another thing, I got stung by a bee for the first time in my life yesterday. Uh. It was pretty awful. It just attacked me when I was on the cell phone talking to Grandma. I think it was confused by my skirt… Anyway, the sting still burns but it wasn’t as bad as I thought– I’m still alive, aren’t I. (XF Alert) Hopefully it wasn’t a genetically manipulated bee designed to turn me into a pod for an alien…
Funnily (or oddly), just on Thursday my aunt had been stung by a bee at a stable. We both were innocent!

On Saturday we went on a little weekend trip to “the biggest store village” and a wild animal park (they call it a zoo). I bought a very nice pair of shoes and a small backpack from the store.

My godson is so cute. He’d seen me read with a piece of kitchen tissue folded as my bookmark and sometimes, when the kids were eager to disturb me, I followed the lines with the paper (so I’d know where I was). The other day, I think it was yesterday, he sat next to me with a folded kitchen tissue and started reading his Beyblade magazine, following the comic strip pictures with it.

Ugh, talking about Beyblades… My godson is very enthusiastic about them at the moment. He watched the latest episode (something about a tournament in Las Vegas) at least twice a day and played the different characters as he was watching. Pedro with his sword, Jose and his gun and… some guitar guy. And he could remember some parts of the dialogue by heart, and by dog (no sic) did he repeat it over and over and over. I’ve got Beyblades coming out of my ears!

As a linguistic sidenote [Finnish alert] Sunday night we (me and the 2 kids) had a, well, a hysterical moment (laughing…) and my godson called us “käkättirastas”: There’s a bird called räkättirastas, it’s a kind of thrush, fieldthrush claims my dictionary, and käkättää is a dialectal word for laugh (the sort of loud and crazy ) and he — very cleverly — combined the two. Wow!

Quote of the Day

There comes a time when most folks see the big picture and realize they’re puckered up not to kiss smiling fate on the mouth because life just slipped them a pill, and it tastes bitter.
— From a Buick 8 by Stephen King

Something in the quote seems lost. I’m missing a “but” in “not to kiss – – *add but here* because”. Or it simply means that *when* life slips a pill *then* folks realize… But I understood it so that they’ve not puckered up to kiss but because the taste of the pill. Ah, never mind.

They have two cats, my aunt & co. I mean. I don’t like cats as a species but the individuals are quite nice (cats are cute, I’m not going to argue with that). One of them hopped on my lap one night when I was watching the news (and once when I was reading in the rocking-chair) and they purred and rolled around when I scratched them even just a little bit. I’m still a dog person, mind you.

Uhhh, the bee sting is a real pain in the butt… almost literally (thigh).

Finally I get to sleep enough. Even though I didn’t have to wake up until 7:30 each morning, the sun woke me up around 5-6 every time… My room (at home) is nicely pitch black. I’m not even going to set my alarm clock!

Note to self: Adding a nicer search function a la Raena. I removed the counting of search results because I use pagination so if there are 10+ results it would show “There are 10 results…” even though there were more. Also, I changed the length ($excerpt_length) of “the_exceprt_rss” function in template-functions-post.php, line 194.

Added a Statistics hack for my own fun. Note to self: Doesn’t show private messages.

An observation: I don’t understand what the word count really counts… it always seems to be missing a few words. E.g. it claimed there was 18 words before this note here, and I counted 19…

I downloaded a lot of goldie oldie games from Pelit [Games] magazine’s site (you need to be a subscriber and registered to download): New Adventures of Zak McKracken, Maniac Mansion Deluxe, and Mario Forever. I also downloaded Codename Gordon, a 2D game with a Halflife motif. I was looking for Space Quest: Replicated, a fan-made game, but didn’t find it.

*insert proper curse word here* I’m going crazy with these mad insects flying around. They’re attracted to my desk lamp. If only I could whack ’em.

Today I bought two new Kings: Salem’s Lot and Needful Things. (That means updates at TGWLSK.) I was supposed to buy hard-back Song of Susannah too but I got scroogy cause I’d bought soooooo much already (nothing interesting though).

Tomorrow I’m off to my grandparents’. I’m travelling by train, Pendolino, a super quick one if only it’d work this time. Last summer the mechanism that allows the train go fast was broken so it had to travel at normal speed. When the new trains first started running, a door was sucked off by the speed. Nice going. And tomorrow’s Friday 13th… Good thing I’m not superstitious. Let’s hope the person controlling the train isn’t either.

I’ll be gone for about a week, I’d imagine.

I haven’t started packing yet, and I have to wrap some books in book plastic (I don’t read paperback books (or in my case “backpack books” ) without the plastic) before I get too tired to do that.

@ 22:45
Joined Words fanlisting

Around 10 pm Wednesday night while I was watching Cold Case, I hear commotion from outside and something that sounds like a scream. I peer out the window but see nothing. Half an hour later I hear sirens (police or ambulance, I never know which) and immediately think: Murder!

The “scream”, I’m sure, was a hysterical laugh and the sirens never got close but faded.

I’m at my grandparents’ at the moment. For an unknown period of time still. What have I done here? Well, on Wednesday I got my hair cut (– 10 cm), bought a lovely lovely book (Oxford’s dictionary of new words) and choco+mint coffee, got an umbrella (it started raining and Grandma and I didn’t have one with us — of course not). I’ve also got 2 biggish boxes full of old books (ahhh dictionaries! and all kind of wonderful language-related Grandpa put aside for me) cause my grandparents’ are moving quite a stretch and I tell you, they’ve got books. Lots and lots of wonderful books. So they’ve been giving some away to library, and of course to children and grandchildren.

I finished reading Pet Sematary on Wednesday (18.8.), luckily I can add it to my booklog from here, but the stars and things I’ll have to add when I get home. I’ll give it… *ponder* 4 stars? Yeah, it was a good one. King himself says it’s his most gruesome. After reading the foreword, I agree.

I also saw From a Buick 8 finally translated! I’ve been wondering where it’s been but, well, Grandma actually noticed it, there it was in the bookstore. Finnish title: Buick 8. Translated by Ilkka Rekiaro, who else?! This is just a note to self to add it to TGWLSK.

A little bit of QOTD:

The swamp was alive, but not with the sound of music
— Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Just makes me think of Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge. Ahh…

Well, I think that’s all. I found another 6 ft 2 in quote in Pet Sematary I need to add to the Notebook at TGWLSK.

Gosh, being on a 800 x 600 screen with only IE makes me want to go home!!! Nah, I like it here. Besides, I haven’t had a dip in the lake yet.

Word of the Day: air quotes — quotation marks represented by the movement of a speaker’s fingers in the air (Oxford Dictionary of New Words)
(I’d love that kind of a smiley gif, it’d be absolutely wonderful!)
[edit: Sep 15, 2004] I found that kind of smiley gifs. [/edit]

I left for Kuopio, where my grandparents live, on August 13 — by train. I got back home today — by car. Dad took a vacation week and drove to Kuopio so I got home with him. Just before going to Kuopio I had been at my aunt’s for a week, but now I’m done travelling for this summer.

On Monday (23rd) I finally got to swim in the lake. First time this year. But… the water was 15°C and air 17°C — and it was very windy! Grandma told me I was nuts but I wanted to swim at least once. And believe me, once was enough. Well, maybe next year I’ll be at the summer cottage a little earlier in the summer…

Today I’ve been updating a bit. First of all I read two books while I was away: Pet Sematary and Christine, both by Stephen King. After an “uncle-in-law” (an aunt’s husband) took the main TV away (he was helping with my grandparents’ move, taking some stuff to the new place) there was really nothing else to do than read because Grandpa was glued to the set (a smaller tv I used to have in “my room”) watching Olympic games (Finland only has 2 silver medals so far — bummer) AND he even dared to tease me by saying I couldn’t possibly watch anything cause there were so much important sport events!

Also, I bought Oxford dictionary of New Words because I couldn’t find any new Kings… Next week I’ll go buy Song of Susannah — I have to.

I am very excited about the 2 boxfuls of books I got from Grandpa and Grandma. There are lots of old old books, and wonderful (old old) dictionaries. I don’t even remember all that I took from their bookshelf.
Grandpa said he gave about 1000 books to different libraries and they still had a 1 meter high, 2,5 meters wide (my bad estimate) pile of books waiting to be packed. And all the books they gave away to me and my aunts (“me” includes our family), and a box of summer cottage reading… I won’t even try guessing how many books they had to begin with.
I told Grandma that I’ll probably end up with a similar collection later on.

I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 on Sunday 22nd. It was an interesting documentary, had an excellent — and apt — music selection (Roof is on Fire, etc.), and it was very funny, too.

Today I’ll get Matrix Revisited on tape. They show it on the cable channel, SubTV. I snatched Dad’s digi-box so I can tape it.

My sympathies go to the site, network, and whatever called Orkut.com (it’s some sort of a Google affiliate). They probably have no idea how bad a title they’ve chosen…

As you know (or don’t), I got two boxes full of books (books books!!) from my grandparents so when I got home I faced the problem of where to put ’em all.
Well, yesterday my dad and I embarked on a mission to buy a bookshelf. Eventually we found one, at Lundia (it’s a Finnish company). A lovely, sturdy 5-shelf giant. I got all my Kings in one row (I can see them all!), all the old dictionaries and language related books in one corner, high school + university papers in neat folders (Mum and I “argued” about the difference in meaning of the words mappi and kansio, Finnish. To me they’re synonymical. To Mum not.). I also gathered a lovely collection of dictionaries etc. near the computer. *happy sigh*

Soon I’ll get the Sex and the City episode on tape where David Duchovny is visiting (episode Boy, interrupted). I was afraid I might’ve missed it (but I’ve seen all the episodes lately and haven’t spotted DD) cause I knew it as “episode 6.10” and the channel 3 (MTV3) told they were showing episodes 82-94. Anyway, it’ll be the 3rd episode when S&C starts next Tuesday. Now I have to find a tape and make sure I don’t use the VCR on that day (it’s a crappy VCR).

I was trying to get rid of subcategories in a parent category (annoying when a post is NOT assigned to the parent category but still shows in it) with the help of a post by Andrew Hall. No luck. I studied the code and dared to comment out another bit that looked “right” and now it seems to work:
in wp-blog-header.php (found in the WP root folder) around line 293 (under “Category stuff for nice URIs”), comment out (= add /* before the code and */ after it) the line

$whichcat .= get_category_children($cat, " OR category_id = ");

Also, updated wpPaginate plugin (by Scriptygoddess) to .1.1.

UPDATE
On WP1.5. this is found in wp-includes/classes.php, on line 413. Comment out

$whichcat .= get_category_children($q[‘cat’], ” OR category_id = “);

UPDATE
On WP1.5.1.(1) these are found in wp-includes/classes.php on lines 393, 396, 420; below Category Stuff and Category Stuff for Nice URIs. Comment out the lines starting with $whichcat .= get_category_children

Pinseri.com had a link to Invisibility (which I unfortunately came across…). It’s a game to test your mouse skills. Invisibility is exactly what it is — you can’t see the cursor! Test it out. I’m currently on level 6 and I’m pretty sure I’ll be stuck at level 6 for all eternity.

I’ve been reading blogs and pondering if I should register my blog to Globe of Blogs…

I was disappointed to find out that term starts on 6.9. instead of 13th like I thought. Oh well. Maybe I’ve done my share of vacationing.