all things me

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!
In Finland it’s a day for friendships which is much fairer because we don’t all have valentines (or maybe you all do, but I don’t) but people usually have friends…

Don’t know if any of you ever glance at the Recently updated posts, but if you glance at it now you can see I’ve been updating my old old posts. Yes, I admit it. I’ve been checking my posts for typos. I’m a little odd like that. But boy did I find some silly blurts.

I’m also pondering whether or not to publish a post about the secret of mine that is now done, finished, over (I guess) on my part. ‘On my part’ being the operative phrase. Aren’t I annoying?

This, well… yesterday, morning I was feeling very sick. Very. I don’t really know why, but the world was spinning around me and I could hardly stand straight, let alone walk. I just hope it’s not yet another bug because I’ve missed enough lectures as it is (= one). Luckily, it settled down after a few hours and the rest of the day I’ve been feeling fine — if a little queasy. I wonder what that was all about.

This has been a feature of Google for a long time, I presume, but now that I’m writing descriptions, or terminological definitions, to the terms in the lexical ontologies I realize how nifty it is. By writing define: and a term (define:dictionary), you get several definitions picked up from all over the web. All on one page, no link-clicking required.

Having an English-speaking roommate has led me to notice that my vocabulary for bidding farewell is extremely restricted. When she says “see you”, all I can say is “bye”. Fridays are easier, because I can wish her to “have a nice weekend”, but 4 days out of 5, “bye” is the only thing she can get out of me. “Not if I see you first”, is not an option.

I’ve been wondering what the correct plural for those little facial expression images is. Lots of people write it ‘smilies’ which would make the singular ‘smily’, right? (As -y usually changes to -ie- in plurals.) Smily has the suffix -y which often makes the word adjective (as the base word here is ‘smile’). However, ‘smily’ doesn’t seem to be a word even; ‘smiley’ is used as the adjective, too.

If the base word is smiley, it should be made plural by just adding -s at the end (compare: key–keys, not kies). There is a grammar rule “-y after consonants is changed to -ie-, but -y after vowels doesn’t change”.

QED

I just love it how Stephen King sometimes refers to himself in his work (my emphasis)

Frank’s niece, Bobbi Anderson, lived on the Garrick place now — not that she farmed, of course; she wrote books. (…) Also, she wrote good old western stories that you could really sink your teeth into, not all full of make-believe monsters and a bunch of dirty words, like the books that fellow who lived up Bangor way wrote. Goddam good westerns, people said.
— The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

King also uses a lot of brackets and short paragrahps

2

(…)
‘Relax,’ Newt said, and Dick nodded. ‘No one is going to connect the disappearance of a four-year-old boy who prob’ly just wandered off into the woods or got picked up and driven away by a sex pervert with the disappearance of two big strong State Bears. Right, Dick?’
   ‘As rain.’

3

Wrong.

4

(…)
— The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

(or Persnicketiness as the Americans say)

I sent feedback to the library service because there was a separately written compound word (“nouto kirjasto” — the library where I want to pick up the book I’ve reserved) in the Reserved works table. I asked them to correct it.

I’m writing a unification-based parser grammar and am faced with a problem with adjectives. Professor proposed a model where adjectives of a same “type” (size, colour, etc etc) should be restricted in a way that they can’t modify the same word. Is this a good rule? Seems so, it would be a bit silly to talk about “rough smooth surface” (or “smooth rough”) but is it absolutely wrong? What about the game title “Little Big Adventure”? On the other hand, that’s creative writing and the parser will be working in a relatively restricted domain (not meaning ‘restricted by relations’, well… in a way). Also, the parser is supposed to be “permissive” and last summer I had to throw my perfectionism in the trash bin and allow plural subjects and predicates to mix freely
Well, the *biggest* problem is probably how I am going to restrict the adjectives if it comes to that…

I’ve been making the parser more permissive by allowing nouns to be articleless (and of course, sometimes they’re supposed to be). Hmmm… what to tackle next?

I’ve been searching for the proper meaning of CPD (domain: printers etc.), and during my journey I found this (the site is a mess, there are better acronym sites): CPD — Cubicle Prairie Dogging (people popping up in their cubicles when something happens)

It’s not exactly what I was looking for… I could also be looking for CDP…

The small boy sniffs the air. His narrow eyes, shiny as those of a rodent, slide sideways to Dr. Lecter’s lunch. He speaks with the piercing voice of a competitive sibling:
“Hey, Mister. Hey, Mister.” He’s not going to stop.
“What is it?”
“Is that one of those special meals?”
“It is not.”
“What’ve you got in there, then?” The child turned his face up to Dr. Lecter in a full wheedle. “Gimme a bite?”
(…)
“Mooooaaaahm, can I have some of his samwich?”
The baby in Mother’s lap awoke an began to cry. Mother dipped a finger into the back of its diaper, came up negative, and gave the baby a pacifier.
(…)
she called to Dr. Lecter. “Would you pass it down to me? If you’re offering it to my child, I want to see it. No offense, but he’s got a tricky tummy.”
(…)
He passed his Fauchon box down to Mother.
“Hey, nice bread,” she said, poking it with her diaper finger.
— Hannibal by Thomas Harris

Ughhhhh, poor Hannibal.

I texted my aunt asking that she’d pass on happy birthday wishes to my godson (her son, obv.). I also told her that the gift would be arriving next week because I went to the post office yesterday evening after the mail had already been picked up for the day. She replied telling that my godson had enthusiastically asked how soon is ‘next week’. Gee… I hope he isn’t too disappointed: I only got him a little Bionicle dude. It did have a very cool disk launcher with a glow in the dark disk, though.

Word of the Day Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia — fear of long words (The Phobia List)