Backlog
Wow, this makes a grand total of three entries on here so far this month, I've been slacking. Not that I haven't been busy, I've been setting up my working environment in my new Vista installation on a new hard drive, and trying to solve a problem that it has presented with the machine hardlocking.
And no, that's not a real word, but it is a commonly used technical description on the internet. Setting that aside now.
Once I get this all worked out and squared away I'm going to start to do some work again. A Skewed update is rather overdue, and I've got a new short story idea I want to start working on. I need to get something here integrated with Pivot so I can put stuff on this site.
Maybe since I'm working on my toolset, I'll discuss more of the tools I use for writing over the next couple of entries.
Tags: computer personal skewed software website_design words
Two Strikes
I usually tend to avoid searching for lyrics on the internet, as lyrics sites are some of the most banner-ridden, popup-ridden, spyware-infested sites out there, but occasionally they're necessary. However this search wasn't particularly for looking up the lyrics to a song.
I don't remember exactly what I was looking for for sure, but it was related to the band Dragonforce. At around page three I came to a lyrics page for their bonus track "Where Dragons Rule". So I decided to stop in, because the recording is rather low quality, so I was curious about some of the lines. However, as soon as I entered, this glaring statement popped out at me:
Visitors: 102 visitors have hited Where Dragons Rule Lyrics since Feb 12, 2007.
"Hited", spelled completely wrong. It should be "hitted"...
...That is, if "hitted" was a real word either.
If you can't trust a site's own scripts to tell you correct things, how are you supposed to be able to trust the lyrics on the site? Not to mention the popups I got from that site...
And, on a slightly related note. If you're wondering about my comment about the song being low quality, the version of the song in that video is different than the copy I have. The lines are different in a few places too. I have honestly never heard that version until just now when I was looking up a Youtube video to link. This music video linked here has the version of the song I have, which I thought after much searching was the only version of the song.
Tags: internet music words
Otherland
I think I'll switch gears for a minute, and talk about the books I'm currently reading, the Otherland series by Tad Williams.
As I've mentioned before, I am a fan of the .hack series. For those not familiar with the series, it revolves around a popular MMORPG called "The World", which is usually played with head mounted displays. The primary spark to the plots of the .hack series involve characters going mysteriously going into comas during the game, due to events within the game, as observed by people associated with those going into comas (though not believed by others, as that is simply a silly concept). In the first series, it is the protagonist Kite's friend Orca, and in the second, it is the protagonist Haseo's friend Shino. Different sets of events, different proceedings, but in both cases thats what really sparked the games to start.
On Blind Guardian's latest album, A Twist in the Myth, there is a song called Otherland. One of my favorites from the album, when I first heard it I had interpreted it as it sounded, like an illusionary world that the characters of the song are trapped in somehow. However, it was pointed out to me by someone on the Dothackers.net forums that it is based on a book series of the same name, with a storyline very much similar to the .hack series. Intrigued, I checked out the first book from the library, and got hooked.
The storyline very much starts off the same way. It takes place in the future, somewhere around the 2070's, where the internet and virtual reality technology had evolved to a point where it was very much a virtual world that could be explored. The main protagonist of the story is a woman named Renie, a college teacher in South Africa. Her younger brother falls ill and into a coma after exploring a paid part of the internet he broke into, and encountered something odd according to the friend that was with him. She then begins her investigation into what happened, with the aid of one of her students which had become her friend, and through the course discovered a second network, called Otherland, much more complex and realistic then the internet, and she and others were gathered together by a mysterious man who wanted them to go into Otherland to rescue a person trapped within. Once inside, they discover they are trapped within, everything feeling real to them and their physical connections seemingly nonexistent, and they can't be unplugged from Otherland without enduring unending pain.
Short summary, yes, especially for such long books. The Otherland story is four books total, each about 800 pages in length. There's much more to the story, but I don't really want to spoil it. All I can say though, is that it's a very intriguing story, rich in description and complexity, and I'm loving every page of it.
Tags: music novels video_games
The Antlion
One of the webcomics I read is xkcd, a stick figure comic focusing on commentary of various things, language included. A fairly recent comic was about tripping up grammar nazis with careful use of affect and effect.
Looking at his blogblag just now, however, I discovered an entry that it apparently came back to bite him, as he spelled "foreign" wrong in the comic and didn't catch it until later. People then proceeded to comment on the entry, talking about other grammar mistakes, but tripping over themselves as they made their own mistakes in their comments, digging themselves deeper and deeper.
Antlions are a family of insects, who, in their larval form, dig pit traps to catch prey. As they struggle to escape, the walls of the trap give to the disturbance, dragging them further and further down to the antlion. Thats very much what that comment page reminds me of, the author as the antlion in the center, with the grammar nazis falling into a trap to correct his other stuff, then tripping over themselves in a panic to try to escape because of their own mistakes and just falling deeper and deeper in.
Tags: internet
Déjà Vowel
I thought I had talked about this once before, but apparently I haven't. Also, it seems Google isn't indexing anything for the search box, I'll look into that in a little while.
As I said, I thought I had talked about this before, but apparently I haven't. Must have slipped my mind, because I stopped hearing the commercial so I forgot it. I just heard it again the other day, however.
I'm talking, specifically, about a Washington Mutual commercial currently running on the radio. In it, the announcer talks about free checks for life or something, and another person commenting says he'd never heard about it (there's another commercial that introduces this character as a contrarian, arguing with everything he says). He then breaks down and admits that he had heard about them, but not in the voice of an Irish Sheepherder. So the announcer asks a couple questions to find out which kind of sheepherder he wants to hear, then does a impression of such a person. The contrarian is then very impressed, and the announcer comments that it's all in the vowels.
In accents, occasionally there will be some misuse of consonants (such as dropping the 't' resulting in "moun'ain" in my Utahn accent, or replacing it with a 'd' resulting in 'rollerskading'), but its much more often a result of the vowels. A different vowel is created by different positions of the tongue in the mouth. The tongue at the top in the front making a "ii" sound such as in east, tongue at the top in the back making a "u" sound such as in goose. The Wikipedia page on vowles gives a breakdown chart of all the vowel sounds, leading to approximately 35 positions for the tongue. The lips don't have as much effect on the pronunciation as you might think, try making an "oh" sound without rounding your lips, and you'll see what I mean.
A couple more examples of this in the Utahn accent are the more southern Utah pronouncing "creek" as "crick" (as in cricket), and some parts (I'm not sure the breakdown) pronouncing "pillow" as "pellow" (as in mellow).
Tags: accents english linguistic pronunciation