Category: Blather

Slow day at work. Should I finish translating that story for the Tenth Dimension, send out some more job applications, read up on the formats the rice genome data was published in, fiddle with the design for the Tenth Dimension web site (coming soon!) or work on my games for Bigor?

The answer, of course, is that I did none of the above. Instead I fiddled with my web pages, to make them valid XHTML.

If this makes no sense to you, you’re really better off.

Oh, I also did some more website maintenance, changing the whole site over to the new look the weblog had.

Yesterday I demonstrated my vast powers of miscommunication to someone over ICQ (as I regularly do, being a great miscommunicator), and wondered if I could possibly sprinkle more smilies than usual on top of each message.

Not so, says “Anil Dash”:http://www.dashes.com/anil/index.php?archives/005433.php, upon being taken to task for saracasm. One should fight back against the forces that enforce online understanding at the price of sacrificing our right to cynicism. He promotes the anti-smiley “:-)” , to undermine the whole purpose of defusing ambiguity.

Revising my C.V. is as painful as pulling teeth (yes, I’m still doing it, no I haven’t sent it out to anyone yet, yes, I am very farsh because of this). I notice that in my last version I appear pretty fond of the word “proprietary”. A trace of being too influenced by open source political-speak?

Anyway, replaced that with either the actual names of products, or more descriptive (but fairly opaque) technospeak.

Going over my C.V., I get a creepy feeling about my spelling of “web-site”. Google gives only 7.46 million hits for web-site and in fact asks me Did you mean: website? (66.2 million hits!).

But spelling matters aren’t really something you should settle with a popularity contest. The online dictionary suggests web-site or Web site, but actually offers a “usage note” which seems more like an apology for recommending the less common form.

So I go back to Google and look up the site of that copy editor with strong opinions Bartov enjoys reading. This person turns out to be Bill Walsh from the Washington Post, and on his site,
The Slot, he’s perfectly clear what he thinks you should use:

With dictionaries and other mainstream publications tripping over their feet to use “website” and “email” in an attempt to look like Techie McTech to their readers, I find it deliciously amusing that the excellent PC Magazine, of all publications, continues to stick with “Web site” and “e-mail.” I guess that’s the difference between being secure in your knowledge of the subject matter and being a big, fat poseur wanna-be.

I was given notice by my boss one week ago (shortly after posting my last post, in fact). As of the end of the month, I will be unemployed (like many fine and talented people I know, actually).

I was holding off posting this until I got around to polishing my CV, but since I still haven’t done that, I might as well get this out of the way, so that whatever friends read my blog will know about it.