This is very cool. It’s an explanation of how Russian written on Western keyboards leads to new words for things. From the ever-marvellous Language Log.
PeBloWriMo is over but I won’t stop blogging entirely; however, it felt like too many of my posts were lytdybrs (see link in previous paragraph) and I won’t write unless I have some germ of an inkling of what to say. Or fun links to post.
A very cool music video with ditto song. It makes me sit and dance on my chair, so the neighbours think I’m even stranger than usual. And there are birds, probably crows, in it.
Random Beer Name Generator generates random beer names. Most of them are silly or bland, but some are pretty good, such as the Amber Solstice Russian Imperial Stout.
Oh, and Kicki? Are you reading this? The GROW! games guy has published two new games since last time I checked: GROW! Island where you find the right order to introduce new technologies to the island - and watch out, cos there are two radically different endings! - and GROW! Nano 3 which is a small and fairly quick, but very sweet, grow game where you help the little guy get healthy again. Not only Kicki will enjoy these, but I know she’s a special fan of the series.
(The first two links from MCiOS. The GROW! links from Jay is Games.)
As I’m typing this, Anna Karenina is being downloaded to my computer as 712 mp3 files. (Part 156 coming down right now.) I bought it for EUR 12 from the site emusic.com where we buy a lot of excellent music. It’s a very good music store, with a LOT of good music, cheaper by far than iTunes store and without any limitations to how many devices you can play the music on (there’s two people in our family, we have one computer each at home, J has another computer at work, and we both have an iPod. This doesn’t exceed the number of times you can play an iTunes store bought track, but I think it comes close. And I like not supporting that kind of stupidity by buying from them, anyway.) And if a track you’ve once bought is lost for some reason, you can download it again from emusic.com without any extra fee.
This wasn’t going to be a sales pitch for emusic, though I do recommend checking them out, for anybody who is interested in music or audio books. I look forward to listening to almost 34 hours of Anna Karenina. I’ve never read it, as a matter of fact, just excerpts. An audio book is a very different animal from a regular book, not only for the obvious reason that it’s mediated by a person narrating it but also because there is no skimming, and the reading pace is set by another person. The narrator is very important, of course. As I wrote a few days ago, I wouldn’t want to listen to an American voice narrating Jane Austen - though that would depend on the person’s accent. Too-flat narrations are no good either, not if I’m paying money to listen to them, and I’m a bit sensitive to overly theatrical performances as well. A while ago, somebody read his own book on Swedish radio and it was just really painful to listen to, because he was trying to do various regional accents. Which is not a good idea unless you are a genious at accents.
There are enough excellent narrators in the world to keep me happy, though. Torgny Lindgren, as I mentioned before, and also my grade 7-9 Swedish teacher who taught us the history of literature partly by reading parts of the classics to us, making them come alive to us in a way that mere reading of the works wouldn’t have done (and I say this, who has always been fond of reading silently to myself.) Unfortunately neither of those gentlemen is available through emusic, which limits itself to English-language literature. I’m looking forward to discovering the best English narrators; I know of a few I like very much, but there has to be hundreds and hundreds that I would like if I’d heard them.
The download is complete and J is setting the table for lunch, so I’ll wrap this up. Keep listening to books.
I just realised that the linkdump the other day was truncated: the winners of the 2007 World Beard and Moustache Championships link was lost. Follow it. You will not be sorry.
Good afternoon. Here is a mixed link dump.
National Awareness Awareness month. Er, yes. Can’t add anything to that.
Gesellschaft zur Stärkung der Verben want to strengthen the verbs in all languages, including English, Swedish and Latin, to make them as strongly verbed as German. (They have haikus and other amusing German language exercises as well.)
A 5-minute reenactment of the Princess Bride, so funny I pretty much fell off my chair.
I’d write something, but my back hurts too much. I will go to bed instead.
But not before providing a link to why I should have been a programmer.
Oh dear, bedtime and no blog post. I’ll just post some game links and hopefully noone’ll notice…
The Great Kitchen Escape is a fun clicky game where the object is to get out of the kitchen.
Treasure Box is some kind of… interactive art, I suppose.
You are lucky! is more than a little reminiscent of GROW! only different.
And Trapped parts one and two are unavailable. That sucks - they were great games and I was waiting for part 3.
Mythaxis is a new online short story magazine, which publishes fantastic fiction (that is, science fiction and fantasy) in English. There is one issue, just published, available at the moment; I have read two of the stories and enjoyed them, so have no compunction about linking to the site. Good quality writing by people I’d like to read more from; mostly previously unknown names but also one story by HG Wells. They welcome submissions of sf/fantasy stories and artwork, btw.
I know the editor of Mythaxis, he is gil of MCiOS fame. I knew he was into sf related activities, and his writing is on par with his widdershins strile. Read Mythaxis Magazine.
I’d like to promote something I rather believe in - the kiva.org website, which is all about microfinance, more specifically microloans. I won’t try to sound as if I know the first thing about economics, but this is how it works: Person A lives in a developing country, and needs a largish sum of money to start or expand a business. “Largish sum” in this case means from the equivalent of US$ 200 up to US$ 1200 or so - let’s say 300 dollars. Too little for a bank to be interested in lending it, and anyway with banks there’s security, and possibly an exorbitant interest rate, and so on. Instead, Person A contacts a local microfinancing institution, where he is investigated to see that he actually seems to be able to repay a loan, and that the money would be used to good purpose. When the local microfinanciers are satisfied, A’s details are relayed to Kiva.org. They publish the information about A on their site. Persons B, C, D, E, F and G visit the site and decide to lend $25 each to A. A takes the money, builds an extension to his shop or some extra stock or whateveer it was he needed the money for, and proceeds to pay back the loan over 10 or 12 months. B, C, D, E, F and G are not rich people and none of them would have been able to lend $300 very easily, but $25 each is no great sacrifice. I know it sounds like something out of Bamse but lending money through Kiva is quite satisfying. Because it isn’t charity, nobody needs to be beholden to us for anything, there is no non-rectifiable debt of gratitude (which I have come to realise is a very fundamental concept for Swedes - but I won’t sidetrack into discussing that here.)
For a lot more detail, see the Kiva website. I’ll just mention, too, that when somebody lends money they must use Paypal - and Kiva is the only organization that Paypal doesn’t charge a fee from for using their service.
Here are some fun games I’ve discovered over the past couple of months or so. Most of them I found at the excellent site Jay is Games (or is it Jayisgames?).
In Bloons you get to throw a dart through a lot of balloons. It’s as silly and satisfying as it sounds, and it gets very difficult after a while. (posted at MCiOS, I can’t remember by whom)
Hoshi Saga is a Flash game where the object is to find a star that’s hidden in each of the 25 levels. Sometimes easy, sometimes quite difficult.
I’m tempted to call Trapped a point-and-click game, because that’s what you do in it, but the author says it isn’t. It is an escape-the-room type of game, with some rather difficult puzzles; I found it very intriguing and fun to play. It’s my favourite kind of game, I think, the kind with a lot of clicking, puzzling and pondering with no time limit or shooting. Part one is available, out of three. I’ve signed up to be told when parts two and three are finished.
Remember the GROW! games? I’ve linked to several different ones over the years. Here is GROW! Tribute, not created by the original GROW! creator, but managing to be very similar. Not as fun, I didn’t think, partly because the music is more annoying. Still worth playing for a few minutes’ entertainment, though. There is a new GROW! game, too: GROW Nano. Which is… less challenging 
Bodilies is another solve-the-story point-and-click puzzle game, and a very beautiful one too, with great music. It’s a while since I played it now, but I really loved it.
I can’t remember if I’ve already linked to Ring Pass Not; I played it all the time a few months ago when it was posted at MCiOS. Beautiful and hooking solitaire-type game.
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