Thursday, December 14, 2006
This blog has just been upgraded to a new version of dasBlog, which apparently provides some new ways to protect bloggists against spam (or "smap" if you prefer). I don't get a lot of visible spam here (comments are fairly well protected by CAPTCHA [except for one or two that seemed to have been added by hand, and were just as easily deleted by hand], trackbacks are disabled, and referrals are not made visible anywhere). But back behind the scenes, there are any number of referral spamming techniques cluttering my logs (spam blogs, dodgy links of various styles, spammy linky postings from open message boards, and so on and so on). But strangely enough, they've almost all been attracted to one particularly exciting post I made last September with the title Spammy, spammy, spammy (which just so happened to mention a few terms that often occur in spammy spams, like poker, diet pills, phentermine, cialis, jackpots, and virtual slots [uh oh, there are those terms again!]). The upgrade log revealed that this entry had received 7683 referrals (where most of my posts are in the low hundreds). So I wonder if a new entry of a similar nature might do the same, as a sort of honeypot attracting smappy interest away from the rest of my posts. If I wrote such an entry, my logs suggest that it probably shouldn't contain terms related to pharmaceuticals like viagra, prozac, zoloft, wellbutrin, thorazine if I want to keep the spam away. I sure wouldn't want spam related to insurance or banking, either, so I'd better avoid using terms like geico, aetna, insure, annuity, account. And when it comes to gambling, I really want to steer clear of slots, roulette, blackjack, poker (although I think I'm safe with three-card monte or baccarat). And I'm terribly afraid what would happen if I mentioned porn. Anyway most of those terms appear in my blacklist, so I'm sure this particular entry will remain pristine, untouched by spammy referrals, comments and so on.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
It's time for another excellent time-wasting website, brought to my attention by a recent post on the Language Log (title: "If you loved The Chomsky Reader, you'll hate The Devil Wears Prada"). This one is the Library Thing, an online book cataloguing system that allows you to see your own collection in the context of other people's collections (N.B. you can only enter 200 books into your "collection" for free [no limit: $10/year or $25/life], but 200 is probably a pretty good start if you have time for it). To me the most interesting aspects of this site are the suggestion/anti-suggestion options. The suggestion option is similar to Amazon's recommendation system (Amazon recommendations are also presented in the Library Thing's suggestion page), "People with this book also have...", based on deviation of actual ownership of a title from the expected ownership based on popularity.
The suggestion system gives results that look like this for a few of my favorite books (I've only looked at the level of individual works; I'm a bit too busy to enter in my own library [or subset thereof]): people who own Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash tend to own other works by Stephenson, also William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and so on. Just like me. Owners of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow seem to have plenty of other Pynchon, plus William Gaddis, David Foster Wallace, John Barth, and Richard Powers. Just like me. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace gives more Wallace (not of IJ quality, I should note), plenty of Pynchon, also Gaddis, Dom DeLillo, Dave Eggers, Jonathan Franzen (plus Michael Chabon who keeps coming up, I'll have to check him out). A Confederacy of Dunces, however, brings up some odd results (differing depending on "v1" vs "v2", a distinction I haven't quite figured out yet*). Top of the table is Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, followed closely by Gravity's Rainbow and a slew of Vonnegut titles, but also Faulkner, Joyce, Nabokov, Irving and Kerouac.
But there's also an anti-suggestion system the unsuggester (people who own X tend not to own Y): People who ownSnow Crash tend not to own Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Church, Henri Nouwen's The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society and Jan Karon's In This Mountain. Owners of Gravity's Rainbow are very short on Tim LaHaye (7 titles in the top 30 "unrecommended"), John Piper (4 titles), also missing out on The Other Side of the Story by Marian Keyes and Petals on the Wind by V.C. Andrews. Infinite Jest readers do not tend to own novels by James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Tamora Pierce and Dean Koontz (this is the only exception I've found: I must admit I do have something by Koontz hanging around the house that has not yet found a suitable home). Finally, A Confederacy of Dunces owners tend not to have Boy Meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship by Joshua Harris, and a mass of books by Sherrilyn Kenyon (seven of the ten unsuggested books).
*The distinction between v1 and v2 is explained in a comment on the LibraryThing blog: "Basically v2 has the "obscurity knob" turned up. It care more about the
ratio of have/expected than the absolute number of have/expected. v1 is
also massaged a bit to dampen high-popularity low-specificity books
(eg., things you read in High School, like the Crucible)."
Monday, December 11, 2006
During our recent trip to the USA, we spent a bit of time visiting bicycle shops in the Pensacola metro area, in search of a new helmet to replace my current one (extra large Giro Laguna) which is starting to show signs of age. Now it's been some time since I've shopped for a helmet (the current one came from my father, who no doubt found it at a super-low price in a clearance sale somewhere), and I've discovered a worrying new trend in cycle helmet fashion.
My previous helmets have all been variations of a general theme: the helmet is secured by a chin-strap which divides just under the ears, plus (lately) a sort of plastic cradle at the back of the head, held in place by the straps. Fine fitting adjustments can be made by shortening or lengthening various parts of the straps, and foam pads of variable thickness (in my case, the thinnest ones available) are placed to ensure that the helmet fits securely against the head. Most new helmets I saw in cycle shops still have the chin straps, but these are used only to ensure that the helmet stays on in a crash. Instead, these helmets are secured by an adjustment system somewhat similar to an adjustable baseball cap. Various companies have their own terms for this sort of system ("ring fit systems", such as Bell's ErgoDial, Giro's Acu-Dial and so on), based on a sound idea: ensuring that helmets are properly fitted so that they will actually protect the head as much as possible in an impact (most helmets are not worn correctly, most commonly leaving the forehead unprotected; see this site for info on "How to fit a bicycle helmet"). Unfortunately, none of these systems seem to accommodate a head that is significantly larger than average (much less a large head wearing a hat for winter warmth). My own head happens to be at least an American size 8, a circumference that goes beyond the range of your readily available ErgoDial etc. products. So I returned to London without a new helmet after all.
Since then I've looked around a bit more. There's a nice page on helmets.org specifically listing the helmets that are available for large-sized heads. At the top of the list are the Bell Kinghead and the Vigor Duo, both of which are advertised as fitting 26-inch heads. So now it's just (I hope "just") a matter of finding someone who carries one of them; my initial google searches show nothing (0 hits for "vigor duo" site:uk; only two for "bell kinghead" site:uk, and both of those are junk/link farm sites). At least there's hope I'll be able to get a helmet that does not require someone making a custom mold of my head.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Below is the text of a letter recently received at the Dunce home. It may explain why we don't seem ourselves lately; it's terribly hard to get through the day after receiving this kind of bad news.
---------------------------------------------------
Dear Darts Fan,
THE LAKESIDE WORLD PROFESSIONAL DARTS CHAMPIONSHIPS 6th-14th JANUARY 2007
We thank you for applying for tickets for the above event.
However due to another record breaking influx of ticket applications it has not been possible to allocate you tickets.
If your application was accompanied by a cheque, it is returned herewith.
If you applied by credit/debit card then all your details have been destroyed in accordance with the data protection act.
We are sorry for any disappointment caused and hope that you will enjoy the BBC TV coverage of this event.
Once again, our thanks,
Sincerely
[signed: digitized scrawl]
The Box Office
Lakeside Country Club.
Monday, December 04, 2006
I've spent the past couple of weeks with Mrs. Dunce on our annual holiday to the U!!S!!A!!, following our new tradition of Thanksgiving with family and then a quiet Christmas at home. I figured I'd be writing about our annoyance at having a flight cancelled and baggage delayed. Or maybe the joys of shopping in the US with a very favorable exchange rate. Or perhaps going on and on about the great restaurants in the Pensacola area and that it's very good for my waistline that I live so far away from them. But no... instead I'll be talking about our triumphant return to London.
It seems that while we were away, someone apparently tried to break into the house next door. I'm not sure when it happened; at some point this weekend we noticed a pane of glass which was suspiciously broken around the window latch. We're especially sensitive to this sort of thing as our own place was burgled on a previous trip out of the country. So we called the police to report the possible break-in (after knocking on the door to make sure no one was home). After a couple of hours a couple of officers arrived (I'm not criticizing their response time, after all this was only a possible break-in which had occurred at an unknown time). They thought there wasn't much that could be done, perhaps slipping a note through the door in case the resident was out of town or something. But the answers we provided to their questions about our neighbor (an older man, not known to us and quite unsociable in general [a couple of early "hello" + waves from me were answered only with a scowl]), plus a few observations by Mrs. Dunce about the lack of noticeable activity for some time before our holiday, led them to break down the door instead (at which time we quickly closed the cat flap, not wanting our inquisitive cat to assist in the investigation). Not long after that, the officers returned to our door with the news that our neighbor was dead, and had been possibly for quite some time. That was all they told us, so we spent much of the rest of the evening twitching our curtains to see what else was going on. Not much, as it turned out: whatever sort of investigation is done on the scene, then lots of police-waiting until a private ambulance arrived. Now the door and window are boarded up, and we'll just have to wait and see what comes of it. There will probably be a small story in the local paper, we may be asked a few questions at some point.
But it's really quite a disturbing turn of events, especially considering that we were the first ones to notice that anything might be amiss. It seems like he must have had no friends, family members, social workers who might have gotten worried and checked in -- the police obviously hadn't been there before. And the only way we noticed anything was because of the apparent burglary (although I hate to imagine how we might have found out otherwise). Very sad to think about.
Friday, November 17, 2006
This week was time for another beer festival, this time at the Pembury, sister pub to our local and quickly rising into the top tier of London real ale pubs since the very early, very quiet days (e.g. my post from January). We've been there on a few occasions since our first visit, and every time it seems to have improved: more customers, something on the walls to improve the ambience, pub games, even a fantastic kitchen. And its rating on Beerintheevening.com has skyrocketed (up to the point at which pubs enter the "top 10" list, where tactical So how could we miss the beer festival?
As soon as we finished work, we jumped on a bus and made our way there. Just in time too, every table but one was occupied (although... the tables are quite large and fairly well suited for sharing). There were 20+ beers available (plus a few in the cellar not quite ready to be served). Ten or so from the Milton brewery, but a good assortment from elsewhere. I have to say the landlord made some excellent choices; it was very hard for us to find anything worse than a "half smile" on our simple beer rating scale (explained at the bottom of this post). And not because of drinking to excess; we chose to drink half-pints in order to taste more of them. Along the way we had a very nice dinner (the special Ploughman's sandwich featuring four different Neal's Yard cheeses for me [I've already reached the point where I find it difficult to even consider anything else], a vegetable cheese bake for Mrs. Dunce, and an order of root vegetable chips [fries] for both of us), and we finally took a chance at playing bar billiards (thanks to a local friend of ours who taught us how to play, thrashing us in the process). The pub seemed quite busy all night which is very encouraging. Without further ado, here are the beers and our ratings (note that only the "owner" of a beer was permitted to give it a rating. Where there were two ratings, we each had one.):
Dark Star: Old Ale (4.0%). Full smile rating from me, half smile from Mrs. Dunce. This was a dark beer with quite a smoky taste. Not quite as strong as the German Rauchbiers but sometimes the latter are somewhat like drinking a big glass of bacon. Mrs. Dunce thought it was a little too much smoke for the time of day (although thanks to the Pembury's no-smoking policy this was the only smoke we experienced).
Dark Star: Winter Meltdown (5.0%). Mrs. Dunce's beer of the night (full smile rating). Not as flavorful as you would expect from the beer tasting notes which ran to four lines. But very drinkable, and a good hit of ginger as an interesting touch.
Milestone: Crusader (4.4%). Full smile, A blonde Belgian-style ale, very smooth and tasty but perhaps slightly too balanced for me. I did still like it quite a bit.
Milestone: Rich Ruby (4.5%). Mrs. Dunce gave it a half-smile. Initially it was horrible: the aroma was vaguely reminiscent of urine (verified by me [not that I went and smelled some urine, but that I sniffed the beer too and agreed]) and this carried over into the first sip or two. After that it was fairly nice, but hard to get that initial impression out of your mind.
Milton: Gargantua (5.6%). I was going to avoid the Milton beers which are usually readily available at the Pembury and the Oakdale. But I'd never tasted this one before, and the description "extremely hoppy" suggested it was my kind of tipple. Yes indeed, a full smile it is, and my choice for beer of the night. Maybe a little less than subtle, but I'm a sucker for the hops.
Milton: Mammon (7.0%). I had one of these late in the evening: it's just too strong, and rich, and sweet, and everything else. The notes indicate that it was brewed in September 2005 and had over a year to mature. It was just too much and I had to give it a flat-mouth rating. A special offer was noted, a pint of Mammon and a plate of Stilton for £4. Stilton is perhaps the only food that could stand up to the aged Mammon. Just not my thing on this occasion.
Nottingham: Bullion (4.7%). I rated this one only a half-smile, rather bland and light in flavor. Lacking any sort of distinct finish, but still nice enough.
Nottingham: Dreadnought (4.5%). Mrs. Dunce was blown away by the flavor, describing it as quite biscuity, and almost too complex for its own good. Still deserving of a full smile rating.
Saffron: EPA (3.9%). Mrs. Dunce gave this one a half smile. It's a bit hoppy but all right. She prefers the malty beers; I've had this one before and thought it quite nice, although light and perhaps better suited for summer.
Saffron: Silent Night (5.2%). Described as a dark and hoppy bitter, so I jumped at the chance to try it. It didn't seem so hoppy to me, but more chocolatey and stoutish. I still found it quite lovely, giving it a full smile rating.
Springhead: Cromwell's Hat (6.0%). Mrs. Dunce gave this one another full smile: malty with a cinnamon hit (although she didn't notice the juniper mentioned in the tasting notes).
Finally we had two beers as a sort of quiz challenge: Tring: Buzby (4.0%) and Tring: "It's for you!" (4.0%). The quiz came from the tasting notes ("Amber coloured and spicy. Suggestions gratefully received as to what the spice actually is"). Sadly, we had no idea what the spice might be (and didn't even notice the spice in the "It's for you!"). I took the Buzby, giving it a half smile as "decent but not special"; Mrs. Dunce appreciated the maltier character of the "It's for you!" (I'm not sure I approve of drinking beer whose name contains multiple punctuation marks) but didn't rate it higher than a half smile.
And that's about it. We were a little disappointed that a couple of the listed beers were not being served yet (Nottingham's Rock Mild, and Milton's Marcus Aurelius in particular), but the selection was already plenty good.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Lest you think my sneering at the quality of local news is limited to my old hometown newspaper, let me share with you a story from my current local weekly.
Sex shop hoax by builders
CROUCH End was bracing itself for its first sex shop shop - but it all turned out to be a hoax.
A shopfitter working on the conversion of a shop in Topsfield Parade scrawled an announcement that a sex shop was opening there as a joke.
Eyebrows were raised by shoppers and local business owners when the note appeared last Monday morning in the window of the former HAM Estates office on Topsfield Parade, Crouch End, brazenly declaring: "This is new Crouch Hill sex shop".
It wasn't long before nearby workers and passers-by started asking questions, but things started sounding fishy when a Journal reporter made some inquiries.
Sniggering builders admitted that the sex shop sign had been a joke.
The note was removed by Wednesday lunchtime. When the truth - that the shop was going to be a rather less racy estate agents - was revealed, some local shopkeepers seemed a little disappointed.
One said: "It would have been more exciting than another estate agents." Another said: "My reaction was 'brilliant!' and At least it's not another clothes shop."
But not everyone was fooled. "I knew it was a fake," said Pizza Hut manager Jason Ireton. "The note was on the outside. Obviously you are not going to get a sex shop in this area.
This story has it all: sex, comedy, quotes from local notables, even a very-badly written sentence that jumps out and smacks you in the face with its badness (I refer of course to the phrase "as a joke" which really wants to modify the nearby verb phrase "was opening" rather than the intended verb "scrawled").
(link to story, but who knows how long the link will remain active).
Friday, November 10, 2006
I just went to the webpage of my old hometown newspaper. At the top of the page:
Breaking News: Which Sunday Comics are your favorite?
It's good to see things haven't changed much around there.
Over the past couple of months Mrs. Dunce
and I have been on a house-hunting mission. London property is
massively overpriced, yet incredibly fast-moving, so it's been quite a
frustrating enterprise. We divided up the responsibilities in a very
unfair and uneven manner (partly because of differing workloads at the
moment, but mainly because of Mrs. Dunce's greater dedication and my
own laziness): she was the primary "property finder", regularly
searching various online sources, contacting estate agents and setting
up viewings; my main job (aside from the occasional secondary property
search, providing a second opinion on the "possible" properties, and of
course viewings) was that of Primary Negotiator in the event we
actually found a place.
Early days were really rough: from the very start we spotted any number
of flats and small houses within our budget, and potentially of
interest, but every time we rang an estate agent to see about looking
at one of them, we heard the same old news: "sorry, it's already under
offer". We later learned that properties are selling so quickly that
estate agents are hesitant to mail out property information sheets; by
the time a sheet arrives in the post, the property will very likely
have sold. It was also quite hard for us to arrange viewings: not very
many agents were willing to show a property after work, and Saturday
appointments were quite hard to come by. But we eventually started to
fit a few of them in. Here are some descriptions of the places we got
to see (I may be missing a few due to repressed memory of traumatic
events)
A ground floor flat in a Victorian (or maybe a little post-Vic)
conversion, with the tiniest kitchen I've ever seen. Big enough for one
person to stand in, but not enough space to do any sort of actual
cooking.
A decent, more recently built (post WW2) ground floor flat, tucked back
into the corner of a sort-of-busy street. Nothing was really wrong with
this one (Mrs. Dunce sort of liked it), but the front of the building
and its street had quite a shabby feel. This one did remain a "maybe we
should have" property for quite some time after we decided "no".
Another ground-floor flat in a Victorian conversion. This one had
decent bedrooms, kitchen, living room, but the bathroom was a real
problem. It was built in a tiny extension, and the ceiling was low
enough that I could not stand upright in the shower.
Next, we went to Mrs. Dunce's old student neighborhood (our ideal
location, we had sort of decided) to look at a 3-bedroom place. The
living area was giant (maybe even too big) and the bedrooms were
upstairs (always good--it means less noise from neighbors). But oddly
laid out: you had to go through one of the bedrooms to get to another
one, the (separate) toilet and bathroom were jammed into a corner next
to the kitchen, and the kitchen itself was built in a flat-roofed
extension that may have had some dampness issues. We liked it well
enough to make an offer, though. And finally it was time for my
negotiating skills to shine. We made our offer by phone, and had it
rejected on the spot. Mulled it over, called back with another offer,
and waited for several days. Turns out someone else bought it for the
asking price, which would have been quite a stretch for us given the
likely need to do additional work.
A bit more time passed, and we decided to have a look at something very
different: a "modern" ex-local authority flat, built in perhaps the
early 1960s. It's also sitting right at the edge of a very large, very
notorious council estate (but which is in the early stages of a very
substantial makeover). We walked inside and loved it. An older lady had
been living there for ages, the rooms were all very well proportioned,
upstairs bedrooms, etc. The area definitely falls into "not-so-great",
in fact, it is listed as "ACORN type 56", the lowest possible ranking
on the ACORN scale
("the leading geodemographic tool used to identify and understand the
UK population and the demand for products and services". The ACORN
scale deserves an entry all its own): As described by upmystreet.com "Many
of the people who live in this sort of postcode will live in crowded
flats in multi-ethnic areas... 70% of the housing is purpose built
blocks of flats. The flats tend to have one or two bedrooms and are
rented from the council or housing associations. The large numbers of
children living in these small flats make these homes the most
overcrowded in the UK.". Or as the ACORN site puts it, "Hard
Pressed: Inner City Adversity". But even more concerning than possible
poverty and adversity were the signs in the neighbors' windows, giving
a comforting message something like "Please don't tear down our homes."
We asked the estate agent about this, and he reassured us, telling us
that he had spoken to someone from the council, and they were not going
to be demolished after all. We weren't convinced and did a little
research (we were still interested in possibly making an offer if this
statement was true). Mrs. Dunce rang the council and, surprise,
surprise, demolition is still on track, planned within the next couple
of years. I see that at this very moment the property is still being
listed HERE,
by Courtneys Estate Agents. Needless to say we did not bother putting
in an offer on it. Maybe you would like to. I hear from the agent that
demolition has been cancelled.
This last property gave us a different sort of idea: maybe we like the
idea of living in an ex-local authority property, where the rooms tend
to be of sizes a little more suitable for modern living of the type we
prefer to do. So we checked out a couple more of them (in different
areas, and definitely offered by different estate agents than the last
one). Both had decent-sized rooms, and private gardens, but both of
them were set in fairly depressing-looking areas of a vaguely run-down
nature. And both were rather shabby, sort of halfway through
renovation; I think the owners had started, then run out of
time/energy/money.
We were really starting to get depressed, but then it got even worse.
First, we saw a recently-developed Victorian conversion, which had been
done up to a very nice standard, but which also had very limited space
(a second bedroom that would maybe fit a futon, and a nice but very
small kitchen, the whole place was small enough that it would take some
clever doing to fit a table anywhere but outside). But little did we
know that the worst of the lot was yet to come. This was a
three-bedroom flat, again of an ex-local authority nature. Mrs. Dunce's
extensive research had revealed that this very flat had sold earlier in
the year, at a price £30,000 less than the current asking price. We
figured someone had bought it, put a little money into it, and was
hoping to get a quick profit out of it. Boy, were we wrong. Now, it's
somewhat hard to get a sense of space when a place is being occupied by
a family of nine (who were present while we were looking at it). And
it's somewhat hard to see past crayon-scribbled walls and various bits
of who-knows-what flung around the place. But it's definitely easy to
see a completely collapsed ceiling in one of the bedrooms, drooping
window frames and obvious structural problems, and an ancient, decrepit
hot-water boiler that looked like it was ready to blow at any moment
(we peeked at the boiler, then gingerly crept backwards as slowly and
carefully as we could). When we left we were completely shell-shocked
(perhaps latent effects of the first WW2 bomb to land in Tottenham,
which destroyed this immediate area). The following days were not happy
ones (after all, the asking price was right in the neighborhood of what
we thought we could manage).
But the next week, things changed completely. On the Friday just after
work we saw an excellent place, on a very nice street (turns out to be
ACORN type 15: [not 13 as I originally wrote, but still...]). It has
its flaws (chiefly: very narrow bedrooms), but we really liked it (we
were also lucky in that we saw it on the very first day it was on the
market). We went back the next day, tape measure in hand, to see
whether it could work. And it could! We were pretty certain we would
make an offer, but we did have another place to see.
And it was back to the very first area we had noticed (and from which
all the available properties had sold just the moment we started
looking seriously). Definitely a less affluent area, but full of small
two-bedroomed houses (originally built as workers' cottages). It was
quite nice (though cozy), but we were so dazzled by the
previously-mentioned place it stood no chance.
We've now made an offer on the aforementioned place, and it's been
accepted, so now we're going through the various painful steps toward
finalizing the deal (the less said about any of that, the better. And
I've intentionally left out a bunch of details because I don't want to
jinx anything). The current owner is hoping to finalize her own new
place by the end of January, so we're hoping everything goes smoothly
from here on out. I have carefully avoided mentioning specific prices;
I'll just say **GULP**.
Oh yeah, during the final decision stage, I did sneak away from work
one afternoon to look at one other place that had just come onto the
market: a small semi-detached house backing onto a cemetery (Mrs.
Dunce's dream, believe it or not). It was in a really village-like
cul-de-sac, with loads of mature trees around, and plenty of outdoor
space (not even counting the cemetery which I am sure would have been a
real treat for the cat). Unfortunately it required a lot of work (holes
in the floor, possible structural problems, just about everything
inside would need replacing), and since my DIY skills are limited to
changing light bulbs and vacuuming, I thought it was definitely not for
us.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
A while back I stumbled across the Acronym Finder. It's always interesting (to me) to put in people's initials and see what else comes up. Before I continue, a brief digression into acronyms and related terms (from the Acronym Finder's "about" page): "An acronym is a pronounceable word formed from each of the first letters of a descriptive phrase or by combining the initial letters or parts of words from the phrase.... An acronym is actually a type of abbreviation. Our database contains abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms and we make no distinction between them in our database or on our site. We are more interested in defining "acronyms" for you than we are in trying to properly distinguish between abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms."
So now to my own initials: Only seven are listed; the top-rated entries are Desert Patrol Vehicle and Diver Propulsion Vehicle, and if I had to pick one of them, it would be Dynamically Positioned Vessel. The related Acronym Attic gives quite a few more (48, in contrast to the 7 "carefully reviewed and edited" DPVs in Acronym Finder; acronyms found in the Acronym Attic have not been reviewed by humans), including a few I'd be proud to represent. Description of Plant Viruses, Delivering Profitable Value, but perhaps the best of all is Disease Pest and Vermin. If you wonder what DPV stands for, you can't do much worse than Disease Pest and Vermin.
For Mrs. Dunce there are some choices. Her full married name has no entries in the Acronym Finder, and only four in the Attic (Annual Register of Book Values? Architects Registration Board of Victoria?). Before she joined the land of the Vs, she had 44 to choose from in the Acronym Finder. Top-rated options incude Arbitrageur, Airbag, Anti-Roll Bar, and the Armee Revolutionnaire Bretonne; other good choices are Armored Rifle Battalion, American Royal Barbecue, or the Ann Arbor, MI airport code. And I don't even want to go into the Attic where more than 100 ARBs await me. Well, ok then, but don't say I didn't warn you (Approves Rice Burning? Automatic Rubber Banding? Australian Roo Bar? And Rear on Board? Abuse the Right Back?). Clearly it's a good thing she joined up with the Vs. Where she can take her pick of a reasonable 14, including Antiretroviral, Approximate Retail Value, or any number of vehicles that are armed, armored or airborne (Armed Robotic Vehicle, anyone?). The Attic has 62, all of a classy nature (e.g. Anti Rabies Vaccination, Adding Real Value, Animal Rights and Vegetarianism).
Yes, I am jealous that Mrs. Dunce's initials (not counting her full married name) could be considered an acronym (as they are pronounceable as a word) while mine are only an initialism.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Here's a headline I saw today (maybe not technically a headline as it was actually printed on a placard to advertise a story in one of today's newspapers, but it's still a lot like a headline), which oddly seems to be made up entirely of nouns:
CITY LAWYER MURDER TRIAL DRAMA
OK, perhaps there's some ambiguity with the word "murder" (is "murder trial" a noun-noun compound or a verb-noun compound), but its nouniness was enough to catch my eye ("something is wrong with that headline", said my eye). There's no shortage of recommendations to avoid "noun strings", but at least the ambiguity in this one is fairly limited. But I have one real complaint: it's missing the word "fury" which no good tabloid newspaper noun string headline (how's that for a noun string?) should be without.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
At the moment, we Dunces are currently involved in the difficult, stressful process of searching for a house to buy. Instead of writing about mortgages, leaseholds, freeholds, (I'm glazing over just writing the words), I thought I'd revisit the language topic of eggcorns, described in the online Eggcorn Database as a type of linguistic error reflecting "spontaneous reshapings of known expressions", such as the use of "eggcorn" instead of "acorn". I've recently run into a few interesting examples:
owness instead of "onus": as in "Folks who are going to be watching this film [Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ] need to educate themselves about how to watch the film. The owness is on churches as well as synagogues." (CNN Live Sunday transcript). Google lists over 200 hits for "owness is on", vs. 774,000 (searching for "owness" on its own gives an assortment of things, not all of which are eggcorns for "onus", such as "Sickness and Owness" which I guess means "the state of 'OW'!!", or "U2 Albums in Order of must-owness"). This is a characteristic example of an eggcorn: onus (etymological origin, Latin onus, "burden, load" [OED]) is a very uncommon word, and its replacement "owness" (or "oweness", with its 52 google hits "oweness is on") can quite nicely be interpreted as "a state of owing someone something" ("owe" coming from a totally different etymological origin than "onus"). Once you start looking for variants of an eggcorn it's often not hard to find interesting variants, such as one instance of "ownuss", "...if you do not get a gas cert then the ownuss is on you to keep records to show that you at least checked things out...". I'd imagine this is some sort of link between owning and responsibility.
dribble instead of "drivel". I first noticed this one in the spoken form (by someone I know who will remain anonymous). Because I know this person fairly well (and perhaps because my social graces are somewhat lacking) I had no hesitation at all in prodding them for more details. "It makes sense," said my informant, "because it's like they don't think about what they're saying and it just sort of dribbles out of their mouth like spit." This is an especially good example, as it brings the meaning of "drivel" back to some of its former uses: OED's first definition of the noun "drivel", with examples from the 14th century "Spittle flowing from the mouth; slaver, dribblings. Now rare.". The subsequent evolution of "drivel", "Idiotic utterance; silly nonsense; twaddle." is first attested in 1852. It's a little harder to find Google examples (unless you cheat by looking for drivel and dribble together, to see whether anyone else has written about this comparison. Which they have, but I figured I may as well avoid their examples and find some for myself), since "dribble" is a perfectly acceptable word in the right contexts. But it's not too hard; you just need to come up with a decent phrase in which "drivel" should appear, and replace it with "dribble". Here's one: "talking a lot of dribble" (a forum posting, someone appears to be making an idle thread of legal action against another forum poster who is "talking a lot of dribble" on some topic related to The Legend of Zelda). Just one example does not demonstrate a highly-used eggcorn, but it's encouraging. Then I struck the motherlode (or "motherload" as often eggcorned), "load of dribble". Would you believe nearly 800 Google hits? From my totally unscientific investigation of the first few instances of "load of dribble" I would suggest that this phrase is almost always used in a ranting context, and seems to correlate quite well with the use of run-on sentences and other language uses which might be considered anomalous, variant and/or wrong.
untilmatum instead of "ultimatum". Google only shows a handful of them (depending how many fingers you have, if you prefer to interpret "handful" in the literal sense [which is not actually a literal sense of "handful" because the way hands work, a handful is not actually likely to contain fingers {unless they have been removed from someone else's hand(s), for example, in which case there is no requirement that there be exactly five of them, but I digress}]), but this is such a beautiful example of an eggcorn I couldn't pass it by. You obviously wait until you have no other choice before delivering an untilmatum.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Here's one of the best scam email messages I've received in a long time. It arrived in ALL CAPS, without line breaks or anything, but it was so hard to read I've converted it into a readable format. It's not quite enough to tempt me into a career change, but I hear Canada, USA is a great place to work.
Canadian hotels Canada,
Welcome to Hotel Omini this is Canada Hotels in Canada, this my phone number you can call us any time from morning to night, I1-806-359-6279, or international dial 561-753-3993.
Canada.
Sign.
By Hotel Canadian .
Hello dear the manegements and the staff of Hotel Canadian wish to inform you for an a job vacancy at Hotel Canadian from 27-1-006 read cerefully so that you will understand.
Now, the hotels need a group of 5-10 men and woman who can work and live in hotels in canada, u.s.a
this is how the work can be and about ur payment of salary? , this is the type of work
a, waching cars in hotel. --- every month salary - 1200 us doollars
b, clean in the hotels room.-- every month salary -1800 us dollars
c, sale in the bar hotel.----------- every month salary -1700 us dollars
d, or men who want to sex with grils. --every month salary - 2000 us
these are the things hotel need from u 'and you have to apply with you internationl passport number
thanks mrs c g rose grand christana
I have not corresponded with this particular individual but I imagine they will request a small processing fee to handle my application, perhaps followed by a slightly larger but entirely reasonable fee for document verification, perhaps followed by a somewhat larger fee for necessary lawyer's fees (what can we do?! everyone knows lawyers are expensive!), perhaps followed by an additional fee for security clearance checking, perhaps followed by any number of fees, and during this process no doubt the nonexistent Hotel Omini will have already filled its nonexistent jobs with nonexistent people who will no doubt excel at their jobs of waching cars, clean in hotels room, sale in the bar hotel, and wanting to sex with grils.
Oh yeah, if you google the telephone numbers in the email messages, you can see that a few different variants of this scam are floating around out there.
Monday, October 23, 2006
The front of our house features a rather sizable hedge which serves to separate our front "garden" (a mostly paved, mostly weedy area behind a waist-high brick wall) from that of the neighbors (I suppose they are "neighbours" and not "neighbors"). It's a pain to trim it as we only have an old, rusty pair of hedge clippers. And also because the top is fairly high, requiring somebody to stand on a rickety stepladder and reach over the top of it. That somebody has to be me, as I am significantly taller than Mrs. Dunce, and have impressively long monkey-like arms that, in theory, should allow me to successfully reach every wildly-growing bit of the hedge. Given my lazy tendencies, it's not really a surprise that I've trimmed the hedge only about three times (err, exactly three times) in the year and a half we've lived in the house.
A few weeks ago, there was an added impetus to trim it, as the aforementioned neighbours went through a flurry of yard work, including a neat trim of their side of the hedge. Since then it's been very noticeably asymmetric, and on multiple occasions Mrs. Dunce has observed that it sure would be nice if our side of the hedge were similarly trimmed. (Such observations may have also been made by Mrs. Dunce's mother, who happened to be visiting during my trip to Poland. If so, they have only been passed to me indirectly, through the impressive channeling abilities of Mrs. Dunce herself). Some of her observations have been more like requests, I should note, but none have (quite) reached the status of direct orders. So I have gradually become resigned to the possibility that indeed, on some brisk, dry, but not too windy weekend afternoon (conditions ideal for hedge trimming, and also rare enough that I've been able to avoid the job until now) I will have no choice but to drag out the stepladder, oil the trimmer, move the cat safely away from the blades, and commence a hedge trim the likes of which hasn't been seen since Elvis joined the army. Or so I thought.
But then, suddenly, we received an announcement through the mail slot. "Dunce", it said, "Your laziness has been rewarded." Well, maybe not in those exact words. But it seems that, through a neighbourhood improvement initiative, area hedges will be trimmed at no charge in early November. A telephone number is provided, in case you do not want your hedge trimmed. So a truly ideal situation for a lazy Dunce with an overgrown hedge. If you want your hedge trimmed, do nothing. I may extend this approach to all other aspects of gardening.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Sorry it’s been quite a while since I updated, thanks to the usual routine of just too busy to do anything. I’ve finally found a corner of sort-of-free time to write the last in my current cycle tourism series. We got up for the last morning of riding, fortified ourselves with a hefty hotel breakfast (giant omelette filled with strange assorted canned vegetables), then consulted the maps to decide on the best route back to Krakow. There was a small problem, though: only one of us had a map with sufficient detail to show all the roads on our desired route: taking roads as small as possible to avoid the main highways wherever we could (Not to say we were traveling without maps. Everyone had a map that showed highways both major and minor). The owner of the detailed map was, of course, your narrator (the Dunce is not above over-planning his activities, perhaps to a fault). Anyway, our plan was to stick together fairly closely, so that we’d all manage to make the correct turns at the correct moments. Not a problem; the previous day’s ride gave us a pretty good idea that we’d overestimated the amount of climbing we’d have to do (therefore making it easier to stick together: climbing sections are where groups separate quite quickly).
After the previous evening’s ride into Nowy Sacz (along a very busy highway) it was incredibly gratifying that getting out of town was much easier: immediately after crossing a bridge at the edge of the old town, we suddenly found ourselves on a quiet suburban two-lane road which quickly became quite rural (I guess Nowy Sacz style urban sprawl only happens in certain directions). And then the first climb commenced. Contrary to our expectations there were a number of climbs, the first of which led almost immediately to a separation of the group into three or four subgroups (each containing one or two riders). I, holder of the map, was unfortunately not in the lead group, and a combination of this with some badly lacking (i.e. absent) road signage led us to miss our first turn and continue for some distance on a more major road than any of us would have preferred. It was still only a minor highway but had quite a bit of traffic. This caused a bit of upheaval among the more athletically-inclined members (member) of our group who preferred to be in charge of both leading and route planning rather than leaving it to someone somewhere behind him on the road. A transfer of the map was effected about this time. We continued onward, the group splitting once again, and foolishly some of the rearguard decided to take a brief(?) stop to check out another wooden church. Unfortunately this did not bode well for the newly-appointed map-holder who had suddenly become very concerned about the possibility of reaching Krakow before dark, and issued a command that none of us should stop at churches, and further that we should follow the most direct route to Krakow. This may have been an entirely reasonable fear given the unexpected amount of climbing, and the inaccurate measure of distance on our first day riding. However, it may also have been related to the newly-appointed map-holder’s failure to realize the extent of the change in map scale (going from 1:500,000 to 1:200,000) and thus overestimating the distance remaining by 100% or more. Or something; in any event any sensible reader should find it quite obvious that I'm exaggerating the degree of conflict for narrative effect (perhaps highly ineffectively).
I might mention here that despite some degree of mental anguish (on the part of the newly appointed map holder, that we might not make it to Krakow before dark, and that some of us were lollygagging to an unacceptable degree. On the part of others, that the newly appointed map holder had gone power-mad for no apparent reason, and that we should lollygag more just out of spite), the scenery was still quite nice. Well-off farming communities for the most part along pretty river valleys, and on up into the hills.
I might be giving a sort of grumbling tone, but it was actually quite fine as we were making good time (especially for those whose scale of the map was somewhat distorted). However, the quality of the road surface was gradually deteriorating, and suddenly we found ourselves at the junction of a major highway leading to Krakow (and the only road that appeared on my map that went anywhere near where we wanted to go). Not only a major highway but a narrow, two lane highway with no shoulder and loads of fast-moving traffic. Mere moments (not even minutes!) after joining this road, three out of four of us were run off the road by a passing bus which not only failed to give us any room whatsoever, but would have run us over had we not taken to the (highly undesirable) ditch. As we had no other choice (and only 4km or so before we reached the next town), we tightened the straps on our helmets and took off at the highest pace we could manage, keeping an eye on the shoulder and intentionally ducking off instead of being hit or crushed. As soon as we hit the outskirts of town we took to the sidewalks, then flopped down in a small park by the intersection of the two busiest, most dangerous small highways any of us had ever seen. None of us wanted to ride on such a road ever again, yet the only slightly direct route to Krakow was on that nasty road we'd just left (which no doubt only got worse as Krakow approached). Fortunately we figured out that we were quite close to Krakow: maybe 20km. So a much less direct route would still get us there in plenty of time (as it was still the very early hours of afternoon. Just seemed like evening. We planned to take the two long sides of a right triangle instead of its hypotenuse, and given that the two sides were approximately equal in length we could have had a pretty good estimate of distance, had any of us been capable of rational thought at that point. The riding was a little less interesting: terrain had flattened out and just about everything reminded me of northern Indiana (guess that's why a lot of Poles ended up there).
At least there weren't any buses or big trucks trying to wipe us out, but this last part of the ride was becoming a bit tedious. Flat and fairly dull, and without promise of much more (from the hills we had seen that everything flattened out most of the way to Krakow). So instead we headed straight north, planning to intersect a railway line with a general plan to take a train west to Krakow central station (thus avoiding the very undesirable concept of riding west into the major built-up and industrial areas of Krakow, right about rush hour and with the sun right in our eyes (and in the eyes of the assassins behind the wheels of buses and trucks). Before long, there it was, a train station (or at least two platforms with people idly waiting for the next train). Some 45 minutes later (30 minutes late) the train for Krakow arrived, signaling the end of our bike ride. The journey was not complete, however, as we, our bicycles and our filth crowded into two entry/exit compartments for the ride. Scheming looking young men soon joined us in the compartments, looking very suspiciously at us and our bikes. I thought surely we were about to be robbed or something, and I wasn't pleased at all when one of them forced one of the doors open while the train was still moving (his companion watching down the train for authorities). I held onto the bike (as if using it for balance) and made mental plans about what I would do if (a) I were thrown off the train, (b) my bike was thrown off the train, (c) I and my bike were thrown off the train, (d) various other criminal activities upon my person and/or belongings. Turns out they were just sneaking into the entry/exit compartment to smoke. Reality 1, paranoia 0. (Or so "They" would like you to think. Anyway, we made it to the station, and to the hotel without further incident.
Distance ridden for the day: a not-so pleasant 52.9 miles
Time on the bikes for the day: 5:00 (moving time)
Moving average: 10.6mph
Maximum speed: 35.0mph.
Today's altitude profile was unexpectedly peaky though nowhere near as nasty as that first day:
Total distance for the trip came out at 266 miles, total riding time 23 hours and 36 minutes.
The last night in Krakow was uneventful; we were too tired to do much of anything. Dismantling and packing the bicycles, then showers and an ordinary meal at a fast-foodish Georgian restaurant, then straight to bed with no shenanigans of any kind. And the trip back home was entirely ordinary (and home was a very very good place to be).
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
With four snoring gentlemen in one small room, it's no real surprise that we were up quite early. Our quality accommodation offered no breakfast (although it did have a somewhat rundown kitchen, which might have been useful if we'd have bothered to buy any foodstuffs besides Snickers bars and beer). No problem, we'd just find a restaurant in the town centre. Well, after walking into several different establishments, we were sorely disappointed: we were looking for something a little more substantial than coffee or beer (half of the customers were having coffee for breakfast, the other half pints of beer). Eventually we found ourselves at a sandwich shop, very much a Slovakian equivalent of Subway (I might note here that in our entire time in Slovakia we didn't see any of the ubiquitous American chains: no Subway, KFC, McDonalds, Starbucks, nor any of your familiar large retailers). I had a big-ol sandwich with an odd mix of the non-meaty things on offer: boiled egg, mushrooms, cheese, pickled peppers, cabbage/slaw, onions, tomato, mustard. We sat there, gobbling our sandwiches and wondering what happened to the concept of breakfast in Bardejov.
Our original misconception was that today's ride might be the most difficult of them all, but our more informed reinspection of the maps gave a much more pleasant impression: hilly but not mountainous. We set off north from Bardejov toward the Polish border. Or we would have, except that P. discovered one of the bolts on his rack had worked itself loose and disappeared. Fortunately there was a bike shop on the main square, and they gave him a suitable replacement bolt (for free!). And then we actually did set off. Once again the weather was perfect for riding; slightly chilly, sunny, with a light breeze. Hazy/misty off in the distance but which had dissipated by the time we reached it. Roads were quite empty, apart from the occasional Mercedes (unusual compared to the rest of the traffic we'd seen in Slovakia). The last Slovakian town we passed was Becherov, the only place that had a Cyrillic sign:
The early part of the ride was a 6-mile climb (250m) up to the border crossing; here's a shot of a couple of us getting ready to attack the steepest part of it:
Although both countries are part of the EU the crossing is quite a serious one. High fences, gates, numerous guards with guns, motorbikes, jeeps and so on. And very quiet in terms of traffic: only a couple of cars passed through while we loitered on the Slovakian side (spending our SKK at the border shop, which unfortunately offered only chocolate and alcohol). Our passports were closely inspected, but none of us did anything rash or silly and we were permitted to pass. The road surface was very nice and we cruised downhill for the next 12 miles or so (passed several times by border patrol people on the aforementioned motorbikes and jeeps). The countryside was quite scenic: nice rolling hills and fairly prosperous-looking farms.
We climbed another long uphill section, and discovered to our general displeasure that its downhill counterpart contained some of the worst road surfaces we'd faced so far: not so many large potholes but innumerable small holes, broken surfaces and all the other properties that make a speedy descent a truly bone-jarring process. Not only bone-jarring but bicycle-jarring as well: all of MJ's chainring bolts had become slightly loose (fortunately these are easily tightened). Far worse, we discovered that P's rear cassette had jiggled itself extremely loose. As we didn't have the exact tool designed to tighten it, we would be stopping every five miles or so to tighten it back down as best we could. One more climb and then it was downhill the rest of the way to Nowy Sacz. It's fairly big (pop. ~80,000) and we found ourselves riding along a quite busy highway to the city centre. There we stumbled across a very nice hotel just off the main square, the Panorama (overlooking the river valley):
The rooms were good, the staff were very helpful, and there was even a quite secure sort of cellar area where we could stash the bicycles. MJ and P set off to find a cycle shop where P's cassette could be properly tightened (after a small wild goose chase they did find a workshop, where all it took was a good turn with a long-handled cassette wrench), and HH and I went on a less difficult mission (finding a nice outdoor cafe where we could have a coffee and a beer and some snacks). Nowy Sacz seems to have some interesting sights but we were much more inclined to sit and relax. Once the "cassette mission" had been completed, we took a bit of a wander, stopping for a couple of Zywiec Porters at a very lovely art deco jazz bar.
Dinner was at a very nice (although deserted) basement restaurant ("Restauracja Kupiecka") specializing in traditional Polish food. The cassette-mission boys went for the "most traditional/typical" option, pork in a prune sauce with buckwheat grits. They weren't a fan of this dish at all. However both HH and I had extremely delicious food: mine was trout in a creamy sauce, HH's was a venison dish, rated as perhaps the best food on the trip. And then it was time for a short wander round the square before returning to the hotel. Some of us had to stop and pose for a picture with the Pope sculpture:
MJ (front), Pope (rear)
Distance ridden for the day: a very pleasant 50.9 miles
Time on the bikes for the day: 4:15 (moving time)
Moving average: 11.9mph
Maximum speed: 37.7mph.
It was a gradual-up-and-down day:
Total distance for the ride so far: 212.8 miles, and only one more day of riding left.