Entries tagged with geeky

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In which she makes a calendar

I came across The World's Smallest Calendar today, which is awesome, and I think it'd be cool to have on the back of the Moo cards I've been hypothetically pondering for a while but could never think what to put on the back of.

Problem is that there's no chance I'd use them all up in a single calendar year. So I spent the evening creating this, which should last until 2099. Oh, except for the Easters.

Questions:
1. How many instructions does it need to be useful to anyone other than me?
2. There's no way that's fitting on a Moo card, is there?

(I've got a tab-delimited file of just the text if anyone wants it.)

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In which she is a serious writer doing serious research

The 16th century has the best dirty jokes ever.

A man that was ryght iolous on his wyfe, dreamed on a nyght as he laye a bed with her & slepte, that the dyuell aperd vnto him and sayde: woldest thou nat be gladde, that I shulde put the in suretie of thy wyfe? yes sayde he. Holde sayde the dyuell, as longe as thou hast this rynge vpon thy fynger, no man shall make the kockolde. The man was gladde therof, And whan he awaked, be founde his fynger in his wiues ars.

(A small selection in modernised spelling. Find the full text in a library near you.)

ETA: Also, this guy is so not talking about a bird.

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In which she turns towards more mundane explanations

So again last night Boots went to sleep on my beanbag as soon as I'd abandoned it, and in the wee hours walked on my hair until I let her in the bed with me.

While pondering this over lunch today it belatedly occurred to me that it has actually been quite cold these last days. My beanbag when I've been sitting on it for several hours must be the second-warmest thing in the house -- preferable to the warmest thing (me in my electric-blanket-toasted bed, spoiled for the cat by my heavy bedcovers) for the five or six hours it apparently takes the living room and beanbag to cool down to an uncomfortable temperature.

Duh.

(Now wondering whether and how new beans in the beanbag would affect its thermodynamic behaviour. Also trying to resist the temptation to graph overnight low temperatures against the length of time it takes Boots to climb into bed with me.)

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geeky,
shiny

In which she plays with the shiny

On Sunday I finally reconciled my inner magpie and my inner miser and ordered myself an iPod. (It's useful! It will help me endure mowing lawns and doing dishes!) It's a silver 4GB nano, and I got free shipping and engraving (I put my email address on the back, so if I lose it the person who finds it will know who to be grateful to). It arrived at work this afternoon and I spent half an hour alternating "Ooh shiny!" with customer service and "Pamela*, where did you hide my shiny?" because my colleagues are like that. Then I had my tea break, during which I figured out how the scrolling worked and undid my accidental setting of the language to Dutch. (Thank goodness it was an Indo-European language I accidentally set it to or I'd never have worked it out.)

Aside from the mowing of laws and doing of dishes, I must admit that the games were an attraction, but the contacts/calendar/alarm functions are also pretty nifty. And I can read txt files! That's got to come in useful. What would have been really cool would be built-in note-taking ability using the scroll-through-the-alphabet function that's already used in at least one of the games: it's amazing how quickly one can scroll through even without practice.

* Not her real name.

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Psalm 116 modibus "Gaudete"

Just remembered I'd done this one too. Last Christmas Irina taught me the song "Gaudete", and when I wanted a short tune to put this psalm to, this is what sprang to mind. For these purposes I've gone and mutilated it: in the second verse, the tune of the fourth line repeats for the fifth. Squish the syllables in the third line to suit; I say "-dia" as one syllable and tack "et" on where one might normally otherwise take a breath. (Lyrics; music (midi).)

Laudate Dominum,
O-omnes gentes!
Laudate eum, omnes
Populi!

Quoniam confirmata est
Su-upe-er no-os
Misericordia eium, et
Veritas Domini
Manet in saeculum.

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Psalm 5 modibus "If I were a butterfly"

(I had a reason for choosing this tune, but the logic of it skips a few beats. Anyway. If you don't know it, the tune is here (mp3) from the from official butterfly song site(!); original words and English translation are here; I didn't mess with the words much this time but did mess with the rhythm, so underlining below indicates the main beat. Yes, it did take me a while.)

1. Verba mea auribus percipe
Domine intellige clamorem meum.
Intende voci orationis meae
Rex meus et deus meus
Quoniam ad te orabo domine
Mane exaudies vocem meam
Mane adstabo tibi et videbo.

(Chorus)
Quoniam non deus volens iniquitatem tu es
Neque habitabit iuxta te malignus
Neque permanebunt iniusti ante oculos tuos.
( and the rest of it... )

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When I should have been sleeping

Thanks to a fortuitous conjunction of reading material and iTunes; modified from the version at the Parallel Latin/English Psalter; annotated according to a key below; I present to you:

Supercalifragilisticexpiali-psalmus
In finem, in carminibus, Psalmus David; modibus Supercalifragilisticexpialidocii

(chorus)
Domine ne in furore tuo arguas me; / Deus neque in ira tua corripias me.
Miserere mei [] quoniam infirmus sum valde. / Quoniam conturbata sunt ossa mea sana me.

(verse)
Et anima mea turbata est valde et tu / Domine usquequo? et tu Domine usquequo?
Convertere Deus eripe animam meam. / Salvum me fac propter misericordiam tuam - oh!

(chorus)
Quoniam non est in morte qui memor sit tui. / In inferno autem quis confitebitur tibi?
Laboravi in gemitu []; cubilem [] lavabo / Per singulas noctes lacrimis stratum [] rigabo.

(verse)
Oculus meus est a furore conturbatus / Iam inveteravi inter [] inimicos meos
Discedite a me omnes qui nefas agetis / Quoniam exaudivit Deus vocem fletus mei - oh!

(chorus)
Exaudivit Deus deprecationem meam; / Deus meus suscepit orationem meam.
Erubescant [] [] inimici mei vehementer; / Turbentur et convertantur [] valde velociter!

[Key:
Words I added to fit the metre
Words I moved to fit the metre or pseudo-rhyme
Synonym to fit the metre
[] Words I deleted to fit the metre]

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geeky

Lolcode!!1!one

I just emailed my sister, saying "I need more geeks in my life with which to share this," because Boots doesn't understand why I'm laughing hysterically and though I'm slowly introducing my work colleagues to lolcats, I don't think they'd quite grok lolcode. But then I remembered I have a LiveJournal and there must be some geeks reading it, so all is well.