New Gifted Typist site is launched

Bad news:

http://giftedtypist.blogspot.com is coming to an end



Good news:

http://giftedtypist.com is born. Come and see.

Final clue

giftedtypist

+

+

com

=

???????

(All is revealed tomorrow)

It's a hint of things to come

Coming soon!

To a computer near you. More later.

Typist goes AWOL

Due to a combination of circumstances, this typist went AWOL yesterday. This blog and its readers were completely ignored for the entire day with no explanation until now.

Early yesterday morning, one of the young typists was rushed to hospital with a mysterious and potentially serious condition. There were tests on blood, lymph nodes, mobility and other things. There were X-rays, radioactive isotopes swallowed and then gamma rays. There were doctors, specialists, nurses and nuclear (!) medicine technicians and nice people who came around to make sure we were comfortable. There were looks of concern from professionals and at times frightening body language.

And there were hours of waiting for results in small windowless rooms on a beautiful sunny spring day, a day the little typist should have been out playing because there was no school.

In the end, there was happiness and relief. The worst was ruled out. The little typist has a problem but he will be OK.

The keyboard also had a problem - water spilled on it by the other little typist. But that didn't rate yesterday. Nothing else rated yesterday.

Typist on typing experiment

This typist will be guinea pigging (is this correct typing?) in a typing experiment this Saturday at Dalhousie University.

The idea is to make transparent and public the rather messy and undignified business of writing (or typing in the case of this typist) so that students can learn from the experience.

Six guinea pigs will be asked to squeeze themselves through the brutal sausage-making machine that is writing. Participants will be encouraged to speak aloud to give observing students insights into the writing (typing) process.

The experiment is called WHIPS - Write Here, in Plain Sight. It will take place at the Kenneth C. Rowe Management Building and the McCain Arts and Science Building Saturday, March 10, 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Passing of a post-modern guru

The post-structural theorist, cultural critic, and photographer Jean Baudrillard died yesterday after a long illness. He was 77.

Baudrillard was a post-modern thinker who inspired the ideas behind the movie The Matrix. His thoughts about hyper-reality forged the notion of virtual reality and launched an entire sub-genre of science fiction.

His simulacra theory speculated that people do not live in reality but in a world manufactured by mass media, the simulacrum. This lead him to pronounce that the first Gulf War was not real. It was produced as a sort of virtual video game for TV watchers in the west.

Two years ago he told the New York Times: “All our values are simulated! What is freedom at all? A choice between purchasing one or another car? This is only the simulation of freedom.”

His dense, translated-from-French prose were not always the easiest to read and some of the ideas seemed bizarre, but they were intoxicating, just as the ideas of Canadian thinker Marshall McLuhan were a generation before.

Baudrillard's passing is marked here as he was an influence on this typist's typing.

Lunar landing

It isn't of course, but it has that look. What we have is more frost fractals on the window as the result of another cold snap. Intriguing how dramatic the change in patterns. It's almost as though the frost lays itself down as a geological formation. See Frost Bite(s) for more fun with winter fractals.

Typist's favourite headline

In the world of newspaper headlines, Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster is top gun.

This famous and now-infamous headline goes down in history as one of most attention-grabbing - to say nothing of funny - headlines ever.

It appeared in the British Tabloid The Sun (cir. 4M+) in 1986. Its object - comedian Freddie Starr - denied ever imbibing hamster, gerbil, guinea pig or vole.

The story and headline, did however, re-kindle Mr. Starr's flagging career.

This headline remains a feather in the cap of Mr. Starr's publicist Max Clifford who is probably more famous than Mr. Starr and more infamous than the headline he procured. In 2006 this headline was voted the best-ever by listeners of BBC radio.

A forest of frost fractals

Another frost fractal on the bedroom window, zoomed and cropped. The tiny ice crystals capture rays of early morning sun. It has the look of a moonlit line of scruffy evergreens on the crest of a hill.

(1/400, f4.5, ISO 200, 200mm)

Germ-glish debate rages

Canadians who do not like to be called American (by people who regard them as North Americans) will often turn around and cavalierly refer to Britain as Europe. This strikes the British as strange, given the Canadian language and culture is far more similar to the US than the British language and culture is to those of Europe.

The following joke sheds light on British resistance to European identity and integration.

The European Union has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than
German. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".
Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy.

The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This
should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond
year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling
kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double
letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e"
in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as
replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil
find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

Human rhinovirus 16 attacks typist!

This computer model depicts the human rhinovirus 16. The infected human suffers sneezing, nasal discharge, sinus pain, sore throat and upper respiratory tract problems. That human can also experience abdominal pain, lack of sleep and lower back discomfort - all from persistent coughing (or hacking to use the vernacular.) HR16 is described by medical experts as non-lethal.

This human typist contracted this terrible condition two days ago. Given the misery it has caused, she would prefer her condition be referred to as the Human Rhinovirus 16, not the Common Cold.

Happy Valentine's Day, girls

This little parable arrived today with the wish of Happy Valentine's Day. Perhaps demographers who are concerned about population decline in western countries should take a closer look.

Once upon a time, a girl asked a guy, "Will you marry me?"

The guy said "No."

And the girl lived happily ever after and went shopping, drank martinis
with friends, always had a clean house, never had to cook, had a closet
full of shoes and handbags, stayed skinny, and was never farted on.

Revenge of the PC owner

We've all got a Smug-Mac friend. You know the type: you just mention something that went wrong with your morally inferior PC and the Smug-Mac friend is straight in there with the 10 Commandments of Mac evangelism. Thou shalt not buy a PC. Thou Shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife's PC. Thou shalt profess thy love for thy Mac.

No doubt Mac computers are good - probably better than PC - but the Mac Love thing gets tiresome, as does the iPod Love and all its iLove variants. Well, here's a bit of revenge for the lowly PC underdog. The piece was written by Charlie Brooker in The Guardian. It's called I hate Macs. Here is an excerpt:

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

I heart Valentines Day - Not!

Old stamp

After our new stamp post, Rowan of Cheddar sent this: the Penny Black, the world's first official adhesive postage stamp. It was issued in Britain on 1 May 1840.

The profile is a young Queen Victoria. The postage stamp cost one penny. The red marks represent the stamp's cancellation.

Thanks Rowan.

10,000th hit winner and prize announced.

And the Gifted Typist's 10,000th hit winner is .... TagBagger.

He wrote in to claim his prize, noting that double-entendre dessert comments he made on the Sweet Nothing post lined up with the moment this typist's hit counter rolled into five figures. (A committee of judges has been struck to confirm exact times and TagBagger's computer will be called as evidence.)

The prize is this lovely wine-bottle gift bag. Don't be fooled by the out-of-season design. This exquisite piece of giftware is perfect for any season.

Made of sturdy reinforced velour fabric, your wine will be safe in this wine bag. And not only safe, but stylish too! The detailing in the unique design is some of the finest ever produced by the Chinese factory that cranked it out.

When you arrive at your dinner party and a bottle of wine in this bag, your hosts' jaws will drop and they will be speechless, possibly for the rest of the evening. This unique gift will have your friends talking about it - and you - for years to come.

And who knows, someday you might even have the honour of receiving it back again.
Congratulations Tagbagger and ShinkingShrink

on being GT's 10,000th. Keep hitting because who knows, if win on the 20,000th, you might even get a bottle of wine in the next one.

10,000 hits!

Clocked at 10:58:40 today! Since the end of August. 10,000 hits!

Congratulations to the 10,000th hitter. This typist has no idea who you are but stats reveal you are registered in Halifax. If you think it might be you, please contact us for an important message.

And thanks to the other 9999 hitters since the end of August. As most bloggers know, the hits are the fire in the belly of the bloggist.

So go on, hit me!

I don't "heart" the iPod

If a company manufactured a product designed to last only 18 months, would you think that is cool?

And if that company manufactured the product to last only 18 months so that customers would have to go out and purchase another such low-quality product, this time for more money, would you think that is cool?

And if that company told customers they were "cool" if they kept buying the low-quality product over and over again for more money each time, would you think that was cool?

And if the company convinced customers to profess their love for this low-quality product with the short lifespan and the increasing price, would you think that's cool?

Cool? For the company. Yes. They're getting rich off this cool.

But for customers? Is this cool? Well, if the company says it's cool, and everyone believes them, then yes, it's cool in the same that way it was cool to buy and smoke cigarettes because companies said it was cool.

St. Paul's II

Here is Herbert Mason's iconic shot of St. Paul's Cathedral (previously blogged here) as it appeared in the Daily Mail on 30 December 1940. Mason captured this shot from the rooftop of the Daily Maily building during the German firebombing of the City of London 29 December 1940. The paper's headline says: "War's Greatest Picture: St. Paul's stands unharmed in the midst of the burning City."