irreconciliable difference

Posted on Monday, 2006 July 03 by Anton

Still getting the hang of Wikipedia.

Anything in nature, technology or mythology that can be represented with an image can be put on a shield, and probably has been; and the Wikipedia article “Charge (heraldry)” is bloated with examples. Is anyone wiser for knowing that an aloe plant appears in the arms of the North-Eastern Transvaal Tennis Association?

There seemed to be a tacit consensus that “show don’t tell” was not the best policy here, so beginning on June 14 I took a chainsaw to it, my guiding principle being that the layman is more interested in knowing what charges occur frequently, and thus contribute to heraldic style, than in either an exhaustive catalog of exotica or the minutiae of blazon. When I stopped for breath on June 17, the article was a quarter of its former size, and I had added some brief passages on general principles.

Alas, I had not examined the article’s recent history. The bloat did not happen by accident, and much of it, apparently, is the diligent work of one person. Today he reverted the article to his version of June 13, with the note “rv [revert] a lot of what is in essence vandalism”.

Posted in humanities | Leave a comment

a particular kind of earworm

Posted on Sunday, 2006 July 02 by Anton

Does anyone remember a song of thirty years ago that ended with the narration “But now we must descend, for there is another side to this vision”?

Later: I am advised that it’s “Solar Boat” by Ray Manzarek.

Posted in music+verse | Leave a comment

mutual admiration society

Posted on Thursday, 2006 June 29 by Anton

It’s almost always a pleasure to find a new domain in one’s referral log (unless one is an insufferably big shot). My newest referrer, not counting spam, is Degrees of Freedom, by James. I don’t yet know which James.

Posted in blogdom | 3 Comments

the 13th biggest fish in a small lagoon

Posted on Wednesday, 2006 June 28 by Anton

What d’ya know — this is allegedly the 13th most popular website in .nu. How they work that out I have no idea.

Posted in me!me!me! | Leave a comment

could be worse

Posted on Saturday, 2006 June 24 by Anton

A comfy chair, a blue sky, a mild breeze, the season’s first watermelon . . . .

Posted in California | 1 Comment

without questions there can be no answers

Posted on Saturday, 2006 June 24 by Anton

Is there a standard Unix shell command to pause for a given amount of time? One wouldn’t use this from the prompt, of course, but it might have its uses in scripts. Mine is to open a large number of files (local or Web), but not all at once:

cat list-of-files | xargs slow-open &

where slow-open looks like 

#!/bin/sh
for i in $*
  do
    open $i
    pause 60
  done

It seems like unnecessary overkill to write pause in Python.

In unrelated news — I’ve heard that you can discourage vermin from stealing your pets’ food by setting out a sample spiked with emetic. Have you tried this, does it work? What drug is appropriate for a cat? A neighborhood tom has recently found our cats’ dish, and drops in every night as if he owns the place (if I’m not watching).

Posted in neep-neep, pets | 2 Comments

who’s ringing my doorbell at this hour?

Posted on Thursday, 2006 June 22 by Anton

Yester evening a neighbor’s car engine caught fire, and I gave him my extinguisher. Just now he came by to replace it.

Posted in California | Leave a comment