andrew johnson

Posts

February 16, 09:00 AM

Some are common knowledge, e.g. dog, cat, monkey, bird. I felt special that I knew a handful of the less common ones (cow, horse, wolf, bear, fox). Here is a list of some useful and some completely random animal adjectives.

Seeing the word asinine in the list yields great insight into its etymology.

Animal	Adjective
alligator	eusuchian
ant	formicine, myrmecine
anteater	myrmecophagine
antelope	alcelaphine, bubaline
ape	simian
armadillo	tolypeutine
ass	asinine
auk	alcidine
barracuda	percesocine
badger	musteline
bat	pteropine
bear	ursine
bee	apiarian
bird	avian, muscicapine, oscine (song), passerine (perching), penduline, volucrine
blackbird	icterine
bluebird	turdine
bobolink	icterine
buffalo	bubaline
bull	taurine
bullfinch	pyrrhuline
bunting	emberizine, pyrrhuloxine
buzzard	buteonine, cathartine
calf	vituline
camel	cameline
cardinal	pyrrhuloxine
cat	feline
chamois	rupicaprine
civet	viverrine
cormorant	phalacrocoracine
cow	bovine, vaccine
crab	cancrine
crane	alectorine
crow	corvine
cuckoo	cuculine
deer	cervine, elaphine
dodo	didine
dog	canine
dolphin	delphine
dormouse	myoxine
dove	columbine
duck	anatine, fuliguline
eagle	aquiline
elephant	elephantine
elk	cervine
ermine	musteline
falcon	accipitrine
ferret	musteline
finch	fringilline
fish	piscine, piscatorial
flea	pulicine
fox	vulpine
frog	bufotenine, ranine
gerbil	cricetine
gibbon	hylobatine
goat	caprine, hircine (smelly)
goose	anserine
gull	larine
hare	leporine
hawk	accipitrine, falconine
hog	suilline
hornet	vespine
horse	equine
hummingbird	trochiline
jay	garruline
kangaroo	macropodine
kestrel	falconine
kingfisher	halcyonine
kite	milvine
leech	hirudine
lemur	lemurine
leopard	pardine
lion	leonine
lizard	lacertilian, saurian
lobster	homarine
macaw	psittacine
magpie	garruline
mallard	anatine
marten	musteline
martin	hirundine
meadowlark	icterine
mink	musteline
mockingbird	mimine
mongoose	viverrine, herpestine
moose	cervine
mosquito	aedine, anopheline
moth	arctian
mouse	murine
mule	muline Note: stallion x jenny (female donkey) = hinny mare x jack (male donkey) = mule
nightingale	philomelian
opposum	didelphine
oriole	icterine
otter	lutrine
ox	bovine
oyster	ostracine
parakeet	psittacine
parrot	psittacine
partridge	perdicine
peacock	pavonine
pheasant	alectorine, phasianine
pig	porcine, suilline
pigeon	pullastrine
plover	charadrine
polecat	musteline
porcupine	hystricine
quail	coturnine
rabbit	leporine
raccoon	procyonine
ram	arietine
rat	murine
rattlesnake	crotaline
raven	corvine
reptile	reptilian, serpentine
rhinoceros	ceratorhine
robin	turdine
sable	zibeline
sea horse	hippocampine
seal	phocine, otarine
sheep	ovine
shrew	soricine
silkworm	bombycine
skunk	mephitine
skylark	alaudine
slug	limacine
smelt	atherine
snake	anguine, elapine, colubrine (garter,king), ophidian, reptilian, serpentine, viperine
snipe	charadrine
sparrow	passerine
squirrel	sciurine
stag	cervine, elaphine
stoat	musteline
stork	ciconine
sturgeon	acipenserine
swallow	hirundine
swan	cygnine
swift	cypseline
swine	porcine, suine
tick	acarine
tiger	tigrine
titmouse	parine
toad	batrachian
tortoise	chelonian, testudine
turkey	meleagrine
turtle	chelonian
viper	viperine
vulture	vulturine
wasp	vespine
weasel	musteline
wolf	lupine
wolverine	musteline
wombat	phascolomian
woodcock	charadrine, scolopacine
wren	troglodytine
zebra	zebrine

[via]

February 09, 09:00 AM

of psis, define sylle and reference elli

Another use of ellipsis, the omission of unnecessary repeated information, is in zeugma. Zeugma, from the Greek word for "yoke", is stringing several sentences which share a common binding word together as one. For example:

"Mr. Jones took his coat and his leave."
"Friends, Romans, Countryman, lend me your ears!"

A much more interesting subset of zeugma is called a syllepsis, in which sentences are still joined by a common word, but a different meaning of the word is used each time. Some examples:

"You held your breath, and the door for me" -Alanis Morrisette
"Are you getting fit or having one?" -Hawkeye in M*A*S*H

February 02, 09:00 AM

egg on my face

yoke has many definitions, mostly related to a burden, such as the beam over oxen shoulders to support a load, shoulders in general, or oxen in general.

yolk is just the yellow part of the egg.

October 13, 09:49 AM

posted immediately

"stat", used most frequently by doctors to mean "immediately" comes to us from the Latin word "statim" with the same meaning.

September 09, 11:22 AM

analog(ue)

I had thought that perhaps analog meant the opposite of discrete and analogue was the noun form of analagous (the subject of an analogy) but both spellings are the same word (like colour/color) and both spellings can have either meaning.

[via wiktionary]

June 01, 03:19 PM

sally contracted him to build her seashell stand

I just need to share this amazing (and long) tongue-twister that comes together so elegantly and is reminiscient of buffalo buffalo buffalo in that you need to stress words just right or it would (wood) not make sense.

Esau Wood sawed wood. Esau Wood would saw wood. All the wood Esau Wood saw, Esau Wood would saw. In other words, all the wood Esau saw to saw, Esau sought to saw. Oh, the wood Wood would saw! And, oh the wood-saw with which Wood would saw wood! But one day, Wood's wood-saw would saw no wood, and thus the wood Wood sawed was not the wood Wood would saw if Wood's wood-saw would saw wood. Now, Wood would saw wood with a wood-saw that would saw wood, so Esau sought a saw that would saw wood. One day, Esau saw a saw saw wood as no other wood-saw Wood saw would saw wood. In fact, of all the wood-saws Wood ever saw saw wood, Wood never saw a wood-saw that would saw wood as the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood would saw wood, and I never saw a wood-saw that would saw as the wood-saw Wood saw would saw until I saw Esau Wood saw wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood. Now Wood saws wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood.

[via wikipedia]

May 24, 09:00 AM

ante up

the latin word ante means "before" and is useful by itself but also as a root for many other words and phrases such as:

ante - by itself a poker term for the small buy-in fee placed before the round starts.
ante meridian - commonly seen as a.m., ante meridian translates to "before midday." (this leads to post meridian or p.m. which translates to "after midday")
antemortem - uttered almost daily on cbs (home of c.s.i.), this word means "before death."
antebellum - in the united states this typically refers to "before the civil war," but the phrase literally just meas before any war.
many similar "before" words in romance languages: antes (spanish); avant (french); avanti/anti- (italian)

May 17, 09:00 AM

~there's no ekscaping these common mispronunciations

some of these are more common than others, but the words that really get me (in an engineering atmosphere) are 'acrost' and 'heighth'.

the etymology of the fake word 'heighth' is not too hard to imagine as several dimension qualifiers follow a similar pattern:

deep -> depth; wide -> width; long -> length; yet high -> height?

it would make some sense if height had an 'h' on the end, but it does not.

acrost is more difficult to pin down. the correct word to use is across and my theory is that the past tense of 'cross' in the example sentence 'we crossed the river' gets applied to across (i.e. 'we went acrossed the river') and it is pronounced as acrost.

several language blogs point out that this word has been in use for centuries (this is their proof that it is a real word) by high profile writers like mark twain and john steinbeck. i disregard these examples because the authors (in the adventures huckleberry finn and the grapes of wrath, respectively) are purposely using poor grammar from the voice of the narrator.

merriam-webster online has an entry listed for acrost, but it is not available unless you have a premium account, and my trusty hardcopy has no listing for acrost.

here is my list of some other chronically mispronounced words:

else/eltse
nuclear/nucular
both/bolth
supposedly/supposibly
drowning/drownding

those with phantom x's or other x trouble:

espresso/expresso
especially/ekspecially
exit/eggzit
asterisk/asterix

and several with mispronounced vowels:

pillow/pellow
milk/melk

what common mispronunciations drive you nuts?

April 26, 09:00 AM

invulncerible

when i was little i learned the word invincible from superman comics. when i was a bit older i encountered a green powerup in doom that made you invulnerable and wondered why there was this slightly different word that apparently meant the same thing.

i have now discovered that these two words have subtle differences that are apparent in their latin roots:

invincible comes from the latin verb vincere, meaning "to conquer."
invulerable comes from the latin verb vulnerare, meaning "to wound."

so invincible means "unbeatable" - superman at times could be wounded (when kryptonite was present) but was never beaten - and invulnerable means "unwoundable" - in doom even when you were impervious to damage you could still be beaten in other ways.

April 01, 09:00 AM

aibohphobia

great addition at language log to the recent linguisteresis post on palindromes:

the Urban Dictionary claims aibohphobia is a technical term for the irrational fear of palindromicity. The etymology will raise a smile. Just stare at the word for a few seconds, and it will reveal itself to you.

[via language log]

March 22, 05:34 PM

but wikipedia is my only source

eclectic is a word that does not mean what i thought it meant. i had heard of eclectic music, eclectic houses, eclectic clothing style, and based on what i had seen the synonyms for eclectic i made in my head were whimsical, random, bohemian (if i am using that right?) and maybe a hint of snobby.

eclectic really means "of varied sources" and comes from ancient philosophers who picked and chose tidbits from several different systems of philosophy. eclectic music may have jazz, rock, and pop influences (now i can understand cities97); eclectic houses may have victorian and tudor styles blended together.

i find my taste in food to be very eclectic. golden corral fits my eclectic needs :)

March 15, 06:12 PM

harbringer

this seems to be a rarer eggcorn, but one that i was guilty of.

a harbinger is someone or something that foreshadows someone or something that is to come (synonymous with an "omen"). i mistakenly thought there was another 'r' (i.e. "harbRinger"), assuming this object or person was literally "bringing har," and har was something ominous, to be sure :)

March 11, 09:00 AM

can't dampening cause damping?

this may only interest engineers, but a smart guy i work with pointed out to a crowd of technical folk a mistake many of them were likely making: damping is the process of dissipating kinetic energy while dampENing is the process of making something moist.

looks like star trek may have had it wrong.

March 04, 09:00 AM

but i did not shoot the superscript

www.therejectionist.com

a serif is a little tail added to the limbs of letters (example). knowing this explains why many fonts are referred to as "sans-serif" meaning, in latin, "without serifs."

font types with serifs are also commonly referred to as 'roman' fonts (e.g. times new roman) while sans-serif fonts are sometimes referred to as 'gothic' or 'grotesque' (e.g. century gothic or arial)

interesting tidbits - sans-serif fonts are typically used for headlines while serif fonts are used for body text because the serifs help guide eyes consistently across one line. however, the internet has made sans-serif body text much more common because serifs often rendered weirdly on low resolution or slow refresh rate screens.

March 01, 09:00 AM

for *most* intensive purposes

an important linguistic concept is the eggcorn. an eggcorn is a word or phrase that is incorrect but is rooted in plausible sounds or reasoning. "eggcorn" itself is a reference to the common mispronunciation of the word acorn - with no official name for this phenomenon, this example became eponymous.

causes of eggcorns can vary but commonly include folk etymology ("preying" mantis), hypercorrection ("languistics"), and accounting for obscure or archaic words ("baited breath" to replace "bated breath").

eggcorns are subtly different from malapropisms, which are seen as erroneous uses of words or phrases, usually with nonsensical or comical results, e.g. mishearing song lyrics (electric boobs), confusing idioms ("moo point"), misusing big words)

for a great collection of eggcorns check out the eggcorn database. dont look too closely though, as this is a good spot for post ideas ;-)

February 25, 09:00 AM

teatea

this is a nitpicky thing. nobody should get too upset about it: the word chai actully just means "tea." whenever you hear an utterance of "chai tea," you are really hearing "tea tea." most asian languages refer to all tea as just "chai" and what americans call chai tea (the spiced stuff) is actually masala chai. its just a cool word, so we should not get too pedantic.

February 22, 09:00 AM

homning

Artwork by rocketpigeon.net

i used to confuse these all the time:

hone - to sharpen or get better e.g. "hone your skills"
home - get closer and closer to a target e.g. "homing missile/pigeon"

so i need to stop using the phrase "honing in"...

February 15, 09:00 AM

adversity aversion

the words adverse and averse can cause confusion and are often erroneously interchanged. Both are adjectives with negative meanings, but they are not interchangeable; they are subtly differentiated by interest vs inclination:

adverse (adj) - unfavorable. used in the "against one's best interest" case. base word for adversity and adversary.
averse (adj) - having repugnance or opposition of mind. used in the "against one's personal inclinations" case. base word for aversion.

these derived words (adversity/aversion) are the best mnemonic for deciding which to use, and have cured me of my bad habit of saying things like "I am not adverse to medicine with no averse effects."

February 15, 01:39 AM

sherbe(r)t

internationally, the words sherbet and sorbet are synonymous. the united states colloquially refers to something different with each term. sorbet is seen as a dessert similar to italian ice (i.e. no dairy) while sherbet is both fruity and creamy (due to minimal dairy content)

what is interesting is how (anecdotally) everyone learns that this dessert is called "sherbeRt" with an extra /r/ sound. this has become an aceptable and understandable mispronunciation, but is technically not the right name. if you are like me and only ever learned to call it sherbert, look at the package next time you are at the grocery store and it mght surprise you that they leave out that /r/.

February 08, 09:00 AM

glamorous pompadour

Madame Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour preceded the footsteps of Ambrose B. Burnside, Jheri Redding, and A Flock of Seagulls in leaving an eponymous hairstyle as a legacy.

The pompadour is the poof of hair made famous by elvis and sported by many subcultures today.

This odd departure from the normal linguisteresis fare is brought on by the confusion over what the king of the cosmos is referring to when he mentions that he lost his pompadour during a knife fight in the video game we ♥ katamari (part of the katamari damacy series, which means literally "clump spirit")

[via]

February 18, 11:47 PM

semicolons can be confusing; here is a lesson ;)

the oatmeal, famous for lengthy animated rants of the surreal variety such as how to use an apostrophe, has created a new lesson on a less commonly used punctuation mark: the semicolon.

the comic uses non-sequiturs to break down the uses of the semicolon, with the main reasons being:

conjoining two related sentences that could stand on their own (do not use a conjunction such as 'and' or 'but' with this use)
adding more pause than a comma but less than a period.
seperating items in a list when those items already have punction (e.g. i have lived in lakeville, mn; edina, mn; and minneapolis, mn.)

the comic neglects to mention some other uses for the symbol, such as ending a line of code in many computer programming languages or a line of a matrix in a mathematical matrix. also a winky face.

[image by theoatmeal]

February 01, 09:00 AM

well, yeah

a cliché is a predictable unoriginality - when what may have been a neat idea in the past is now overdone.

the opposite of a cliché is a non-sequitur: something that has never been done before and is accomplished with a completely absurd disjointedness in relation. non-sequitur is a latin phrase literally meaning "does not follow," and is most often used with humorous intent (as a major subset of surrealist humor)

a common example of a non-sequitur is the following joke:

Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Fish.

i submit that if this joke is used too often, it will become a cliché. The logical name for this transformation would just be "sequitur" meaning "it does follow [convention]," but perhaps a better name would be "sequiché." your move, ADS.

January 28, 09:00 AM

whatever gets you here

a macguffin is a plot device - something to create a plot in a story - that, itself, is left very vague or unimportant. in the words of legendary filmmaker alfred hitchcock (the word's de facto founder):

"in a thriller the MacGuffin is usually 'the necklace'; in a spy story it is 'the papers'"

it doesnt matter that the theives are planning a heist for the necklace. it could be a painting or a stash of gold - but this macguffin's importance sets the scene for every character's intentions.

recentism alert! go see avatar. there is a human/alien conflict because the humans want to mine the mineral unobtainium, a valuable substance, from the alien homeworld. the audience does not care about the details of this mineral, the only important thing is the struggle to get it.

January 25, 09:00 AM

legally binding minestrone

de facto is a latin phrase for "unofficial" or "assumed" (literally "by fact"). it is used in situations to describe something that established in practice but not necessarily documented officially or legally.

example for lost fans: jack is the de facto leader of the survivors.

lesser used is the opposite of de facto, which is de jure, meaning "official" or "legal" (literally "by law"). this should not be confused with the french du jour which is pronounced the same but means, instead, "of the day" e.g. soupe du jour.

January 21, 02:58 PM

read these twice

an ambigram is a word or words that can be read from more than one point of view, usually with some artistic aspect. the picture shown here says "ambigram" even when rotated 180 degrees.

There are manyvarying types ambigrams: it is an entertaining trip to just go down the side of wikipedia's page on ambigrams and see some of the uncanny visual tricks achieved. Who would have thought Paul McCartney could make his name rotatable?

linguisteresis

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deadmau5

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last.fm

Updates

Dropquest!

Posted 9 days ago
my russian neighbors are watching empire strikes back very loudly. I am okay with this

Posted 7 weeks ago
How can the scores of Lion King, Inception, Pirates of the Caribbean, Gladiator, Avatar, A Beautiful Mind, Prince of Egypt, Broken Arrow, and Twister all be composed by the same guy? Hans > John in my mind

Posted 2 months ago
π

Posted 2 months ago
Did I see the forecast right? Today freezing with a chance of snow, Tuesday 63 and sunny?

Posted 2 months ago
Thanks everyone! Big thanks to Amtrak, Shane Co., and Brad Litsheim for making this possible :)

Posted 3 months ago
49°F

Posted 4 months ago
new years resolution: go from a kmol of technetium to a kmol of yttrium

Posted 4 months ago
neat trick: until you refresh google reader, it will stay the old style!

Posted 6 months ago
matlab, how I missed thee

Posted 8 months ago
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."

Posted 10 months ago

Photos

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Updates

I just got a $1 credit for songs and albums @amazonmp3. http://t.co/Y7fQI8ZV to get yours. #hollerforadollar

2 months ago from Amazon | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
anyone in edina have red brown water?

8 months ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
@GLEEonFOX, can you mash up Katy Perry's "E.T." with Michael Jackson's "They Don't Care About Us"?

14 months ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
i want the loon call remix song from the mn state lotto radio spots

2 years ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
loved OK Go - This Too Shall Pass Rube Goldberg Machine on Boxee http://bit.ly/9crRV8

2 years ago from boxee | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
you can come back #twins! #bandwagon

2 years ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
@lindsayhandtke welcome back

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i need my #gmail but it is brok'd

2 years ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
@JoshNoalan ya it never loads tonight :(

2 years ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
http://twitpic.com/ccam2 - @HeejinHan i think i got caught in that same storm

2 years ago from TwitPic | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
@mattaudio we should chat sometime about 'technology evangelism'

2 years ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
@ScottJIsAOk is the dog okay?

2 years ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
@panndder im going to the game tonight with a bunch of my managers so i need to learn as much as possible. i'll read your posts ;-)

2 years ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
@ScottJIsAOk that is fairly fantastic :)

2 years ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
@panndder i got three pairs of ipod earbuds at the U. nobody ever claims things from the centennial lost and found...

2 years ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
weird fishes!

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evony ads are killing me. on every page and nsfw. i actually checked it out and it looks like 'castles' from 1991. how do they make money?

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tweetdeck keeps crappin out and i very much dislike the twitter.com interface. also i dont have a smartphone. what to do?

2 years ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite
twitter has been overrun by sex ads posing as girls :-/ this is what killed myspace for me. i dont want to be friends with sexkitten69...

2 years ago from web | Reply, Retweet, Favorite

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June 04, 03:01 PM

Error 808 - Drum not found

i don't know much about music production, but i frequently noticed references in music to something called an "808." i gathered by some of the lyrics that an 808 must be some giant drum that is widely known to be the most booming.

after doing a quick search to quell my curiosity, i discovered an "808" is not an actual drum at all, but the Roland TR-808, a synthesizer that has drum kit samples. apparently they are known to be rather unrealistic sounding samples at that, but this synthesizer is comparatively cheap and is frequently used to generate rap/hip-hop backbeats. this (plus autotune) explains the artificial sound of Kanye's 808's and Heartbreak album.

hear some 808 samples here

May 13, 07:15 PM

broken email from wells fargo

May 12, 12:36 AM

advertisement hijacking

what do you do to shake asian advertisers that are not actually asian and pretend to be interested in your blog but are actually using it just to post random links?

examples:

May 06, 10:24 AM

bananananananananananananana...

March 09, 03:19 PM

screen sizes

tv and monitor screen sizes are reported in inches from opposite corners. this is a fine standard until you want to compare screen sizes.

one would tend to assume a 40” screen is twice the size of a 20” screen, but the screen size is proportional to the square of the diagonal length (i.e. Area = k*h²). this is easy to do mentally for multiples (e.g. 40” is twice as long as 20”, so the 40” screen is 4 times bigger) but I wanted to simplify the calculation for calculating any screen size.

below I have the proportionality constants (k) and the formula used to calculate it

for 16:9 (widescreen tv's) use A = 0.427 * h²
[k=(16 / 9) * (sin(arctan(9 / 16))^2) = 0.427299703]

for 16:10 (widescreen monitors) use A = 0.449 * h²
[k=(16 / 10) * (sin(arctan(10 / 16))^2) = 0.449438202]

for 4:3 (old tv's and monitors) use A = 0.48 * h²
[k=(4 / 3) * (sin(arctan(3 / 4))^2) = 0.48]

one interesting thing is that, for the same reported screen size, older 4:3 tv’s will actually be 12% bigger. this is not very helpful, however, since most tv/movies are now presented in 16:9, and 4:3 tv’s will need to use the black bars and actually end up with 25% smaller pictures for the same reported screen size.

January 30, 01:59 PM

bed sizes

this shattered alot of what i thought i knew about bed sizes:

i thought a twin bed was an even 3'x6' and every level up added one foot to the width.

the way it actually works is:

twin: 3'3" x 6'3"
full: 4'6" x 6'3"
queen: 5' x 6'8"
king: 6'6" x 6'8"
california king: 6' x 7' (<-- my choice :-D )

[wikipedia bed sizes]

October 12, 11:13 PM

house centipede!

only once in my life have i come across this crazy critter that looks a little like a mutated centipede. his legs are too long! apparently confusion over this arthropod is common as 'nobody' has seen one before and 'everyone' is perplexed when they encounter one. i came across mine unmoving on the cement wall in the basement of an old church, and i shocked a friend when i knew exactly the critter being described (once again chillin on a wall)

they are harmless to humans (unlike regular centipedes) and hunt spiders and other bugs.

learn more about scutigera coleoptrata

September 01, 06:44 PM

day length as a function of latitude and time of year

how cool would it be to live at one of the poles and have only one sunrise and one sunset each year? (i mean, besides the fact that it would drive you nuts)

[via wikipedia]

August 11, 02:30 PM

vibrato and tremolo

what started off over at linguisteresis as a simple inquiry into the difference in definition vibrato and tremolo ended up a full scale investigation.

vibrato is the fluctuation of frequency while tremolo is the fluctuation of amplitude for audio signals. vibrato seems to be more well known because it is considered a good quality to have while singing, yet tremolo is much easier to implement mathematically to a time-varying signal.

i thought a picture would be great to illustrate this difference but wikipedia surprisingly did not have an example, so i made one (seen above) and added it to the page.

im not sure i can really hear the difference between the two so i dove further in by finding a sample audio clip of a (very soprano) operatic singer and viewed her spectrogram (not innuendo.) to me it really just sounds like the sound is getting louder and softer, but what i see is clearly vibrato:

August 06, 11:33 PM

new blog!

my primary passion is electroacoustics, but i realize i frequently post about language oddities, and this is something i have alot of interest in. to accommodate this i created a new blog dedicate to just my random thoughts and observations about language. hopefully others find it interesting also!

http://linguisteresis.blogspot.com/

April 09, 03:17 PM

microsoft's lorem() function

lorem ipsum, a set of nonsensical latin phrases used as a placeholder for text in a template, continues to show up in random places for me. recently i found out something interesting having to do with microsoft word 2007. there is a function, lorem(a,b), which will produce some lorem text placeholders. parameter 'a' is the number of paragraphs and 'b' is the number of sentences. to get this to work, type

=lorem(1,1)

anywhere in a word document and it automatically turns into this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

it appears the second parameter defaults to 3 if left blank, but the first parameter cannot be left blank.

March 20, 03:29 PM

RSTLN E not the best letter frequency mnemonic

ok so i know its not a mnemonic device at all, but i have always used RSTLNE as the general guideline for which letters were most common in english, because thats what wheel of fortune suggested. turns out its misleading, and there is a better one.

I happened upon the wikipedia page for the ampersand where i learned that it got its name from the way english schools used to recite the english alphabet, seen below:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&

the ampersand on the end looks out of place, but its there because they would include that character as a letter. they also used to use the latin phrase 'per se' (meaning 'by itself') in front of the letters that could be words. so they recited the alphabet as "per se 'A'BCDEFGH per se 'I'JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ and per se 'and'" and the last part very easily slurs to 'ampersand'. thats great. interesting story.

but the true purpose of this post is to make people aware of etaoin shrdlu. this ampersand business led me to the page of letter frequency in the english language, and i noticed it spelled an interesting name (ETAOIN) and when i did a search of this combination of letters the page for ETAOIN SHRDLU came up. this is about the order of the most frequent letters in the english language. this is great knowledge to have for word games, and apparently it is used as a character name in many literary works

March 19, 10:54 AM

cutaneous rabbit illusion

IEEE did an article on a new technology from phillips: a jacket with 64 little actuators in it that let you feel a movie or tv show. for instance, in a frightening scene it can make you feel like a shiver is running up your spine. the question came up about how only having 4 actuators for the entire length of your arm is enough, and the article references the 'cutaneous rabbit illusion' as the answer. my interest was piqued so i went to good ole wikipedia. it turns out that if your wrist is tapped several times rapidly and then your inner elbow is tapped several times, your brain tricks you into thinking you are being tapped at every point along your forearm - like a rabbit running up your arm. using this, four actuators can create the illsuion of being touched along the entire arm. neat.

March 19, 11:20 AM

'life is beautiful' always reminds me of 'come undone'

no, not the weezer song... but everytime i hear 'life is beautiful' by sixx:am (the new band for nikki sixx, the lead singer of motley crue) i am reminded of 'come undone' by duran duran.

here is a clip of the chorus of each. they are in different keys, but they are about the same speed.

March 13, 02:27 PM

evanescent vs effervescent

today's adjective lesson:

evanescent - tending to vanish like vapor
effervescent - bubbly (like a beverage, not a blonde)

with regards to soda, time causes the evanescence of effervescence :-D

March 08, 02:00 PM

house questioning God's existence

a recent episode of house on fox featured a priest who has lost his faith in God after he is wrongfully accused of molesting a young boy and is kicked from church to church, continually fired after they find out about his past. he has a vision of jesus after a night of drinking and so he checks himself into the hospital thinking there is something wrong with his brain.

house pulls his file from the clinic simply because he wants to mess with another doctors head for her religious hypocrisy. things start to happen to this priest (e.g. his toe falls off) and it becomes a legitimate case for house. the symptoms lead his team to believe he has AIDS and therefore assume the allegations against him must be true.
house eventually figures out that if he eliminates hallucinations from this list, then it fits that the priest has a genetic disease that can look just like AIDS, but is much less serious. when he tells the patient, (sarcastically deeming this genetic disorder another "gift from God") they have a very thought provoking conversation. house had become especially interested in this priest because the priest had become an atheist.

House: it explains all your symptoms- toe, chest, eyes, skin
priest: what about my hallucination?
House: scotch explains that...
priest: that was just a coincidence?
House: coincidences do happen...
priest: but that coincidence is what brought me to you in the first place
House: you promised you wouldn't go there
preist: einstein said that coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous
house: a woman in florida said "look, jesus is on my cheese sandwich"
priest: you didn't even want to take my case, you didnt even think i was sick
house: the fact that i was wrong is not a proof of God... everything that happened to you can be rationally explained
priest: i know, its just... thats an awful lot of coincidences

it can be difficult for people who want to think logically and rationally about everything to deal with the issue of faith. the concept of God, who has always been around, without regard of time, spcae, or the confines of any facet of the reality we live in, can seem unfathomable. yet at the same time, ockham's razor can lead the same person to accept the existence of God as the most likely reality. I have so much to be thankful for, things just seem to work out for me. i cannot see all these coincidences happening around me and accept them as simply coincidence. the only rational explanation is that God has a plan for me and whatever happens is a contribution of what He wants me to be. i could see the universe, life, and the experiences i have had are pure chance, as many naysayer's would. but... that is an awful lot of coincidences.

February 18, 06:08 PM

was blind, but now i see (

what we see:

what we learn we see:

i am flabbergasted at how mislead i was in elementary school. intrigued by ars technica's article on the recent question into whether magenta is a real color, i began to investigate this chromaticity diagram further (oddly enough aspell doesn't even know that chromaticity is a real word)

when we were young we were told that the three primary colors are red, yellow, and blue, and that with these three powerful colors we can make any color in the world! this was enough for a young person. when i was a little older (5th or 6th grade?) i was let in on the secret of additive vs. subtractive colors, and that additive colors (red/green/blue) applied to light, and subtractive colors (good ol' red/yellow/blue) applied to things like paint and crayons. i didnt care about the physics or where these came from. apparently these are more psychological primary colors (read: we dont care about how this works). arent sensation and perception amazing?

in later years i would go on to learn about rods and cones in the eyes and how they pick up wavelengths of the elctromagnetic spectrum that we perceive as colors. i know about what wavelength applies to which color and what comes before and after on the EM spectrum. but i still assumed that every color of light could be made with RGB and every color of reflective objects could be made with RYB.

this graph above got me very interested in this shroud that seemed to be over our eyes. it is a plot of all the colors the average person can see. the triangle chunk taken out of it is the subset of visible colors that can be represented using the RGB model. maybe we dont care. apparently the colors outside the triangle are inefficient to reproduce electrically, and they are very similar to colors that are inside the triangle, but still. we dont see a triangle of colors, we see a tongue! i couldnt believe that humans simplify visible colors into linear combinations of these three without there being an awareness that other visible colors exist outside this subset. our tvs and computer screens cannot reproduce these ignored colors. also worth noting is that the red-yellow-blue model is old and deprecated, and now we "know better" that the best choices as the three primary subtractive colors are yellow, cyan, and magenta (all this time i have been confused into thinking that cyan and magenta were primary additive colors, not subtractive...)

the answer to ars's article is that magenta is a combination of other colors, and not a true monochromatic color. but most of what we see in the real world is not a perfect monochromatic color either, and our accepted scheme for representing color cannot realize any monochromatic colors anyway.

February 17, 02:02 PM

shutoff begins tonight

television stations can now begin shutting off their analog broadcasts today. in the twin cities, only one plans to do this: channel 23 (the CW) will end analog at 11:59pm, with other stations to follow later this week

February 15, 02:48 PM

DTV transition update

as mentioned before, no television station would like to continue broadcasting longer than they have to, but of the 491 full power stations that have expressed wishes to shut down analog broadcasting on feb 17th (instead of waiting til june 12th), the FCC has only okayed 368. for the other 123 stations, the FCC wants them to jump through several hoops if they want to turn off early, stating that it is the best interest of public safety. [via]

February 11, 03:51 PM

jimmy john's, erbert's & gerbert's, and milio's founders are all cousins!

i had heard stories - urban legends, almost - about the founders of erbert's and gerbert's being brothers (named erbert and gerbert, coincidentally) that eventually had disagreements about how sandwiches should be made so gerbert branched off, changed his name to jimmy john, and made his own sandwich franchise.

seems there is a hint of truth in this: jimmy john's came first, in 1983, founded in a garage by jimmy john liautaud. he helped his cousin, kevin schippers, set up erbert's & gerbert's in 1988 (jim was in illinois and kevin in wisconsin, so they were competing yet). little did i know, milio's founder was another cousin, mike liautaud, who also got help from jimmy john setting up a sandwich shop in 1989!

excerpt of an interview with the milio's guy:

"We all get along. We’re not going out to eat every Friday, but we’re fine... I try to keep that competition out of the family, and at family events." [franchisetimes]

all three are sandwich options on the university of minnesota campus! [mndaily]

in my opinion, jimmy john's is by far the best. now i just wish i could recreate his #5 at home...

February 09, 06:04 PM

autohotkey script for MappedUp behind a proxy

very cool new screensaver/active desktop/rss reader MappedUp is definately my new screensaver. you choose your rss feeds and it sticks them on a world map. a sample is seen below:

however, if you are behind a proxy server that requires a username and password, the feeds do not work until you enter your credentials (it uses the same interface as IE). to solve this problem, i wrote a simple autohotkey script that will simple click "okay" when the screensaver comes on:

#Persistent
settimer,check,5000 ;checks every 5 seconds to see if screensaver is active

check:
result:=DllCall("user32.dll\SystemParametersInfo","uint",0x0072, "uint", 0, "uint*",screen_saver_active, "uint", 0 )
if(screen_saver_active) ;if screensaver is active...
{
SetTitleMatchMode, 2
ifwinexist, Connect to ;and proxy window is active
MouseClick, left, 184, 320 ;click the okay button (enter does not work)
}
return

feel free to use/modify this however you want :)

February 10, 07:01 PM

i always wonder the same thing!

this is usually only a problem when the smileys are not converted

February 06, 01:30 PM

review: prince caspian

imdb rating 7.1/10
release date: 16 May 2008 (USA)
plot: he Pevensie siblings return to Narnia, where they are enlisted to once again help ward off an evil king and restore the rightful heir to the land's throne, Prince Caspian.

supposedly this strays from the source material quite a bit (i am ashame to say i have never read the book) but i found this movie to be less cutesy than the first (surprisingly frightening for a PG) but more enjoyable. plus peter dinklage was great

February 06, 01:24 PM

review: campbell's tomato soup offerings

now that i have tried all three of these, i have to warn against the first and sing praises for the last. the classic tomato is just alright when its hot. its a little thin, maybe a little too plain and tomato-y, and there are definately better soups out there. the creamy tomato solves the thinness issue, but it is still just plain tomato and so it still tastes more healthy than delicious. enter the creamy tomato parmesan bisque. i believe this to be the best soup i have ever had. it doesnt come in can form, or in the bigger microwaveable bowls, just the small soup at hand, but it is so worth it. if you get a chance, try this soup

February 05, 07:27 PM

google deleting streetview incidents

newsblog valleywag posted a story about a girl flashing the a google streetview camera. now this particular point of the street is listed as "under high demand"/'unavailable", showing instead a black screen.

this same thing has happened with other incidents caught on film, with highlights posted here

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Profile

Andrew Johnson

Electrical Engineer at Starkey Labs

Medical Devices | Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area, US

Experience

Jun 2008 - Present
Electrical Engineer / Starkey Labs

Education

2004 - 2008

University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

B.S.E.E. in Electrical Engineering

Activities: EE Undergraduate Teaching Assistant, Eta Kappa Nu EE Honors Fraternity, Community Advisor

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