All the houses are sideways

I’ve walked down my street hundreds of times since I moved here last summer, and I never could figure out exactly what it was about my neighborhood that bothered me - until last night.

All of the houses are sideways.

At least, compared to where I grew up. See, as long as I can remember, houses have always been wider than they are long - that is, the front door facing the street was on the longest wall of the house. You can get a pretty good idea of what I’m talking about by looking at this picture - you’ll see that the long side of the houses are facing the road:

But here, the part of the house facing the street is the shortest wall of the house!

I’m not sure how I feel about this.

John Doe and Joe Bag-o’-donuts

Wikipedia has a list of names for generic/unknown people used in different countries. Apparently John Doe isn’t used much outside the U.S.

Some favorites: Don Nadie (”Sir Nobody”, Argentina), Marko Marković and Petar Petrović (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Jos Bleau (Quebec), Joe Borg (Malta), and Johnny Foreigner (UK).

I had a teacher in high school who would regularly use “Joe Bag-o’-donuts”, of which I am particularly fond.

On a side note, I think that with the right intonation, you can quite productively create new names like this - you just have to start with a generic first name (Joe/John/Jane) and then have a multi-syllabic last name, which sometimes (but not always) lends some of its meaning (e.g. Johnny Mailman refers to your generic, everyday mailman, but Joe Bag-o’-donuts doesn’t have anything to do with the fried circles).

The day Google stood still (on my WiFi network)

I just finished resolving (after 3+ hours) what may be the strangest, most incomprehensible computer problem I have ever dealt with.

The background: Will and I have a wireless router to share our internet. We both have laptops in our rooms. The wireless has worked without any major problems for weeks.

And then…

All of a sudden, Google stopped loading. And when I say Google, I don’t just mean search. I mean GMail, Froogle, image search, everything. The pages just timed out. Pings didn’t return, traceroutes just sat there.

That in and of itself wouldn’t be so strange, but:

1. All other pages loaded fine (and other protocols worked fine, too)
2. Plugging either computer into the ethernet jack caused Google to load fine, but it would stop working when going back onto the wireless
3. A third compy (my old laptop), which hadn’t been on the network in something like a week, was able to load Google with no problems

I tried everything - I checked the /etc/hosts files of all computers involved, I checked if the firewalls had mysteriously been turned on on both Will’s and my computer, I even did a hard reset (to factory settings) of the router. Nothing.

Based on a wild guess, I tried turning off WPA, and lo and behold, it started working! There is *no* reason (that I can think of) that this should have any effect on loading an individual page. Can you?

(PS, guess we’re now using WEP for our network…)

Of course…

On the way home from karaoke tonight, well after 1am, Will and I found a couch sitting out on the curb about a half-mile from our apartment. Having been looking for a couch, we decided to take it back to our apartment.

After a grueling 30 minutes of carrying, quickly putting down, and picking back up again, we arrive 2 blocks from our place, only to find a bigger, more comfy couch.

Of course.

Omnibus update

I’m finally alive and well in New Jersey, counting down until classes start at Rutgers.

I flew in to Boston and crashed with Alex, then took a nice little road trip down here.

I moved in to my new apartment.

I’ve even already gone to a concert in the city (Ted Leo and the Pharmacists at the McCarren Park Pool)!

I’m off now to go find a bike!

→  “Repo! The Genetic Opera” - There are just so many things wrong with this: She Who Must Not Be Named will be starring in a movie version of "Repo! The Genetic Opera", "set in 2056, when the human race is almost destroyed and survival depends on organ transplants." I might've actually been interested in seeing it if she weren't in it... (Who am I kidding? How could I not see a rock opera with that premise?) For additional info, see the website of the Broadway production. :/: 3 Comments »

Who knew a Deaf church would be so… loud?

As you may or may not be aware, I’m taking a class this summer to learn ASL (it’s a lot of fun). In order to fulfill the “Deaf culture” requirement, this Sunday I want to a Deaf church.

Inter-community Church of God is a non-denominational Protestant church, which serves hearing people, Deaf people, and their families. Early morning worship is done in English, followed by ASL worship. During the English service, there is an ASL Sunday School, and during the ASL service the English Sunday School takes place.

As soon as I walked into the foyer, I was greeted by several Deaf congregants, all of whom knew right away that I was not deaf. An old lady came up to me, and signed that her name was Rosie, and asked my name, where I was from, and what had brought me to their church that day. Luckily these were questions I was prepared to answer in ASL, and doing so made her quite happy. Several other Deaf congregants expressed similar feelings. Everyone made an effort to communicate with me, signed slowly and deliberately (thank goodness), and were tolerant of my horrid “accent” (oh let’s face it - my lack of knowledge).

Walking into the chapel, I noticed that there were a lot of speakers and audio equipment around, which I (understandably) assumed was for the English services. Boy was I in for a surprise. Read the rest of this entry »

Hats

On the way home from the gym today, I saw both a woman wearing a sombrero, and a man wearing a pith helmet.

     

That is all.

→  Should we simplify spelling? - The Beeb pitted a spelling reform advocate against a linguist who is against such change. Spelling reform for English based on links between sounds and letters has to relate to a single accent... This disadvantages once again children with non-standard accents, say those who would naturally spell "bath" as "barf". It also cuts accents of English off from each other; a Londoner would not be able to read Geordie, a person from Sydney a letter from someone in Ottawa. The cost of any change would be astronomical. [While I like this quote, the real reason I excerpted it here is because it has an example of gapping in it :)] :/: No Comments »

→  Linguistics in a Primary School - Linguist Kristin Denham (Western Washington University) talks about bringing linguistics into a primary school setting. :/: No Comments »

→  “I’m not sure how I feel about prescriptivism when I’m the victim” - Dinosaur Comics, one of my favorite webcomics, takes a (hilarious) look at prescriptivism and precision of language. :/: 4 Comments »

→  On Serious Literature - SciFi legend Ursula Le Guin responds to Slate's implication that genre fiction is a "decaying corpse". A great (very) short story. :/: 2 Comments »

Mixing up arguments

I got the following IM today:

“I traded the permanent parking spot for the bigger bedroom”

My first thought was “why would you get rid of the bigger bedroom?”

Apparently the natural reading of this sentence is that the speaker originally had the parking spot and then got the bigger bedroom, but I can read it either way. In fact, I can get either reading for several verbs like this: “trade”, “switch”, “swap”.

Anyone else, or am I alone in this?

Update: Danny informs me that Igor (a native Russian speaker, L2 English speaker) produces and judges these guys the same way that I do.

Update 2: JonW reminds me that he noted this pattern with the verb “replace” in what’s he’s termed ABrE on his wiki back in July ‘05.

Quail Botanical Gardens and San Diego

I’ve posted some photos of my trip with Brad to San Diego and the Quail Botanical Gardens. Some of them actually came out really neat!

A sampling:

   

   

Further proof that I haven’t lost my mind (yet)

Several years ago (in fact, I think it was 2004), I went to BUCLD with JonW. The BU linguistics club was selling t-shirts that read (approximately) [aj <3 lɪŋgwɪsts].

I almost hesitated to buy one, because of the spelling of “linguists” — I pronounce it as [liŋgwɪsts] (=”[leen]guists”, for my non-IPA-reading friends), whereas the pronunciation on the shirt was [lɪŋgwists] (=”[lynne]guists”).

JonW assure me that I was thoroughly crazy, and that the shirt’s pronunciation was correct.

I am here today to report that I am not, in fact, mad, but that rather this is one of the many features of the California English dialect I have picked up living in the Golden State.

From the Wikipedia page on California English:

I didn’t realize it was possible to pronounce “rang” as [ræŋ], or “king” as [kɪŋ] - in fact, I have to contort my mouth in all sorts of funny ways to make those sounds come out

For more on /ɪ/→[i]/_ŋ, see this Phonoloblog post, or your friendly neighborhood Californian.

One day, your computer will be a big-a** table…

…with pictures of other people’s kids all over it.

A delightful parody of the Microsoft Surface “table-puter”

(Via Gizmodo)

Dear writers of The 4400

Dear writers of The 4400,

In the future, please do not start a new season with a Monster of the Week episode, containing exactly nothing tying us back to the mythology from the previous season.

Thanks a bunch!

-Aaron

The laziest dog in the world

My family’s dog, Zoe, is probably the laziest dog in the world:

  

I’ve created a chronology of her day, for your viewing pleasure.

Multi-lingual iPhone New York ad

I like this (possibly fake?) iPhone ad, for obvious reasons. Click the image to go to the video. (Also, props for including ASL among the languages represented.)

→  The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs - I know I'm about a year late on this, but I love Fake Steve Jobs. :/: No Comments »