That new dictionary is ginormous!

Well, the new edition of the official Meriam-Webster dictionary has been finalized, and there are plenty of words that now enjoy the status of being recognized by MW as parts of the English language.

I first heard the most outlandish new word in the movie Elf, where Will Ferrell's character (a human who was adopted and raised as an elf at the North Pole) exclaims "These toilets are ginormous!" when he first encounters a human-sized public restroom.

Additional newly-minted words include "sudoku," "smackdown," and "DVR."

New dictionary includes 'ginormous' - AP

The Cult of the Amateur, by Andrew Keen

I have to get a copy of this book (unfortunately it's not in the local library, at least not yet):

“What you may not realize is that what is free is actually costing us a fortune,” Mr. Keen writes. “The new winners — Google, YouTube, MySpace, Craigslist, and the hundreds of start-ups hungry for a piece of the Web 2.0 pie — are unlikely to fill the shoes of the industries they are helping to undermine, in terms of products produced, jobs created, revenue generated or benefits conferred. By stealing away our eyeballs, the blogs and wikis are decimating the publishing, music and news-gathering industries that created the original content those Web sites ‘aggregate.’ Our culture is essentially cannibalizing its young, destroying the very sources of the content they crave.”

The Cult of the Amateur - Andrew Keen - Books - Review - New York Times

Getting Things in Order, Part II

Well, I made a small step toward the cleaning of the home office: a clean desk!



Plus, for added photo goodness, here's a picture of our rabbit, Gimli (he's a dwarf rabbit... get it?), sitting on my stomach all wrapped up in a blanket:



(I know, that pic was probably a bit too cutesy, but what the heck...)

What Should I Eat?

Great Wondermark... don't forget to check the image mouse-over text, which is the best part of this one.

Wondermark by David Malki ! - 310: In which Paul asks a Question of an Eel

Getting Things in Order

Well, I recently ran across a blog post about "just getting started" on personal projects (hat tip to blogging bird-dog Merlin Mann for the link) that got me thinking.

My wife and I are approaching the first anniversary of owning our first house. That means I've been sitting in an utterly disorganized, jam-packed home office every evening for the last fifty-one weeks. Well, our friends are saying, didn't you wait to move in until a couple weeks after you bought it? OK, well, that's not the point. Ignoring the fact that I haven't actually been sitting there for a year doesn't change the fact that the computer room started getting cluttered the moment we began bringing boxes over from the apartment.

You see, when we moved we were kind of rushed. Due to that rush, I told Lauren that we were just going to "throw everything in boxes and move it over," and that we would sort out our possessions as we unpacked them in the new place. Well, it's been almost a whole year, and I still haven't gotten around to going through all the Frito-Lay cartons of our stuff.

So the upshot is that I still sit among piles of boxes as I surf the Web and fiddle with my home Linux server. So I've decided to "just do it" once again and clean up my room. (In the intervening time I've also started on a weight loss plan that seems to be taking hold and working well, just in case you thought I'd gone more than half a year since starting anything new.)

Here are a couple of pictures of what I have to start with:


I'll keep this blog updated with photos as I work on it; my plan is to have things cleared away and neatly organized by September 20—the end of the summer, since Fall starts on the 21st—hold me to it!

The best Steve Jobs article I've read in a while

Though the author, John Heilemann, is a self-described "Mac cultist," he offers a well-balanced summary of the life and times of Steve Jobs in his recent article for New York Magazine (linked below).

It's long, and according to a friend of mine it "was written with an editor's vocabulary" (that is to say, with sesquipedalian tendencies), but I found it interesting and insightful.

The iPhone Inaugurates a Dangerous New Era for Apple Boss Steve Jobs -- New York Magazine

xkcd did it again

Great stuff... I especially like the bit right after "visible light" and "UV light."

xkcd - Electromagnetic Spectrum - By Randall Munroe

A Blog Post About Sex!

Well, sex chromosomes, anyway. The article linked below is extremely well-written, informative, and enjoyable. Check it out!

For Motherly X Chromosome, Gender Is Only the Beginning - New York Times

A more "population-based" map of the Web

Randall Munroe already did a "topographic" map of Internet locations here, but today's comic (link below) is a map that actually depicts user population for various Web-based communities. I'd say that I live mostly in the IRC isles, with frequent trips to del.icio.us. I view the rest of the Web with a telescope (i.e. RSS feed subscriptions).

xkcd - Online Communities

Earth, Mach II?

It appears that scientists have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is likely to have liquid water and earth-like temperatures. It's much closer to its star than Earth, but said star is a red dwarf that emits much less heat than our sun.

I really don't have much to say about this, but I think it's really cool!

First habitable Earth like planet outside Solar System discovered - Malaysia Sun