In Uncategorized on October 10, 2002
there’s a collective noun
for everything from an aarmory of aardvarks through to a yoke of oxen. this
collective of nouns differentiates between the “submitted” and the merely
“suggested” but it does think the collective noun for bats is a cloud. and
it’s the number one hit on google for “collective noun bats“.
i think
the collective noun for bats is a cauldron. i first realised we were coming
up on halloween when it appeared in this websites top search terms today.
i’m number two on google for that search term. i haven’t a clue what my
source was.
number three on google merely asks the question “what is a group of bats called?”; number four thinks bats come in colonies; and number five doesn’t even ask the question, yet alone give an answer.
sorry gentle reader, but the answers just aren’t here (or there).
In books read on October 10, 2002
Hmmm, I see I wrote in my writeup of A Fall in Denver, the second book in this series that the book took a while to get going. This is the third in the series and the same is true. If I was subjecting books to a 50 page test, or even a 100 page test, then I don't think I would have finished this.
I enjoy the decently plotted scientifically bent plots and Em Hansen solves mysteries using skills she's learnt as a geologist. I enjoy her mixed-upped-ness and her family failings and her not quite with it attitude to life. There's lots here that I love but I just don't like the beginnings.
One of the problems with amateur sleuths is that they have trouble falling over dead bodies all the time in books, something a professional detective can get away with. I do think the author has done an admirable job of making Em's detective work realistic by tieing the necessary shennaigans into a plot thicker than crude oil but I think something is definitely missing from the beginning of these books. I'd either like a ten page summary of the first hundred pages to get me into the heart of the mystery faster or I'd like a mini-mystery, related to the main one or not, to get tied up earlier in the book.
At the moment I don't feel much like trying book four but I might give Andrews another chance to write a beginning before I write her off because I really do enjoy her middles and endings.
Purchased on 28th February 2000.
In Uncategorized on October 10, 2002
m c escher in lego is wonderful. it’s a a lego reconstruction
of the famous picture in which monks appear to be constantly ascending or
descending a square of staircase. don’t scroll down the page until
you’ve had a good look at the photo of the model as they explain how they
built it further down the page.
they’ve also recreated escher’s balcony and belvedere
drawings. i think the belvedere one isn’t quite as seamless as the others
because the bumps on the lego bricks give the perspective tricks away a bit
too much. i think they must’ve had cracking fun creating these.
[found via milk and cookies via wander lust]
In Uncategorized on October 10, 2002
this little touch typing game word shark
is amusing me no end as i’m not a very good touch typist. i’m too used to
looking at the keyboard though when i don’t think about it i find i hardly
need to. i’m fine at typing real words with regular letter patterns, my
fingers seem to know what they are doing. as soon as this game wants me
to type odd letters or strange sets of initials i’m totally at sea. i came
out with 46 words per minutes at 97% accuracy which i don’t think is too
shabby. it certainly merits a “could do better” though.
i nearly managed to type the whole of that last paragraph looking at the screen too.
[found via #!/usr/bin/girl]
nocto