Dear Readers,
Hopefully, the page loaded faster for you. I’ve spent a few hours optimizing the page for faster load and better readability. I downsized pictures and removed as many from the .css file as I could. I don’t have any pictures in my background anymore. I also cut quality on the picture displayed on the site.
My next update will be a photo update that won’t be seen on your side of the site…….hopefully. I’m trying to clean house on my side of the site.
I’m working on launching a site for purchasing my photos. It will have a cart feature. I’m going to call my photography business Starlin Studios. I have a logo planned. I’ll be placing watermarks on my pictures.
I started working for Midwest MTD in Willard through Spherion again. I’m really enjoying it. Since I now have a fresh prospective on what’s out there in terms of local jobs. I’ll be starting my 2nd full week Monday. I worked 3 days my first week. I received my first pay check from this job. Man, is it nice to have a pay check again. I haven’t had one for about a month.
Today, I worked in the basement again. Crystal, Aunt Valerie and I have spent many days down there going through stuff. Carol was sort of a pack rat. We’ve almost finished going through stuff now we just need to straighten up the stuff that’s left. I’m going to be optimistic and say just 1 more day of work will finish it up. I’m going to try to straighten it up during the week so that we don’t work too many more weekends. The flood that happened awhile back ruined many, many pictures and files stored down there. We’ve went through an emotional hurricane while working down there. We come out completely drained, at least I do and they look like it. I did move quite a few photos upstairs before the flood so we’ll have too look through those some time. I also have a closet of books that need going through yet.
I think, I haven’t yet told you yet that I don’t have a roommate anymore. He went to Texas to make some money this summer. I guess, I’ll have to live. I miss him a lot already and he has only been gone almost a month.
Well, I’d better go since I have a birthday party this evening and I need to run to Goodwill again since we worked in the basement.
Your Blogger,
Nathaniel Starlin
Some mistakes are more entertaining than others
By Gere Goble • Drat It • June 13, 2009
My husband is prone to quote one of his college professors in defining what it is copy editors are supposed to do: Keep bad stuff out of the paper.
Advertisement
I skipped the quote marks on that, because the direct quote uses more colorful language. But you get the idea.
Yes, copy editors fix grammatical and spelling errors. We remind reporters that if they’re writing about an upcoming event, it’s important to include such basic information as time, date and place. We make sure stories aren’t missing essential information, such as a source’s first name. (That happens way more often than you’d think.)
We also make sure there’s a single space between sentences and that the quote marks point in the right direction. We eliminate obscenities. (Don’t ask me why people think they can drop the F-bomb in a family newspaper, but they try.)
But when you get right down to it, it’s all the same thing.
A lot of the time, copy editing’s simply boring. Reading an entire high school honor roll’s not much fun when you don’t know any of the kids. Trying to guess if names are misspelled or merely very highly unusual is enough to drive a person nuts.
But sometimes, things go wonderfully wrong. A simple typo can entirely change a sentence’s meaning. Modifiers go astray. Inadvertent double entendres attack. Kids really do say the darndest things. And sometimes, words just plain sound strange.
It’s been a while since I shared some of my favorite bad things that didn’t make it into the paper. So brace yourself: Here we go.
# “We can begin to chip away at some of the erosion that’s causing our unity to decay.” And I began to chip away at some of the mixed metaphors.
# “Keep that waggy, pointy finger in our pants for a minute.” Even after I said I was rewriting this sentence, the writer saw nothing wrong with it.
# “I started sowing in 4-H when I was in third grade,” the person said. I suppose that’s possible, but the story was about a needleworker, not a farmer.
# “The young people… participated in a 30-hour famine in support of world hunger.” Hurray for world hunger? Maybe they were in favor of famine relief. Ya think?
# A recipe called for 2 tablespoon poopy seeds.
# “We’ve looked at the six major world religions,” he said. “We will see how Christianity fits into that and we will also talk about the scared scriptures of the religions.” Scriptures may have frightening passages, but I’ve never once seen one that’s actually afraid. In same story: “The way the Jewish treat their holidays is scared.”
# “The Mansfield Symphony String Ensemble also will entertain the audience with tree selections.” Nothing lovely as a tree, I guess.
# “I can’t believe I almost drowned, but thanks to my cousin, Max, he saved me. I was surprised that he saved me.” Ain’t Max great? OK, that quote wasn’t wrong. It was just a kid being a kid.
# “Sate winners receive a weeklong rip to Gettysburg and Washington, D.C.” That’s quite a prize.
# “The members returned to (a member’s) home, where they ate sack lunches, and ate fruit and dessert, along with Uxley.” Yum, Uxley.
# “An unhealthy sampling of salt offers just enough seasoning for a bustling, juicy colonel.” Or a bursting, juicy kernel. Maybe.
# “It’s going to take more than nudity in a hot tub.” Don’t ask me what that one was supposed to mean.
# “I liked the Bible discovery (program),” said a 12-year-old. “We learned about the periodical son and how his father forgave him.” The periodical son must have been working for Playboy.
# “It’s usually boring and we have nothing to do but read the Bible and listen to people preach,” the young girl said. “But this was fun.” Ah, the honesty of youth.
# “Area students named to the spring water dean’s list are named according to their hometown.” I think the typist may have been thinking about her shopping list that day.
# “The Greater St. John’s, Oasis of Love Church, of God in Christ.” Wild commas on the loose!
# “Some kids might get really upset if their best friend dies.” Duh.
# A speaker “presented the program and gave scripture from Chronicles, Psalms and Hewbrews.” Hewbrews? Are those the people with the scared holidays?
# “What do you have to have long as you know why he lands in the eye of the Dan.” Sometimes, I just scratch my head.
I’m going to close with a slight change of pace: A pair of direct quotes from co-worker Holly Harman Fackler.
The first one was overheard while she was speaking — in a very chipper voice — to someone about an obituary: “So, you have a death wish!”
I wish I could have heard the other end of that conversation.
The second quote will be appreciated by readers of my husband’s columns. It was Holly’s reaction a few years back when she heard Steve was going to have his gall bladder removed: “So Steve will have less bile!”
Dream on.
ggoble@nncogannett.com
419-521-7263
via Some mistakes are more entertaining than others | bucyrustelegraphforum.com | Bucyrus Telegraph Forum.
MOSCOW, June 6 (UPI) — The video game “Tetris” has been addictive and entertaining since it was first created 25 years ago, its Russian inventor says.
Russian computer programmer Alexey Pajitnov said when he first created the popular video game, he was immediately entranced like its users by its simple but engaging premise, The Daily Telegraph (Britain) said Saturday.
“The program wasn’t complicated, Pajitnov remembered. “There was no scoring, no levels. But I started playing and I couldn’t stop.”
The video game, which forces users to place various falling shapes together in order to form lines, was first released as an IBM computer game. But when “Tetris” came out on Nintendo’s Game Boy system in 1989, it became an instant international sensation.
The Game Boy version of “Tetris” has resulted in more than 35 million copies being sold to date, The Tetris Co. said.
Pajitnov, who only began receiving royalties from such sales in 1996, said he initially created the game in 1984 as a distraction from his work at Russia’s Computing Center of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
“I started to put together all kinds of mathematical puzzles and diversions that I had loved all my life,” he said.
via ‘Tetris’ celebrates 25 years of gaming fun – UPI.com.
Miyamoto Spotted at Microsoft’s Project Natal Demo
Nintendo’s R&D mastermind checks out what Microsoft has in store for videogame motion controls.
By Kris Pigna, 06/06/2009
Project Natal
Microsoft’s announcement of Project Natal, their new Xbox 360 full-body motion control device, was a clear challenge to Nintendo’s Wii. Naturally, it got Nintendo’s attention. As Bitmob’s (and formerly 1UP’s and EGM’s) Dan Hsu reports, as he was leaving Microsoft’s behind-closed-doors demo setup for Natal at E3, he spotted a few interesting faces coming in next: Nintendo of America’s Bill Trinen, and none other than Shigeru Miyamoto himself.
To have seen what Miyamoto’s reaction was when he tested out Microsoft’s new motion controls would have been a sight to behold , but alas, it was a private demo, so we’ll never really know. But Miyamoto was asked by the BBC what he thought about both Microsoft’s and Sony’s new incursions in motion control earlier this week, to which he responded that Nintendo was “very flattered” that Sony and Microsoft “have looked at what we have done with the Wii.” He went on to say he wasn’t worried about the increased competition. “Based on the announcements we’ve seen, they are still in the initial stages and are trying to create experiences that at this point don’t seem like they have the type of depth that we’re able to provide with Wii Motion Plus,” Miyamoto said.
Which begs the question — were these comments made before he got hands-on time with Project Natal, or after… and would it have made a difference? Alas, that’s something else we’ll never know.
via Miyamoto Spotted at Microsoft’s Project Natal Demo: News from 1UP.com.
