Posted by Administrator in : Uncategorized, Linguistics , add a comment
I know that the correct pronuciation of some words like nuclear is not up to much debate, no matter how our oh so cultured president mangles it. For a different take on this particular linguistic faux pas, see the essay given on Fresh Air by Geoffrey Nunberg.
While some words, like pecan, is pronounced differently depending on where in the U.S. you were raised.
Even so, I would think that if you were producing and/or starring in a major television series, that you could at least manage to pronounce a given word the same way each time you say it. Especially, when it is featured three times in the same sentence.
Maybe the producers of $40 a Day on Food Network need to coach Rachael Ray on that.
And while I am at it, maybe the wait staff at Middletown Place in Charleston, SC, could manage to pronounce huguenot properly when listing their desserts.
The times they are a-changin’ April 26, 2006
Posted by Administrator in : WordPress, Web Development, Internet , add a comment
As Bob Dylan said…
Well, if any of you come here often you will have noticed that the look of the site has changed. I am now using the Regulus theme by Ben Gillbanks.
The reason for this is that I am now running the Widget plugin and needed a new theme that supported widgets.
For more on WordPress Widgets, browse on by the Automattic WordPress Widget page.
In the next couple of weeks I am going to be working on a widget or two. I’ll post more on that soon.
But when will I ever need to know that?
Posted by Administrator in : Uncategorized , add a comment
For all of those who thought (and still fervently believe) that all of those hours of math we took will never be used, now you too can turn that hard work into works of art.
Take a look at the math-inspired Lego(r) structures featured at MAA Online, the Mathematical Association of America.
iTunes and WordPress April 6, 2006
Posted by Administrator in : Mac OS X, WordPress , add a comment
Looking for a way to display my recently played songs in the sidebar of my WordPress site.
I ran across a small program called Recent Tunes, by Freshly Squeezed Software in conjuction with a WordPress plugin called WP iTunes.
When the plugin is activated, after following the configuration notes on the homepage, it should create the appropriate table in the WP database. In my case it did not and I had to manually create it myself. If you refresh your homepage after activiating the plugin and receive a parse error, then most likely you will need to create this table yourself. The query for doing so is:
CREATE TABLE $wpit_table ( itunes_id mediumint(8) NOT NULL auto_increment, album varchar(255) NULL default '', track varchar(255) NULL default '', artist varchar(255) NULL default '', genre varchar(255) NULL default '', image text NULL default '', added_date varchar(50) NOT NULL default '', PRIMARY KEY (itunes_id))
After creating this table you will need to configure Recent Tunes to use HTTP GET to update the wp-itunes data. Make sure that you don’t add http:// to the url section of Recent Tunes’ preferences, or it won’t work.
For more on configuring this setup checkout the following references:
Note: The original version of wp-itunes is written to display either an image from Amazon or a link to the iTMS for the album. Since I wanted neither of these, I commented that line out in the plugin file.
Are your pixels stucK? Call for a tow! April 3, 2006
Posted by Administrator in : Technology, Consumer , add a comment
So, you just got this really awesome LCD monitor. You gingerly take it out of the box and lovingly connect it to your machine.
You turn it on and a horrific screams escapes you mouth “Noooooooooooo! A Stuck Pixel!”.
Then you get that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you remember the manufacturer will only replace the monitor for 5 or more bad pixels.
So what do you do? You fix it yourself. That’s right fix it!
Check out some techniques on repairing your stuck pixels.
I have one on my monitor at home and I am going to test this out. Check back tomorrow for a report on whether it works or not.