heraldry wrongitude

Spotted on a sign near Castle Combe, Wiltshire:

The shield above depicts the arms of Scrope; its blazon is Azure, a bend Or.

Every heraldry geek knows that the arms of Scrope are azure a bend or (not "argent a bend" - a bend what? besides you don't get metal on metal). You would have thought it would not be beyond the wit of sign-writers to obtain a decent proof-reader...

The reason that every heraldry geek knows this is that there was a dispute between Scrope and other families (Carminow and Grosvenor) over who had the right to use azure a bend or.

word verification

Recently Google has been generating quasi-meaningful-sounding word verification - so far today I've had besserso (as in, "Ja, es ist besser so.") and vocurdst:

I vocurd
Thou vocurdst
He vocurdeth
We vocurden
You vocurden
They vocurden

(to vocurd: archaic English verb meaning to vocalise through emulsified substances associated with whey.)

And the latest gem is pologami - that's either "the art of folding small round mints with a hole in" or a love-in at a polo match...

Avast there!

Happy Internashnul Talk Loike a Pirate Day!

Avast there me hearties! Prepare to be boarded. I be out on the cyber-seas lookin' fer people to walk the virtual plank. Ye lubbers!

If you be an aspirin' female pirate, you should read Pirates by Celia Rees, which be explainin' all about how young ladies might become pirates, if so be as they wanted to excape from a loife of drudgitude and subjecshun to patriarchy and such-like stuff.

Teh ship's mascot also be gettin' in on the akshun:

Steampunk

Awesome! Bluetooth, steampunk-style:

clipped from www.slipperybrick.com Nicrosin’s Victorian-style Bluetooth device should be mass produced and powered solely by winding. He makes his creations from sculpey and watch parts, then lines it with leather for comfort. Though it still looks like it will eat your ear.

And this steampunk R2D2 is pretty cool, too:

clipped from www.slipperybrick.com

Here’s what you get when a mad scientist from the 19th century creates a droid. The only thing missing is C3PO in a gentleman’s suit and bowler. It was made by Deviant Art user Amoebabloke, who has mad droid modding talent.

care of your geek

There are numerous guides available to living with a geek; there's even a book.

• The Geek Handbook: User Guide and Documentation for the Geek in Your Life
  by Mikki Halpin
• mattandjess.net - as you wish: The Care and Feeding of your Geek
• Your New Geek: Care and Feeding Guide « willfe's blog
• A Girl's Guide to Geek Guys by Mikki Halpin and Victoria Maat

Most of these guides are written as if the geek in question is male; however there is some awareness of female geeks, particularly in the book.

If you think you may be a geek, there's a diagnostic tool available from just say hi, and a more comprehensive one available from innergeek (but slightly biased towards a US audience). My latest geek score from innergeek is 37.08087% (major geek); JustSayHi rates me as 72% geeky.

Because we all know that the geek shall inherit the earth.

maybe it's because I'm a geek...

...but I love this keynote given at the Accessibility 2.0 conference held in London in April 2008 by Jeremy Keith.

It's got things in it like architectural shearing layers:

• the site
• the structure,
• the skin (which is the exterior surface),
• the services (like wiring and pipes),
• the space plan and
• the stuff (like chairs, tables, carpets and pictures).

What the great-grandson of Champollion is doing:

It was only thanks to the Rosetta Stone (also on display in this very city) and the valiant efforts of Champollion that we can read and understand hieroglyphics today.

By the way — and this is a complete tangent — do you know what the great-grandson of Chamopollion does for a living? I only know this because my wife is a translator: he writes software for translators. Well, I say software …he’s actually created a plugin for Word. So his legacy might not be quite as enduring as his ancestor’s.

The connection between Whitworth's standards for screws and Babbage's difference engine:

The true father of standards is a British man, a member of The Royal Society which was based, yes, right here in this city. His name was Joseph Whitworth and he was an engineer. A developer in other words. He standardized screw threads. Before Whitworth, screws were made on a case-by-case basis, each one different from the next. That didn’t scale well for the ambitious project that Whitworth was working on. He was the chief engineer on Charles Babbage’s difference engine which, although it can’t boast a direct lineage to this computer, bears an uncanny resemblance in its internal design. I love the idea that there’s a connection between the screws that were created for the difference engine and the standards that we use to build the Web.

It's also a really great article about the (near) future of web accessibility, and goes into some detail about future-proofing, another hobby-horse of mine that no-one else seems interested in; he also makes a connection between accessibility and future-proofing:

We can either spend our time and effort locking data up into closed formats with restrictive licensing. Or we can make a concerted effort to act in the spirit of the Web: standards, simplicity, sharing… these are the qualities of openness that will help us preserve our culture. If we want to be remembered for a culture of accessibility, we must make a commitment to open data.

He also likes science fiction - hurrah!

I'm so geeky

72% Geek

This is quite an improvement on my previous score.

ET loves Firefox

Even aliens prefer Firefox:

religions as software

Christianity is like Microsoft:

• It's a large corporate venture, bent on world domination
• Once you've installed it on your hard drive, it's really difficult to get rid of it
• Nearly everyone's got it (and they use it in schools), so it has become the default option
  
• It is incompatible with other software
• It takes up a lot of space on your hard drive
  
• It fails to conform to international standards
• But the user interface is attractive and the support is 24/7

Paganism is like Linux:

• It's dead set against Microsoft
• It's small and developed by a dedicated community of geeks
• It comes from Northern Europe
• The support arrangements are a bit patchy
• It's eclectic and has lots of shareware

Reconstructionism is like programming via the command line:

• It's bloody hard work and you can only do one thing at a time
  
• Heathenry - "the religion with homework" - 'nuff said.
  

Satanism is like a computer virus:

• It's parasitic upon Microsoft and exploits its vulnerabilities
• People blame it on the Linux geeks but it's actually done by spotty teenagers with no social life
• Naive Microsoft users are always claiming there's more of it about than there actually is (there are only about 100 actual Satanists in the UK)

Google is like an insidious cult:

• It appeared from nowhere and everyone thought it was peace-loving and non-corporate and cool
  
• Now it is trying to take over the world by stealth
• It started with the motto "Don't be evil" but then got into bed with a totalitarian regime
  

The New Age is like Facebook:

• Light, bright and has lots of shiny gizmos
• Uses social networking to connect people

Quakers (Friends) and Unitarians are like Apple Mac:

• Generally owned by intellectuals and arty types; not corporate
• Adheres to international standards
  
• Great user interface; universally agreed to be cool
  
• But hardly anyone actually owns one

Wicca is like Firefox:

• Wicca discovered the Divine Feminine way before Christianity, and now they're stealing our clothes (so everyone will think they discovered Her) - Firefox invented tabbed browsing way before Microsoft, and now Microsoft have finally adopted it, and everyone will think they invented it
• Both Wicca and Firefox have a great logo
• Both adopted by a small community of dedicated users

By Yvonne Aburrow (if you pass this on to anyone else, please link back here).

See also: Religions as ex-girlfriends by Al Billings

I'm MIT

I'm the Massachusetts Institute of Technology!

People have often said about you that the odds are good, but the goods are odd. You're definitely good at knowing what the odds are in any situation, even if you might have trouble expressing what they are to a crowd of people. You see the whole world in numbers and have even argued that it might be beneficial to replace peoples' names with numbers in all situations. It would seem that you are odd after all. But brilliant. You make a serious effort to never go outside.

What university are you? Take the University Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

I'm quite happy to be a university full of geeks with a solstice sunrise alignment in my corridors...