Altered Carbon wiki
I've absolutely loved
Richard Morgan's books ever since I first picked up Altered Carbon. The books of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy are so packed full of concepts and ideas that I find it almost impossible to keep track of everything suggested.
So I've started putting together a
wiki of the Altered Carbon universe. There's a long way to go yet, but the idea is that eventually it will become a useful resource for anyone else who's addicted to these books!
A rant about language
Someone recently asked on a mailing list I'm on: "
What is the plural of doofus?". All kinds of weird and wacky answers were suggested, and that's what I want to complain about.
Modern English is really one of the simplest languages when it comes to pluralising words, you simply add a
-s suffix (or if the word already ends in a sibilant, add
-es). It really is as simple as that, so the plural of
doofus is
doofuses.
OK, I know there are the obvious exceptions to the above -s rule, this are predominately old Germanic words whose use in the language not only predates the introduction of medieval French 1000 years ago, but which were common enough that the irregular plurals didn't fade away. Examples would be child/children, man/men, sheep/sheep.
But in general, pluralisation is simple in English. All this nonsense about treating nouns ending in
-us differently is generally just that -- nonsense. English isn't Latin, and has never been Latin, so there is absolutely no reason at all to assume that Latin declinations should apply to English words, even if the words themselves are derived from Latin sources. For a good exmple, see this article on
the plural of the word "virus".
I blame the Victorians.
For some reason best known to themselves, early Victorian gramatticists decided that the only "pure" language was Latin, and everything else now spoken wer merely degenerate cases of that language. Hence their coming up with completely arbitrary rules such as "never split an infinitive". Why not? You
can't split an infinitive in Latin, as it is only one word. But in English it's often far more natural to put an adverb into an infinitive. So if that's how the language flows, do it!
The same Victorian belief on Latin purity is what produces the confusion about English words ending in
-us. Because they bear a superficial resemblence to many common Latin nouns it was decided that in many cases they ought to decline as if they
were Latin nouns. But they're not! Latin's influence on English is very remote, having spent 500 or so years evolving into Norman French before getting amalgamated with Germanic Anglo-Saxon in the 11th and 12th centuries.
I repeat: there is no reason at all why Latin grammar rules should be applied to English.
Compass for mobile phones
Wow, finally a J2ME application that (a) is useful and (b) works!
Compass is the apt name for a small Java application that sits on your mobile phone and enables you to find out where North is. You simply tell it where in the world you are (enter latitude and longitude coordinates if you have them, or the nearest airport code if you don't), and it displays a graphical image of the sun and/or moon, along with a pointer to north. So you merely align your phone so that the images of the sun and moon match the real objects, and away you go :)
OK, so there are a couple of minor problems. There
are times when neither sun nor moon are visible, and potentially you could be somewhere many hundreds of kilometres from the nearest airport with no idea what your lat/long is. In which case you'd probably be better off investing in a decent GPS unit. And some of
Ray Mears' survival skills, too!
Rock 'N Fuckin' Roll
So, that was it then.
The Intrepid Fox's final ever party (at least the Wardour Street Fox as we know it). Lots of loud music, lots of silly games, lots of good rockin' music and a good time had by all. Can't speak for anyone else but I know I was very bleary-eyed this morning!
Pictures to follow in a short while.
