Wyclif on Yonk

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It’s now well-known in the World of Webologosphericon 2.0 that Wyclif is back, but now there’s more to the story: I’ve just redone his WordPress template.

Take a look. As with most of my work, I go for a simple, understated layout consisting of neutral colors, light on use of images, letting type carry the message. (If the main content div looks a bit tight, it’s because of the whole “500px width for Flickr’s sake” issue again.) I call the template “Yonk.” At some point I will release all the WP templates I’ve ever made for download somewhere. But not today.

BegTheQuestion.info Reborn!

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Meet my latest pet project: Beg The Question. (Or BTQ, for short.)

Although BTQ started out as a silly little April Fool’s gimmick, I recently decided to make better use of the domain by turning it into a concise central venue to inform the general public of this all-too-common idiomatic travesty. Now, you can chastise casual BTQ abusers online by linking to begthequestion.info, thus causing them to hang their heads in shame at their grammatical ignorance. (Or perhaps cause them to explode in righteous descriptivist outrage. You never know till you try!)

There’s also a printable card sheet (inspired in part by Coudal’s SHHH cellphone etiquette campaign), and shirts and mugs, which make great gifts for the pedantic philosophical linguistic curmudgeons in your life. Just in time for Christmas, too.

(For the inevitable “language is evolving” arguments, I refer you to the Frequently Begged Asked Questions.)

[Also posted to Metafilter Projects.]

I Get the Wrong RAM

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I really wish I’d read the specs a bit more closely on that PC I got. Why did I blithely assume that what I needed for this machine was 184-pin SDRAM? The Netvista M41 uses old, slow 168-pin PC133 SDRAM. Not that you’d know that from the product page which is for the wrong computer anyway. And 168-pin RAM, for some reason, is really pricy.

Here I have 1GB of 184-pin SDRAM and an IBM Netvista M41 which is too old for it. Should cut my losses and just re-sell this box on Craigslist before it costs me any more in dollars and grief? Then I can get something compatible with the SDRAM sticks.

Update: My brother dug up two 256MB sticks of 168-pin PC133 SDRAM and is sending them over to me, so I guess the Netvista stays. Since all the cool geeks are naming their boxes, I figure I’d better name this one. I name it Fezzik.

Tiger Direct Sends Me the Wrong PC

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Those of you who saw the Cheap And Tiny entry on cheap small form desktops probably had a clue that I posted it because I was looking for, well, cheap small form desktops, since my iBook is getting on in years, but I want to wait for the Intel Macs before I get another Apple PC.

I was all set to order a refurbished Asus AE3 Pundit barebone kit with a Sempron 2800+, along with an old salvaged HDD and a stick of RAM, but then I found an almost fully equipped IBM Intellistation E Pro P4-1600 (that would be a 1.6GHz Pentium 4) for a low $170 (after rebate) on Tiger Direct, and I decided on that instead.

I really, really wish I had read a bit more on Tiger Direct before going through them.

Ordering was straightforward, and the box arrived in under three days. It was a bit bigger than I expected, but that was okay. I unpacked the PC and set it on my bed (my desk was a bit messy), checked the box label to make sure I was not going mad, and gasped in shock and horror. (Well, not really “gasped”; more like whined to the air in peeved annoyance.)

Take a good look at this photo of what I thought I was buying, and the box label I expected. Remember, the product page specified an IBM Intellistation E Pro P4-1600. Now, here’s what I got:

Yes, they sent me an IBM Netvista M41 P4-1800 instead. Actually, when you order a P4-1.6 and your mistaken order is a P4-1.8, that’s not too bad, eh? But I was ordering as small form a box as I could get for cheap, and this Netvista M41 is definitely not small.

I did a little more reading, and discovered that Tiger Direct is not so much a store as it is an online frontend to other third party computer retailers — in my case, Joy Systems — who provide the text and photos to Tiger Direct. That’s why there’s a tiny line of fine print at the bottom of every page:

“TigerDirect is not responsible for typographical or photographical errors. Prices and specifications are subject to change without notice.”

So I looked at the rather draconian return policy, looked at this BIG HONKING IBM NETVISTA M41, made a decision … and filled out and mailed the rebate forms and set up the box on my desk.

Hey, it’s not what I ordered and it’s not small, but it’s still 0.2GHz faster than what I expected. I can live with that. I ordered a WinXP OEM CD and a 1GB stick of RAM for it, but I did it on NewEgg. No more Tiger Direct for me. But I hope that rebate comes at the end of 14 weeks anyway.

New Desk Layout

So here’s my new desk layout. And if anyone asks, it was a typographical and photographical error on Tiger Direct’s part, after all, and they’re not responsible.

Wider

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Notice anything different? Yeah, a wider weblog div, slightly larger text, and no more serifed type. Mostly I tweaked things because Flickr doesn’t provide 400px photo width (and they don’t seem to be planning it as an option), and I was tired of having to post 240px photos because the standard 500px width was too wide for my existing format. So, I added about 70 pixels to my weblog div’s width (Good bye, legacy of accomodation for 640×480 resolution!), found I didn’t like the serifed body text anymore, and embiggened things till it looked like they fit. Do you find it more readable?

(When in doubt, Shift-Refresh.)

Cache Clearing

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Sitting on my computer desktop at home I have a little text file which I use as a scratch pad for notes, journal posts, to-do lists, copy-pasting, and other such things in need of quick mental buffering. It has been filling up with incomplete weblog entries lately, so it’s time to hunker down and dump the cache, just to get these unfinished thoughts and links out of the way in a messy and disorganized yet cathartic fashion.

Garver on “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ.

Holy Office on “spiritual but not religious” cliché.

Aaron abandons presuppositionalism as an exclusive apologetic method. I’ve never been comfortable myself with a philosophy of faith which begins by begging the question.

A bit old, but important: InternetMonk’s Christian Humanism category. What I like about his specific approach to the faith is the implication that the centrality of Christ’s incarnation directly addresses the age-old dialectic between “spirit” (pneuma) and “flesh” (sarx) which for years has caused Christians to either lean to the gnostic error of equating the physical with evil and the spiritual with good, or to descend into hedonistic antinomianism excused by unconditional forgiveness. In the Incarnation, both spirit and flesh are glorified, with the promise of a Resurrection which unites both in a future kingdom without sin.

Mary, Mary.

More on MARC “Soviet Russia” posters.

Review of Boogie Nights, which I watched and found gritty and intriguing, but less than satisfying for its portrayal of redemption at the end.

The Dane on democracy and manifest destiny.

Comment spammer tries to gloss over his own failure with bluster that his program was too successful. I’ve said it before: spam makes money, but it still can’t buy brains or morals. Refer also to Spammers, Stickers, Shirts.

Shark-shaped shark cage.

An “intelligent” debate with Sassy Lawyer on Roman Catholicism and intelligent design in Kansas.

That is all for now. Thank you.

Lost 2.06

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This week’s “Lost” Comprehension Quiz is an analogy question. Please circle the correct answer:

Dumbledore is to Shannon as Snape is to:

(a) Sayid

(b) Walt

(c) Ana Lucia

(d) Voldemort

Some quick notes from Wednesday’s Lost episode, “Abandoned,” which mostly failed to sustain my interest. Spoilers follow; highlight to read.

  • We don’t see Jack, Kate, Dharma Initiative, Hanso Foundation, Marvin “One Hand Clapping” Candle, or The Hatch. Not once. Hurley and Rose only mention the hatch in passing because she prefers line-drying clothes in the sun to using the time-displaced washer and dryer.
  • For someone convinced that The Hatch and The Button are the stuff of fate, faith, hope, and destiny every 108 minutes, Locke sure doesn’t seem to be spending a lot of time down there. I know they’re having alternating shifts with the other survivors and all (I guess this episode was Jack and Kate’s shift), but Locke seems to be back to business as usual, wandering the beach as Wise Old Mystic Island Shaman Who Swaddles Crying Babies.
  • By the way, Locke is crummy at intervention. “So, uh, let’s play some backgammon … YOU DRUG ADDICT!”
  • A very trigger-happy Ana Lucia shot Shannon. She made the Iraqi guy angry. But on the up side, Nadia now has no competition.
  • Lesson learned: when HallucinoWalt says “be quiet,” do not run off into the woods.
  • And speaking of HallucinoWalt, the Whispers in the Woods make a return in this episode. We know from Sawyer’s experience that the Whispers can be drawn from one’s own thoughts, and now from this episode that the Whispers are a sign that someone’s about to disappear or die. This could mean The Others have some kind of telepathic affinity towards people on the island. Or it’s possible that they just have sore throats.

More from Mostly Muppet, and check out all the mourners.

Anyway, I don’t really feel like entertaining Lost-related threads on this post, so comments are closed. You can, however, crash into DCeiver’s Pompatus of Lost 2.06, where the recaps are funny and the comments are open.

Housing Market Leveling Off?

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A bit late on this, but: DCist last month on local real estate. All the signs point to a slowing in the housing market around here — not a popped bubble just yet, but at least a leveling off which gives young urbanites time to catch up with prices that shot up far too high, even for a crowded, high-demand urban center. Given this slowdown, plus the news of thousands of new condos being built in the DC metro area starting next year, I might actually be able to live the so-called American Dream sometime in the near future, without being priced clear out of the District to Nebraska or something.

To those of you who sold before now, goody for you! (Thumbs up to Terrapin.) To those of you who bought $800K houses in gentrified neighborhoods on variable rate no-mortgage loans, my condolences, and let me know if you have a pre-foreclosure open house.

Update: Joint Strike Weasel: It’s a renter’s market. Over on Volokh, David Bernstein says DC markets are starting to take a pounding.