English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Kitḫ

15:01

sigh I can't seem to do anything right today.

Matt Эллен

you can type in a straight line. That's one thing

what's been going wrong?

Kitḫ

My husband just called me, all excited, to see if I wanted to go to this thing that we got FB invites for.

I am less than excited. I think I rained on his parade.

And now I'm not sure if I should go or not.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

BTW @Kit @Rob new active war.

Kitḫ

I think I should just tell him to go ahead without me.

Robusto

@RegDwightѬſ道 Geezis. We already giving up on 666?

Matt Эллен

15:04

@Kitḫ maybe

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Robusto the spreadsheet is your friend.

Matt Эллен

@Kitḫ why don't you wanna go?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

They've been climbing at 20 points/day since forever.

Robusto

@RegDwightѬſ道 I don't have any spreadsheets in my G+ Friends circle. I might put some in Acquaintances, but even that is iffy.

Kitḫ

@RegDwightѬſ道 Well, I'm not helping.

Robusto

15:06

In any case, I'm at work and have to solve real problems, not wring the poo out of someone's Excel nightmare.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Kitḫ In that case, you might wish to consider changing that.

Kitḫ

@MattЭллен It's some old friends of ours, who I like well enough, but the thought of hanging with the wife is about as appealing as having teeth extracted, plus it will be in a loud, crowded bar with crappy table service. (The friend's band is "debuting.")

@RegDwightѬſ道 I'll try again.

Matt Эллен

@Kitḫ I see. It's not in Amsterdam, is it? It sounds similar to a party Cerberus is trying to avoid ^_^. Nothing worse than a crappy bar where you can't hear what you're saying to the people you're with.

Kitḫ

It's the sort of thing I would have loved to do five years ago.

Now, a quiet evening with alcohol and conversation would make me happy.

Robusto

@Kitḫ If you have enough of the former you don't need as much of the latter.

Kitḫ

15:12

Can't have much of the former if I have to mind children within 24 hours.

Matt Эллен

Aye

Robusto

@Kitḫ I guess you're hung up on the whole "good parenting" meme.

Kitḫ

I hate Richard Dawkins.

Also, I hate the thought of having to find a new therapist.

Matt Эллен

Richard Daw- nah, too easy

@Robusto Yeah, drunks are great parents, or at least they think they are ;)

Kitḫ

Hey, have either of you ever transferred film to a computer before?

Robusto

15:16

@MattЭллен Once you've given up the impossible dream of being a "good parent," alcohol welcomes you back like an old friend.

Matt Эллен

gonorrhoeal reference:

0

Q: Incented or Incentivized?

What is the correct adjective to describe someone who has been given an incentive? Incented or incentivized? I have heard/seen both.

word-choice

Kitḫ

That person needs a facepunch.

Matt Эллен

knock that smug grin off that pretty face of his

Kitḫ

0

Q: Is that right to call it "SEO" and how do you pronounce it?

Two questions: I couldn't find a source to decide whether to assume SEO an acronym or not. How should I pronounce it? SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization" while it is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines. At first glance and with nothing in...

meaning pronunciation abbreviations

WTF, people?

@MattЭллен I left a snarky comment.

Apparently, evil Kit has taken over again.

Matt Эллен

@Kitḫ I saw :D +1

Kitḫ

15:20

He is kinda cute.

Matt Эллен

@Kitḫ again? I mean - oh no!

Kitḫ

"Unregistered" though? Dude.

Matt Эллен

Yes, how can they be tracked down and imprisoned, if they don't centrally register?

Kitḫ

Oh, I see. You're against the MRA then?

0

Q: "Material world", "Physical world", "Corporal world" - what's the difference?

What's the difference or different hues of meaning between these three phrases?

meaning

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен through their eye pee

Kitḫ

15:23

We are living in a material world.

Matt Эллен

@Kitḫ MRA? I'm against MRSA, since it would probably kill me. What is MRA?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Also it's not a corporal world. It's corporeal.

Kitḫ

And anyway, so noöne here has digitized negatives?

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I commented that.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kitḫ oh THAT kind of film

I have with my scanner

Or, I should say, my wife did.

Kitḫ

@MattЭллен Mutant Registration Act.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Do you have a special scanner for it?

Matt Эллен

15:25

@Kitḫ Oh! Yes. Professor X, magneto and their ilk must be stopped.

Unless I turn out to be a mutant

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kitḫ not exactly. My scanner came with a slide holder, it's just a flatbed though.

Kitḫ

@MattЭллен OK, then. Go stand in line with Tony Stark.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Specifically, I needed a way to scan Medium Format negatives, and this scanner had a slider holder in that size.

Kitḫ

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Oh, then it probably has a lighted cover?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

It also has two lights, one for reflective and one for transparent. But I never figured out how to make the transparent thing work. I just scanned them reflectively.

@Kitḫ yeah.

Kitḫ

15:27

Damn.

Matt Эллен

@Kitḫ he's for the MRA? I thought his liberal, peace loving arse would be on the muty side

Kitḫ

@MattЭллен Pro-registration. It's what split the Avengers up. Again. In um, aught six.

I think.

Big civil war in the Marvel Universe.

Matt Эллен

Oh! well I've not read the comics :(

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kitḫ oh, that wasn't a Mutant registration act, was it? I thought it was all superheros

Kitḫ

It was, as usual, way more interesting than any of that crap that happens in the DC universe.

Matt Эллен

15:28

Always!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kit do you have a scanner already?

Kitḫ

@MrShinyandNew安宇 It started with the MRA, but you are right, it was expanded to cover anyone with superhuman abilities.

Matt Эллен

Batman is great, but otherwise they're so boring

Kitḫ

@MrShinyandNew安宇 I have access to an all-in-one scanner.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

The scanner I have is an earlier model of this one I think

Kitḫ

15:29

I think if I can backlight the negatives, I might do OK, but I have to figure out how to do that.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Yes, that's very highly rated.

I'd consider it, but I don't know if it would work for my negatives.

I have 110s and 126s.

Frig. Maybe I should just spring for one. It's not super-expensive.

But where to put it?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kitḫ back in the box when you're not using it :p

Kitḫ

And up off the floor.

I found a shoebox of negatives that I had finangled from my mom.

She had been storing them next to the chimney.

In a shoebox.

Right.

Anyway, I got them a couple of years ago on the premise that I would have them cleaned and printed so we could archive them.

Premise? Is that the right word there? That seems wrong.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

seems fine

Kitḫ

I was going through them yesterday and found one that appeared to be my oldest brother's first birthday.

He's turning 40 next week and we are going to his birthday party this weekend.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I'd recommend going to a store that has a scanner and asking about negative holders if you're not sure. Or buy it from a place with a good return policy.

So this is my scanner. It has several negative and transparency holders.

Kitḫ

15:35

So I thought I'd have it printed, but it turns out it is 126, not 35mm, so I can't figure out how to have it printed anywhere,

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

this kind?

126 film

: For the unrelated roll-film format produced from 1906 to 1949, see 126 film (roll format). 126 is the number given to a cartridge-based film format used in still photography. It was introduced by Kodak in 1963, and is associated mainly with low-end point-and-shoot cameras, particularly Kodak's own Instamatic series of cameras. Although 126 was once very popular, it is no longer manufactured, and few photofinishers will process it. History and technical details In 1963, Kodak introduced a new film, encased in a plastic cartridge, for which they re-introduced the "126" designation...

Kitḫ

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Hmm...Epson Perfection has consistently come out on top. Maybe I should just gamble. What's the holder do really?

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Must be.

I'd never heard of 126 before yesterday.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kitḫ It's just a rack that holds the negatives down. It's not that easy to use, really... the upside is that the scanning software can find the images and auto-crop them. Nothing you can't do manually.

Kitḫ

But if I can't find anywhere that prints them (for less than $2 each plus handling) then I have to find some other way to get these images.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I'd try scanning that negative directly, reflectively, and telling the software "it's a negative" so that it flips the pixels, and see what happens.

@Kitḫ yeah good luck.

Kitḫ

15:39

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Well, the all-in-one isn't that clever.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Hence my recent craziness.

And renewed ire toward my mother.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

You could probably just open it up in gimp or photoshop and "invert colour"

Kitḫ

Yeah, I tried editing them in GIMP, and it works great. Except the images aren't good to begin with.

I need to get crisper, brighter scans or photos of the negatives.

It's making me crazy. It's one of those "How can there not be an easy way to do this?" kind of things that just burrows into my gray matter and chews on my medulla oblongata.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kitḫ The easy way is to pay someone to do it for you

You know one thing, besides time, that has stopped me from scanning my old photos? The fact that they don't have timestamps. Drives me fucking crazy when my photos can't be sorted by taken-time.

Like, way crazier than it has any right to.

Kitḫ

Easy + cheap, I should have said.

I have hundreds of negatives, most of them are probably crap. I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars printing them, just so I can sort through them.

But I am willing to spend hundreds of hours digitizing them myself.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kitḫ That's because you don't place enough dollar-value on your own free time.

Kitḫ

15:48

That's because I don't have the money to pay someone, even if I wanted to.

And I can't let these pictures go.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kitḫ Just spend 100s of hours working overtime on a job, then pay someone who's better (experienced and equipped) at scanning negatives to scan them for you. :)

(just kidding, really... )

Kitḫ

I know somewhere in that box, there is a picture of me and my dad when I was a baby. I want that picture.

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Hmm...maybe I could swap skilled work with a friend, though.

MetaEd

@MrShinyandNew安宇 It's more of a general world.

Scanning negatives and reversing the color is not so simple.

It can be done.

Kitḫ

The results I got with Gimp were fine. Suitable for my desires.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MetaEd Well... my scanner can do it automatically, in both its Windows software and Sane in Linux, just by scanning reflectively with the media-type set to "negative"

No backlighting or anything required.

MetaEd

15:54

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Actually you have pretty much explained why economics works. Brilliant!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

In fact I couldn't even figure out how to properly use that back-light

MetaEd

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Yes, then you're likely to do pretty well. It still helps if you have some neutral tones in the photo so you can properly tune the color map.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MetaEd Well, I can't claim credit for it, they've discussed this on the freakonomics blog.

►

Kitḫ

Anyway, the entire reason for my recent panic was the realization that I can't find anyone who can make prints for me for cheap.

MetaEd

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life by David D. Friedman.

That belongs next to your copy of Freakonomics.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

15:59

Hm, I don't have a copy of freakonomics yet :)

MetaEd

I think I'd recommend Friedman's book first then.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

cool, I'll check it out

Robusto

A moment of silence, please, for the passing of one of the main concept artists behind Fallout and Skyrim.

Kitḫ

17:01

I've got 7.6 oz of chocolate that says my attitude's gotta change.

2

Matt Эллен

nice :)

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Future tense in your language may or may not be correlated with how well speakers of your language plan for the future: languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3756

Kitḫ

Only 3.2 oz is 70% dark though.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kitḫ wait, this is a riddle, isn't it? And a bird is flying back and forth between the dark and light parts, and you need to know which way the smoke is blowing.

Kitḫ

Right. How did you know?

Or rather, no, I have no idea what you are saying.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

17:12

The smoke is blowing to your right.

Kitḫ

I have a rather unfortunate case of left-right confusion.

This chocolate really seems to be helping my mood though.

Part of me wishes I weren't so girly.

The other part is slapping that part and thankful that I have a reliable solution.

Matt Эллен

yeah!

MetaEd

Chocolate is not girly.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I could use some chocolate today.

Kitḫ

@MetaEd I was thinking in the sense of "Oh, I've had a hard day keeping house! I shall sit in a bubbly tub, drink chardonnay, watch my stories, and eat bonbons!"

Actually, that does sound really nice...

Except for the chardonnay.

Matt Эллен

17:20

yeah, go for some sauvignon from malborough, NZ

Kitḫ

With chocolate?

I was thinking a bold red.

Matt Эллен

Ah! yes, of course

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I could've used a hard day keeping house today.

Kitḫ

Me too.

I did that for an hour or so yesterday.

Then I went shopping.

headdesk

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Believe it or not, I could use some shopping today.

Kitḫ

17:22

@MattЭллен Oh, well, but maybe you meant cabernet sauvignon?

Instead of sauvignon blanc?

Matt Эллен

@Kitḫ uh, yeah, that's what I meant ;)

Kitḫ

Because that would be good, but I think a shiraz would be nicer.

@RegDwightѬſ道 I did that for a couple hours yesterday, with my eldest son.

Then he trounced me at Mario Kart for a while. Then I let him play Marvel Ultimate Alliance until bed.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Don't worry Kit. After a hard day I could use some shopping too. Just point me to the nearest Toys R Us and I'll browse for Lego until they kick me out.

Also I read your "sit in tub..." sentence as "... watch my stories and eat bonobos", which is decidedly weirder than what you wrote.

Kitḫ

Hahaha.

Bonobos!

Jan 30 at 18:21, by Kitḫ

Bonobo!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah exactly

RegDwight Ѭſ道

17:28

@MrShinyandNew安宇 My town has finally got a Lego store of its own. Basically a poor man's copy of my living room.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@RegDwightѬſ道 yeah those are good too. But their prices are basically the worst-case scenario.

Kitḫ

You mean they actually make stores out of LEGO?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Yeah. I should've said, rich man's copy.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Oh, except for this chain in Toronto called "Toys Toys Toys", where they mark up the lego way past MSRP, then mark them back down and say "we're having a sale!" only sometimes the marked-down price is STILL worse than MSRP

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Hey sounds like something perfectly legal.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

17:30

@RegDwightѬſ道 I think it's actually illegal under the advertising laws here. But so many places do it.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Of course, their prices are probably still 20% below those we have to pay in Europe.

Kitḫ

You have to pay for your LEGO in Europe?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Yeah, go figure.

Kitḫ

We get them free here.

Cerberus

Hai.

Kitḫ

17:31

With our tax rebates.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

We only produce them for free.

Cerberus

Why is Lego cheaper in N. America?

Kitḫ

Because we love our children.

Matt Эллен

yay! hi :)

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Because they can't count, so they just slap on the same figure in every currency.

Cerberus

17:32

Haha.

Seriously?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Sure.

10 Euro here, $10 there.

Cerberus

Stupid Danes.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

And if you're in Canada, that's Canadian dollars.

Kitḫ

It's still profit.

1. Produce LEGO.
2. ???
3. Profit.

They've got it all worked out.

Better business model than most.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Not really, no.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

17:33

No, the way it works is: Same EUR as USD; Same GBP as USD, but Canada is USDx1.4

RegDwight Ѭſ道

They keep producing lines that keep bringing them to the brink of bankruptcy.

Cerberus

Yeah, if you pay € 10 for a box of plastic, there will be profit.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

They don't really learn from past mistakes.

Cerberus

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Huh! That is really weird.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yeah, in essence, the brits get screwed, and the americans get an awesome deal.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

17:34

Bionicle sucked ass, so they canceled it, only to replace it with the exact same shit under a different name.

Dinos sucked, so they canceled them, only to bring them out again.

Cerberus

Unless you have raised demand on your own so much that they can do this.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@RegDwightѬſ道 Bionicle was really popular though

well time to go for lunch

bbl

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@MrShinyandNew安宇 Not where I live. Can't swing a dead cat here without hitting a child holding a bag full of MISB Bionicle sets and offering you money for taking it.

And I gotta run, too! Commute, laters.

Cerberus

Bye!

Kitḫ

Hmm. That reminds me, I have to get a present for a kid who will be 10 years old, who hates Lego.

Also, is not a strong reader...(I usually give books.)

Maybe a book suitable for an 8-year-old.

Cerberus

17:43

Haha.

Matt Эллен

@Kitḫ maybe comic books?

Cerberus

How about a nice looking stone, like pyrite?

I would have loved that and pretended it was Gold.

Kitḫ

@MattЭллен Hmm, maybe. I don't think he's into superheroes much. He likes animals and that sort of thing.

Maybe a book about marine biology.

That's interesting.

Matt Эллен

A puppy! ;)

sea monkeys?

Kitḫ

@MattЭллен He's got one already.

Who will probably eat the bunny slippers I got his mom for her birthday.

Matt Эллен

17:46

heh.

Kitḫ

amazon.com/Ocean-American-Museum-Natural-History/dp/0756636922

This might be good.

Matt Эллен

looks good

Kitḫ

And they might have it at the local BAM.

Holy crap!

I just figured out where that bolt in my chair dropped from.

Matt Эллен

que?

oh no!

are you still upright?

Kitḫ

About a week ago a bolt fell out of my chair randomly.

The other one just came off. Apparently, it held the arm on.

Matt Эллен

17:54

lol. oh no.

hope you didn't hurt yourself

Kitḫ

Nah. I yelped, but that was it.

Matt Эллен

:) good

Kitḫ

All patched up with the help of a pair of scissors, and neatly filed under "things Kit does that are not in her job description."

Matt Эллен

hehe. is that a long list?

Kitḫ

Surprisingly, in this job, it is not a very long list.

Usually that list has consisted of what I was expected to do.

Matt Эллен

17:59

so everything you're expected to do is none of what you're paid for?

Kitḫ

In the past, yes.

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…