Our new apartment, unlike our old, doesn't have built-in bookcases. We were trying to decide between making or buying a bunch of plain vanilla wooden bookcases when kad had a stroke of genius: library carts, aka book trucks. Librarians use them to reshelve books, but no reason they can't be the shelves.

We ordered a few standard-issue flat shelf carts from Vernon Library Supplies, though they're also available with slanted shelves and in various other configurations. In addition to Vernon, School Outfitters and Brodart also have a bunch of different models.

Labels: book carts, book trucks, library

The OED has made a major change to the way it issues online updates and revisions.

Historically OED updates have been released in sequential alphabetical blocks. The December 2007 update, for instance, ran from purpress to quit shilling. The March 2008 update operates on a different model. Rather than a alphabetical block, it consists of words with "significant lexical productivity" and words which will "benefit from immediate review within the dictionary." In other words, it's based on relevance, rather than alphabetical order.

Future updates, according to the OED, will alternate between the old and the new model, with the June 2008 update continuing the alphabetical revision from quits, and the September 2008 update switching back to relevance.

This strikes me an eminently sensible. It allow the OED to be (somewhat) timely, while also continuing the systematic alphabetical review of the entire dictionary. Way to go, OED.

Labels: OED

As a morose little kid I loathed exclamation points, and as an insecure young adult I only used them ironically, when talking about things I hated or when feigning hysteria.

Used gratuitously or insincerely they're still nauseating, but in the right context a good exclamation point is a fine thing. So I was overjoyed to come across Sheep! magazine, "The Voice of the Independent Flockmaster," in this article on young farmers.

The people at Sheep! love sheep. Their enthusiasm is sincere and infectious, all the more so for being focused on something most of us probably don't give a shit about. If Money magazine changed its name to Money!, that would be stupid. But Sheep!? Sheep! is teh alesome.

Labels: exclamation point, flockmaster, money, sheep, teh alsome

And by house I'm not talking about a metaphorical or metaphysical empire of words--I'm talking about an actual house. In which one climbs the bookcase staircase to take a seat under the rafters, surrounded by dictionary plastered walls.

A few of these touches by themselves might be just whimsical, but combine them all and the motif is full-bore OCD, where Martha Stewart gets her MLS and stops taking her meds, a house in which you can't not read.

And where you sleep under these bed linens, which tell their own bedtime story. Thanks to reesetee for the link, via Miss Cellania.

You'll be all the cozier knowing the place is insulated with newspaper. Finally a good argument for a physical newspaper instead of the online version: higher R value.

Labels: bookcase, bookinist, decor, Miss Cellania, reesetee

While poking around on FFFFOUND! I recently came across this fantastic flickr collection of Graphis images.

Founded in 1944 by Walter Herdeg, Graphis (Greek for "writing implement") is a showcase for graphic design and typography.

One of Wordie's unofficial slogans is "pro-text, not anti-image," but it's always a pleasure to be reminded that the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Labels: FFFFOUND, Flickr, Graphis, Walter Herdeg

Per the request of Skipvia and others, you can now tag all words in a list in one fell swoop. Click on the 'add tags' link on any list page, on the left below the list name.

This tags every word in the list, not the list itself.

If you want to tag every word in a list except for a few, you can bulk-tag the list, then go in to the individual words and remove the tag where not appropriate. So you can tag 498 of the words in a 500 word list in 3 steps, rather than 498.

This is the heart of Wordie: helping you waste time more efficiently.

Labels: features, Tags

Headline speaks for itself: "Cheney to Press for Mideast Peace."

Labels: Dick Cheney, New York Times, The Onion

Last week the International Herald Tribune ran an AP story on Nigerian English.

Nigeria, it says, has evolved a Dickensian patois, in which Victorian words and phrases inherited from the colonial era (urchin, gripe water, cutlass) combine with structural and syntactic elements from the hundreds of other national languages to create a unique melange. Good stuff.

[via AWADmail]

Labels: Apartment Therapy, cutlass, International Herald Tribune, Nigeria, Yahoo-Yahoo

I was talking with Peter Kafka of SAI yesterday, and he mentioned John Markoff's disdain for blogs. Sure enough today I was putzing around nytimes.com, as I compulsively do, and came across this:

"John Markoff covers Silicon Valley. He began writing about technology in 1976 and joined The Times in 1988. He gained some notoriety several years ago when he stated that he thought blogs might be the CB radio of the 21st century. He still believes that."

Not sure how I missed this the first time around but... John, are you on crack?* The innovations wrought by blogs are here to stay.**

CBs died because better technology came along, not because they were a bad idea. We now use cellphones to talk in our cars, and the web to chat with strangers in stilted lingo. With blogs as with CBs, the underlying technology and nomenclature may well change, but the needs they fulfill remain, and will be met.

Many of the characteristic traits of blogs--reader comments, frequent updates, a personal voice--are being incorporated into other forms of media. And as that happens, blogs per se may fade away. Maybe "blog" will be put out to pasture with "information superhighway,"***.

Though I suspect they will stick around and evolve, and we'll just keep calling them blogs. It's a succinct and useful word, where "information superhighway" was always an awkward eight syllables, dated on the day it was coined. But just because we don't call it the "information superhighway" anymore doesn't mean the Internet isn't all that and a bag of donuts. Likewise blogs, by that or any other name.

* John, I don't really think you're on crack. Hyperbole is a rhetorical device typical of blogs.

** Self-assured pronouncements by those totally unqualified to make them? Also typical.

*** Larding your "posts" with "links", either for informative purposes or in hopes of getting "link love"**** back from those you've linked to? Again, a typical blogging strategy.

**** Bloggers love cutesy phrases like this.

Labels: blogs, CB radio, hyperbole, John Markoff, New York Times, nextNY, Peter Kafka, Silicon Alley Insider

From the Twitter Blog:

Labels: games, Jacob Harris, Twitter, Wordy Birdie

One more digression: Takes All Types is the best Facebook app I've ever seen. It takes our social networks and uses them as the basis for a national blood donation network. Sign up, let them know your blood type, and they'll notify you when blood is needed in your area. Such a simple idea, but so powerful.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Labels: blood, facebook, Takes All Types

I try to avoid talking about politics on both Wordie and Errata, with mixed results. Likewise I try to stay on the topic of language and words, or at least in the ballpark.

But Marc Andreessen's latest post is just too interesting not to pass on. So to paraphrase Leslie Gore, it's my blog, and I'll repost Andreessen if I want to.

In early 2007 Andreessen spent 90 minutes talking privately with Obama, before the media frenzy made that impossible for normal people (not that Andreessen is all that normal). He writes eloquently about the very positive impression Obama made on him, and about how Obama comes across in an unguarded setting. It's an enlightening post, and will have a particularly strong impact on Andreessen's post-Boomer cohort.

Despite the fact that Andreessen apparently contributed to Mitt Romney's campaign (wtf?), I'm going to take a flier. You heard it here first: Obama/Andreessen '08.

Labels: Barack Obama, Marc Andreessen