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Custom maps
I had ordered two custom maps from Ordnance Survey, where you got to pick your own coverage area and they print-on-demand the map just for you. (You even get to pick the image and words on the front!)
One of them turned out fairly nicely, but with the other one, I had done too good a job of keeping it roughly centred on the main place I wanted to ( Read more... ) -
What would happen to the oceans if the earth stopped rotating
Interesting thought experiment on what would happen to the oceans if the earth slowed down its rotation until, after a few decades, it stopped rotating completely, with several maps.
Short version: since the earth “bulges” a bit at the equator and it’s centrifugal force that keeps the water level high there, if rotation stopped, water would move “ ( Read more... ) -
Monopoly: Klingon Edition
I played Monopoly: Klingon Edition with Gerulats this evening: Peter and Luca played, Bettina baked snacks and watched occasionally.
Luca ended up running out of money first, and then it looked at as if Peter was going to drop out, too… but then I ended up on Qo'noS twice in fairly quick succession and the tide turned quickly, and then I was ( Read more... ) -
I has a chop!
A while ago, I found a Postcrossing user who lives on the Pescadores (Penghu Islands) near Taiwan Island, and asked them whether they would swap postcards with me.
She agreed, and so I sent her a postcard (with Krtek the Czech mole, I think).
A couple of days ago, I got a notification in my letterbox that there was a registered letter waiting for ( Read more... ) -
Random memory: MIT’s web site
I remember that when I first got onto the Internet, MIT’s official web site was at web.mit.edu, while www.mit.edu was the students’ association or something like that: certainly associated with MIT but the site wasn’t the main MIT web site.
Now, though, both URLs show the same web page. I suspect that nowadays, when people guess at URLs and type ( Read more... ) -
Visit from Daša
Daša, a friend of mine from Slovakia whom I met through Postcrossing, visited Hamburg last weekend and I had the chance to meet her again. Yay!
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The wardrobe in the bedroom
The wardrobe in the bedroom: an interesting article in John Wells’s phonetic blog, about juncture or syllabification and how it influences the difference between pairs such as nitrate and night rate or great ape and grey tape.
With a side discussion on how some (including Prof. Wells and I) pronounce words such as bedroom, beetroot, and wardrobe ( Read more... ) -
In which knowing Romansh helps with Romanian.
I came across this Romanian Wikipedia article on Cetatea Albă street in Chișinău (while looking for the diacriticful spelling of a Postcrosser’s address), and what struck my eye was this bit:
Strada Cetatea Albă (până în 1991 str. Krasnodonskaia) se află în sectorul Botanica, cartierul Muncești. (emphasis mine)
That reminded me of Sursilvan ( Read more... ) -
You know you have foreign languages on your brain when…
…you see someone on Facebook using the pseudonymous family name Chaoszicke and your first impulse is not to read it [ˈkaːɔsˌt͡sɪkə] but rather as [xaoˈʂit͡ske], as if it were Polish.
(I blame the ch and sz in close proximity. And having met someone from Poland called Choroszucha which also has ch-sz-.)
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To be, or not to be, a Catholic in Germany
Something that’s been going through the news recently is the status of members of the Catholic church who do not pay church tax.
For historical reasons, certain religious communities in Germany (including the Roman Catholic Church) can have contributions collected from workers’ salaries automatically, at a fixed percentage of their income tax ( ( Read more... )