Bloggeriness

A place to record the things that my brain comes up with.

11 November 2009

Lego nomenclature

Found this on Adam's blog, and I think it needs comment. Because how can you read an article about the names for Lego bricks, and not contribute your own? I'm leaving Barney's names in the chart, since I found some of them strikingly similar to Blockburger Lego names.

Clark, feel free to correct me on this if I misuse any names.

Common Nomenclature for Lego Families

Lego Piece
Barney
mine
Angle Plate 2x2
A bent four-erbent flatsie foursie
Round Plate 1x1
Round flat one-erround onesie; coin
Plate 1x1 W. Up Right Holder
A flat clippy pieceflatsie clip
Plate 1x2 W. 1 Knob
A two-er with only one bobbleone-knob twosie flatsie
Plate 1x1 W. Holder
A flat clippy bitside clip flatsie
Brick 1x1
A rectangular one-eronesie
Plate 1x1
Flat square one-erflat onesie
Round Brick 1x1
Cylinder one-erround onesie
Connector Peg W. Knob
A joining bitshort flagpole type thingy (I don't think we ever really discussed this one)
Turn Plate 2x2, Lower Part
Spinny bitSpinny bit
Flat Tile 1x1
Flat one-er with no bobbleblank flatsie onesie
Lamp Holder
Flat clippy pieceside onesie
Radiator Grille 1x2
Groovy bitGrill bit
T-piece
T-shaped joiney thingI didn't have any of these in my Lego set. But I'd call it a t-bar.
Light Sword Shaft
Light saber handleI wish I had these in my Lego set.
Turn Plate 2x2, Upper Part
The piece that goes on top of the spinny piece to make it spinspinny top
Roof Tile 2x2 Inv
An upper pieceupside down slanty foursie
Brick 1x2 M 2 Holes
Two-er hole-y bitskinny twosie with holes
Diamond With Stick
Lego crystalooh, that's a fancy one
Brick 2x2
Four-ertwosie
Butt
Microphonenightstick
Roof Tile 1x2x3
Upper piecetall slanty
Brick 1x3
Three-erskinny threesie
Light Sword Blade
Light saber bladelight saber
Bearing Element 2x2, Double
A piece you clip wheels onflat wheel base
Right Plate 3x8 W. Angle
Wing pieceplane bit
Dragon’s Fire
Fire pieceFire
Plate 2x2 Angle
L-shapebent flatsie foursie
Brick 2x3
Six-erthreesie
Rudder 2x3x2
Wing pieceairplane tail
Roof Tile 2X2 45° No. 2
Control setcomputer
Brick 1x1 W. 4 Knobs
An attach-any-side piecefire hydrant onesie
Angular Brick 1x1
A piece that you can clip something on the sideheadlight onesie; onesie with a hole

29 October 2009

Just checking.

I was looking around on the internet the other day, and I found the most surprising thing - my blog! I had forgotten all about it.

Looks like several of you (or at least your RSS feeds) did not.

So maybe I'm back. We'll see.

23 October 2009

Hello?

Hello?

06 March 2009

Fixing the book list meme

This is a meme I've seen drifting around on the Internet for a little while now. The idea is that you take the list, mark the ones you've read with an X, then post it on your (usually) Facebook page so everyone knows how well-read you are (or aren't). The origin of this list is often attributed to the BBC, but I haven't done any actual research into it.

The problems with this list are, in my opinion, many. For one thing, it lists The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Chronicles of Narnia as two separate books, whereas one is the first book in a series, and the other is all seven books of that series. So one of those has to go. It also lists The Complete Works of William Shakespeare as one (heavy) book, likewise Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. Which is it list, is it one book or a series? Does Harry Potter count as seven? And if you're listing the complete works of Shakespeare, why did you list Hamlet separately?

The list is also very heavy in what is deemed "classic" British literature (bearing out the BBC origin, I suppose) - but that really skews the list in ways I don't agree with.

And you don't agree with it either, do you?

No, you don't. So let's fix it.

Here's the deal. I'm posting the list below, but with the corrections of taking out each book series and replacing it with the first book in that series - except for the Narnia books, which are already represented separately. That one I'm replacing with Prince Caspian. Your job is to remove as many books as you think don't belong there, but with one catch: for as many books as you remove, you must replace them with a book you do think belongs. Post your changes as a comment on this post. At the end, I'll compile everything (if needed) and see where we ended up.



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Prince Caspian - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

22 February 2009

Suzanne likes to . . .

The saga of the broken finger will appear one of these days, complete with photos! In the mean time, I'm posting fun stuff I find on the interwebs. Clark posted this on his blog, so I thought I'd do it too. Basically, you Google yourself, but with the phrase "[Suzanne] likes to." [You'd insert your own name, of course.] Then you write down the first ten things.

So, without further ado, Suzanne likes to:
  • Suzanne likes to say, when asked how long she has been singing, she answers "since I was in the Music Womb".
  • Suzanne likes to be part of the action.
  • Suzanne likes to contemplate interesting phenomena, like how the three guppies in her aquarium became 161 guppies in five months. [goodness. So far my two are threatening to become more, but haven't as of yet.]
  • Suzanne likes to travel and take long walks with her dog, Charley.
  • Suzanne likes to serves these popovers with a salad for a light lunch. [Suzanne likes to haves grammar problems, apparently.]
  • Suzanne likes to be with her two children, taking them outside and to music festivals.
  • Suzanne likes to stay active. [well....]
  • Suzanne likes to mix classic elements with something fresh and new.
  • Suzanne likes to say that her eight siblings were like having eight built-in best friends.
  • Suzanne likes to exercise, watch (and make) movies, travel, spend time with family and work on various writing projects.

So there you have it.