infundibulum

I was talking to my mom tonight about Blogamundo. She is interested in the idea, and she is actually quite the geek herself — a wiz at quite a few desktop apps, an email addict extraordinaire, and lately even a instant messaging afficionado… I don’t hesitate to ask her questions about what’s where on Windows or OSX, for instance. (Though I haven’t converted her to Linux… yet!)

So she’s no Luddite.

But she asked me this:

“How do you get on to the blogs?”

And actually, I thought that was a damn good question. The word “blog” has seeped into popular usage, and most people will no longer stare quizzically if you use the word.

But still, what’s the answer? I told her that what you have to do is find a blog you like, and then you follow the links in the blogroll. But she asked me how she was supposed to find a blog she likes. Which is also a damn good question. Anyway, I ended up saying something along the lines of “t-e-c-h-n-o-r-a-t-i dot com, or blogsearch dot google dot com, yeah, you just sort of start searching at one of those…”

But it still didn’t feel like the right answer.

It’s easy for someone who has been blogging in one way or another for maybe 4 or 5 years (like myself) to be weirded out by such queries. But it’s not surprising. I’m going to sit down with her and just give her a little tour tomorrow, some big name blogs and the blog search engines and stuff.

I wonder if in the future there will be a job description along the lines of “media filterer: someone who assesses the interests of a client, and then proceeds to filter bring media that meet the client’s interests.”

The bottom time is that it still takes a lot of time and effort to “get” blogs.

Ah, the endless confusion of all the little squiggles on the intarweb.

I bought a Samsung laser printer, which is really quite nice. It’s just black and white, which is fine for me, and it’s really fast, and the quality is much better than the last two crappy inkjets I’ve owned.

Thing is though… fonts. I vaguely remember reading some stuff about “where the fonts live” being different between inkjets and laser printers… or “real postscript”only being available in laser printers… or something like that.

Bottom line: sigh.

Original text:

What my printer printed:

Hallo Welt! German 你好，世界！ Chinese Hello world! English Olá mundo! Portuguese Hallo wereld! Dutch こんにちは 世界! Japanese Καλημέρα κόσμε! Greek Merhaba dünya! Turkish Hola mundo! Spanish Halo dunia! Bahasa Indonesia Helló Világ! Hungarian Salut le monde! French Hallo verden! Norwegian/Bokmal Chào thế giới! Vietnamese Hejsan, världen! Swedish Привет, мир! Russian Tere, maailm! Estonian 안녕, 세상! Korean Saluton Mondo! Esperanto Ahoj svet! Czech Hylô byd! Welsh Terve maailma! Finnish Laba ryta, pasauli! Lithuanian Halló heimur! Icelandic Sveika, pasaule! Latvian 哈佬世界! Cantonese สวัสดีราคาถูก! Thai Hallo, wrâld Frisian Ave, Munde! Latin

It’s so RANDOM. Okay, so I can determine that there are missing fonts for several Asian languages by looking at this stuff. But what about Greek? Why does the “mu” show up but the rest is just blank?

And where do I look to start debugging such a problem? Which kinds of fonts does my printer “understand”?

In situations like this I generally think to myself… uh… I’ll solve this later.

And then I don’t.

Pretty interesting article:

Kevin Malone with the DMV says his agency is aware of the different dialects in the Silver State. “The Hispanic community and language is diverse. There are different words for turn, different words for test, which one is right depends on who you’re talking to. We’re just trying to meet a happy medium.”

KLASTV.com - Lost in Translation: DMV Spanish Driving Manuals

But I must admit this bit surprised me:

Currently there is no translation budget, so the DMV is open to community volunteers who are interested in helping in the publication of the new Spanish driving manual.

Golly ned. That sounds like something that should really have professional translators involved. But if not… well… it should certainly be done on the web.

I’ll get right on it!

Wow, now that I can put all the content that matters over in the Blogamundo Hacklog , I can fill this blog with mundanity and fluff!

Lucky you!

Hey, where’d you go?

The Jamaica Star :: ‘HAIR’ IS THE HAT ::

DARAIN HOUSEN HAS not taken off his hat for the last 20 years. He bathes, he sleeps and does everything possible in it. It is a perfect fit.

But unlike other hats, his is not made of cloth but from the very hair on his head which is why it cannot be removed.

Heh.

But here’s the best part:

“Dem did love it,” he said smiling. “Mi friends an’ some of the girls said I win di hairstyle contest and buy mi a box a Guinness,” he said.

Good gig. ☺

I’m testing out blogging with Flock… looks pretty sweet so far!

Just in time for Halloween, the Blogamundo Hacklog has come to life. Jonas Galvez and myself will be blogging about the trials and tribulations of starting up Blogamundo.com, our new project to help jumpstart translation in the blogosphere.

All the language & translation stuff that’s been showing up around here will be there, henceforth.

This blog will probably be dedicated to cats and teen angst.

Because there isn’t enough of that on the web, after all.

So check it out!

As for the lack of updates here of late, here’s the deal: I’m starting a brand new project pretty soon, and to go with it there will be a new blog. All the stuff having to do with language, translation, and programming will be in the new blog — this one will remain for everything else.

(Unfortunately, comment spam has forced me to turn on “registration” here, I’ll try to fix it.)

As for the new project: it’s a new kind of translation tool for the web . I’ve been working on it pretty much full time with the only other guy in the company the South American Geek Department, Brazil Chapter: Jonas Galvez.

The site’s called Blogamundo!

We haven’t set up a proper mailing list yet, but you can drop me an email with Blogamundo? in the subject line if you’re curious about the project!

More soon, not because I’m trying to be stealth-mode-y, but just because we haven’t set up the new blog yet.

☺