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26
Living Room / Re: In Western societies, how can a man have a hyphenated name? (and why!)
« on: March 03, 2011, 04:27 PM »
hmm, not sure what the legal requirements are here (in the UK) but plenty of "posh" people take on a hyphenated surname when they marry. it's all about them showing off their exceptional breeding, i suppose.
-nudone (March 02, 2011, 02:24 AM)

More to do with land, which is why the breeding is important. If you've inherited more than you husband, he adds your surname to his own. If you've inherited a lot more, he takes yours and drops his own. At least, that's how it worked in the days when he took all the land too.  :mad:

Here in Ulster we have a tradition of christening a son with his mother's maiden name, or the surname of a closely related family from whom he may have - expectations.  :P  Lots of people called Johnston Thompson or the like.  Back the 19th century there was a landowner by the name of Porter Archdale for that very reason. Then he inherited the Porter estate, and changed his name to Porter Porter!

27
Living Room / The XKCD solution to Distraction Affliction
« on: February 21, 2011, 11:22 AM »
Lots of people have asked me for the system I used to implement the restriction in the alt-text of today’s comic.
I made it a rule that as soon as I finished any task, or got bored with it, I had to power off my computer.

I could turn it back on right away—this wasn’t about trying to use the computer less. The rule was just that the moment I finished (or lost interest in) the thing I was doing, and felt like checking Google News et. al., before I had time to think too much, I’d start the shutdown process.  There was no struggle of willpower; I knew that after I hit the button, I could decide to do anything I wanted. But if I decided to look at a website, I’d have to wait through the startup, and once I was done, I’d have to turn it off again before doing anything else.

More here

Interesting idea - what do you do?

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General Software Discussion / Re: Local History Tape Archive - need help
« on: February 08, 2011, 12:14 PM »
Thanks, I'll do that!

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General Software Discussion / Local History Tape Archive - need help
« on: February 08, 2011, 04:02 AM »
I have inherited a collection of over 100 tapes of interviews and talks from the local history society. They were recorded on a cheap cassette recorder, so the sound quality is ... variable.

What's the best strategy for cataloguing and archiving the usable portions on disc for transcription and/or compilation onto a CD?

30
Living Room / Re: Unable to compete with the Kindle, Apple wants a cut of ebook sales
« on: February 04, 2011, 05:06 AM »
That would make it great for hauling around something like the Microsoft Inside-Out series of books - or a complete copy of the LDP archive.
-40hz (February 03, 2011, 06:41 PM)

That is the great advantage of an ereader: series. One example: the six volumes of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Or imagine carrying around Joyce's Ulysses with another book or two full of annotations for it. Very handy. But I still need to be able to markup, take notes, and export those notes in text format sooner, not later.
-zridling (February 04, 2011, 03:44 AM)

Any notes or highlights you make in the Kindle are logged in a text file called My Clippings.txt. If you edit a note, the revised version is logged there too. Some people use their Kindle as a calendar or To Do list by having a text file showing the days or categories, to which they can attach notes. You can export or My Clippings via USB any time, or delete it. A new one will automatically be created the next time you make a note or highlight. The "real" notes for each document are held in a  MobiReader format .prc file of the same name. I'm sure there's software to convert these into text, but I haven't gone looking yet.

Another odd thing - the Kindle doesn't read .htm natively, but if you rename them to .txt it can do a pretty good rendering. Character and list formatting are supported, but not tables, as well as external links. You just need the bare <htm> and <body> tags. I've found that a quick way of saving content from the Web to read later.

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