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Topics - wolf.b [ switch to compact view ]

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1
Living Room / Poem of English Pronunciation
« on: November 16, 2007, 09:59 PM »
I have found several publications of this funny poem on the web: "The Chaos" by Gerard Nolst Trenité aka Charivarius (1870-1946)
  • I give this link: Pronunciation Help?, because it mentions the origin of the poem.
  • Here you can find the same poem with downloadable *.rm files (most likely sound). There is also a link for getting a compatible player on that site. I have not tested the player myself and can not comment on it.
  • English pronunciation same poem and more like it.
The Chaos

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Who is up to the challenge to read it aloud?


Greetings
Wolf

2
Living Room / Multibooting and Partitioning Experiments
« on: October 21, 2007, 11:09 PM »
I have been experimenting with partitioning my hard drive to be able to achieve these goals:
  • multiple OS to choose from
  • several instances of same OS to choose from
  • have a drive with essential tools and data mapped to the same letter at all times
  • write my own boot manager using batch files
  • use hard disk backups for OS



After researching and reading what I could find I came to the following conclusions:
  • I have to partition my hard drive and give each OS its own space. The is a very limited amount (4) of primary partitions that I can put inside the partition table of the master boot record. But I can put any number of logical drives inside an extended partition, given an large enough hard disk.
  • Most (maybe all) OS for PC run well when they are installed on a logical drive and I boot from a matching DOS floppy. So I thought maybe they also run well when booting from a small primary DOS partition.
  • In order to have access to a collection of essential tools (they are in a folder called TOOLS), I would have to copy that folder onto all of the floppies and primary partitions. That clearly is not possible because of lack of space and it would be a pain to maintain in case I update one of the tools or batches. So I have created an extended partition that contains a FAT16 logical drive and always shows up as D:.



Now I have a setup where
  • C: is the only one of my primary partitions that gets mentioned in the MBR
  • D: is the first (and always visible) logical drive and contains stuff that I consider essential. For me that is private data, DOS tools, and non-DOS tools that don't rely on being installed.
  • E: is a logical drive where Windows operating systems (version >= 95) are installed. Only one of them is visible.
  • F: contains a Setup folder where I keep installers for software.
  • G: contains a Games folder and a Disks folder containing ISO images.
  • H: contains a Backup folder for OS.
  • This list is not complete but shows the organising of my hard disk.



I have used these tools to set up my system:
  • Microsoft DOS                    (operating system)
  • Ranish Partition Manager         (partitioning tool)
  • Powerquest Partition Magic       (partitioning tool)
  • Norton Ghost                     (imaging tool)
  • JP soft 4DOS                     (powerful batch language)
  • BREXX by Vassilis N. Vlachoudis  (rexx extension to 4DOS batch language)
  • Microsoft Debug                  (assembler extension to 4DOS batch language)
  • Norton Commander                 (orthodox file manager for DOS)
  • Volkov Commander                 (orthodox file manager for DOS)
  • WBAT by Horst Schaeffer          (dialogue boxes, menus and more for DOS)



Here is a pseudo screenshot:
Pseudo Screenshot.PNG
The entire hard disk is represented in the 2nd row. Most space is occupied by the extended partition containing logical drives.



My reason for starting this thread is not to get anybody to do something similar. I just want to present my thoughts and experiments with multibooting and partitioning. This thread is a spin off of this thread: https://www.donation...54.msg78404#msg78404, which I did not want to hijack. I feel I could write an awful lot more here, but the reading would become pretty boring, unless I write about specific topics that others are interested in. So I invite you all to share your experiments as well, and to ask about specific topics if you like. I don't claim expertise on anything, but I might be able to help. My main inspiration came from this website in 1999: The REAL Multi-boot -Trombettworks. It has been updated since I got my inspiration. Very useful tutorial, very technical in places, and very much in love with Ranish Partition Manager.



Greetings
Wolf

3
Living Room / Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection
« on: October 20, 2007, 08:04 AM »
Sorry, if this has been mentioned by someone else before, but my forum search didn't show it. Simon has been mentioned, portable apps have been mentioned, and I found lots of threads about tiny games. Don't miss out on those:

http://www.chiark.gr...k/~sgtatham/puzzles/

Introduction

This page contains a collection of small computer programs which implement one-player puzzle games. All of them run natively on Unix (GTK), on Windows, and on Mac OS X.

I wrote this collection because I thought there should be more small desktop toys available: little games you can pop up in a window and play for two or three minutes while you take a break from whatever else you were doing. And I was also annoyed that every time I found a good game on (say) Unix, it wasn't available the next time I was sitting at a Windows machine, or vice versa; so I arranged that everything in my personal puzzle collection will happily run on both those platforms and more. When I find (or perhaps invent) further puzzle games that I like, they'll be added to this collection and will immediately be available on both platforms. And if anyone feels like writing any other front ends - Mac OS pre-10, PocketPC, or whatever it might be - then all the games in this framework will immediately become available on another platform as well.


Greetings
Wolf

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