Humanist → Blog - Latest Comments

Re: Hong Kong, Sheung Wan, Day 1

Beth — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:48:34 -0000

We're waiting for more updates.

Re: Hong Kong, Sheung Wan, Day 1

Mark — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 22:37:49 -0000

Great pictures. Are you over your jet lag yet? Keep blogging.

Re: “That” Overuse

Perkimon — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:50:50 -0000

I've found myself using 'that' all the time my whole life. I actually think the use of 'that' is more like an unused if statement, after analysis one realises it serves no purpose but still expired energy figuring it out. I agree the usage of 'that' is a tip or 'cheat' button theory is along the lines that I taught myself to use it as a shortcut to acceptable written language at an early age.

-Programmer too

Re: “That” Overuse

Andie — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 00:51:28 -0000

I had to have my tendency to overuse the word 'that' pointed out to me (about six months ago) before I reversed the habit. It became a habit when I started typing essays and assignments at school rather than writing them (about year/ grade 10). I found the word 'that' very easy to type on the keyboard and it became a "conjunction" word which bought me some thinking time while still maintaining a typing "flow".

Re: “That” Overuse

Bosch63 — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:35:38 -0000

If you are looking for reasons your emails aren't taken seriously, try to read through what you wrote here. Very difficult to follow. You are all over the place. Too many breaks with commas. Too many statements in parenthesis. I took a class on business writing. Learned things are much better understood when short and concise. Don't make people think too hard to understand your meaning. For what it's worth . . . .

Re: Jawbone UP: Not Ready for Christmas

Luke Hoersten — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 10:30:05 -0000

I ended up going with a Fitbit (http://www.fitbit.com). Looks like they have their business together quite a bit better.

Re: Jawbone UP: Not Ready for Christmas

jlm — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 09:27:50 -0000

Anything new, since your last update? Me too wanted to buy some UP's for Xmas, but... think it will be impossible... :-/

Re: “That” Overuse

Vera Haddan — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 23:31:38 -0000

You could eliminate "really" and "just" as well.

Re: “That” Overuse

Eg2333 — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:10:15 -0000

You shouldn't just arbitrarily pick "who", "which" or "that." There are rules of grammar to be considered when choosing between them. http://www.grammarbook.com/gra...

Also, the word "theory" is overused and it cheapens the meaning.

Re: “That” Overuse

Tx_cybergal — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 08:39:57 -0000

Interestingly some of the most brilliant people I know overuse "that" in their sentence structures. Especially techical people because they write a lot about technical objects and things.

Re: Life of Pi Quotes

Author1 — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 06:08:58 -0000

Recommended follow-up reading - Angel Just-Rights, Rebecca Parker - ISBN 9781849914000

Re: Life of Pi Quotes

Ellie — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:12:27 -0000

It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.

Re: “That” Overuse

Des124 — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 00:21:28 -0000

Dear Luke,

I graduated from Albright in 1972. There, I was exposed to some prose or poesy entitled something like "That, that, that, and, that" or some such. I can not rediscover the piece, but ever since, I have been driven, Fudd Style, cwazy by writing at EVERY level using enough thats to bloat, by at least 5%, a given sentence, phrase, article, editorial, manuscript, anthology, book, world history, history of civilization, history of the universe, or collection of writings in the last five millennia. "That" is the written version of the oral "um"; a simple pause will fill the void and act as unaspirated punctuation. I suppose that I will endure until I meet that long road that will take me home.

Re: “That” Overuse

Jaxxy — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:12:16 -0000

This one has been gnawing on my brains for months! It's why I searched up the topic this minute. I used to have a problem with people not taking me seriously, in my emails (I work online), so I started pulling them apart, to examine the way I 'spoke'...

Ooooh! -does a Yosemite Sam dance-! I want to show you, but I can *not*, for the life of me, find where I first read about the chronic overuse of "that"! I must keep plugging along -- it had such a rare (that I can find) observation.

The article mentioned something about the "that"-habit giving one's writings too passive a tone? Something like, if I said, "I think that I will go to the lake," it comes off as sounding less decisive than "I think I will go to the lake." (Even better, "I will go to the lake!"... lol, tell it with gusto, now.)

Another example: If I were to follow the above sentence with, "The rules are that we can't go swimming in it," it would be, in some way, pawning off responsibility or acceptance of my own assertion. It could be construed as my having a subtext, as well: 'Sure, the rules on THAT sign, over there -- which aren't the rules this person right here, ME!, goes by -- say not to swim... *Splash*!'

Things like that (or is it just"Things like?" =D)... or something. Gee whiz, I hope you know what I mean. I can tell, just by the impressions the different sentences leave on me, (that) that (oooh, double-"that"s!) concept is basically true; I just have a hard time articulating it! So, I must keep plugging along... anyway(s), I thought you might appreciate the input.

Bad Ellipsis-ing-ly,
"Jaxxy". =D

Re: Ubuntu Nvidia Compiz “Black Window Bug” Fix

an onymous — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:19:51 -0000

I encountered this with a 256MB nvidia 6600GT AGP card when the 'AGP Aperture size' in the BIOS was set to a value lower than the amount of memory on the video card. After upping the value in the BIOS, the problem went away.

Re: Fix Disqus Validation Errors on WordPress

Jason Chen — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:20:33 -0000

Did this ever get rolled into the plugin? I'm getting XHTML validation errors on my blog that seem related to what these patches would have fixed.

Re: Why Make Erlang a Functional Language?

EStau — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:48:22 -0000

nice

Re: Base32 Encoding in C#, Java

Chris — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:51:42 -0000

Minor comment:
current_byte = (data [i] >= 0) ? data [i] : (data [i] + 256); // Unsign

isn't needed.

In .net (unlike Java) bytes are unsigned values from 0-255. A byte will never be negative.

Re: Life of Pi Quotes

louthella — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:27:51 -0000

a tie is a noose, and inverted though it is, it will hang a man nonetheless if he's not careful

Re: Fix Disqus Validation Errors on WordPress

Devin Walker — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:36:13 -0000

This is exactly what I'm looking for, but unfortunatly when I run your site through the W3C validator it get's a bunch of errors:

http://validator.w3.org/check?...

I like this comment system a lot, but am not sure I want to use it since it's markup and CSS are not W3C compliant at all. I may just say screw it and stick with it.

Re: Why Make Erlang a Functional Language?

Hynek (Pichi) Vychodil — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:33:49 -0000

Erlang always copy data because strict process isolation and soft-realtime GC.

Re: Fix Disqus Validation Errors on WordPress

Guest — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:40:54 -0000

nice blog, I like it

Homepage

Re: Fix Disqus Validation Errors on WordPress

Guest — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:36:14 -0000

Thanks

Re: Fix Disqus Validation Errors on WordPress

Guest — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:13:24 -0000

you++

Re: Single vs. Multiple Computer Setups

clubpenguincheatcodes — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:41:30 -0000

I use a three stage; server, desktop, ultra-portable. This has been the perfect combination for me for years. The server contains mass media, central repositories for development, public/private internet services, documents, finances, incremental backups, multi-user access for friends & family, etc.