Licence Play-t

I play little games with licence plates I see in front of me on the road.
I try to make words by adding only vowels, or adding only 2 letters in between the 3, or making as many words as I can before the car in front vanishes from view.
The other day KYK turned into kayak, KLM turned into kilim.
I also saw a car with my initials - cool!!!

Word Cloud

This was just emailed to me - created at a site called Tagxedo - isn't it cool?

Think. Again

I LOVE this!  I like coming up with different meanings, and it fits perfectly with the image of the newspaper.  A very enjoyable play on words.

So THAT's What "Twin" Means...

Typo

Love the "extra" little bit you get in the sign!

Never Give In

I've always wanted to know EXACTLY what Churchill said about never giving in (or up) - there are so many quotes and misquotes out there.  Here is part of that famous speech given at his old school, Harrow on 29 October, 1941. 

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.”

National Grammar Day

Well, it is in the US anyway.  There are many people who are against the idea of a grammar day - people who are pro-grammar tend to be annoying and of the prescriptive persuasion rather than descriptive. More details here.

Still, I think anything that gets people thinking about language is, in my humble opinion, not a bad thing.

Here's a handy list of tips to improve your writing/grammar :-)

BTW - here are some other language-related days
National Handwriting Day - January 23 (missed this one)
International Mother Language Day - February 21 (missed this one too!)
National Punctuation Day - September 24
English Language Day - October 13
Dictionary Day - October 16

Whiff of Violets

I quote -  "A slice of fruitcake with black cherries, a whiff of violets and a couple of black olives.  Seductively smooth and so effortlessly consumed."

Homophone Fun

This sought of thing relieves the boredom of grant writing!

Scrabble

On Sunday Carmel and I escaped the heat by playing Scrabble in the airconditioned library at Carindale.

I had no idea that there were lists of "official" words - our house rules meant using a dictionary - say the COD - because I am interested in meanings - not just the letters.  But "real" Scrabble players play to win!!  :-)  If you are interested, this is the book of lists -

By pure co-incidence, on the morning we were going to play, I read this post making comparisons between Scrabble and life - my favourite is "there are no bad racks, only players".

Readability

If you have a blog or web page you may be interested in testing the readability level of the content.

I had a bit of fun testing this blog.  The Gunning Fog Index came in at 13.18 (that is, you need that many years of schooling to be able to understand what I have written).  The Wall Street Journal scores an 11, and The Times, The Guardian score 14.

Full results here.

Blogs

For those who may not know, I start my day reading blogs. I use Google Reader which does the job of presenting me with what's new on the blogs I like to follow. Google Reader also allows me to categorize the blogs, so I can decide whether I want to start with "ideas" or "books" or whatever my little heart may fancy...

I need to do this because at the moment I subscribe to 325 blogs...

One posting I read this morning led me to discover this new gem: teal - The Typo Eradication Advancement League. Seriously - these guys go around correcting typos!! How WONDERFUL is that!! And then they blog about it (at length...). It's so nice to know I'm not the only pedant in the world :-)

Brisbane City Library

After an appointment in town I visited the Brisbane City Library, just opposite the Casino.

The windows give you a new angle on the world outside...

Correspondence

It's a lovely wet Sunday - what better time than this to have the cricket on in the background and do some sorting? When we lived in the US for 4 1/2 years I did a lot of emailing to keep in touch with people. The boxes in the photo below contain all those emails!!I thought it might be a good time to start re-reading them - some 12 years after the events took place - and decide whether they should be kept or not...I have already found a couple of incidents that I have totally forgotten about...

Writer's Festival

Yesterday was a picture perfect day in Brisbane - unbelievable blue, cloudless skies and wonderful weather.
First off - a stick-to-your ribs breakfast of hash browns, baked beans, bacon, mushrooms, egg...mmmmmmm
Then it was time for a day at the Writer's Festival. There are heaps of sessions to choose from - too many in fact, and lots of overlaps, so one person can't really do it all.

The sessions I went to covered surveys (how to get to the truth of what people are really thinking, why are we so hung up on surveys and quizzes); the female libido and whether there are differences between "mating in captivity" and "mating in the wild"; cooking; and "Creativity - Art or Science".

More than 28,000 will attend this long weekend of thought provoking, challenging, and funny events. Highly recommended!

I had a break at lunch time and strolled across the bridge to town where I sat and enjoyed free entertainment.
A perfect day.

Hot Day in Brisbane

Officially it's still winter but it was over 30 degrees C here today!

I thought this was a healthy juice - turned out it was an energy drink...
Someone enjoyed writing the words on the label!!

Vinnies visit

I stopped in at Vinnies today. Books are normally $1, but today there was 50% off everything - sorry - everythink

- so I got 2 books for $1 total.

In passing when I was leaving, I asked whether they had any sewing patterns. The lovely guy behind the desk disappeared into a back room and brought out a huge box of patterns. And they were - wait for it - free!! because there is no guarantee all the pieces are there.

This box held someone's sewing history from the 60's on. What a treasure trove. There were hand written notes on the envelopes of some patterns, wedding dress patterns, playsuits, just wonderful. I left most of the patterns there for someone else to rummage through and enjoy. Here is what I brought home.