Tag Archives: WDZ09

If we’re leaving we don’t stop living, you know

by

So another music’s over.

On Thursday, 9 July 2009 (incidentally the 18th anniversary of my graduation day) I archived all my talkpage conversations, told Conrad.Irwin he should take no more trouble with the {{gd-noun}} template, deleted my userpage and put there a brief formal explanation instead, and said goodbye to the community as a whole and those most important to me in particular on my talkpage.

At first glance this might look as something done rashly on the spur of the moment. But I thought about it before I did it, and I thought about it afterwards, and just now I reckon it was just a logical conclusion. I have been boiling inside for quite some time, the “thesaurusi”, “puuko” and “fuck-off gesture” affairs being but a few of the best-remembered ones. Unwatching the RFC, RFD and RFV discussion rooms proved not to have been enough, though; and Štambuk’s (but also Ullmann’s) manner of speech on the “Serbo-Croatian” vote was the last straw. I could stand it no longer.

OTOH, all I know is I won’t be editing there until at least my (Scots) birthday. Today I finished putting items I feel somehow or other “unfinished” into Backlog 09-III, and I may return to them, either anonymously or under a a new username. (And I keep watching a few pages yet, even though not logged in.) But I don’t mean to get involved in anything unconnected with gd if I do; and I may find out by then that I no longer care. It’s early days yet to tell.

I don’t know either what’ll be the future of the one of my LJ accounts where I’m a “friend” of Ruakh and Widsith. Nevertheless, I do know that I’m winding up this blog today. At least until returning to the en-wikt as an editor (if I do that). But possibly I won’t restart even then – the whole idea of keeping three blogs looks the more crass to me the longer I’m at it.

Similarly, I put my last “DM’C” question to the Fòram yesterday, meaning to only go on with the “ThR” one there. (Nevertheless, when *Alasdair* replied and I thanked him as ThR today, it wasn’t intentional – true to form I spilled the beans at the last possible moment. But Seonaidh replied to that, so perhaps they don’t mind.)

Anyway, so long.
 

Note: Elsewhere I noted down some statistics:
* total number of edits: 11,254
* distinct pages edited: 8,014 (thus 1.40 edits/page)
* article edits: 10,052 (thus 1.12 edits/article edit)
* rank among active Wiktionarians on leaving: 47th (revision of 31/7/09)

 

21 Jun 9

by

In the Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia version I was comparatively very hard-working on Friday, with the result that, as far as I can tell, not only the articles themselves but even all the redirects leading to them are changed from the “An t-Og-mhios” to the “An t-Ògmhios” spelling. It was slightly less boring than I had expected, and now I’m glad I’ve kept my word, have there a spelling I prefer – and possibly finally made me one of the regular editors there, rather then just a guest.

 

18 May 09

by

A smart idea entered my head a day or two ago – why not turn this into a blog focusing on my Wiki story? I can hardly talk about it freely at my second blog, given it’s only “watched” by two fellow en-wikt editors – it would look as though I was trying to indirectly tell them this or that, not having the guts to do it in en-wikt itself. Or complain about others (ie, slander them). And I don’t want to give away hints which would make me traceable in the third blog. But as Wiki’s a bluidy important part of my life these days, I feel like I want to tell somewhere, so why not here? And why not tell here only about it, as other matters I certainly can deal with at the other two blogs?

 

9 May 09

by

In a way I a wee bit yearned for this. Something which would force me to abandon taking part in those discussions. Partly because people misunderstand or misinterpret what I say there just as often as they do in my first language. Partly because I’ve got some very strong notions of what I would and wouldn’t like to have in a dictionary as a user, which is much too often the opposite of the outcome of those debates (which is naturally rather frustrating). And partly because it’s not seldom that I watch somebody or other arguing, and feel like Alice in Wonderland, at that famous party.

 

19 Ap 09

by

Funny thing is, I just told Rob “happy birthday” via ICQ in the morning, and in the afternoon had a cola and several fags with him at the Cobra Bar. Okay, he had two beers and a shot of Chivas with somebody else within, but on the whole we were just sitting at the bar next to one another, having a serene leisurely crack as we might on any other Sunday of the year. Ay, it’s many years ago that Hogmanays began to be “just another Friday”s, but birthdays?

What’s funniest, though, is the fact that there wasn’t that sensation of something being missing. No, we just spent a pleasant placid hour at a bar together, which coincidentally happened on his birthday. After all, 26 is no milestone (at least for the likes of him). But still it’s strange – probably the strangest “birthday pub” I ever experienced. The more so as he’s been for years the best local friend of mine.

 

8 Mar 09

by

Ay, it’s true. I bought and downloaded Norton360 to supercede the AVG on my notebooks, and I’m not ashamed. Of course, probably not a single friend or even acquaintance of mine would have done this (unless they can deduct it from tax or something like that), given it cost two grand, but then I could set it to both my notebooks for the price, and after all, taking into consideration how much time I’m spending on the Net these days, there are hardly many things I could have spent it on better.

 

28 Feb 09

by

Well, before I finish writing this it won’t be 28 Feb any longer – in CET, but it still will in GMT, and that’s what matters. On 28 Feb 1638 the signing of the National_Covenant began, and today, unexpectedly soon, I’m making this webpage public. It’s my first “proper” one, and time alone will tell whether I will or will not create another, better one, but for the time being, I’m happy enough with having managed this.

 

19 Feb 09

by

So today it finally happened: Sionnach did the finishing touches format-wise and moved the article from my sandbox to the mainspace, so that from now on I can say I have a Wikipedia article.  [….]  I think I will continue in working at gd-wiki. Obviously there’s a lot to do where even a gd-1 like me can help and enjoy. (Nevertheless it will certainly be some time before I decide to create another “full” article – in the foreseeable future I’content myself with creating “stubs” and doing minor editings on already existing pages).

 

Every decoding is new encoding.

by

It’s fitting that this should be the theme of my fist blog ever, as this is one of my favourite quotations and at the same time it deals with communication. I finally had the chance to read it in the original and it’s just as good as I remembered it from the translation I’ve read several years ago, more than once.

It is the motto of Professor Zapp’s lecture near the beginning of David Lodge’s Small World, in which he explains that one can never get his message across so as to be perfectly understood by anybody else in all its nuances. The other party may get more than just the gist of your meaning, they can even understand you almost perfectly, but never absolutely so. There’s always some nuance which is lost, because they are not identical with you. One conclusion I draw from this fact is the phrase I use when talking the meaning of some lyrics: “I don’t care what the lyricist meant by that, what matters for me is what I would have meant by that if I were the lyricist”. Another aspect is the fact that there are no absolute synonyms in any language, or words in different languages meaning exactly the same under any circumstances. And so on. I’m too lazy to retype here the whole passage, but if you can, read it, it’s certainly worth it.
 

Note: unedited but the copy I have now (Vintage, 2011) has the quote as “every decoding is another decoding”.

Supplement: Webnode “About” page (excerpt)

Like many others, this is a personal website, so that one reason behind its creation is exhibitionism. Or, in other words, the irresistible temptation to have one’s say. Or the tendency to show off what a clever or wise guy one is. Or the striving to make believe one is a much better person than one is in “real” life, which is interrelated with the opportunity to create a different (but not too different) personality. And so forth. In short, it was created for its creator’s amusement much more than for the better future of mankind.