-
Ronald Wayne
You’ve heard of the “two Steves” who founded Apple Computer, but there was a third founder as well: Ronald Wayne. Today is his 90th birthday. Wayne met Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak when all three were working at Atari. Wayne was older, and at Atari created the company’s manufacturing and inventory control system. He was… Continue reading
-
Lipograms
More about lipograms at the end. In the meantime, here’s a great one by Steve Chrisomalis: “Looking at this paragraph with confusion? I’ll aid you slightly. Is any odd gap, lacuna or omission obvious to you? Got it now? No? That’s right – this is a lipogram – a book, paragraph or similar thing in… Continue reading
-
The Rolling Tundra Review
If you look at a map of northeastern Russia, extending westward to Norway, you’ll see a giant peninsula. It arches over Finland and connects to Sweden and Norway, enclosing the Baltic Sea. Tracking eastward across the northern coast of the peninsula, there are various areas where different groups of indigenous people lived — and still… Continue reading
-
Charles Brannock
If you go to a shoe store in the US and aren’t sure what size shoes you need, they’ll be happy to measure your feet, using a…thing. A gadget. A device. The apparatus is basically a flat plate you stand on, with sliders that touch specific places on your foot. Although nobody has ever come… Continue reading
-
ANTEpropreantepenultimate
In English we already know that the initial three items in a sequence: first, second, and “third, are identified in a different way than then next however-many (fourth, fifth, and so on). But what about the other end of a sequence? Other than last, next to last, second from last, and the rest, can English… Continue reading
-
Darn those dratted kids
A pretty common trope is the crotchety old man who waves his cane at the kids in his neighborhood, yelling “You kids get off my lawn!” That gentleman is clearly suffering from ephebiphobia, which is fear of the young. Although the syndrome is probably ancient, the word is quite new. It seems to have originated… Continue reading
-
L. Frank Baum
In some cases, students caught daydreaming in school are severely punished. In other cases, daydreaming students grow up to create amazing works fueled by their imaginations. And in at least one case, both things were true. Today is the birthdate of Lyman Frank Baum, who published his many books and stories as “L. Frank Baum.”… Continue reading
-
Did you happen to animadvert?
If one time-traveled to the here and now from, say, about 1650, probably the very first thing they’d animadvert is that nobody animadverts any more. Or more precisely, they might animadvert (at least on their phone), but practically everyone has forgotten what “animadvert” means. In fact, everyone has forgotten so completely that “animadvert,” which in… Continue reading
-
Spelling
English is definitely not among the languages where words are spelled phonetically. In phonetic languages, spelling errors are probably much rarer than in English, where they’re depressingly common. One of the problems with spelling in English is homonyms — words that sound exactly the same, but are different words. There are some unusual homonyms lurking… Continue reading
-
Doc Ricketts
If you’ve read Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (published in 1945), you may remember the character Doc. The novel is set in Monterey, California, during the Great Depression (1929 to about 1939), when Monterey was primarily a fishing village. The title refers to a street where several fish-packaging businesses are located; it was informally called… Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer (among other things) located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. No surprise, she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity. You can also find some of my minor software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly write tiny utilities in Python.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!
Privacy policy
No trackers, no ads, no data collected or saved.
Contact
peterharbeson@me.com