Miscellaneous photography

[elfs]

Why Grammar Matters

As I was walking to the grocery store the other day, I passed by this sign embedded in the yard of the Shell gas station. The issue at hand is a property tax levy to pay for a new fire station and other thing; the current fire station is so old it's no longer up to code and will collapse in the event of an earthquake. Personally, I'm for the measure. This sign does nothing for the other side, however, which communicates only that opponents of Proposition 1 never completed basic grammar.

Yes, I know, I've made this mistake myself in stories, but never in something quite so small, or so important.

Death's Head Pretzels

What's the word for the human tendency to see human faces in everything? I saw this bag of pretzels, cheap ones, at some discount store and was amused by the way the pretzel, as positioned on the bag, looked just a little too much about the skull. Could these be the pretzels than nearly killed President Bush?

Why Grammar Matters II

I think I know what this guy's trying to say, but the wording, lack of punctuation, and general thoughtlessness in this home-made signage add up to a failure to communicate.

Consilience UML Chart

In case anyone's curious, this is the UML chart with WAE I churned out for my To-Do manager. The model is pretty simple: Users have Lists, Lists (called "Documents") have Tasks, Tasks have DoneDates. Task properties include a minimal number of days that a task can be allowed to slide, and a maximal amount. An algorithm, initially in python but I intend to migrate it to javascript and do the math on the client to reduce server load, figures out how to decorate the task list based upon the task profile and a collection of done dates "around today."

This chart is very shorthandy: in many cases it's a matter of my knowing what I meant. The boxes with circles in the upper right hand corner are controllers; the ones with squares are views. There's some confusion on the chart as to whether or not there are controllers that are view generators; the one labeled "doc builder" appears to be, but there's no corresponding view generating controller, I don't think, for Lists of Lists. There are also weaknesses in WAE that I've never gotten around to addressing, which is that it was first cooked up in 2003 and has almost no sense of ajax or component-driven view management, and has a whole bunch of notation for frames that can't really be ported over to ajax.

And still there is hope.

I spotted this about two weeks ago. Something like that. There are still people hoping Hillary runs again.

Comments

[mg4h.livejournal.com]

Pareidolia is what you're looking for - the tendency to assign coherence where there isn't any - aka seeing Jesus in a piece of burnt toast.

And my icon agrees with your grammar woes. Oy.

Palin has already said she's planning on running in 2012 if it doesn't work out this year, can you imagine the catfight if it's her against Hillary? (This is also assuming Obama doesn't run again, which might happen if he's wildly unpopular.)