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Showing posts from January, 2023

Happy Thought for 27 January 2023

Have a Happy Thought:  You know when you go visit a website and realise it’s not quite… finished yet? Or when you’re creating a document and you just need to have some text on the page/screen to see what it’ll look like? Then you’ve encountered Lorem ipsum . This is a very fake Latin-looking set of words that are used as, well, placeholders. And have been used by typesetters for centuries. The idea is that these nonsense-words and sentences distribute letters across a page in a way that let you really see what a final piece of writing will look like – whereas if you just put “placeholder text blah blah blah” the words don’t break and flow across a page in quite the same way.   Here’s the “full” paragraph, created by some unnamed person, probably a printer or printer’s assistant, sometime in the 1500’s: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exer

Happy Thought for 20 January 2023

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Have a Happy Thought: Happy Lunar New Year to all who celebrate! On Sunday, many countries are entering the Year of the Rabbit, including China, Korea, Japan, and Cambodia, amongst others. Zodiac rabbit, showing the tù (兔) character for rabbit Image: Alice-astro (picture)+User:Miuki (modified caracter) - wikimedia commons. CC BY 3.0   However, some countries that also have significant Lunar New Year celebrations are instead entering the Year of the Cat. These traditions include Vietnam and Nepal. One explanation for this is that the zodiacal name for this year is Mão/M ẹ o 卯 which is similar in pronunciation to the Vietnamese word Mèo for cat. A ginger cat lies curled up on a hiking backpack Image: supplied   Meanwhile, the Malay (including eastern Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, and parts of Borneo) are entering the year of the mousedeer. A chevrotain or Lesser mouse-deer (Tragulus kanchil), a small (7–16 kg (15–35 lb), 45 cm (18 in) long, average height of 30 c

Happy Thought for 13 January 2023

Have a Happy Thought:  2022 was, as they say, a mood . But this did give some opportunities for wonderful news headlines. Sometimes you get a great headline because the thing being reported was just. that. bonkers. Sometimes it's just really good copy-editing!   Here are a few that were compiled online - I've chosen my favourites but you may want to click through to find some more that tickle your fancy :)   Coffey urges staff to be positive, be precise, and not use Oxford commas --The Guardian, 15 September 2022 Is that…? Yes, that is an Oxford comma in that headline!   Top scientist admits ‘space telescope image’ was actually a slice of chorizo By Toyin Owoseje, CNN Updated 10:23 PM EDT, Sun August 7, 2022 --CNN, 7 August 2022 An example of an April-fool's-day-type joke getting well out-of-hand.   Man who paid $2.9m for NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet set to lose almost $2.9m --The Guardian, 14 April 2022