Daily Archives: April 27, 2007

Scratch Pad Apr 26

9:01:
I am wearing my RED SHOES today!

9:11:
Also, it is my father’s birthday. Happy birthday, Dad!

9:11:
“baton: a stick used by a conductor to help control the performance of a group of musicians”. I laughed, envisioning a conductor whacking away at a group of musicians desperately trying to follow the sheet music.

9:12:
I’m using all the same words in a definition, I just… move them around a bit to make things clearer. And I add punctuation. (Mostly.)

9:17:
I can’t decide between getting the two-volume shorter Oxford dictionary, which is a selection from the complete OED, and the Compact OED, which is the 20-vol complete dictionary in one volume, in microscopic print on thin thin paper used with a magnifying glass. The completeist geek in me wants the Compact, but the Shorter would probably be more practical. The price isn’t that much of a factor, as I can get a secondhand Compact for around the same price as a new Shorter. (I love eBay and abebooks; sure, it’s the previous edition, but how much has changed, and do I really need to pay another three hundred dollars for a new edition?) I’m really leaning towards the Compact because of its completeness; I look up archaic words a lot. (Who, me? Word geek? Never.)

10:03:
One of my biggest tasks is making sure the tense of the definition matches the tense of the word. Life is very exciting, I tell you. Satisfying, though.

10:35:
It appals me that a dictionary doesn’t understand the that/which differentiation.

11:24:
Have I mentioned lately that PUNCTUATION COUNTS? Sometimes necessary punctuation is missing; other times there are extraneous commas in places they have no business occupying. Maybe someone was trying to make up for the lack of commas elsewhere by putting on after every second word in certain definitions.

11:41:
Nothing like finding misspelled words in the dictionary. Not in the definitions; the actuals words themselves. Five so far. I’m hoping it’s an importation error.

13:22:
“A large bird that feeds on dead animals from South America” is not the same thing as “a large bird from South America that feeds on dead animals”. Sentence structure ALSO COUNTS.

15:44:
Um. I’m talking to myself again. I’d take a break but I promised this would be done by tomorrow afternoon and, well, it might not be. (Checks status.) Just less than halfway through. Nope; maybe Monday morning.

16:44:
Huh. Did more than I thought today. Still not certain this will be finished by tomorrow afternoon, but I can sure as hell try.

Scratch Pad Apr 25

9:01:
Un Lun Dun is reminding me of Neil Gaiman and Charles de Lint (not to take anything away from the genius of China Mieville himself). It’s like Gaiman and De Lint got together in Mieville’s brain and used it to write the book, only it’s not like any of them. (Really, this makes sense to me. It’s like, but not anything like. Honestly.)

9:12:
Sorting this alphabetically was a good idea. There are doubles, and I can also see how many words have the same definitions for slightly different variants.

9:30:
Oh, I see. It’s the air in here. I’m falling asleep. And it’s not that I’m tired; I went to bed at eight last night, fell asleep reading, was woken up by HRH to eat pizza at 9:30, then fell right back asleep again. I got plenty of sleep.

10:38:
Editing! Actually editing! And now I look at things that I marked to be edited and wonder, “What’s wrong with that?”

10:53:
Now watching the numbers skew madly as I start to adjust the levels on those words that really belong in another level of the dictionary. Oi. They should settle as I continue on, but for now there’s an awful lot of red of and blue on the totals page (these being the colours that indicate below or above our target number).

11:54:
Yay – we’re back to the “huzzah!” feeling of succeeding in a good edit. I am such a geek.

14:07:
It’s because I’m problem-solving. That’s why it’s so satisfying. I’m not just scanning lists of words to flag them for something to do later; I’m actively problem-solving.

14:20:
Why is it that a lunch of fries, gravy, and cheese would send most people into torpor, but I am more awake than I’ve been in days?

15:10:
Mellanmouse has given my name and contact info to her supervisors to proof her script when it’s locked, and has also suggested that I be kept on the permanent roster of freelancers. Am dizzy with opportunity.

15:42:
For the past week I have had the oddest desire to go shoe shopping. What’s up with that? I hate shopping for shoes.