Friday Four

Friday, January 03, 2014

1. Astronomy and pre-teen fashion join forces against crime: "Don't Want Your Laptop Tampered With? Just Add Glitter Nail Polish". The connection to astronomy involves comparing snapshots.

2. Since yesterday, I've gone from the frying pan to the fire. One kid woke me several times last night, causing me to slightly oversleep. Then the other woke, vomiting.

This post, if you see it at all, will come thanks to the Pinboard bookmarking site, the Draft smart phone app, and whatever time I spend holding babies as they go to sleep. It will also come, courtesy of my new phone, despite the most aggressively bad "auto-correct" I have ever seen. (Blame it for any random capitalization or stray single letters I miss on a last-pass edit on my laptop. It even "corrects" freaking numbers.)

3. A top ten list of things a new mother wishes she had known about parenting indirectly reminds me, via the final bullet point of Item 10, of our first night away at my in-laws for Christmas this year.

Pumpkin woke up and was hard to resettle due to the unfamiliar room, so I offered to sleep on the other bed in the room. Some time later, I woke to see her standing at my bedside. I let her climb in. She seemed to have lots trouble getting back to sleep and started climbing around on me. Soon, she gave me the sweetest hug I've ever had -- both arms around my neck -- and looked at me. "Do you want your own bed? I asked. She nodded.

I put her back into her bed, where she went into a peaceful slumber.

4. Did you know that a recent USPS stamp featuring the Statue of Liberty actually pictures the replica in Las Vegas?

-- CAV

2 comments:

Steve D said...

When I first got my Android, I couldn't believe how bad the auto-correct feature was. The worst thing of all was that I could not figure out how to turn it off! It turns out there isn’t a good way. It even 'corrected' some of my words (which were spelled correctly I might add) into German. Sheesh!

What sort of nincompoop…evil programmer…really I mean how is it possible for a feature like this to be so bad without spontaneously making my phone (or my head) explode? Given the fact that the auto correct features on most word processors, spreadsheets and email programs are reasonably functional it was hard to for me to believe what my eyes (and blood pressure) were telling me.

Gus Van Horn said...

Steve,

Ugh! I hadn't started looking at how to turn it off, so that's bad news!

I'll look anyway, and if I find out a way, I'll pass it on. I really hate having to tap the screen a couple of extra times just to use a term I normally use. (I haven't been prompted to "add to dictionary", not that the option doesn't exist.)

My favorite from my last phone was my wife's very common first name consistently being
"corrected" to a man's much less common name every time I typed it until I added it to the dictionary.

Gus