a hundred visions and revisions

Clueless Student 1: *rushing up to me* What's the word for, like, when the government doesn't let you say something?
Me: Uh...you mean censorship?

Clueless Student 2: So, what's the deal with this library? Where are all the books and how do you find one?
Me: *facepalm*

(To be fair, it is somewhat confusing to try and find books in our library if you're just walking in and looking around. Our reference books are all on the first floor, but mostly it's computers and media centers. All of the circulating books are on the floors above. Still, this was a graduate student, who apparently hadn't entered the library before. Which is pretty pitiful, in my book.

Check out my dad's new website, courtesy of yours truly! It's not finished yet - I've still got to add some pictures and put some finishing touches on it. It's due next week as my final project for Information Architecture for the Web, and I presented on it today in class. It seemed to go really well, and my professor and the other students liked it a lot. I'm certainly no expert web designer now, but I'm still really thrilled with what I've learned in this class.

UGH. After seven hours of alternately staring at a computer screen and pulling my hair out in frustration, I've finally completed my first CSS markup assignment for my web design course. Here it is, if anyone's interested. And check out that code! (If anyone is wondering why it took me seven hours to get through this, just take a look at that.) Oh, and the silly "return to top" icons and Ghost World picture are there because we had to include a certain amount of images in the page. So I just threw them up there. This isn't necessarily the design I would do if I didn't have to meet all the requirements for my assignment - I think it's awkward in a couple of places because of that - but I'm still pretty proud of it. Now, on to my term project!

The other day I picked up a copy of Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn at a used bookstore here in Bloomington. It's a strange little novel about a fictional tiny island country that worships the creator of the classic typing test pangram, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." They've erected a monument to this guy with the phrase written on it, but when the letters start falling off one by one, the island leaders take it as a sign and, as each letter falls off, they ban the people from using each letter in writing and conversation. Anyway, reading this got me curious about other pangrams, so during a boring reference desk shift I wandered over to the Wikipedia entry on pangrams and wasted a good hour or so. Among my discoveries was this incredible Finnish pangram, "Törkylempijä vongahdus," which Wikipedia helpfully translates as "Muckysnogger booty-call." Now, I have no idea what a muckysnogger booty-call is, exactly, but the fact that it exists and is a perfect pangram in the Finnish language just makes me unreasonably happy, and I intend to proudly use this beautiful phrase at every possible chance I get.

Other great pangrams in other languages and their translations, as mentioned on Wikipedia:

Bulgarian: За миг бях в чужд плюшен скърцащ фотьойл: "For a moment, I was in someone else's plush squeaking armchair."

Lojban: o'i mu xagji sofybakni cu zvati le purdi: "Watch out! Five hungry Soviet cows are in the garden!"

Dutch: Sexy qua lijf, doch bang voor 't zwempak: "Sexy of body, though scared of the swimsuit."

Korean: 키스의 고유조건은 입술끼리 만나야 하고 특별한 기술은 필요치 않다: "The essential condition for kiss is that lips meet and there is no special technique required."