Sunday, August 29, 2004

Surviving the /.ing

Distributed Proofreaders (of which I may have gushed earlier) has recently posted its 5000th project to Project Gutenberg (not individual unique item mind you, some books/works were split for various reasons but we're getting close to 5000 of them too). This got mentioned on /. thus prompting the 3rd slashdot wave to enter DP. As I've now been at this for quite some time now (I only recently realised it's over a year) I do some mentoring giving feedback to people doing their first proofing pages, and over the last 4 or 5 days it's been on the almost frantic side trying to keep up and give feedback in a timely fashion so as to keep people interested.

So much is easily lost or discarded in today's world that the goal of DP - Preserving History, one page at a time - really resonated with me. It's interesting in any case, as you never know what people are going to find to make projects, from victorian pot-boilers, to treatises on gunpowder, to Chaucer poetry, and stuff still written in Englifh :) There's usually something there that is interesting to read as well as proof. Although that part of me that likes a challenge has been known to proof (if not understand) latin poetry, english grammar texts, and one that boggled even me, Virgil's Aenid translated into Scots verse (and I'm talking broad scots here)

Ah well, back to mentoring.

Monday, August 16, 2004

Back to IE

Now Opera won't even log in properly with blogger. Oh well.

I hadn't realised before, but several people have told me in the past week or so that yes, you can crack a rib coughing. I'm beginning to believe them. I initially thought it was just a strained muscle but this is really hanging on and doesn't quite feel the same as a muscle.

It only hurts when I laugh. Or cough, or sneeze, or move. Luckily it's only for movements that affect my upper body so my typing is unaffected.

Might watch some of my season 2 Press Gang DVD tonight since there's nothing remotely watchable on now that sport has taken over the TV. I mean yes I agree that ideally the Olympics is a worthy thing, but of late all the technological 'aids' and drug scandals and so forth just seems to take the point out of it. And since I'm not a big sports watcher I think I'll skip it.

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Coff Coff

I finally succumbed. I couldn't take it any more and got some cough mixture. Hopefully it will work enough to allow me to get to sleep. While my rises this week are not so early as they were last week I still have relatively early starts and need all the sleep I can get. At least my voice is coming back. I had to jot some of the answers for the quiz night on my phone's jotter app to show D who was writing them down. The next day I had barely a whisper left. Still, getting stronger now.

Thanks Pam, we had a blast at the quiz night, to be honest, winning was quite a suprise, we didn't think we had done that well on the Hensonia. Of course if my head had been clear the answer to the british actor question would have been obvious. Doh.

Working from home today. The urgent stuff is done and I'm going to start on dinner so that the flavours get a chance to mingle.