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From: Michael Wojcik on 10 Feb 2010 13:13 Pete Dashwood wrote: > Michael Wojcik wrote: >> If it hasn't happened already. It'd be less work than the Lolcat >> Bible,[1] after all, especially since it can be almost entirely >> automated. >> >> There have long been filters for translating English prose to (and >> sometimes from) various dialects, such as B1FF. I have a Thunderbird >> extension installed that will encode/decode 1337-speak, etc. (I >> installed it for Rot-13 and other marginally more useful things.) >> >> [1] http://lolcatbible.com/ > > Sad to say Michael, none of the above made any sense to me and I never heard > of any of the references, bar Thunderbird. I'm obviously leading a deprived > life... :-) Well, I gave a link to the Lolcat Bible, so you could look that up. Isn't it pretty much self-explanatory? (No, not really.) Lolspeak is a dialect popularized by lolcats, a cultural form that originated on various web forums as "cat macros" and was popularized by the ongoing online collection icanhascheezburger.com. "Cat macros" are (purportedly) amusing pictures of cats with captions, used as visual interjections in web boards such as fark.com. The name "cat macro" comes from the use of shortcut macros to insert the necessary <img> tag into the message body. Gradually the name "lolcat" (a portmanteau of the acronym LOL, for "laugh out loud", and "cat") came to be preferred. For unclear reasons (and there's a surprising amount of scholarship, albeit mostly informal, on the subject), it became customary to use certain misspellings and nonstandard grammar in the captions. This evolved into lolspeak. It shares some features with txt (eg abbreviations for pronouns and other common words) and 1337 (eg the frequent substitution of "w" for "o"), but is more or less recognizably distinct from those, at least to experts (such as they are). The lolcat form also expanded into a number of related forms, such as lolrus (walrus picture with caption) and other lol-animal genres; faildog (pictures of dogs doing stupid things, often captioned with the word "FAIL"; this is a hybrid of loldog and failblog[1]); and the cute-pictures genre, typified by cuteoverload.com (warning: not safe for cynics). Besides the usual deliberate misspellings and such, the lolcat dialect features many stock phrases (eg the greeting "O hai"), common terms ("nom" for eating), and references to common tropes (such as the deity Ceiling Cat, featured prominently in the Lolcat Bible). O hai. Lolcatz duznt kno much punktuashun or spelingz. B1FF is a much older dialect, created by Joe Talmadge sometime in the 1980s. For many years it was a prominent Usenet fixture, more or less until it drowned in the waves of sincere stupidity from newbies during Eternal September (the period that began when America Online gave its users access to Usenet). B1FF is a "pseudo" or fake user. He responds to messages with posts consisting of block capitals, misspellings, digits substituted for letters, excessive exclamation points, and painfully long signature blocks featuring ASCII art. There's a decent entry about B1FF in Wikipedia and another in the Jargon File.[2] I believe B1FF was implemented as a filter from the beginning; you'd write a deliberately provocative and unhelpful reply in normal English, then run it through the B1FF filter to B1FF it up before posting. (Typical Unix newsreaders of the day used external editors like vi and emacs to edit messages, and those editors make running text through an external filter trivial, so this was a fairly common practice. There were also filters for dialects like Jive, for example.) TH1S 1Z S0ME B1FF TEXT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1337, also spelled "leet", is a dialect popularized by some hacker subgroups, particularly in the mid to late '90s. It features extensive substitution of digits for letters (so "leet" becomes "1337", with L->1, E->3, and T->7); contractions and abbreviations ("leet" is a contraction of "elite", indicating what sort of hacker the author is); and conventions (such as including "greetz" naming the author's friends and others whose work contributed to the project at hand). There's an extensive Wikipedia article on 1337, covering typical alphabetic substitutions, morphology, etc. h3r3 !5 50m3 1337-5p34k 73x7. (0801 ru135! 1337 is as likely to resemble line noise as anything else. It takes some practice to read full-on 1337 text. There - now you can be confident that you're no longer deprived. HTH. HAND. :-) [1] For the failblog genre, see http://failblog.org/. The original faildog site, faildogs.com, has become http://actinglikeanimals.com and is no longer dog-oriented. Note many similar domains (failblog.com, faildog.com, etc) are parasite domain-camping traps. [2] For the Jargon File entry, see http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/B1FF.html. Finding the Wikipedia entry is left as an exercise for the reader. -- Michael Wojcik Micro Focus Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University
From: Michael Wojcik on 10 Feb 2010 16:21 john(a)wexfordpress.com wrote: > Now this information can > be documented in any programming language, but except for COBOL the > language itself doesn't encourage it. COBOL is not the only programming language to include documentation features. Java and Perl, for example, both include documentation constructs and recommend their use. Most of the .Net languages support Microsoft's documentation markup syntax. Other languages have add-ons or third-party products, such as the (very good and free) Doxygen, to extract documentation from comments and code structure. Much more ambitiously, the literate languages - WEB, CWEB, etc - are designed to incorporate code within a written document. I gave a presentation last year at the Association for Teachers of Technical Writing annual conference on the history of attempts to include documentation in program source code.[1] COBOL's documentation constructs were an early and important contribution, but they're neither unique nor the last word on the subject. [1] The slides are available at http://ideoplast.org/code/. -- Michael Wojcik Micro Focus Rhetoric & Writing, Michigan State University
From: Pete Dashwood on 10 Feb 2010 19:23 Bill Gunshannon wrote: > In article <7telkiFcvfU1(a)mid.individual.net>, > "Pete Dashwood" <dashwood(a)removethis.enternet.co.nz> writes: >> SkippyPB wrote: >>> On Mon, 8 Feb 2010 13:39:37 +1300, "Pete Dashwood" >>> <dashwood(a)removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote: >>> >>>> SkippyPB wrote: >>>>> On Sun, 7 Feb 2010 13:05:03 +1300, "Pete Dashwood" >>>>> <dashwood(a)removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Fred Mobach wrote: >>>>>>> Pete Dashwood wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Alistair wrote: >>>>>>>>> On Feb 5, 10:32 am, "Pete Dashwood" >>>>>>>>> <dashw...(a)removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote: >>>>>>>>>> Sure. But don't try and rewrite Shakespeare in English, >>>>>>>>>> either. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I can't resist: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> 2 B / not 2 B? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> LOL! >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I guess it is only a matterof time before someone with more >>>>>>>> time on their hands than they should have, produces a TXT >>>>>>>> version of the works of Shakespeare. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> If it would get kids to read the original, I wouldn't complain. >>>>>>>> :-) >>>>>>> >>>>>>> If via >>>>>>> lynx -dump >>>>>>> to TXT reformatted HTML will do you can have a look at >>>>>>> http://shakespeare.mit.edu/ >>>>>> >>>>>> When I was a teenager I had the Complete works of Shakespeare >>>>>> (and a few others of my favourite authors, Kipling, Poe, and >>>>>> Edgar Rice Burroughs (many people don't realize he wrote a lot >>>>>> more than "Tarzan") in book form, of course, and spent many >>>>>> happy hours engrossed in them. Over the years, with travelling >>>>>> and moving (not to mention pilferage from storage warehouses) >>>>>> these have been lost and I keep thinking I must replace them, >>>>>> but never get round to it. From time to time, I get the urge for >>>>>> Shakespeare and I recently bought the RSC production of King >>>>>> Lear, on DVD. It came with a bound transcript, and, although it >>>>>> is not my favourite Shakespeare play (and is pretty heavy going >>>>>> in places) I did enjoy it. >>>>>> >>>>>> Thank you so much for this link, Fred. I have bookmarked it and >>>>>> will be using it. >>>>>> >>>>>> Pete. >>>>> >>>>> As a kid I wasn't into Shakespeare so much but I did read >>>>> everything Edgar Allen Poe wrote and I read a lot of non-Tarzan >>>>> books that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote as well. I also, at age 10 >>>>> or 11, read the original Mary Shelley book Frankenstein and Bram >>>>> Stoker's Dracula. Both had what I can only describe as a rich >>>>> language. I admit I had strange reading habits as a kid. No >>>>> idea where they came from. I also was into reading Sir Arthur >>>>> Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes' books and a lot of science fiction >>>>> by the authors of the day. >>>> >>>> Yep, all great stuff and I did the same at around the same age. >>>> >>>> I wonder if what we read at an early age can shape us? >>>> >>>> I guess it can if we agree with it or are delighted by it. Or maybe >>>> the rich world of fiction is just a good escape for people at any >>>> age. >>>> >>>> I'd like to think any flaws in my current character were not the >>>> result of reading the authors you mention... :-) >>>> >>>> Of course, if I can blame my faults on Poe or Shakespeare, that >>>> would be a really good cop out... :-) >>>> >>>> Pete. >>> >>> Well Mr. Poe was an Opium addict :) Nevermore, nevermore. >> >> I never heard of that. He certainly was adicted to alcohol and on ONE >> occasion tried to suicide from an overdose of Laudunum (an opiate >> commonly used in Victorian times for sleeping problems)... sure >> you're not thinking of Samuel Taylor Coleridge? Xanadu is definitely >> tripping and there are parts of the Ancient Mariner which look like >> they were influenced by substance abuse... >> >> "The very deeps did rot >> Oh, Christ! That ever this should be >> Yea... slimy things did crawl with legs >> Upon the slimy sea." > > Poe's opium addiction was well known, at least here in the colonies. > Citation please, bill? A web search revealed several sites that disagree. Pete. -- "I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."
From: Pete Dashwood on 10 Feb 2010 19:26 SkippyPB wrote: > On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:57:20 +1300, "Pete Dashwood" > <dashwood(a)removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote: > >> SkippyPB wrote: >>> On Mon, 8 Feb 2010 13:39:37 +1300, "Pete Dashwood" >>> <dashwood(a)removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote: >>> >>>> SkippyPB wrote: >>>>> On Sun, 7 Feb 2010 13:05:03 +1300, "Pete Dashwood" >>>>> <dashwood(a)removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Fred Mobach wrote: >>>>>>> Pete Dashwood wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>>> Alistair wrote: >>>>>>>>> On Feb 5, 10:32 am, "Pete Dashwood" >>>>>>>>> <dashw...(a)removethis.enternet.co.nz> wrote: >>>>>>>>>> Sure. But don't try and rewrite Shakespeare in English, >>>>>>>>>> either. >>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> I can't resist: >>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>> 2 B / not 2 B? >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> LOL! >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> I guess it is only a matterof time before someone with more >>>>>>>> time on their hands than they should have, produces a TXT >>>>>>>> version of the works of Shakespeare. >>>>>>>> >>>>>>>> If it would get kids to read the original, I wouldn't complain. >>>>>>>> :-) >>>>>>> >>>>>>> If via >>>>>>> lynx -dump >>>>>>> to TXT reformatted HTML will do you can have a look at >>>>>>> http://shakespeare.mit.edu/ >>>>>> >>>>>> When I was a teenager I had the Complete works of Shakespeare >>>>>> (and a few others of my favourite authors, Kipling, Poe, and >>>>>> Edgar Rice Burroughs (many people don't realize he wrote a lot >>>>>> more than "Tarzan") in book form, of course, and spent many >>>>>> happy hours engrossed in them. Over the years, with travelling >>>>>> and moving (not to mention pilferage from storage warehouses) >>>>>> these have been lost and I keep thinking I must replace them, >>>>>> but never get round to it. From time to time, I get the urge for >>>>>> Shakespeare and I recently bought the RSC production of King >>>>>> Lear, on DVD. It came with a bound transcript, and, although it >>>>>> is not my favourite Shakespeare play (and is pretty heavy going >>>>>> in places) I did enjoy it. >>>>>> >>>>>> Thank you so much for this link, Fred. I have bookmarked it and >>>>>> will be using it. >>>>>> >>>>>> Pete. >>>>> >>>>> As a kid I wasn't into Shakespeare so much but I did read >>>>> everything Edgar Allen Poe wrote and I read a lot of non-Tarzan >>>>> books that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote as well. I also, at age 10 >>>>> or 11, read the original Mary Shelley book Frankenstein and Bram >>>>> Stoker's Dracula. Both had what I can only describe as a rich >>>>> language. I admit I had strange reading habits as a kid. No >>>>> idea where they came from. I also was into reading Sir Arthur >>>>> Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes' books and a lot of science fiction >>>>> by the authors of the day. >>>> >>>> Yep, all great stuff and I did the same at around the same age. >>>> >>>> I wonder if what we read at an early age can shape us? >>>> >>>> I guess it can if we agree with it or are delighted by it. Or maybe >>>> the rich world of fiction is just a good escape for people at any >>>> age. >>>> >>>> I'd like to think any flaws in my current character were not the >>>> result of reading the authors you mention... :-) >>>> >>>> Of course, if I can blame my faults on Poe or Shakespeare, that >>>> would be a really good cop out... :-) >>>> >>>> Pete. >>> >>> Well Mr. Poe was an Opium addict :) Nevermore, nevermore. >> >> I never heard of that. He certainly was adicted to alcohol and on ONE >> occasion tried to suicide from an overdose of Laudunum (an opiate >> commonly used in Victorian times for sleeping problems)... sure >> you're not thinking of Samuel Taylor Coleridge? Xanadu is definitely >> tripping and there are parts of the Ancient Mariner which look like >> they were influenced by substance abuse... >> >> "The very deeps did rot >> Oh, Christ! That ever this should be >> Yea... slimy things did crawl with legs >> Upon the slimy sea." >> >> Pete > > In March of 1834 Edgar's foster father, John Allen, died and left > nothing of value. Edgar soon after added Laudanum to his Opium and > alcohol diet. In 1835 he went back to Richmond, Virginia and secretly > married his 13 year old cousin Virginia. And everyone thought Jerry > Lee Lewis was the first celebrity scoundrel :) > > Seven years later, unfortunately, Virginia was found to be suffering > from a disease called consumption. It was the same thing that had > killed his mother and father. This drove him to heavy drinking and > many foolish acts. > > However during that very dark period in his life he wrote the poem > "The Conqueror Worm", which projects the image of a destructive worm > or maggot, and the decay of humankind: > > But see, amid the mimic rout > A crawling shape intrude! > A blood-red thing that writhes from out > The scenic solitude! > It writhes!--it writhes!--with mortal pangs > The mimes become its food, > And the angels sob at vermin fangs > In human gore imbued. > > Virginia died in 1847 at the age of 25. Poe died in a sanitarium in > 1849. He was more of an alcoholic than anything else but he certainly > liked his opium as well. > > Regards, Thanks, Steve, erudite and interesting. I have updated my knowledge, which was lacking previously, accordingly. :-) Pete. -- "I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."
From: Pete Dashwood on 10 Feb 2010 19:32
Michael Wojcik wrote: > Pete Dashwood wrote: >> Michael Wojcik wrote: >>> If it hasn't happened already. It'd be less work than the Lolcat >>> Bible,[1] after all, especially since it can be almost entirely >>> automated. >>> >>> There have long been filters for translating English prose to (and >>> sometimes from) various dialects, such as B1FF. I have a Thunderbird >>> extension installed that will encode/decode 1337-speak, etc. (I >>> installed it for Rot-13 and other marginally more useful things.) >>> >>> [1] http://lolcatbible.com/ >> >> Sad to say Michael, none of the above made any sense to me and I >> never heard of any of the references, bar Thunderbird. I'm >> obviously leading a deprived life... :-) > > Well, I gave a link to the Lolcat Bible, so you could look that up. > Isn't it pretty much self-explanatory? (No, not really.) > > Lolspeak is a dialect popularized by lolcats, a cultural form that > originated on various web forums as "cat macros" and was popularized > by the ongoing online collection icanhascheezburger.com. "Cat macros" > are (purportedly) amusing pictures of cats with captions, used as > visual interjections in web boards such as fark.com. The name "cat > macro" comes from the use of shortcut macros to insert the necessary > <img> tag into the message body. Gradually the name "lolcat" (a > portmanteau of the acronym LOL, for "laugh out loud", and "cat") came > to be preferred. > > For unclear reasons (and there's a surprising amount of scholarship, > albeit mostly informal, on the subject), it became customary to use > certain misspellings and nonstandard grammar in the captions. This > evolved into lolspeak. It shares some features with txt (eg > abbreviations for pronouns and other common words) and 1337 (eg the > frequent substitution of "w" for "o"), but is more or less > recognizably distinct from those, at least to experts (such as they > are). > > The lolcat form also expanded into a number of related forms, such as > lolrus (walrus picture with caption) and other lol-animal genres; > faildog (pictures of dogs doing stupid things, often captioned with > the word "FAIL"; this is a hybrid of loldog and failblog[1]); and the > cute-pictures genre, typified by cuteoverload.com (warning: not safe > for cynics). > > Besides the usual deliberate misspellings and such, the lolcat dialect > features many stock phrases (eg the greeting "O hai"), common terms > ("nom" for eating), and references to common tropes (such as the deity > Ceiling Cat, featured prominently in the Lolcat Bible). > > O hai. Lolcatz duznt kno much punktuashun or spelingz. > > > B1FF is a much older dialect, created by Joe Talmadge sometime in the > 1980s. For many years it was a prominent Usenet fixture, more or less > until it drowned in the waves of sincere stupidity from newbies during > Eternal September (the period that began when America Online gave its > users access to Usenet). > > B1FF is a "pseudo" or fake user. He responds to messages with posts > consisting of block capitals, misspellings, digits substituted for > letters, excessive exclamation points, and painfully long signature > blocks featuring ASCII art. There's a decent entry about B1FF in > Wikipedia and another in the Jargon File.[2] > > I believe B1FF was implemented as a filter from the beginning; you'd > write a deliberately provocative and unhelpful reply in normal > English, then run it through the B1FF filter to B1FF it up before > posting. (Typical Unix newsreaders of the day used external editors > like vi and emacs to edit messages, and those editors make running > text through an external filter trivial, so this was a fairly common > practice. There were also filters for dialects like Jive, for > example.) > > TH1S 1Z S0ME B1FF TEXT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! > > > 1337, also spelled "leet", is a dialect popularized by some hacker > subgroups, particularly in the mid to late '90s. It features extensive > substitution of digits for letters (so "leet" becomes "1337", with > L->1, E->3, and T->7); contractions and abbreviations ("leet" is a > contraction of "elite", indicating what sort of hacker the author is); > and conventions (such as including "greetz" naming the author's > friends and others whose work contributed to the project at hand). > > There's an extensive Wikipedia article on 1337, covering typical > alphabetic substitutions, morphology, etc. > > h3r3 !5 50m3 1337-5p34k 73x7. (0801 ru135! > > 1337 is as likely to resemble line noise as anything else. It takes > some practice to read full-on 1337 text. > > > There - now you can be confident that you're no longer deprived. HTH. > HAND. :-) > > > [1] For the failblog genre, see http://failblog.org/. The original > faildog site, faildogs.com, has become http://actinglikeanimals.com > and is no longer dog-oriented. Note many similar domains > (failblog.com, faildog.com, etc) are parasite domain-camping traps. > > [2] For the Jargon File entry, see > http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/B/B1FF.html. Finding the > Wikipedia entry is left as an exercise for the reader. Thank you very much for your time and trouble here.I have saved the mail for future reference. If the course you are pursuing requires you to follow this stuff, I can only say, "Wow! I'm glad I never took Rhetoric..." If you are doing it simply out of personal interest, then you really do need to get out more, Michael... :-) Nevertheless, interesting, and appreciated. Thanks. Pete. -- "I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything." |