Schnee's journal

Welcome back my friends
To the show that never ends!
We're so glad you could attend
Come inside, come inside!

— Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Karn Evil 9 (1st Impression, Part II)

Hi there!

If you're reading this, you're probably just looking at my journal, perhaps even thinking about adding me as an LJ-friend; or alternatively, perhaps I just added you as an LJ-friend, and you're curious about me now. In either case, I'd like to use this opportunity to say a few things.

Trevor: You're skating the edge.
Æon: I am the edge.

— Æon Flux

First of all, I tend to write freely about topics everything that matters to me; more distanced, "professional" entries may directly be followed by more personal ones (and vice versa), and I will, generally, openly write about all sorts of things, including philosophy, sexuality, politics and more. Some of my entries will be friends-only, others will be publicly viewable, too, and unlike other people, I don't use <lj-cut /> tags or specific "topic filters" (i.e., custom friends groups dedicated to specific topics) to shield people from things they may not want to see.

Well, as long as it's text, that is; I will cut images that aren't safe for work etc. (at least if I remember, which I might not always do!), since I wouldn't want for people to get in trouble if their boss happens to be shoulder-surfing at work. Text, though, is a different issue, and if you'll get into trouble for reading about certain topics at work, you probably shouldn't be checking your friends page at work to begin with.

He said, "I am told that when men hear its voice, it stays in their ears, they cannot be rid of it. It has many different voices: some happy, but others sad. It roars like a baboon, murmurs like a child, drums like the blazing arms of one thousand drummers, rustles like water in a glass, sings like a lover and laments like a priest."

— Mike Oldfield, Amarok (liner notes)

Second of all, concerning friending me: feel free to. There is no need to ask if it's OK to do so; everyone's welcome to, as well as to post comments etc. (as long as they're genuine: spammers etc. will not be tolerated, but that goes without saying, anyway). I may add you back if your journal looks interesting or if I know you, too, but this isn't automatic. If you do want me to add you back, engaging me and talking to me is probably the best way to go about it.

Please don't ask about being added back if I didn't do so on my own, either, unless I already know you well and you want to be able to read my non-public entries.

If I already friended you but you don't know who I am and haven't been in contact with me before, that most likely means I became aware of your journal somehow, took a look, and decided I wanted to keep up with what you're writing — "I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter", as it were. I don't expect you to friend me back or otherwise take an interest in me, but if you do — all the better.

If what it is to be furry you still don't comprehend
Then consider this advice, my curious friend
If you're willing to respect that which you don't understand
Then come take my paw and I'll take your hand.

— from "Furry", by Croc O'Dile of TigerMUCK with help from Tony DeMatio, June 1995

Regarding commenting, BTW, I'm always happy to receive comments. However, things like "lol" are not proper punctuation, and correct spelling and grammar would be nice as well. And of course, I expect people to not be insulting or rude, but that, again, should go without saying.

That's about all I can think of for now. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

NetHack 5.0.0 has been released. Get it while it's hot!

(No, the version number is not a late April fool's joke. Apparently the DevTeam decided to release what used to be 3.7 until quite recently as 5.0.0.)

It's with the greatest sorrow and with tears in my eyes that I have to report that Björgvin Halldórsson has died. Björgvin was, IMO and until now, the greatest living Icelandic musician, a towering giant, a legend. I cannot express how great of a loss this is.

Gullvagninn var loks sendur að sækja þig. Góða ferð, Bó, og við munum aldrei gleyma þér, þó liði ár og öld.

I am left dumbfounded, devastated. I didn't know Björgvin personally, of course, but I saw him perform, and I listened to his music time and again, and loved it. He is – was – an absolute legend; Pop Star of the Year in 1969, and that was merely the beginning. You can't overstate how important, how influential and how just plain amazing he was. What an absolutely terrible tragedy. I'm at a loss for words.

This is truly the day the music died.

My thoughts, are, of course, with his family — his wife, his children, everyone; and with his friends, his colleagues, his loved ones, his fans.

May love rest gently in your broken hearts.

Newer versions of Windows 11 have a drag tray at the top of the screen in Explorer that pops up when you start dragging an item, say a file.

If you find this behavior annoying and want to disable that tray, the relevant setting is Settings > System > Nearby sharing > Drag Tray. Just turn it off and you're good.

I just thought that it's really fascinating how differently the u umlaut in Icelandic can affect different words. The most basic rule taught to beginners is that before an inflectional ending involving an u, a stressed a becomes ö and an unstressed one u, but this is only part of the truth. For instance, the ending may in fact be a null ending (södd), or it may not trigger the umlaut (saddur), or the ending itself may be affected (bökuðu). But what I always find fascinating is that the first a to change may not be the first one in the word.

Here's some interesting examples of the u umlaut at work. fag becomes fög (nom./acc. pl.); fagur becomes fögur (nom. sg. f.); banani becomes banönum (dat. pl.; the alternate form bönunum is equally valid); almanak becomes almanök (nom./acc. pl.; neither *almönuk nor *ölmunuk are valid forms); and Emilíana becomes Emilíönu (acc./dat./gen. sg.).

Given names are interesting anyway. Anna becomes Önnu (acc./dat./gen. sg.), María becomes Maríu (dto.), and Annamaría becomes Önnumaríu (dto.); Barbara becomes Barböru (dto.; *Börburu is not valid), and Alexandra becomes Alexöndru (dto., and again, there are no valid alternate forms).

In contrast with Anna and Annamaría, BTW, annasamur become annasöm (nom. sg. f.), as anna- is already in the genitive case here, derived from önn. And as that last word shows, it's of course perfectly possible for an u umlaut that occurs in the dictionary form to disappear again in inflected forms.

Fanney Hrund Hilmarsdóttir's Fríríkið and Dreim: Fall Draupnis feature a character nicknamed Allamma, which becomes Öllömmu (acc./dat./gen. sg.), and I was quite tickled to read the following dedication: Þessi bók er tileinkuð æskustöðvum mínum – Hamarshjáleigu – og öllum Öllömmunum sem þeim fylgdu. Öllum Öllömmunum! That's positively delightful.

And then there's of course there's other kinds of vowel change, and words that undergo several different ones, e. g. þröstur, which inflects as þröstur — þröst — þresti — þrastar in the singular, and þrestir — þresti — þröstum — þrasta in the plural.

From thewayne comes the word that Tom Lehrer has died at the ripe old age of 97 of undisclosed causes. Tom was not just a gifted mathematician but also a talented musician who gave us a host of satirical songs, ranging from National Brotherhood Week to The New Math. He had no surviving immediate family, but he's survived by friends and fans.

The NY Times has a good obituary.

Also, Tom kindly released all his songs and lyrics into the public domain a few years back, so you can download all of his songs on this website.

One that came up in a conversation today:

clutty, adj. (comp. cluttier, superl. cluttiest)

Cluttered.

If you want to make your house cozier by adding more stuff, make sure it's cozy stuff, otherwise it'll just get cluttier instead.

This may seem redundant (greetings from the department of redundancy department!), but it avoids the awkward use of more and most when comparing cluttered.

Just because it's not wholly obvious how to do so, here's how to set the display language in Opera — this might be useful if you're using a locked-down computer at work where your IT department set the system to a local language and when you want English instead:

1. Go to the settings (opera://settings).
2. Scroll down to Preferred languages (this is the fourth block in the Browser section).
3. If English (not English (United States) or so!) is not yet in the list, add it.
4. Click on the three dots next to English.
5. Select Display Opera in this language.

Voilà — that's all. Complaining to your IT department is optional but not recommended since experience shows it never achieves anything.

After a long period of development, tweaking, fine-tuning and polishing, GIMP 3.0 has been released. I've not tried it out yet, but the release notes sound promising. And new feature releases should also be more frequent from this point onwards.

I just learned that James Harrison died: the Man with the Golden Arm, who regularly donated plasma for over sixty years and whose blood contained a rare antibody that is needed to treat a potentially fatal disease in newborn children.

It is impossible to overstate the positive contribution to humanity that this man has made.

James died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 88 at a nursing home on February 17. My thoughts are with his family, his friends and his loved ones, and with everyone who owes their life to James and his golden arm.