Here in the U.S. it’s an honorary Monday, since most of us took yesterday off to celebrate Labor Day (by not laboring!). So, in the spirit of easing back into the work week, here are some (admittedly not translation-specific) links to enjoy on your coffee break:
- The U.K. Telegraph on 50 things that are being killed by the Internet. How timely; just the other day I was commenting on my own guilt when it comes to #27, not knowing telephone numbers by heart once they’re on speed dial.
- Get Rich Slowly on The war on stuff. The Thoughts on Translation household has been in purge mode lately (anyone want a broken salad spinner, the pot to a coffee maker that broke 5 years ago or a set of dishes that’s too large to fit in our dishwasher?) so I really enjoyed this post on cutting the clutter.
- Maybe I’m easy to impress, but I just love Wordle, the website that makes artistic “word clouds” out of text that you submit. It’s fun to use it to make a word cloud out of your blog (or any other website), but I also like to use it to make personalized greeting cards for friends. I’m totally un-artistic, so I type words that remind me of that person (things we like to do together, their favorite movies/books/foods, etc.) into the Wordle box and let it create a nice picture that I can put on a birthday card.
Good links! I’ve been in unclutter mode lately too, but it is more of the paper variety since I’ve already uncluttered all my old broken stuff. I also subscribe to the unclutterer.com blog.
RE: the first link – I can’t believe you mentioned #27 and didn’t even mention #29:
29) The mystery of foreign languages
Sites like Babelfish offer instant, good-enough translations of dozens of languages – but kill their beauty and rhythm.
LOL!
Regarding phones numbers, I just don’t call that much anymore. Or rather, I don’t call the same person that much frequently. But what I remember is how to get that person’s number.
Of course, the process is largely computer based, but it still is a process and, as far as I am concerned, it is just as good (if not better in some cases) to remember one generic process that will cover a full data set than remembering all the points in the data set.
I’m in full “unclutter” mode and enjoyed the link. Thanks!
Great links for a coffee break: I love Wordle! I think I’ll become an addict 🙂
I’ve often said that the Tuesday after a three-day weekend “feels like Monday,” but I like your “honorary Monday” phrase much better. And as for Wordle, very cool, but I’m going to try to put it out of my mind. I was sad when Scrabulous disappeared from the Internet (copyright issues), but I did gain back hours every week.