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Puns, ahoy!
1 min read
Equestria Daily commenter @DeadandEd started a bird-pun-filled comment thread here. (Eleventh comment from the top, date-wise.) You can find all of the puns nested under the original comment. I don't know wren people will stop posting puns, but you should be swift if you want to get in on the fun.
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On Styling Additional Ponies
2 min read
Those of you that have asked already know this, but I'm not sure which pony I will style next and I don't know when it will happen. When I find the time, I will most likely set up a poll with all of the secondary and background ponies with unique mane styles to let you guys decide who will be next on the styling block. (By the way, the joke image of a poll I set up that humorously lists AJ as a background pony isn't the poll I'm talking about.) I have some Christmas presents to create, and I go back to school in January, so I am not sure when I will have time to style.
However, this doesn't mean that this account will be completely dead until more pony arrives. I've had some small projects postponed by pony that I hope to complete soon. One of them was the scale image of the solar system. The next is something a little less nerdy. Well, a lot less nerdy. It involves fairy tales and underage drinking. (Fictitious characters drinking underage, mind you. I'm not going to stand outside my neighbourhood liquor store offering to buy twelve-year-olds beer or anything like that.) I hope those that are waiting for more pony will find it at least a little amusing.
However, this doesn't mean that this account will be completely dead until more pony arrives. I've had some small projects postponed by pony that I hope to complete soon. One of them was the scale image of the solar system. The next is something a little less nerdy. Well, a lot less nerdy. It involves fairy tales and underage drinking. (Fictitious characters drinking underage, mind you. I'm not going to stand outside my neighbourhood liquor store offering to buy twelve-year-olds beer or anything like that.) I hope those that are waiting for more pony will find it at least a little amusing.
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Beautiful Progress!
1 min read
If you've never heard of "Night on Bald Mountain", although you probably have, that is okay. You are a broken person. Thankfully, you can easily fix yourself here.
This is my "Eye of the Tiger". It may be a little archaic, but it sure makes placing, resizing, and cropping the photos in my Applejack tutorial feel like I'm bashing a mountain apart with my fists. Vigor! Triumph! Concision and clarity! Grrr!
This is my "Eye of the Tiger". It may be a little archaic, but it sure makes placing, resizing, and cropping the photos in my Applejack tutorial feel like I'm bashing a mountain apart with my fists. Vigor! Triumph! Concision and clarity! Grrr!
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First off, this has almost nothing to do with pony. (Applejack's tutorial is coming; don't worry.) I was thinking of places to put this rant one-sided discussion, and for some reason I thought a journal entry on my deviantART account would be appropriate.
Anyway, those of you that have read my journal entries and noticed my love of puns would not be surprised to learn that I am a fan of language. I'm a big fan of English, in particular, as that is the language I know the most of. (German and French come in at very distant second and third places.) As proof of this, I can tell you that when I grow up, which might happen in the next thirty-or-so years, one of my dream jobs is being a lexicographer, a person that builds dictionaries. I own a full-sized Canadian Oxford English Dictionary, since "Canadian" is my particular brand of English, a full-sized Oxford English Dictionary, for English English, and a pocket-sized Webster's Dictionary, for American English.
Now, you might think that someone who owns several kilograms (or 2.2 severals of pounds) of dictionaries might be a linguistic pedant, someone who is very particular about how language is used. This is partially true. I strive to abide by the standards of style outlined in the back of my dictionary. I try to ensure that the meaning of the words I use match those listed inside my dictionary. I also love it when others speak and write well (not "good"). However, I try not to be persnickety when others ignore their shift and punctuation keys or are clearly ignorant of how they should be used. This may seem as if I am holding others to a different standard than I hold myself, but that isn't quite the case.
I sometimes feel it is a bit difficult to explain my stance on the use of English. So, I've enlisted the help of someone who holds the same attitudes I have: Stephen Fry. I forgot about this until I saw this video today.
I think my attitude can best be described by the notion that writing is art; not engineering.
It is probably safe to assume that people reading this know a thing or two about art. You probably know that visual art has rules. For example: the rules of anatomy. You may know that adult humans are 7-8 or so heads high, and an eye is supposed to be roughly a fifth of the width of a human face and so on. I can almost guarantee you that anyone who is a professional artist knows these rules either consciously or subconsciously inside and out. In the same way, you can tell by the way Stephen is speaking that he is a master of the English language. (He was an English Lit major, by the way.) He knows the rules, like the difference between "disinterested" and "uninterested", a distinction I was only vaguely familiar with until I looked it up in my dictionary.
These kinds of rules are important because they add clarity to art. You could not read this sentence if every word was spelled completely wrong (without some difficulty). It is difficult to tell whether a drawn figure is male or female unless attention is paid to the anatomical differences between the sexes.
So, why do Stephen Fry and I (not "me") seem content with the gratuitous portmanteau-ing of words and similar lingual blasphemies? In the video linked to above, and another one using an audio snippet from a podcast he did some time ago, Stephen mentions that English has always been a beautiful mess and fighting its inevitable evolution is a futile and tasteless pursuit. I agree with that, but I'd like to add a little of my own thinking.
Going back to my art analogy, art that follows the rules of correct form and structure can be interesting and aesthetically pleasing. However, if following rules was the only way to make art, we would spend our time on a very boring site with content devoid of any style. There would be no anime; no cartoonishness of any kind at all. I think the same can be said about writing. If people did nothing but stick to what is technically proper, writing would be very dull. Shakespeare did all kinds of improper things to English that have made it a more interesting language. Breaking the rules of art makes it interesting.
So, if the rules of art are meant to be broken, and I believe writing is an art, then why am I so passionate about learning the rules? I am because I know that you need to know the rules of an art to break them properly. If you want to draw a cartoon hero, you may make their eyes a little bigger than anatomically acceptable to make them look a little more endearing. If you want to make a cartoon villain, you might do the opposite: make the eyes a little smaller to make the character look sinister. If you don't know how large eyes are supposed to be on a human being relative to their other features, this will be very, very difficult. Similarly with language, you cannot make up a word and expect it to get into a dictionary at some point in the future. Shakespeare could do it because he was a word ninja. Stephen Fry can say "ass-gravy" on a talk show and still seem distinguished because he's a brilliant English speaker. They knew the rules of English and knew how to break them properly.
And that is what I want for myself. I want to know everything I can about English, so I can write and speak technically perfectly when necessary and bugger it all up to Hell to enhance what I want to say when it is time to get creative. When people do improper things with language, it is an opportunity for evolution. Like evolution, most mutations result in cancerous atrocities, but sometimes amazing things are born.
Like "y'all". I love "y'all". Other languages, like German, have formal and eloquent versions of "y'all", but English does not. I would never consider writing an essay for a university course with "y'all" in it, but in informal settings, I use "y'all" liberally. Using "you" or "you all" to refer to several people you are communicating with is silly, in my mind. That being said, I do not like it when the three th-airs (there, their, they're) are used interchangeably. It just makes things confusing.
However, I feel fine when a person makes such mistakes because it means someone was willing to use language even at the risk of making a mistake and possibly looking foolish. Someone was willing to be creative, and I and Stephen Fry think that is more important than vehemently enforcing the rules of English.
Anyway, those of you that have read my journal entries and noticed my love of puns would not be surprised to learn that I am a fan of language. I'm a big fan of English, in particular, as that is the language I know the most of. (German and French come in at very distant second and third places.) As proof of this, I can tell you that when I grow up, which might happen in the next thirty-or-so years, one of my dream jobs is being a lexicographer, a person that builds dictionaries. I own a full-sized Canadian Oxford English Dictionary, since "Canadian" is my particular brand of English, a full-sized Oxford English Dictionary, for English English, and a pocket-sized Webster's Dictionary, for American English.
Now, you might think that someone who owns several kilograms (or 2.2 severals of pounds) of dictionaries might be a linguistic pedant, someone who is very particular about how language is used. This is partially true. I strive to abide by the standards of style outlined in the back of my dictionary. I try to ensure that the meaning of the words I use match those listed inside my dictionary. I also love it when others speak and write well (not "good"). However, I try not to be persnickety when others ignore their shift and punctuation keys or are clearly ignorant of how they should be used. This may seem as if I am holding others to a different standard than I hold myself, but that isn't quite the case.
I sometimes feel it is a bit difficult to explain my stance on the use of English. So, I've enlisted the help of someone who holds the same attitudes I have: Stephen Fry. I forgot about this until I saw this video today.
I think my attitude can best be described by the notion that writing is art; not engineering.
It is probably safe to assume that people reading this know a thing or two about art. You probably know that visual art has rules. For example: the rules of anatomy. You may know that adult humans are 7-8 or so heads high, and an eye is supposed to be roughly a fifth of the width of a human face and so on. I can almost guarantee you that anyone who is a professional artist knows these rules either consciously or subconsciously inside and out. In the same way, you can tell by the way Stephen is speaking that he is a master of the English language. (He was an English Lit major, by the way.) He knows the rules, like the difference between "disinterested" and "uninterested", a distinction I was only vaguely familiar with until I looked it up in my dictionary.
These kinds of rules are important because they add clarity to art. You could not read this sentence if every word was spelled completely wrong (without some difficulty). It is difficult to tell whether a drawn figure is male or female unless attention is paid to the anatomical differences between the sexes.
So, why do Stephen Fry and I (not "me") seem content with the gratuitous portmanteau-ing of words and similar lingual blasphemies? In the video linked to above, and another one using an audio snippet from a podcast he did some time ago, Stephen mentions that English has always been a beautiful mess and fighting its inevitable evolution is a futile and tasteless pursuit. I agree with that, but I'd like to add a little of my own thinking.
Going back to my art analogy, art that follows the rules of correct form and structure can be interesting and aesthetically pleasing. However, if following rules was the only way to make art, we would spend our time on a very boring site with content devoid of any style. There would be no anime; no cartoonishness of any kind at all. I think the same can be said about writing. If people did nothing but stick to what is technically proper, writing would be very dull. Shakespeare did all kinds of improper things to English that have made it a more interesting language. Breaking the rules of art makes it interesting.
So, if the rules of art are meant to be broken, and I believe writing is an art, then why am I so passionate about learning the rules? I am because I know that you need to know the rules of an art to break them properly. If you want to draw a cartoon hero, you may make their eyes a little bigger than anatomically acceptable to make them look a little more endearing. If you want to make a cartoon villain, you might do the opposite: make the eyes a little smaller to make the character look sinister. If you don't know how large eyes are supposed to be on a human being relative to their other features, this will be very, very difficult. Similarly with language, you cannot make up a word and expect it to get into a dictionary at some point in the future. Shakespeare could do it because he was a word ninja. Stephen Fry can say "ass-gravy" on a talk show and still seem distinguished because he's a brilliant English speaker. They knew the rules of English and knew how to break them properly.
And that is what I want for myself. I want to know everything I can about English, so I can write and speak technically perfectly when necessary and bugger it all up to Hell to enhance what I want to say when it is time to get creative. When people do improper things with language, it is an opportunity for evolution. Like evolution, most mutations result in cancerous atrocities, but sometimes amazing things are born.
Like "y'all". I love "y'all". Other languages, like German, have formal and eloquent versions of "y'all", but English does not. I would never consider writing an essay for a university course with "y'all" in it, but in informal settings, I use "y'all" liberally. Using "you" or "you all" to refer to several people you are communicating with is silly, in my mind. That being said, I do not like it when the three th-airs (there, their, they're) are used interchangeably. It just makes things confusing.
However, I feel fine when a person makes such mistakes because it means someone was willing to use language even at the risk of making a mistake and possibly looking foolish. Someone was willing to be creative, and I and Stephen Fry think that is more important than vehemently enforcing the rules of English.
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Fantastically Mediocre News!
1 min read
Things are happening, and none of them are terribly remarkable! My styling studio, a.k.a. my bathroom, now has all four light sockets populated with light bulbs! I found some elastics for Applejack's mane today at a local drug store! My desk lamp has one of those newfangled LED lights in it that has a spectrum that looks roughly like this! I'm getting unemployed which means that I will suddenly be assaulted by a barrage of free time in about a week that will be largely spent fixing up my AJ's hair and tutorializing! I've eaten too many jellybeans that contain trace amounts of apple juice for some reason! A robotic cashier ate two of my finest nickles today! Now that I am on a roll, I'm reluctant to end any of my sentences with punctuation besides exclamation points! Toodles!
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