Real Groovy closes doors in Dunedin

Well, this is a disappointment. I had hoped to get in before the end.

Infinite Recursion II

I got through half my notes that I wanted from language books for my list of prepositions today. The result is going in a different direction than I initially expected. It’s dangerous thing to design a language. I am constantly being distracted by its shinyness. I will have to post the results somewhere. The hyper-text mark-up language version can go here. I should post a thread on Conlang when I’m done.

The Teach Yourself grammars I was looking at today included: Dutch, Polish, Norwegian, and Russian. Still to come: Spanish and Welsh.

Other news: I am going to Papatowai for my cousin’s 50th birthday bash next weekend. It should be a fun excuse to get out of Dunedin for a couple of nights.

Tomorrow I start relabelling boxes at work that contain wedding records. By March 2009 they should be on our new shelves in the former journal floor when we are in our new office. That’s progress.

Merlin episode 1

Jethro Cane arrives at Camelot to take up service with Dr. Constantine. Rupert Giles is celebrating a 20 year pogrom against magic by throwing a party. His son, Prince Arthur, is a royal prat. Gwen Cooper’s swanning about in the background being an evil witch.

The makers have have gone for a high fantasy feel. I would have prefered a Celtic/Welsh feel myself. Maybe they thought that was overdone. Nevermind, it’s a good laugh. I definitely would like to see a version of it on IBWiki. I might have to think about that.

Karkehan will have left the country by now and I expect I won’t see him until next year at the earliest. Sad, really, as his fortnightly role-playing sessions were an opportunity to get out of the house to somewhere different in my life, and I shall miss them. Good luck to him. Where he goes I know that he will touch down feet first.

It’s a cloudless day today. I’m out of here for a walk into town. Whitcoulls have got copies of Gorminghast on DVD and I reckon that there’s a copy with my name on it, or else! Selaya

Rejoice with me

General Assembly, the Presbyterian Church’s biennial meeting, is in sederunt over this weekend. The archives have already had our good news as the development of the buildings that house us, with costs, has been approved. This was passed with only one voice in dissent. When asked from the floor what archives has to do with the mission of the church one of our more conservative ministers spoke passionately for the archives’ cause. (At least one reader will know who I mean by Rev. Blobby!) That won over the evangelical partisans. I think I shall go do a little victory dance now.

This time next week we shall have begun our shelf check in preparation for the big move.

infinite recursion

I have been trying to design an eclectic language for a while. If you don’t know what I mean, google ‘conlanging’. A few links will have you fleeing screaming in terror in no time.

I’ve started a grammar on Frathwiki called OT2.0. It hasn’t got very far. Tonight I decided to try a different direction. I took an old copy of Rick Harrison’s Universal Lexicon and started designing words for it based on an earlier version created from Lingua Franca and other creoles. Creole languages are underappreciated in my opinion. I took indo-european stems from the American Heritage Dictionary and applied soundchanges from a language project I started some time ago with lots of fricatives. This time I hope to get a bit further with it.

After I got back from the gym this evening, doing my weights programme, I worked my way through the preposition list. I got just under half way through. I have to think of a new word to mean ‘like’ or ‘similar’ after I find an acceptable etymology for ‘come’ (Italian word, not English).

That’s enough strange confessions for one evening.