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Methinks me is over da hump...
Dec. 5th, 2001 08:58 pmAt least as far as the Friday job is concerned, but it was touch-and-go for a while, there.
I got down to brass translations around 11:30 this morning. For the next two and a half hours, I struggled with the text in front of me. It had to do with a method for determining the displacement of a vessel, which involves "heeling" or inclining the vessel using a known mass. This is really useful stuff to know, especially for bar bets.
I made my way through the text at a fairly moderate rate, but short of what I'd have to achieve to finish enough today to allow me to actually finish the beast tomorrow night (which would leave me Friday morning to check it over). I picked up the pace for the next couple of hours until I broke out of the turgid text a few minutes after 4.
In the final analysis, I'm just over the 50% mark now, and most of the remaining pages look pretty sparse, text-wise. The last three pages I did today took me half and hour to do, but that was only because they involved the translation of about 300 words.
Jeez, I can be utterly boring at times, can't I?
I've hardly had any time to play with my birthday present to myself, which is the CD version of the Oxford English Dictionary (talk about a busman's holiday... though I call it a present, it's really a tax deduction, but I digress...).
My fascination with the OED actually began in the late '80s, when I happened to be in the Baltimore area and dropped by to see an acquaintance of mine that I'd first "met" on the Byte Information Exchange. His name is Hugh Kenner, and he is a Very Learned Man, especially if the conversation turns to one Ezra Pound.
A second supporting piece of evidence in Kenner's favor was his introducing me to the wonders of the vodka martini. Though it has not prevented me from enjoying the more traditional libation (4 parts gin and the vermouth bottle is left uncorked in the same room for 5 minutes; I like my martinis dry!), it was a liberating experience, and to have had it in Dr. Kenner's elegantly appointed home was icing on the cake.
Anyway, it turns out that the OED is a dictionary that is chock full of actual quotes from various sources that illustrate the usage of the words. Kenner is the source of more than a scant handful of quoted text, it turns out.
The subject of the OED lay dormant for many years until it raised its head again about 18 months ago when I borrowed a book from my former boss that described the life and times of one of the major contributors to the OED, an murderously insane individual who had been committed to a mental institution for having shot a man in the street in cold blood and who, as a result, had scads of spare time on his hands to devote to lexicography. The story is fascinating.
By that time, I knew that the paper version of the OED ran a couple of thousand dollars (unless one likes the ersatz two-volume version that's sold with (literally) a magnifying glass to read the minuscule print), which put it pretty much out of my price range (not to mention I have no place to put it), and the CD version ran for nearly a thousand.
The CD price has dropped markedly over the years, until it recently broke below the $200 level.
So I bought me one.
Anyway, I've already had occasion to use the OED to look up some words to ascertain their meanings for this translation I'm working on, so my purchase is already justifying itself as a tax writeoff. The software that drives the electronic OED is fairly plain-vanilla; perhaps the one notable item is the fact that the publisher has seen fit to encrypt the data disk and to require its presence in your CD drive when you use the product. I don't really see any problem with that; what irks me is the inability to make a backup copy of the data disk, just in case something should happen to the (fairly expensive) original.
Ah well, I've seen worse. Much worse. For now, I have nothing to complain about.
Cheers...
I got down to brass translations around 11:30 this morning. For the next two and a half hours, I struggled with the text in front of me. It had to do with a method for determining the displacement of a vessel, which involves "heeling" or inclining the vessel using a known mass. This is really useful stuff to know, especially for bar bets.
I made my way through the text at a fairly moderate rate, but short of what I'd have to achieve to finish enough today to allow me to actually finish the beast tomorrow night (which would leave me Friday morning to check it over). I picked up the pace for the next couple of hours until I broke out of the turgid text a few minutes after 4.
In the final analysis, I'm just over the 50% mark now, and most of the remaining pages look pretty sparse, text-wise. The last three pages I did today took me half and hour to do, but that was only because they involved the translation of about 300 words.
Jeez, I can be utterly boring at times, can't I?
I've hardly had any time to play with my birthday present to myself, which is the CD version of the Oxford English Dictionary (talk about a busman's holiday... though I call it a present, it's really a tax deduction, but I digress...).
My fascination with the OED actually began in the late '80s, when I happened to be in the Baltimore area and dropped by to see an acquaintance of mine that I'd first "met" on the Byte Information Exchange. His name is Hugh Kenner, and he is a Very Learned Man, especially if the conversation turns to one Ezra Pound.
A second supporting piece of evidence in Kenner's favor was his introducing me to the wonders of the vodka martini. Though it has not prevented me from enjoying the more traditional libation (4 parts gin and the vermouth bottle is left uncorked in the same room for 5 minutes; I like my martinis dry!), it was a liberating experience, and to have had it in Dr. Kenner's elegantly appointed home was icing on the cake.
Anyway, it turns out that the OED is a dictionary that is chock full of actual quotes from various sources that illustrate the usage of the words. Kenner is the source of more than a scant handful of quoted text, it turns out.
The subject of the OED lay dormant for many years until it raised its head again about 18 months ago when I borrowed a book from my former boss that described the life and times of one of the major contributors to the OED, an murderously insane individual who had been committed to a mental institution for having shot a man in the street in cold blood and who, as a result, had scads of spare time on his hands to devote to lexicography. The story is fascinating.
By that time, I knew that the paper version of the OED ran a couple of thousand dollars (unless one likes the ersatz two-volume version that's sold with (literally) a magnifying glass to read the minuscule print), which put it pretty much out of my price range (not to mention I have no place to put it), and the CD version ran for nearly a thousand.
The CD price has dropped markedly over the years, until it recently broke below the $200 level.
So I bought me one.
Anyway, I've already had occasion to use the OED to look up some words to ascertain their meanings for this translation I'm working on, so my purchase is already justifying itself as a tax writeoff. The software that drives the electronic OED is fairly plain-vanilla; perhaps the one notable item is the fact that the publisher has seen fit to encrypt the data disk and to require its presence in your CD drive when you use the product. I don't really see any problem with that; what irks me is the inability to make a backup copy of the data disk, just in case something should happen to the (fairly expensive) original.
Ah well, I've seen worse. Much worse. For now, I have nothing to complain about.
Cheers...
