Category: Randoms & My Life
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Will Ebooks Kill the Printed Book?
A lot of hardcore readers were doubtful when the Kindle came out, but there’s no denying sales of ebooks have skyrocketed these past few years. More and more people own e-readers, and several authors are making more money self-publishing electronically than they could ever make with a traditional publisher. Does this spell death for the…
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The First Shall Be Last
Why we don’t actually know who was first, why being “first” isn’t so clear-cut, and why it’s best not to be first anyway. There was an annoying internet trend a few years back, where people would race to post comments like “First to post!” or “Yes! First” under every article, without any useful contribution to…
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Famous Now, Famous Always? Not Necessarily…
Fleeting Fame Just imagine – you’ve got it made. You’ve climbed to the pinnacle of your career in acting, writing, music, or whatever, and now everyone in the world knows your name. This is what you’ve been dreaming about since you were a kid. A household name. Yeah, that’s you. You bet a hundred years…
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That’s Not Shakespeare! Or Maybe It Is
“Alas, poor Yorick!” – Howl, from Howl’s Moving Castle, quoting Shakespeare When I first read Howl’s Moving Castle, I didn’t realize this was a quote from Shakespeare until I read Hamlet a year later. Funny how we tend to attribute things to the last person that we remember said them, whether or not they actually…
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Top Ten of 2011: Ugly People, E-Publishing, and Limericks
OR, Why People Read Stories and Stuff It’s Quotable Wednesday today, and since it’s coming up on a year since I started blogging regularly, what better way to celebrate than to quote myself? So here is a list of the Top Ten Most Viewed posts of 2011, brought to you by Stories and Stuff. First…
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Not My New Year’s Resolutions
I’ve never believed in the whole goal-setting thing as much as I should believe in it. (I’ve been told I must set goals or fail at life since elementary school, and when people phrase things like that I have trouble believing them). It doesn’t help when goals you have set – eg: finishing nursing…
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A Call for New Classic Christmas Carols
Every year, people complain about how sick they’re getting of hearing the same Christmas carols over and over. The obvious solution to this would be to write some new carols. Unfortunately, the vast majority of new Christmas-themed music that comes out every year is hard on the ears. I’m trying to think of the most…
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Why It’s Harder to Write a Term Paper Than a Blog
Some people might think blogging is pretty scary – putting up stuff for all the world to criticize, and maybe to use to your disadvantage when you run for President someday (fortunately, there’s no chance of me doing that). However, I realized these past two weeks that writing academic papers scares me more. Then I…
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Un Bon Mot – Language Learning is Hard…
No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself. – Tolkien, English and Welsh I’m thinking this is true, as my Spanish and Portuguese “fluency” languishes… It’s tough to learn languages, and I…
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Quotable Misquotes
3 Ways Misquotes Happen “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” –Mahatma Gandhi Delightful little quote, isn’t it? I’ve seen it plastered all over the net, on T-shirts, on bumper stickers. But it nicely illustrates the problem of using quotes, especially ones you find on the internet. According to Wikipedia (behold the…
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