Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Naming the Roses
The World Names Profiler is a fun toy. First I found that New Zealand is now the most popular place in the world to be called Bulkeley, with the UK and USA offering very poor competition to get the silver and bronze spots. The map below also shows a creditable score for India, which given that the scores are in frequency per million may mean that there are more Bulkeleys in India than any other country!
It was also interesting to discover that, although in NZ as a whole names like Smith, Wilson, Brown, Williams, Taylor, Jones... filled the top ten, with only the possibly amgiguous Lee at number ten suggesting the non-Anglo-Saxon component of contemporary NZ, looking at Auckland City gives a very different picture with only half the top ten being Anglo names, and Patel, Lee and Wang all in the top five.
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| Top Countries | |||||||||||||||
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It was also interesting to discover that, although in NZ as a whole names like Smith, Wilson, Brown, Williams, Taylor, Jones... filled the top ten, with only the possibly amgiguous Lee at number ten suggesting the non-Anglo-Saxon component of contemporary NZ, looking at Auckland City gives a very different picture with only half the top ten being Anglo names, and Patel, Lee and Wang all in the top five.
Labels: bulkeley, fun, names, nz
¶ 1:31 PM
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Thursday, November 20, 2008
Audio epistolatory novel
Perhaps the biggest, and certainly the most complex, Librivox project I've been involved in is finished!
It took 400 days, involved about 20 different readers "playing" the various characters whose reminiscences and letters make up the story, in which different characters versions of events are told alongside each other.
The Woman in White was written by Wilkie Collins in 1859, is the first mystery novel, (which may make it attractive to Barbara who reads whodunits. The Woman in White is widely regarded as one of the first (and finest) in the genre of ’sensation novels’. Many people know it through the musical adaptation by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 2004. It has al,so been filmed by the BBC, a Rusian company and Holywood...
Oh yes, and you can listen, or download from the Internet Archive, or Librivox.
¶ 5:38 AM
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Perhaps the biggest, and certainly the most complex, Librivox project I've been involved in is finished! It took 400 days, involved about 20 different readers "playing" the various characters whose reminiscences and letters make up the story, in which different characters versions of events are told alongside each other.
The Woman in White was written by Wilkie Collins in 1859, is the first mystery novel, (which may make it attractive to Barbara who reads whodunits. The Woman in White is widely regarded as one of the first (and finest) in the genre of ’sensation novels’. Many people know it through the musical adaptation by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 2004. It has al,so been filmed by the BBC, a Rusian company and Holywood...
Oh yes, and you can listen, or download from the Internet Archive, or Librivox.
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Wednesday, November 05, 2008
The Avatars they tried to censor
Wayne Leman (as noted below) claimed that he wanted "to play with the avatars as well to see how I and others I know fare" but no gallery of the smiling faces of the Better Bibles crew have appeared yet.
So I thought I'd investigate... Here's what they really look like, and why no gallery has appeared:
Mike Sangrey 
David Ker
Dan Sindlinger 
Peter Kirk
and
Rich Rhodes
The crew are all bad enough, but the ringleader of the gang "Wayne Leman" seems to be taunting us...
Wayne Leman.
The moral of this post is: Reveal your own avatar, with suitable comments to soften the blow, or... I may reveal your real self for all the world to see... Ha ha ha! ¶ 7:52 AM
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So I thought I'd investigate... Here's what they really look like, and why no gallery has appeared:
Mike Sangrey David KerDan Sindlinger Peter Kirkand
Rich RhodesThe crew are all bad enough, but the ringleader of the gang "Wayne Leman" seems to be taunting us...
Wayne Leman.The moral of this post is: Reveal your own avatar, with suitable comments to soften the blow, or... I may reveal your real self for all the world to see... Ha ha ha! ¶ 7:52 AM
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Wayne may have wanted to keep our true appearances secret, but I have now revealed them!
By 
Peter Kirk, at
November 5, 2008 10:58 AM
I've been found out! Aaaargh!
Back to reading from C.S. Lewis, Until We Have Faces.
:-)
By 
Wayne Leman, at
November 5, 2008 11:23 AM
Well, we're no longer faceless.
So, what is the opposite of faceless?
spoken to the tone eeyore uses:
Oooooo Hummmmmm....Things we just don't talk about. But, talkin' about it makes it better.
"Anyway, One can't complain. I have my friends. Someone spoke to me only yesterday."
LOL.
By Mike Sangrey, at
November 5, 2008 1:01 PM
Everybody else is pretty accurate but I'm much more handsome than that.
By David Ker, at
November 6, 2008 6:58 AM
BTW, Wayne I love that book.
By David Ker, at
November 6, 2008 6:58 AM
Yes, David, we know your true handsomeness is revealed here, or maybe here.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Fun while marking: online avatar generator
The online Avatar generator turns your name into a visual avatar. But it does not seem to like bibliobloggers as these examples suggest:
Chris Heard 
Jim West 
Mark Goodacre 
Tyler Williams
Even fellow Antipodean Judy Redman does not fare well:
Judy Redman
However, for some reason I alone seem to be blessed with an acceptable image.
Tim Bulkeley
Whether it is clean living, towering intellect, or blackmail that allows me to get off so lightly I'll leave in silence (and expect you to too ;) though I'd welcome suggestions of great and famous people that our biblibloggers' avatars resemble!
Or add to this rogues' gallery by typing your friends' names in to the site, and watch the fun! If you link here I'll add a link back so that interested parties can collect a full set - more fun and perhaps less divisive than the infamous "more conservative than you" list.
PS: Jim West calls it deviltry, and posts pictures of himself (in two guises) and of Chris Tilling which seem to demonstrate his point, or possibly that the pair of them are hiding out and appearing on wanted posters ;)
But, as if to demonstrate that to the pure all things are pure, Wayne Leman wants to "
¶ 2:40 PM
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Chris Heard 
Jim West 
Mark Goodacre 
Tyler WilliamsEven fellow Antipodean Judy Redman does not fare well:
Judy RedmanHowever, for some reason I alone seem to be blessed with an acceptable image.
Tim BulkeleyWhether it is clean living, towering intellect, or blackmail that allows me to get off so lightly I'll leave in silence (and expect you to too ;) though I'd welcome suggestions of great and famous people that our biblibloggers' avatars resemble!
Or add to this rogues' gallery by typing your friends' names in to the site, and watch the fun! If you link here I'll add a link back so that interested parties can collect a full set - more fun and perhaps less divisive than the infamous "more conservative than you" list.
PS: Jim West calls it deviltry, and posts pictures of himself (in two guises) and of Chris Tilling which seem to demonstrate his point, or possibly that the pair of them are hiding out and appearing on wanted posters ;)
But, as if to demonstrate that to the pure all things are pure, Wayne Leman wants to "
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Marking really does deserve some kind of escape to rest the weary brain. I'll have to play with the avatars as well to see how I and others I know fare.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Neat tool: countries I have visited
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I saw this neat tool on "Moving at the Speed of Creativity" Edublog without thinking I imagined that, since on my sabbatical I will be visiting some strange and far away places, I'd be able to update it with lots more red - but of course I won't. Thailand is already red, Sri Lanka is small and I don't count airports so tiny UAE won't get added :(
Still you may enjoy it and it will be interesting to see where you have all been!
¶ 9:31 PM
Still you may enjoy it and it will be interesting to see where you have all been!
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Friday, October 12, 2007
Somewhat unusual jobs I've had
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Scott (at Jesus Creed) has a post Crazy jobs I’ve had in it he lists (some of?) his previous employment and invites others to do the same. Here's my list:
- dolly boy in a ducting factory - the dolly boy holds a lump of iron against the inside of the ducting while the "craftsman" hammers the aluminium rivet flat, it is quite a noisy job but in those days we had no ear protectors
- accounts clerk (temporary) - helping fix the accounts before the auditors got to see them, I worked at a side table in the CEO's office, so between the job and the telephone conversations I could not help overhearing I knew more about the company than anyone (yes, even the CEO in whose office I worked, he did not see all the invoices and receipts ;-)
- student pastor (sole charge) of a church with 10 members - it was great practice for preaching each week to people you know and who know you
- filling station attendant (night shift) during my PhD, the theory was I could get reading done in the quiet hours... after a few months of feeding the police and other denizens of the night (there were few if any all night fast food outlets in Glasgow at that time) I developed splitting headaches and had to give up this sinecure, for "real work" as:
- Father Christmas - yes I confess I am not just any red faced, portly older gentleman, I am that (now retired from the role) red faced, portly older gentleman so just send me your Christmas wish lists and I'll see what I can do!
- vice-recteur (vice-principal) of a University (well of two faculties on the way to becoming a University) with 2000 students - while there I was also (unpaid except in food) a rabbit, chicken and duck keeper (who once branched out into goose) for food, and part-time computer technician a role that dogged my steps later here in NZ :(
- part-time computer technician when our administrator left in a hurry here at Carey I
was offeredgot landed with the job of computer support, during my time our network went from six PCs on a peer to peer network sharing one printer to twenty plus PCs and laptops with an NT server and an Internet... I went from an (almost, well nearly almost) full head of hair to my present un-hirsuite state!
Photo of one of many plastic imposters by Clouds76
Labels: fun, scholarship, work
¶ 5:51 PM
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Wednesday, February 14, 2007
The Mouth Revolution!?
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Here's a fun You Tube with a message even - The Mouth Revolution.
¶ 8:24 AM
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