Windoze

[altivo]

Ick. Necessary to replace a machine at work today. It's a domino effect from the major failure of my own desktop workstation. I swapped my harddisk out and put it into the seldom used workstation from the Reference Desk, since that one was an identical model. Got me back up and running with everything intact, but left the Ref Desk without a workstation. Since that location is used very rarely and doesn't need a lot of computing power just to look at the online catalog, periodical indexes, and perhaps Google or something similar, we decided to put an older machine from storage back into service. I pulled a Pentium III off the shelf and fired it up. It already had XP on it, with SP2. That was good. However, even on a T-1 line it took five hours to apply all the patches to bring XP up to current levels. SP3 came first, with 47 individual patches after that. Adobe Reader and Flash had to be upped by a level, and I'm sure Java is going to demand an upgrade the next time it's turned on. It's about ready to go back out at the desk though. I can get it out there tomorrow.

Glad this coming weekend is a long one, I still have too much to do here at home. Got through the full deskload of cataloging that was waiting for me yesterday, only to have two more boxes of new books arrive from Baker & Taylor today. All of those except the DVDs are done now as well.

I've been listening to Kyell Gold and K.M. Hirosaki doing their podcasts while driving to and from work. The audio quality on no. 2, which was recorded over Skype, is really bad and hard to follow. The first and third have been much better. They have some good writing insights to offer, at least if you can read between the rather crude jokes. I'm becoming very curious about Kyell's speech pattern, though. He lives in California and has hinted that he has a known identity as a writer outside the furry world and under another name (presumably his own.) He asks anyone who recognizes him not to reveal it. I've had some thoughts, but nothing concrete. The speech pattern though, is definitely not West Coast. It is strongly overlaid by California and possibly the Midwest too, but there are underlying nuances that suggest East Coast or the Southeastern states, perhaps Virginia or North Carolina though I'm not entirely sure. Must listen more. Hirosaki-san is, I gather, a native of Japan though his English is very Americanized now. I'd guess he came here at an early age, or had strong American models when learning English. His pronunciation is much more "standard" and "proper," like a network news anchor. When he laughs, though, I hear a hint of the Japanese still. I could be entirely wrong about both, of course, but usually my ear for regional speech is pretty accurate.

Beautiful sunny day again, though cool. Why couldn't this weather have happened while I was on vacation?

Wasting inordinate amounts of effort, though not a lot of time, on a Facebook application that simulates running a zoo. It's called My Zoo, and you start off with $25 grand to build a petting zoo. You have to build enclosures, buy the animals, and hire help as it grows. At each level, you are offered additional options for expansion, both in terms of exhibit space and animals, and in retail and food vending. The need to provide parking and other visitor facilities such as playgrounds and restrooms is also factored in. You end up juggling a growing budget and employee compliment very quickly. Then you have to start trying to breed endangered or vulnerable species and conducting educational programs in order to keep growing. A day's operations are collapsed into about five minutes, so the action goes fast and continues to run even when you aren't watching. My little petting zoo is now 2 years and 8 months old in game time, and has over 85 employees, an annual budget of nearly 3 million dollars, and daily income in the range of 80 thousand before expenses, drawn from a daily gate count in excess of 4 thousand. The zoo has over 400 animals representing over 60 species, and continues to grow. The latest acquisitions are African lions, Bengal tigers, and red pandas. The newest successful breeding is a black handed spider monkey who has yet to give birth. It's as complicated as the railroad games I used to play years ago on the Amiga (A Train and Railroad Tycoon I think they were) or something like SimEarth, but the time seems to run much faster with no pause to think button.

Enough meandering, though. I need to work on nålbinding to get that piece done.

Comments

[calydor.livejournal.com]

If you like that game, you might want to look up old classics such as Theme Park and Zoo Tycoon; sounds like it's heavily inspired by those.

I used to play both A-Train and Railroad Tycoon. Gods, that's a lot of years ago.

[dar-han.livejournal.com]

Mmh, I've always been interested in the part of linguistics that let people recognize accents well enough to guess where the speaker is from. I, though, know too little of English yet to be able to do that... and English-speaking people who hear me tend to misplace my origins as purely European ^^;

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

My accent is just bizarre now. I started off with a very strong South Midlands accent, due to my place of Birth (Northampton.) However my move to Yorkshire at the tender age of 8 was too late to allow me to make the make the transition to the Yorkshire accent. However it DID change my voice I bit, as a result people now identify me with the rather posh "Home Counties."

[dar-han.livejournal.com]

On another note, I always thought I was speaking French without an accent. Many people now say I actually do, though most of them can't describe it. Only my cousin managed to describe it as a "slight Malagasy accent"...

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

RED PANDAS *coughs*

I go to a board gaming group once a week where they play various games that are a bit like that zoo game, from the sound of it. Even played a zoo one once - not as complicated or in-depth as that, but with the added complication of other players trying to sabotage your efforts to breed the most giraffes.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

It interests me too when people can recognise accents.

I have no ear for accents, even in my native Brit English, and no chance at all of telling Australia from South Africa or Canada from USA.

[flamekist.livejournal.com]

I was born and partially raised in New Orleans, then we moved to many parts of the southeast before I put my roots down in Atlanta. As a result, my accent seems to be so generic that no Americans really detect one which is odd since the southeast accent can be so distinct.

On the other hand, when I go back to New Orleans I subconsiously slip back into such a strong New Orleans accent that non-cajuns have a really hard time understanding a single word I say.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Everyone has an accent. We just can't hear our own. Those from other regions can hear it though. XD

I'd expect your French to have a Malagasy suggestion to it, at least to someone capable of recognizing that. I can tell a Quebecois from a Parisian, but I wouldn't recognize Malagasy influence.

It's reasonable that your English would sound more or less Africanized, since all the nearest officially English speaking areas are former British colonies in Africa. I'm not sure I can tell a South African from a Kiwi or an Aussie myself. I can get some of the most obvious British variations, but only the really blatant ones. Having grown up in the US, though, I'm quite sensitive to the subtleties of regions here. My linguistics classes in college tended to focus more on American variants too, since the examples were close at hand.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You really mean to say you can't hear the difference between Cheapside and Yorkshire? Even I can get that. The differences within Great Britain itself are really larger than they are between any of the former colonies, with the possible exception of India.

US from Canada is mostly more subtle and even many locals can't always hear it. There are some obvious hints, like the slightly Scottish pronunciations heard in the Maritime provinces, but once you get west as far as Ontario, it starts to be pretty difficult. The same gradation applies within the US. The eastern states have clear cut variants, but the differences fade at the Mississippi and from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains on west there's very little other than vocabulary preferences to go on.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yorkshire would be a bit of a cross to bear in the kind of work you do, I would think. At least over here, people who recognize it at all will immediately associate it with farmers. That is, if they can tell it's English. It's one of the more difficult variants for American ears, along with the thick Scottish brogue or a heavy Welsh tinge. By contrast, most of us have no trouble with an Irishman, even if he's drunk on his arse. This may be because there were so very many Irish immigrants that their dialect colored American English heavily.

Home counties, on the other paw... Maybe you should run for Parliament?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

No sabotage in this one. I'm trying to breed *cough* red pandas at the moment, though. They are rated "fairly difficult" and I need to succeed with two fairly difficult species in order to reach the next level. Because they are an endangered species, I only have three to work with, but I'm sure I'll succeed eventually. It seems to be just some percentage odds thing that gets tried once a day until you win the roll. Since a "day" is only five minutes long in real time, you're bound to win eventually. ;p

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you have a good ear yourself, and were influenced by speakers of standardized American English from an early age. Radio, television, movies, and schoolteachers all play a role in that sort of thing, even when your family or neighbors speak the local "lingo" by default. Kids in particular tend to mimic whoever makes an impression on them.

My elder brother spent years in the Air Force, most of them in Texas. When he was discharged, he stayed in Texas for the rest of his life. The influence of Texas was stamped all over his speech, but he still sounded like someone from Michigan too, if you knew what to listen for. I'll bet the native Texans always had him figured for a midwesterner as soon as he opened his mouth.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Theme Park I'm sure I can skip. Roller coasters don't excite me. Big cats and exotic animals do, though. I didn't know there was a Zoo Tycoon.

Gary was gnawing on me for the first few days. He wanted to know when I was getting a Starbuck's Coffee shop and a McDonald's. Now the zoo has two coffee shops, five hamburger stands, two ice cream parlors, and a full fledged restaurant that brings in a respectable income even after paying the eight employees that run it. There are numerous cotton candy, popcorn, and pretzel carts scattered about as well, and souvenir shops that make a tidy income. But the biggest money raiser turned out to be a clothing shop (zoo-themed apparel, I guess, and animal prints most likely) with an average profit margin of $50 per sale. And it only requires three staff to run it... Oddly enough, they never offered me a chance to hire peanut sellers. At American zoos when I was a kid, peanuts in cellophane packets were a staple. You could eat them yourself or feed them to the animals, many of whom loved them. Bears, elephants, and some of the primates are particularly fond of them and will even engage in antics to try to get more.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

At least over here, people who recognize it at all will immediately associate it with farmers.

Indeed, Yorkshire is mostly rural. But there is a big industrial heartland too. Sheffield was in steel. Bradford and Leeds used to be big mill towns. Wakefield and Doncaster did all the mining, along with Barnsley. But the accent does have that rural feel to it. The accent is considered "reliable" in the UK, and many Yorkshiremen are hired in call centres as a result.

My grandfather however had the thickest Glasweigan accent I have ever heard in my life. Even other Scots had trouble understanding him. ;)

If I thought I could make a real different in parliament, I’d probably run. However the system seems to be so set up to maintaining the status quo that I doubt there is much I could before I myself inevitably became corrupted by the place.

[dar-han.livejournal.com]

Well, you'd be surprised - the biggest english-speaking influence we have here is actually American and English culture: movies, video games, and the BBC. We have little to no ties with neighboring english-speaking countries (island, remember).

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I keep the all the service packs on disk, it comes in handy when I fix other people's machines :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'd prefer to stop running Windows machines, actually, and thus avoid the whole mess.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know about the island aspect. You have a lot of fascinating animals and plants because of that, just like Australia.

American movies and television are ruining the English language worldwide, alas.

We're still at a point in history, though, where the deeper influence on English as taught and used in a place like Madagascar ought, in my thinking, to be trade, tourism, and radio broadcasts from nearby English speaking areas, and that means south and east Africa.

Linguistic analysis uncovers layers of historical influence, just as geology does. I'd expect a recent and more superficial overlay of American and British influence atop a more deeply seated African colonial dialect.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I rather doubt that you'd be corrupted. You might be pushed out of office or assassinated, though. I suspect that's what would happen to me if I could even get in. Unfortunately, over here, the only way to win elections is by being inordinately wealthy and spending astronomical sums of either your own or other people's money. That insures that only wealthy interests have any real influence on the course of politics.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

Sadly we're catching you lot up.

I was hoping the EU might save us from the worst of it, but they seem to be every bit as much in the pockets of special interests.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The aggravating thing about that is that it doesn't have to happen. Voter apathy and laziness is what permits it.