When sending email to a large and diverse group of people, BCC is your friend. Everyone in your address book might not be happy to have their email address distributed to everyone else in your address book, and if you use TO or CC, that's what you're doing. Even worse is if one or more of the addressees are mailing lists, than you have no idea to whom you're distributing all your friends' addresses. more...

Posted by: retroflex at 11:27 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Okay. Another web-comic post. And Home on the strange isn't one of my favourites. That is, it's on my list of twenty or so that I check automagically when I'm online, but I have issues with the style, some of the story arcs and it's not as funny as some of the others.Strips like today's though keep me reading. For now.

Posted by: retroflex at 05:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This is one of my favourite webcomics. Sure it's a bit soapoperatic, which I actually like, but it's also got great funniness and deep insights. more...

Posted by: retroflex at 06:56 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I've recently been teaching kids about what we can learn about stars and nebulae from observing their light. Temperature, age, size, composition, etc. But the simplified explanations that I seem to find everywhere leaves me with one major question:

How does this work when there is no such thing as a continous spectrum?


more...

Posted by: retroflex at 10:23 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I like "my recently visited pages" list to be neat. There's absolutely no reason for this since it's not a significant "efficient web surfing" factor, but I have several habits that only make sense if their purpose is to keep that list neat.

more...

Posted by: retroflex at 05:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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It's not something I'm proud of, but there's no point in trying to hide it. I am a procrastinator. And not a wishy-washy oh-I-sometimes-leave-the-dishes-for-a-day-or-two, or I-occasionally-put-off-things-to-the-last-minute procrastinator. No, I more...

Posted by: retroflex at 09:36 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I mean, what's not to love? It's made by someone who's not Microsoft, it's free, it's Norwegian, it's feature rich, and I'm used to it. And now I've discovered another feature. I can nickname bookmark folders!

more...

Posted by: retroflex at 09:56 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Do you have any weird habits? I have one in particular I want to share with you. (But you guessed that from the opening sententence, right?)
When I'm done placing slices of delicious cheese on my sandwich I very often plane off another slice for scarfing (I'm Norwegian, so my slices are made with a cheese plane), and then hum/sing "Thank you, Cheesus! Thank you, Cheesus!" in a gospel chant kind of way, upper body motions included.

Mmmm, cheese.

Posted by: retroflex at 08:32 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1

Don't like cheese planes.  Soft cheeses don't work well with them.  I prefer teeth.

Posted by: McGurk at April 12, 2007 06:04 PM (Ri74D)

2 They're not supposed to be used with soft cheeses. Next you'll say you don't like phillips screwdrivers because all your screws are torx.

Posted by: retroflex at April 13, 2007 08:45 AM (/5xrz)

3

As one who's actually, out of necessity, used phillips head screwdrivers on torx screws, I believe that tools with limitations are crap. 

Look at that phillips screwdriver, for example.  It's also a pry bar, a tack driver, a staple remover; can handle flathead screws, torx, square drive, pozidriv, hexagonal; it can be used as a paint stirrer, an awl, a pilot hole starter, a sex toy, etc...  I could go on.

A "cheese plane" isn't even a friggin' cheese plane.  its a HARD cheese plane.  Imagine a phillips head screwdriver that only worked with countersunk screws.  That'd be stupid.  Just like "cheese planes". 

Posted by: McGurk at April 13, 2007 02:20 PM (Ri74D)

4 I guess the weirdest habit I have is, I almost never eat everything on my plate.  I don't know why I do this, it's obviously a waste of food but I just can't seem to eat that last little bite.  -

Posted by: scarlet_35 at July 02, 2007 05:07 PM (KqABb)

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Yet another annoying feature of human physiology. Example: I'm feeling my normal self, no urges of any kind. Well maybe I'm a little peckish, so I go to wash up before fixing a snack. And what happens? Halfway through washing my hands I get an irresistible urge to pee. And what does this mean? It means I have to wash my hands again!

It also hits at other times, like when I'm just getting a drink of water. Wham! Go pee now!

Of course I refuse to give in and I finish my drink of water while doing the holding-back-a-nearly-irresistible-urge-to-pee dance, but the damage is already done. My serentiy has been compromised.

I am not the master of my body, no matter how much I try to make it so, I'm merely a privileged passenger.

Posted by: retroflex at 01:30 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Okay, so now that we have the capability for embedding YouTube videos I have to test it. And what better way to test it than more...

Posted by: retroflex at 08:04 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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En siste test før jeg gir meg for dagen. Hva gjør mee.nu med norske bokstaver? Jeg må vel ikke inn med html-entities for hver jævla norske bokstav? For jeg har planer om å blogge litt på morsmålet serru.

Posted by: retroflex at 05:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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This is going to be a relatively anonymous blog so that I can speak my mind without having to worry about any students with more time than sense googling his or her way to it and posing embarrassing questions in class. more...

Posted by: retroflex at 04:17 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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A retroflex flap is a consonant sound in some languages, including the dialect of Norwegian that is my native tongue. It's difficult to describe, but you take an ordinary 'l', curl your tongue back a little and then you "flap" it. This adds a bit of body to the l, which is why it's called a "thick l" in Norwegian, and it also adds a more or less pronounced clicky sound. Like in Xhosa, only different.

It's considered vulgar by the kind of people who dub other people's dialects vulgar and you can read lots about it on wikipedia.

Posted by: retroflex at 03:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here we are! The first entry in this, my new blog. It's just an inane welcome message, but I expect great things in the future. Or at least I expect I'll get in an explanation of the name and a short intro on myself before I run out of steam. But you never know, I might surprise myself. more...

Posted by: retroflex at 03:16 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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