BlogNerds

Apparently there’s another meme going around: the thinking blogger award. Thanks to David of the Tomísimo Blog for tagging me — your posts have made me think, too. Now for five more blogs that have made me think:

1. What I Learned Today - Kiri posts about all sorts of subjects, sharing whatever she learns. I always learn something new from her, so her blog definitely makes me think!
2. Notes from a Linguistic Mystic - I recently subscribed to this blog, and I was really impressed! Every single post so far has made me think. I could learn a lot about linguistics by reading through the archives.
3. Jim Carson - Jim’s personal blog has a bunch of awesome, geeky science posts that have made me think — maybe a little too much sometimes.
4. EmptyEasel.com - Subscribing to this blog is like taking a mini art class — lots of tips, history, and beautiful paintings. It makes me think about art, which is not something I normally do much.
5. Name Wire: The Product Naming Blog - This niche blog focuses solely on the topic of brand names. Many of their posts made me think, considering I don’t know anything about the art of creating brand names! But I find it very interesting, because it combines business and language.

I’ve found some great blogs through this meme, so I look forward to seeing what these five bloggers pick! According to the rules, you’re only supposed to continue the meme if you’ve been tagged, but everyone’s more than welcome to share their favorite blogs in the comments. I can never have too many RSS feeds to read.

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Tenuous is an adjective with a few meanings:

1. thin or slender in form, as a thread.
2. lacking a sound basis, as reasoning; unsubstantiated; weak
3. thin in consistency; rare or rarefied.
4. of slight importance or significance; unsubstantial
5. lacking in clarity; vague

It comes from the Latin word tenius, meaning thin. I’m guessing that all the other meanings developed later — and it’s interesting how they’re all more or less related. A search for “tenuous” on Google News shows many different uses, like “Oil Market Reaches Tenuous Balance”, “a tenuous grip on reality”, “tenuous reasoning”, and even a “tenuous nose injury”, whatever that means.

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I have less than four months left of my year off. There’s so much to do, but once college starts, I’ll have so little time! I figured I’d just try to learn as much as I can, but thanks to the Problogger Group Writing Project, I got the idea to narrow it down to five things. (And in doing so, I have a chance to win $1001! Is that a good deal or what?)

So, these are the five things I will definitely learn in the next four months:

1. Mental arithmetic - I’m terrible at arithmetic. I did well in calculus, but I had to use my huge scientific calculator to find out what 6 times 7 is. Hey, I have an excuse! I was sick when my third grade teacher taught the multiplication tables.
2. Spanish - Not just because I want to, but because I’m hoping I can re-learn enough Spanish to fulfill my foreign language requirement just by taking a test.
3. JavaScript - I’ll keep learning more about PHP, of course, but I want to learn another programming language soon. I see lots of cool little JavaScript widgets and stuff all over the place, so I figure it’d be fun to learn.
4. Writing - Yes, I know how to write. Sometimes I can even be good at it, but I’ve gotten pretty rusty. When was the last time I wrote an essay? A short story? A poem? It’s been so long, I feel like I don’t even know how! I need to exercise my writing hand/typing hands so that they won’t be totally out of shape when I’m back at school.
5. CSS Layouts - This has been bugging me for far too long! I want to understand exactly how each type of layout works. Why is it so difficult to get things to resize nicely? What’s going on with the whole negative margins thing? Why does Internet Explorer hate me?

Those are my top five, but I still want to learn about drawing, physics, music, French, linguistics, and so many other things! What do you want to learn in the next four months?

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Yes, this is what I’ve been doing all day every day for the last few days! The new design is up and hopefully working. The posts from my sub-blogs have been imported. Now I get to relax for a few minutes!

I call this “Phase One” because I still have to update and reorganize a bunch of posts and videos, and I also want to do more tweaking for the design: a better layout, maybe some images, maybe some more color… But in the meantime, let me know what you think!

You may have noticed that I decided to change how I order posts in a series. Instead of counting each day that goes by after I start a project, I’m just going to go in order: Something Day 1, Something Day 2, Something Day 3. Otherwise, I could easily end up with titles like Drawing Day 257. That wouldn’t be good. It makes more sense to only count the days that I actually work on something, because I might only have time to work on something once a week.

Anyway, I have a lot of updating to do, so watch out for broken links and empty pages. It should all be done by the end of the week, though. Hopefully.

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This is the first new word I’ve found in a while that I’d actually use regularly. Malinger: “To feign illness or other incapacity in order to avoid duty or work.”

I can be quite the malingerer. And yes, malingerer really is the noun form of malinger. This word just keeps getting better and better!

It comes from the French word malingrer “to suffer”, and the Online Etymology Dictionary says that the meaning “to feign illness to avoid work” may come from the “notion of beggars with sham sores.”

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Argh! My internet’s been down for so long! Sorry for the late update. Here’s what’s new:

• Redesigning My Site Day 34: Finalizing the General Layout
• Redesigning My Site Day 37: The Structure
• Any Suggestions for Flash Card Programs?

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This short video summarizes the many frustrating hours I spent on the HTML, PHP, and CSS to make a working version of my site.

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The reference pages I used from the WordPress Codex:

• Template Tags
• The Loop

I have so many details to work out, but I want to get my new theme done so I can start reorganizing my posts! I might have to make a simplified version first, and then once I’m done with all the blog housekeeping, I’ll focus on making it nice and pretty.

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Relearning Spanish has been working pretty well, but vocabulary is my greatest weakness. I bet there are Spanish parrots out there that know more words than I do! Anyway, I remembered a post on my friend Kiri’s blog (What I Learned Today) that mentioned a flash card program for the Mac called iFlash. It sounds awesome, but I’m using Windows.

I know there are lots of similar programs and even web apps out there. So, do you use any of them? Have any recommendations? Or would you suggest using — gasp! — flashcards made out of paper?

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To meet my new deadline, today I rushed through my final decisions on where everything should go.

Click To Play

Next, I’ll have to work on the code for my new WordPress theme. It’ll be easier to play around with the font and other details when I have a working version of my site.

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Ah, yes, abstemious. I forgot what it means, but as soon as I saw it on A.Word.A.Day, it reminded me of that stupid SAT prep class my dad made me take.

Anyway, it’s an adjective that means “sparing or moderate in eating and drinking” or “characterized by abstinence”. It’s easy to spell, because it has all five vowels in order.

The Online Etymology Dictionary says that it comes from Latin “abstemius ’sober, temperate,’ from ab(s)- ‘from’ + stem of temetum ’strong drink’”.

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