What Caught my Eye – Week Ending July 30, 2022

Each week I read through a crazy amount of content. Who knows what will catch my eye. Some times I may devote an entire post to something, other times it may just be little mind worms that either inspire me, make me mad or even laugh. You never know what I may put here. I have an eclectic collection of interests in life. Items are posted in no particular order, and I will provide the full link to the articles in case anyone is interested in checking them out.

TL;DR? This week we cover a quick set of links covering :

1. You’ve been doing your Old-Timey talk wrong – The 27th letter of the alphabet
2. Somerton Man Mystery – From International Espionage to a simple broken heart.
3. Out of Milk – Latte Dock Author steps away
4. Bear Grylls takes on a different kind of fire
5. NFL Goes Online

I am a few days late with this one. Mostly because I have two big and very different strategy-related sessions this week for work and my head-space has been mostly locked into that. You’ve been your

You’ve been doing your Old-Timey talk wrong – The 27th letter of the alphabet

I was in an online chat / forum this past week where someone jokingly made a reference to ‘Ye Olde System’ as to the age of a particular configuration. This conversation took a weird turn about the modern misunderstanding of the English Language and the loss of the 27th letter of the alphabet. It was a fascinating conversation about the letter ‘thorn’. Visually it looks just like the Greek character sho (þ) but there is no historical and linguistic relationship between the two. The thorn is pronounced with the ‘th’ sound as in “THE’. As the English language modernized and typographic technologies were considered expensive, somewhere along the line printers dropped the thorn and generally replaced it with the letter ‘Y’. One might call it the first casualty of cost savings related to language. So when we see ‘Ye Olde Cheese Shop’ It should be pronounced “The Olde Cheese Shop”. I find it fascinating how much this little change impacts things hundreds of years on. How many people who have read the Bible or other historic documents written in that time (keep in mind this was all around the time of the Reformation, the Gutenberg press, etc) have pronounced this wrong the entirety of the time. For many say “YEE” is a reference to historical speaking and yet if they were able to time travel back to that time, I am sure people would think us mad.

English is a crazy language and its use of words and letters is constantly evolving. That is both its strength and weakness. If one ever read the historical documents from the late mid to late 1700’s they would also see that ‘f’ was alternatively used for ‘s’ in many documents. So President would be written as Prefident.

I dont know maybe this is well known and understood in, say, the UK – but it has been lost on the general education here in the United States (Don’t even get me started on that!).

Somerton Man Mystery – From International Espionage to a simple broken heart.

When I was younger, so much younger than today (sometimes my Beatles come out) I remember reading about Somerton Man. The story goes that a body was found on the shore of a beach in Southern Australia with no identification. The body was found with notes of paper with strange ‘codes’ written on them and an excerpt of the Rubaiyat. The initial investigation could not identify the man and for decades the mystery surrounding this body – many of which focused on Cold War era secrets – circulated around the world. Was he an American? A Brit? A Russian? What were the meaning of the codes? What about the cryptic references from the Rubaiyat? In reading this article they finally used modern DNA technology to try and answer some of these questions. The truth, it turns out is nowhere near as salacious or mysterious. I wont give up the ending here other than to say All we need is Love. (Damn, did the Beatles thing again…).

Out of Milk – Latte Dock Author steps away

I was crushed to see that psifidotos has officially walked away from active Latte Dock development. As an avid KDE user the Latte Dock was by far the best desktop widget. It was (and is) a staple of my personal linux builds. Incredibly customizable it simply let my desktop experience be unique and personalized on a level that I have grown accustomed too. Countless people have referred to my custom interface and have wanted to emulate it. I am hoping someone else picks up the mantle here on this project. Strangely crushed by this.

Bear Grylls takes on a different kind of fire

I dont know if you have ever watched the ‘The Hot Ones‘ on Youtube. But for me it is must see tv in terms of online content and entertainment. Think of a talk show where the interviewer (Sean XX) Interviews celebrities as they have to eat ever increasingly hot, hot sauces after each section. The questions and answers are always compelling, and the actual eating of hot sauces adds an element of comedy that is just perfectly entertaining. Although maybe its more schadenfreude than pure comedy. The most recent one features world famous survivalist Bear Grylls. Its a great one. Some of my favorite ones are the interview of Jack Black and Gordon Ramsey.

NFL Goes Online

The NFL launched its new streaming service this past week. I am a huge American Football fan and have probably purchased every viewing option available over the past few years. NFL Redzone, Game Pass, and others. I am excited about this offering and hope they really expand it. One of the problems of being a Chicago Bears fan who doesn’t live in Chicago is you struggle to watch the games every Sunday. I am super hopeful for this. Plus I can do it on any device which would be helpful for me for those times I need to watch on the go!

\Mm