The Rhyme of Sim'

Simon Hampel

You are here: Home / 2005 / Archives for August 2005

Archives for August 2005

In Hot Water

1 Comment

We’re in a bit of hot water – at last !

Wednesday evening last week I had a shower after doing some rowing. While I was getting dressed afterwards, I heard a loud “bang” and the lights flickered. Fearing the worst, I ran to the study, looking for smoke that would indicate something had blown up. Nothing there.

I checked the lounge – everything looked fine there. Kitchen ? Nope – no problems. mmm. Then I noticed a bit of a funny smell coming from the laundry. Sure enough, the hot water service had scorch marks on it from where it had blown. *sigh*, we knew this was going to happen sometime soon, but I would have been happier if it had lasted another couple of weeks.

The worst part was that I had a flight on the red-eye up to Brisbane on Thursday morning – departing 6:35am … I was planning on being up at 4:30am to have a shower before I left, but the best I was able to do now was to boil the kettle and pour some into the bathroom handbasin to wash myself down with. I wouldn’t even have time for a shower at the Qantas club lounge before I left.

We didn’t hear back from the repair people until lunchtime Friday, by which time they were too booked up to come that afternoon – so we made an appointment for Saturday, just after lunch.

LJ had been able to have showers at work, so she was okay, but I was left with my kettle and washing myself out of the basin for 3 days. We had an old plastic jug that I worked out how much cold water I needed to put in so that when I topped it up with hot water from the kettle it was an acceptable temperature to pour over my head so I could wash my hair. If it wasn’t wintertime I would have just had a cold shower – I’ve done that before … but it’s just way too cold in winter for that.

Anyway, hot water service was replaced on Saturday and so now we are back in hot water – and how nice it is too!

Where I’ve been

4 Comments

You know you truely are a geek when:

Your mother starts complaining that you haven’t blogged enough !!

Seriously – mum complained that she went to check my blog to see where I was and what I was doing, but there weren’t any meaningful updates – simply sentimental drivel about old poems.

Well, I do have an excuse (a pretty lame one, but still an excuse!).

Other than being busy with work, I’ve been spending almost every waking hour (and many when I should really have been asleep!) – building a new website.

Finally we launched tonight – after quite a few months of work.

InvestEd :: Teaching Australians to Invest

This is a website aimed at providing education to investors. It’s a community: a discussion forum, a blog (or three) for news updates, a library with articles about investing, a wiki with FAQs and a glossary, a photo gallery, a chatroom, and a heap more.

It’s not free – but charging a modest annual fee allows us to deliver so much more in the way of meaningful content and services than a free site would … and we also get to avoid a lot of banner-ad-itis that many sites suffer from.

We have some pretty big visions for this site – and we think it will do well. Feedback so far has been excellent.

I’ll try and write a bit more about what I’m doing – especially with some of the other stuff going on in our lives right now. But for now, I’ve got some more articles to edit and get online before I get some sleep tonight!

Writing for understanding

1 Comment

While browsing through some old posts I made on a discussion forum, I found this attempt at humour I had written a couple of years ago – in response to someone’s use of latin in their writing:

Greetings and good dies Michael et al.

I must say that I do take issue when people insist on the use of foreign terms exempli gratia, latin, french, et cetera in their writings.

Now there are those who would argue that such terms are in common usage in the English language, however I do disagree somewhat.

There are still others who prefer to use them as a suggestion of how learned and indeed, how superior they are to others who may be incapable of such eloquence.

Further more, there would be those who suggest that we should not lose the roots of our languages, and endeavour to re-introduce words ab origine back into our common communication.

If you suggest that they are actually doing themselves a disservice ipso facto of their arrogance, such people will argue their point with you ad finem that you are merely proving their own point about how superior they are to you who refuses to communicate at their level.

Per contra, I believe that the onus is on the communicator to ensure that the communicatee of the information is entirely able to understand what is being communicated.

Now prima facie it would seem that I may be a little pedantic in my desire to have clear and comprehendible communication, but isn’t such the raison detre of communicating ?

“If a tree in a forest spoke the entire works of Shakespeare and no-one was there to hear it, then did it really speak ?”

Now if we en masse use such language in quantum sufficiat, perhaps even quoque alternis die, then I would consider that it would be acceptable that people are readily exposed to such terminology and in toto we can communicate effectively.

Personally, my modus operandi is to ensure that the broadest audience can understand the intention of my communication. For surely, this is sine qua non to ensuring that I am not merely wasting my breath ?

At the risk of upsetting the status quo or indeed becoming persona non grata, I will cease to continue ad nauseam. However, nota bene that non sequitur you must understand verbatim et literatim, but would it not be preferable that you at least get your damned point across ?

Yours in vacuo,

Simon

Practising the practice

2 Comments

I have had this problem for a while with the use of the word practice. I was raised in South Australia where they are – or at least were once – quite particular in teaching the “Queen’s English” the correct way. I remember in school being taught that practice was a noun and the verb was practise.

So a doctor has a practice, and what he did there was practise.

Of course, this distinction is rarely used these days, and I was wondering why.

I happened to find this interesting bit on dictionary.com:

Note: The analogy of the English language requires that the noun and verb which are pronounced alike should agree in spelling. Thus we have notice (n. & v.), noticed, noticing, noticer; poultice (n. & v.); apprentice (n. & v.); office (n. & v.), officer (n.); lattice (n.), latticed (a.); benefice (n.), beneficed (a.), etc. Cf. sacrifice (?; n. & v.), surmise (?; n. & v.), promise (?; n. & v.); compromise (?; n. & v.), etc. Contrast advice (?; n.), and advise (?); device (?), and devise (?), etc.

So, since advice (noun) and advise (verb); and also device (noun) and devise (verb) – have different sounds in their different forms, it is correct to spell them differently. But because we pronounce practice the noun and practise the verb the same way, then they should actually be spelt the same: practice !

Although, a more careful perusal of my copy of The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary (3rd Ed.), does go into a little more detail, and explains that the middle english version of the verb word was actually pronounced the same way as advise and devise – hence the spelling distinction.

So I guess that if I am going to insist on using the word practise, I must also pronounce it the “correct way”, or else be prepared to spell and say it as practice.

Sim’ goes off to practise his new practice of spelling practise as practice.