the sun's not yellow it is chicken

Month: February 2007 (Page 1 of 2)

Bowling Alley Guy

bowling-alley-guy-orton.jpg

Just a quick sketch. This guy’s the owner of a nearby bowling alley. Whenever we go there to play a game or have a drink, he has this irritating habit of ending every sentence with my name. It’ll invariably go something like this:

– Hi, I’d like a beer please.
– Ah, a beer coming right up, Jurgen.
– Thanks. How much is that?
– One euro, Jurgen.
– Here you go.
– Thanks Jurgen!
– Oh, and do you have a lane free to play?
– Yes Jurgen! Is lane eight okay Jurgen?
– Sure, no problem.
– Right Jurgen. So. Can you tell me your names then, Jurgen?

Seriously! What’s up with that?

CSscatology

One of my favorite sites is Daily Color Scheme which provides consistently beautiful color combinations to get your creative juices flowing. You can download them in a variety of formats as well which is quite handy. Here’s what you see when you opt to download the CSS style sheet:

style scheet

Embarrassing typo’s! Ha. Gotta love em.

Crunching Numbers

At work, I spend a fair amount of time taking phone calls from French customers. This often entails writing down phone numbers. One particular range of numbers tends to drive me nuts: 70 through to 99.

Take the number 78 for instance.

Let’s have a look at how this is written/pronounced in other languages that I’ve more or less mastered:

  • Dutch: achtenzeventig
  • English: seventy eight
  • Spanish: setenta y ocho
  • German: achtundsiebzig

Pretty straightforward, right? A seventy and an eight or an eight and a seventy. Now for our French friends: they thought it would be better to conceive it thusly:

soixante-dix-huit

That’s a sixty, a ten and an eight. To write the number 78 you have to start at sixty, and then add 18. It’s the equivalent of saying “sixty ten eight”.

But wait! How about the number 97! Here, the number is broken down into quatre-vingt-dix sept. In English that translates to “four twenty ten seven”. Yes: the number 80 is composed of 2 numbers itself. Having established the 80, you then add 17 to that, and you’ve successfully processed 97 in your mind, and are now ready to write it down.

Except of course, at this point the person on the other end of the line has already rattled off the last number. Which was 94. Or 79.

The funny thing is that in the French language there are other perfectly legal ways of naming a number within the aforementioned range: septante (seventy) and nonante (ninety). Walloons (the french-speaking part of Belgium) use this.

But the French? Noooo. As the English refuse to drive on the right side of the road, so the French refuse to name numbers the way the rest of the world had envisioned it.

Now if you’ll excuse me: the phone is ringing…

How Not To Reinvent The Wheel

So how do you like my new diggs? I was terminally fed up with the old theme — you know the one with the scary close-up of my face. Rather than to start from scratch, I had a look at some WordPress themes and instantly fell in love with the Hemingway theme. Its minimalism is refreshing, and the black/grey colour combo really brings out my drawings a lot better. See for instance:

Now all that’s needed is for me to get into the habit of posting a bit more regularly. To my defense, and without going into much detail, January has proven to be a pretty shitty month for both Gaby and me. Things are looking up now though.

And with that said, I’m off to admire my shiny new theme for a couple more hours. :)

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