Reposted from my Facebook:

This is a poster for a Christmas Party hosted by Campus for Christ which is found all over UW campus. The problem with it is that the Arabic writing at the top is wrong. As anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the Arabic script knows, the letters should be joined, and they change their shape according to position. Clearly, someone had typed the word “Christmas” into a translation program on a computer not equipped to handle Arabic glyph-shaping, and put it on the poster without actually bothering to check it with anyone who can actually read Arabic.

Lesson: If you’re going to plaster something all over campus in a foreign language, do yourself the favour of getting someone who actually knows the language to translate it for you so you don’t massively embarrass yourself. I’m sure there’s at least one Christian who knows Arabic on UW campus. Seriously.

In today’s world, it’s very important for computer software to be able to support multiple languages. You can’t assume that, just because your software is sold in a predominantly English-language market, your users won’t try to use it with other languages.

In a previous post, I noted the current lack of support for glyph-shaping and other aspects of complex text layout on the Android phone. I hope that this changes in the near future (and, if I have any say about it, it will).

– davinci 11859

No related posts.

In some words, only one part of the original has survived: the ní in 尼姑 ní​gū​ “Buddhist nun” is the last syllable of the Sanskrit bhikkini (sic)…

The Sanskrit word, of course, is भिक्षुणी bhikṣuṇī. Its Chinese transliteration is 比丘尼 bǐ​qiū​ní​. The author seems to have been thinking of bhikkhunī, which is the equivalent word in Pali and other Prakrits, and swimwear.

– davinci 11811

No related posts.

It’s probably not a good thing to be a “Nerd God”.

I’m slightly disappointed with my “History/Literature” score (too low), and my “Dumb/Dork/Awkward” score (too high).

– davinci 11789

No related posts.

This is the text of Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, as a word cloud, with more frequent words given more prominence. The image was generated using Wordle.

The idea is by no means original, but I liked this composition.

I wish I had an electronic copy of the text of the play in the original Klingon though, written in  (the Klingon script). I think the word cloud of that would be really beautiful.

– davinci 11784

No related posts.

In fact, it’s not the only online bibliography of research into comic books. There are three more which are linked to from that site: ComicsResearch.org, comics research bibliography, and Sekundärliteratur zum Comic (German). To my knowledge, nothing similar even exists for quantum computing.

In a related note, the University of Waterloo once offered a course, ENGLISH 760, called “American Comics and Graphic Novels”. The course description is as follows:

In this course we’ll read and study contemporary American “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or produce and aesthetic response in the viewer” (McCloud), i.e., comics. We’ll take a look at the history of American comics — and comics in general — and think about the structure, function, and rhetorical potency of this genre of literature, which relies (usually) on an especially rich correlation of text and image. To help understand that correlation, we’ll draw on the work of visual language theorists, social semioticians, and comic artists themselves, such as Scott McClud [sic] and Will Eisner. Among the comic artists we’ll likely study are Lynda Barry, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, R. Crumb, Frank Miller, Joe Sacco, Art Speigelman, and Chris Ware. Course work will include a presentation, an essay, and a short comic (no drawing skills required). For more information, please follow this link: http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~amcmurry/comicgradcourse.pdf

Students in the class don’t even have to draw! I actually sat in on a few lectures.

Incidentally, Scott McCloud, the author of “Understanding Comics”, gave a talk on comic books at TED 2005, which is worth watching if you’re both a scientist and a fan of the medium.

It’s because of things like this that I sometimes question whether I was in the right academic field for my graduate studies.

– davinci 11781

Related posts:

1. Writing my Ph.D. Research Proposal live

This is my cat Heisenberg, illustrating the “Schrödinger’s cat” thought experiment.

– davinci 11751

No related posts.