Fun Flash presentation of Lego construction… the actual construction of the Legos themselves. [via Emergic, via Boing-Boing]
Day: November 14, 2003
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“rank, profession or occupation”
A friend gave me the Forgotten English calendar for 2003 last Christmas, and I’ve been enjoying several of the words. On Saturday September 28, the word of the day was nannick, which means “to play idly, to fidget.” However, I saved that day’s page not because of the word, but because of the tidbit about the date, as quoted in its entirety below.
On this date in 1801, Britain’s first census was begun. Eighty years later, a follow-up survey was conducted in which residents were asked to furnish their “rank, profession or occupation.” Verbatim responses, as preserved by the London Genealogical Society, included:
- Aritifical scone-maker
- Decayed publisher
- Emasculator
- Rust attendant at lavatory
- Proprietor of midgets
- Beef-twister
- Separated from head
- Fatuous pauper
- Fifty-two years an imbecile
- Examiner of underclothing
- Knocker-up of workpeople
- Supposed to be a lady
- Sampler of drugs
- Hand in Hartley’s Jam
- Turnip shepherd
- Gymnast to house painter
What do you tell people when they ask you what you do?
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The audience is reading
Was it THX or Dolby that first started running those short promotional clips before the movie started touting how incredible the sound system is? “The audience is listening” is my memory of one of the tag lines. (Per Google, it’s THX.) I still think my audience can be counted on two hands, but there’s at least one more reader in the ‘audience’… my father. Hello!
Who knew he was going to Google me? With a name like John Roberts, it’s close to Googling for John Doe, but it worked well enough, I guess. Not sure what terms he used, but he found me via my comments about Chuq Von Rospach’s note about a CNET.com review. Always good to get a reminder that anything you say is public if you put it on the web. I try and write that way most of the time, conscious of the possible misconceptions, but you can’t stop just because you’re worried. I stop — or, more accurately, don’t start — because it’s hard to justify the time for this against all the other things I’d like to be doing, or should be doing. Like updating my daughter’s website, for instance, rather than this journal.
But all the same… greetings to my father.
I also had lunch this week with a friend I haven’t seen for a few months, and we talked about blogs and business. I don’t connect those topics much in my writing here, but the appeal of making a blog work as a business (hint: not so simple) glitters like false gold, unless you’re going to work at it. Best of luck to Mark with HotelChatter.com, and to Vin with Sportscolumn.com, but micro-content is not micro-work. I’ve got a day job which gets me going, so I’ll just continue dabbling here, wandering about in the intersection of the personal, professional, and everything in between.