Day: 02/07/2013

Fortune favors the bold

Posted by

0

I’ve thought about creating a “public” blog for some time. In the past, I’ve had other blogs, but these were usually attached to another social networking website (in the case of Bebo and deviantArt) or were only known to a couple other friends (as in the case of the friends who introduced me to Xanga, LiveJournal, and deviantArt). For whatever reason, I’ve wanted to follow in the footsteps of my friends and acquaintances who have “public” blogs that they link to via Facebook. I’m not exactly sure why I chose today to create this blog, though. I only got about 3.5 hours of sleep last night, and I drank an energy drink several hours ago, so I’m going to blame some combination of sleep deprivation and caffeine, I guess.

Anyway, unlike some of the people I know, I am not doing anything particularly exciting at the moment. I’m not travelling through Southeast Asia, studying abroad in Europe, or serving in the Peace Corps, and I’m not currently trying to start or run a business, though I will be moving later this month and next month I’ll start classes, so that’s sort of exciting, in a “quotidian and unexceptional” rather than “worthy of envy and acclaim” manner. This might be an appropriate usage of #firstworldproblems.

Anyway, enough of my whining. There’ll be plenty of time for that later. For now, I think I’ll end this with a few of my recent obsessions.

Game: Crusader Kings II (Paradox Interactive, 2012) [There will definitely be more on this later]
Song: “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (Bob Dylan, 1963)
Album: We Are the Pipettes (The Pipettes, 2006)

On the Naming of Blogs

Posted by

0

There are probably several schools of thought regarding blog names. One piece of advice for choosing a username I remember reading in the past involved looking at obscure words, which are definitely among my interests. One night recently after coming home from work, I started randomly thinking about names for a blog and came up with “Peripatetic Dilettante”, which I think would win prizes for “obscurity” and “spelling difficulty”, after contemplating a name incorporating “nomad”. The easiest blog name to spell is probably “A Blog”, or “[name]’s Blog”, or “My Blog”. Conversely, “Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophilia”, or something of that nature, would probably win a prize for “most difficult”, since the ease of spelling a word is generally inversely proportionate to its length. My spelling bee success in elementary, junior high, and high school would be less impressive if everyone found it easy to remember how to spell words.

Anyway, earlier today when I started thinking about blog names, before I actually created this blog, I had come up with “Fanatic Philomath” and “Polymath Aspirant” after finding “philomath” on which this page at The Phrontistery,  a site about obscure words that I hadn’t visited recently. The Phrontistery defines philomath as “lover of learning”, which definitely describes me, I think. The Free Dictionary  A quick Google search revealed that “Polymath Aspirant” had already been taken by a few people, which isn’t terribly surprising but still somewhat disappointing. I think I originally came up with “Fanatic Philomath” because I liked the fricative sound, but I then decided I didn’t like the sound so I looked at some synonyms. “Fervid” and “Fervent” also are fricative, but I didn’t like them as much. Then I thought of “ardent”, which fits and doesn’t sound too silly, for lack of a better term coming to mind.

While trying to think of a WordPress username, I started making anagrams of my name, which was fairly amusing. It’s been too long, apparently, since I amused myself by reading the dictionary and making anagrams. It’s almost like junior high or freshman year of high school all over again!