Author Archives: John McGrath

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Library Carts As Bookcases

Our new apartment, unlike our old, doesn’t have built-in bookcases. We were trying to decide between making or buying a bunch of plain vanilla wooden bookcases when kad had a stroke of genius: library carts, aka book trucks. Librarians use them to reshelve books, but no reason they can’t be the shelves.

We ordered a few standard-issue flat shelf carts from Vernon Library Supplies, though they’re also available with slanted shelves and in various other configurations. In addition to Vernon, School Outfitters and Brodart also have a bunch of different models.

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New Revision Schedule for the OED

The OED has made a major change to the way it issues online updates and revisions.

Historically OED updates have been released in sequential alphabetical blocks. The December 2007 update, for instance, ran from purpress to quit shilling. The March 2008 update operates on a different model. Rather than a alphabetical block, it consists of words with “significant lexical productivity” and words which will “benefit from immediate review within the dictionary.” In other words, it’s based on relevance, rather than alphabetical order.

Future updates, according to the OED, will alternate between the old and the new model, with the June 2008 update continuing the alphabetical revision from quits, and the September 2008 update switching back to relevance.

This strikes me an eminently sensible. It allow the OED to be (somewhat) timely, while also continuing the systematic alphabetical review of the entire dictionary. Way to go, OED.

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World’s Best Exclamation Point

As a morose little kid I loathed exclamation points, and as an insecure young adult I only used them ironically, when talking about things I hated or when feigning hysteria.

Used gratuitously or insincerely they’re still nauseating, but in the right context a good exclamation point is a fine thing. So I was overjoyed to come across Sheep! magazine, “The Voice of the Independent Flockmaster,” in this article on young farmers.

The people at Sheep! love sheep. Their enthusiasm is sincere and infectious, all the more so for being focused on something most of us probably don’t give a shit about. If Money magazine changed its name to Money!, that would be stupid. But Sheep!? Sheep! is teh alesome.

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The House That Wordie Built

And by house I’m not talking about a metaphorical or metaphysical empire of words–I’m talking about an actual house. In which one climbs the bookcase staircase to take a seat under the rafters, surrounded by dictionary plastered walls.

A few of these touches by themselves might be just whimsical, but combine them all and the motif is full-bore OCD, where Martha Stewart gets her MLS and stops taking her meds, a house in which you can’t not read.

And where you sleep under these bed linens, which tell their own bedtime story. Thanks to reesetee for the link, via Miss Cellania.

You’ll be all the cozier knowing the place is insulated with newspaper. Finally a good argument for a physical newspaper instead of the online version: higher R value.

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Tag All Words in a List

Per the request of Skipvia and others, you can now tag all words in a list in one fell swoop. Click on the ‘add tags’ link on any list page, on the left below the list name.

This tags every word in the list, not the list itself.

If you want to tag every word in a list except for a few, you can bulk-tag the list, then go in to the individual words and remove the tag where not appropriate. So you can tag 498 of the words in a 500 word list in 3 steps, rather than 498.

This is the heart of Wordie: helping you waste time more efficiently.