I got myself a new camera the other day, with a case that allows you to go swimming with it, to a depth of 15 metres. I thought that for snorkelling it would be really nifty to have the ability to take pictures underwater, particularly since my parents are taking the family up to Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef over Christmas.

I was really excited, and despite the (freezing) cold, I thought I would go down for a quick dip to try it out. After all, we have had some decent weather over the last couple of days, as opposed to the raging storms over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, Clovelly was something of a cauldron of white water. I didn’t get to use my new camera – well, not underwater, at least.

Unfortunate. Next time, Gadget, next time.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was a French Linguist, who had an incredible effect on the development of linguistics in the 20th century. He proposed a structural approach to studying language, which looked at the relationships words have to one another: contrasts, opposites, hierarchies of meaning – in short, language in practice. He studied language synchronically, that is, how words are used at the present time (rather than a long-term evolutionary diachronic understanding).

Furthermore, he divided his understanding of linguistics into two areas – the langue, which is like the storehouse of all possible words, meanings, grammar; and parole, the words actually spoken. The langue is present only in a community of speakers, as they understand and develop the particular rules of language to communicate meaning. Different languages do different things.

All of this means that language is astoundingly (and wonderfully) complex. Words can be combined and arranged in such a way as to create new meaning (contra Logical Positivism). Redundancy helps to eliminate detrimental effects of ‘noise’ such as bad grammar, textual corruption, wide semantic ranges, and so on. Having come to understand this through a philosophy class this semester, this skit is simply wonderful.

There’s an article in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald attributing the decline of modern art to increased iPod usage.

Bold claim, and pretty specious as far as I can work out from the article – it seems to run along the lines of ‘people are listening to music more, therefore clearly not using their eyes as much. I’m a visual person, therefore I the trend is rubbish.’ Hmmm.

But it goes further: “I think we are not in a very visual age and it’s producing badly dressed people.”  

This is devastating critique coming from someone wearing a bow-tie. 

Kristy and I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 the other day. It’s good fun, and much what you’d expect given the first two movies, but…

… it’s 3 hours long.

3 hours.

There didn’t seem to be any editorial discipline whatsoever. I’ve heard interviews with directors before, talking about how excruciatingly difficult it was to chop out a scene that they loved but that needed to go for the sake of the movie. Those types of directors clearly did not work on this film. It had everything – a bunch of lame jokes at the end of scenes that added nothing to the mood, plot, character development, or runtime; really extended battle scenes that went on for what seemed like an eternity (during which, incidentally, the rest of the two warring armadas waited patiently for two boats to duke it out); and a few stupid stunts – very Pirates. I’m not at all sure that there will be any DVD extras when it eventually comes out, because it didn’t seem like they chopped anything out at all.

Not that the extras would fit on the disc – they’d need all of it to put the movie on.

Now, don’t get me (too) wrong here… it was a fun movie, and worth seeing if you like that sort of thing.

It could have been 30% shorter though.

This xkcd comic is suddenly very funny – I just learnt about Godwin’s Law.

For all you UNIX geeks, this one is my favourite.