Some serious emacs keyboard analysis

I know what I'll be reading today during test runs of the stuff I'm writing in Mathematica: a great discussion and analysis of emacs keyboard commands from Steve Yegge, and another one on the organization of emacs init files. It's always nice to find someone who shares your obsessions.

Seven Steps to Heaven has lyrics?!

So there I was a minute ago, going through my email while listening to Chet Baker's 1987 concert in Tokyo (meh - okay if you like ensemble work more than Chet's perfect tone). Chet had been doing a great job with Seven Steps to Heaven, from the Miles album of the same name, when suddenly in the middle of things a women started singing something in a foreign language. "It has lyrics? Is that Japanese? Chet didn't introduced a singer, what the heck is going on?"

The singing sort of fit with the song in some obscure free jazz way, then it hit me: it's the damned website I just visited, playing some 14th-century Breton chant or somesuch. The idiots running the thing have set it to play music when you visit, no matter what the hell else you might be listening to. And now I've written a whole damn blog post about it. Grr...

Holy apostrophe's, Batman!

The inimitable Fr Z occasionally suffer's from Grocer's Apostrophe.

One or the other

Either everyone writing on the web has gotten a lot dumber in the last few weeks or I've entered some manic phase in which every typo and grammatical error on a page may as well be lit up in bold flashing type. The last straw tonight:

The 2009 budget deficit could be close to $2 trillion, or 12.5 percent of gross domestic product, more than twice the record of 6 percent set in 1983, according to David Greenlaw, Morgan Stanley's chief economist. Two weeks ago, budget analysts said the measures might push [the, dammit!] deficit to as much as $1.5 trillion.

Not a good sign

You expect a pharmacy to excel in the "attention to detail" department. That's why it's disquieting to read on their website, "If shipping address is the same ckick here". What the hell else are they going to botch up?