Fun with stuff

Fun with words

In light of the fun with numbers of my last post, here's a site dedicated to fun with words. Everything from anagrams and palindromes to malapropisms and tongue twisters - the section on word records dutifully deconstructs a few language mysteries that will always continue to plague us.

* The Longest word mystery. No easy answer here - there seems to be a short list of contenders depending on what one considers reasonable. Excluding chemical or medical terms, as well as purposely long or silly words, the longest would be 'floccinaucinihilipilification,' which means the estimation of something as worthless. At 29 letters, it beats 'antidisestablishmentarianism' by one letter.

* The 'gry' mystery. Angry, hungry, and...? That elusive third word. It looks like there are more than a few plausible answers, but none in common usage. I had taken a certain amount of pride as a kid when I stumbled across the word 'puggry' in the dictionary. Though good for bragging rights, it obviously wasn't the word as there was an alternate spelling ('puggree') and it was exotic (it's Hindi for a kind of scarf worn around the head). There seems to be no definitive answer to this one, though there are several riddles and plays on words that this mystery has spawned.


Paul Brian's online version of his book Common Errors in English. A collection of hundreds of easily overlooked errors including favorite non-words like supposably, anyways, and irregardless. There are enough errors in grammar here that I don't think I want to read my past writings.


Here's that cool wordcount site that ranks words according to popularity. The most popular word is unsurprisingly "the." The least popular (out of 86800 words), "conquistador."


Fun with TV

For my online TV needs, I have a few sites I go to. Though far from comprehensive, and sometimes poor quality or small video players, there's always something on. TV Links and Alluc.org are good starting places. Searching the uploaded collections of specific users on video sites like YouTube, Dailymotion, and Veoh will also lead to you to many popular shows.


Fun with websites

From the always entertaining Neatorama I get not only cool internet gems but also links to other cool neatorama-style sites. In addition to the best optical illusion site on the net, Mighty Optical Illusions, Mental Floss and Say No to Crack have also been daily visits. I've also been spending a lot of time at the Candy Blog.


My lack of posting here lately can be attributed to a couple of other sites I've been working on. My resurrected guitar page and my new Friday Night Videos page, where I can keep my bi-weekly music video postings in one tidy place.