Adventures in Technology

So, I let poor Sabu's battery run Completely Out and foresaw Many Tragedies thereby. Recharged him overnight, and then this morning after the mail run tapped him on to see How Bad It Was, which was -- not nearly as bad as I had feared. Had to re-establish Documents-to-Go and upMIRC, but after the programs were back, the files and settings magically appeared on their own. Go, Sabu!

Next in line was the camera-check. I have a lovely Olympus C-700 with a 10x optical zoom of which I am extremely fond. Best camera I've ever had, including the Nikon I dragged all over Central Maine during the Reporting Years. The camera's fine, but I needed to make sure the newly acquired smart media card was formatted correctly. No problems there, but -- They, in Their infinite wisdom -- are phasing out smart media cards. Obsolete technology. Hey! My camera's not that old, and I was looking forward to a many-years-long relationship, not a shallow affair that was going to founder on the lack of cheap-and-easy media. Sigh. But, the camera's fine, and to prove it I took a picture of Patia, which is now immortalized in Icon.

Baffled

After we come back from vacation, we'll have a week to do laundry and make it All Right with the cats before we hare off to Trinoc*coN in North Carolina for the last GoH gig of the year.

The good folk at programming have sent us a list of panel topics to mull over, along with a question: Would either or both of us be interested in being on a panel about creating languages? Seems this is a topic the programming chair has long wished to have a panel discuss, and, indeed, if there were such a panel at Trinoc*coN, I'd love to be in the audience, because I'm really interested in linguistics and how the words we know shape the thoughts we can think; and how culture changes the meanings of words so that two people can say the exact same sentence and mean things that are worlds apart. But.

I don't know the first thing about creating a language. Never done such a thing. Granted, we've made up some Liaden words here and there, and linked them to concepts and philosophy, but that's, like, worldbuilding. The idea that we've made up a Liaden language, well ... it just ain't so.

Nor is this the first time that we've been asked to lend our expertise to a panel discussing language construction. There seems to be a group of folks under the impression that we have performed the prodigious act of creating a whole new language. I don't know where the idea has come from, frankly.

Ah, well... Lots of other interesting things on the list, here. Just hate to disappoint somebody....