Author: Heather Meadows

I’m going to be using this post to compare webhosts. (Yes, it’s the same one I posted on December 21. I changed the date, and now it’s back on top. Woo.) Ignore it, unless you’re interested in what I’m looking at, or if you have suggestions. I just came up with an idea for a website that I would have fun doing. It combines pretty much all of my interests. The domain name I have in mind is available. So I’m thinking about going ahead and getting it all set up.

Yes, I did just think of this. Yes, I am crazy.

Cheetaweb

PlatinumLinux level

1000 MB Webspace

20 GB traffic/month

500 POP accounts

500 FTP accounts

20 MySQL databases

20 Addon domains

150.00 British pounds/year* => approximately $24/mo

FuitadNET shared hosting

Bronze level

Hard Disk Space 3 Gig

Bandwidth per month 25 Gig

FTP/POP Accounts 100

MySQL Databases 15

Subdomains 5

Domain Alias (aka Domain Re-directing) 1

SMTP Server

E-mail Forwarding

E-mail Aliasing

E-mail Auto Responder

Graphical Usage Statistics

(Webalizer *AND* Urchin)

Server Side Include (SSI/SHTML)

PHP Scripting

Perl (CGI)

Unlimited FTP Access

Web-based Control Panel

$4.99/mo

HostRocket.com’s shared hosting

GENERAL ACCOUNT FEATURES	ROCKETone	ROCKETtwo	ROCKETthree
RAID Protected Storage Space	1000mb	2000mb	3000mb
High Availability Bandwidth (w/ Month to Month Rollover)	50gb	75gb	100gb
Advanced Easy-To-Use Control Panel	yes	yes	yes
24/7 Live Technical Support	yes	yes	yes
Domain Names Per Account	1	2	3
HUGE Pre-Installed Script Library	yes	yes	yes
Money Back Guarantee	yes	yes	yes
24 month price	6.95 /mo.	9.95 /mo.	11.95 /mo.

ALL WEB HOSTING INCLUDES

FREE – Domain Name Registration

FREE – Web Hosting

FREE – Spam Filtering

FREE – Virus Filtering

HostBusters

Platinum

Disk Space 1,000 MB

Data Transfer 7,000 MB

POP3 Accounts 25

Subdomains 10

MySQL Databases 9

Price Monthly (USD) 7.95

TotalChoice Hosting

Deluxe Plan

Monthly Bandwidth

Transfer 35GB

Disk Space 1000MB

Monthly Price $8.95

Yearly Price $98.00

Domain Registration $10.95/yr

Unlimited POP3, MySQL, FTP, Subdomains

CGI-BIN

Webmail

SSI

Apache

Perl

PHP

SSL

Liquid Web Inc.‘s Shared Webmaster level

$19.95/mo. (Paid Monthly)

$16.62/mo. (Paid 6 Months)

Free Setup

Three Free Domain Names

1500 MB’s Storage

50 GB’s Transfer

Unlimited E-Mail Accounts

50 Virtual FTP Accounts

Unlimited MySQL Databases

Unlimited E-Mail Accounts

Unlimited Mailing Lists

Full CGI Access

Free SSL Secure Server

Detailed Web Site Statistics

15 Account Subdomains

SSH Secure Shell Access

Perl 5, PHP4, C++, Python

24×7 Toll Free Phone Support

30 Day Unconditional Money Back

99.9% Uptime Guarantee

Redundant Nightly Backups

I don’t like 1&1 Internet Inc.‘s push-button websites.

I was checking out MSN’s “10 for ’05” movie preview article, and it was amazing–I wanted to see pretty much every single movie they mentioned. I mean, check it out.

Batman Begins is finally coming out. I am dying to see this movie, especially since the villain is the splendid Ra’s Al Ghul.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire will appear in November. The actors are too old for the parts, really, but I think this one should work out okay–if the director and writers managed to deal with the uberlength of the book, and found some way to translate those ellipses into screen tension. ;>

Mr. and Mrs. Smith looks fantastic and fun. I loved True Lies.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory…now, I’ll admit, I’m not really into Depp’s hair for this one. But come on. Roald Dahl’s unnerving insight into kid justice + Johnny Depp + Tim Burton = good movie.

I’m attracted to Sin City purely based on the cast and MSN’s brief premise blurb.

I have to see Revenge of the Sith, obviously. Here’s hoping it won’t suck. (And here‘s why it probably will suck, if you missed my rant before.)

War of the Worlds and King Kong are movies I will probably see out of a sense of respect for science fiction canon. I’m not supremely excited about them, but I’m excited at the idea that there are movies like these out there.

Fantastic Four!

Even Memoirs of a Geisha, which is based on a book that may or may not (oooh, implicature) be a breach of confidentiality and a betrayal of trust on the part of Arthur Golden, is appealing to me, especially after seeing Hero. I don’t know, some of my previous ire seems to have bled away, and now I’d just like to see what the filmmakers have done with the story. I’m hoping they can capture some of the mystical feel that was so vivid in Hero.

So yeah. About the only thing that could make this year better would be Spider-Man 3. (2007 ;_;)

Mari linked today to the Augusta Chronicle’s story on the train crash in Graniteville yesterday. From a picture caption in the article:

A Norfolk Southern freight train with two locomotives and 42 rail cars struck a locomotive with two rail cars parked at a siding at Avondale Mills Thursday morning, releasing chlorine into the air and other chemicals on the ground near downtown Graniteville, SC.

And from the article itself:

At least eight people died and more than 260 sought treatment for exposure to deadly chlorine gas released after a chemical-laden freight train slammed into a parked locomotive in Graniteville early Thursday, officials said.

I remembered them talking about the evacuation last night on the radio, but at the time I was driving home from biking with Brooke, and we’d gotten rained out, and I was totally drenched…so I guess I was too distracted to fully comprehend what I was hearing.

Pretty scary, especially since it occurred right along the road Mari takes to work. I’m glad it didn’t happen during her commute.

I mentioned previously that I think I’m becoming a fan of Language Log’s Mark Liberman.

Well, now I know I am. Look what he did today!

The Simpsons has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture’s greatest source of idioms, catch phrases and sundry other textual allusions. It’s especially rich in those meta-cliches that Glen Whitman dubbed snowclones. One that we’ve discussed previously is “I, for one, welcome our new __ overlords”.

According to an apparently authoritative list, Homer Simpson uses the meta-cliche “mmm… ___” 97 times in 14 seasons, including 83 different values for the appreciated object.

One thing bothered me: “donuts” was repeated in the list. But Liberman made up for it with his conclusion!

There are many common non-authentic values: “mmm… coffee” with 865 hits, “mmm… scotch” with 224, “mmm… licorice” with 124, “mmm… bourbon” with 107.

And even “mmm… linguistics” with 23. A new slogan: “Linguistics: almost 1/4 as popular as bourbon”. As if, alas.

I love this guy.

Mmm…linguistics.

From Japan Today:

12-year-old boy returns home alone following tsunami disaster

His father Takayuki, 41, and brother Tomoki, 8, were confirmed dead, while his 41-year-old mother Masami is still missing. He escaped the tsunami unharmed and later identified the bodies of his father and younger brother.

What a horrible thing to have to go through…

This is hilarious.

From Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough:

Susan and Steven Manis say it was their fault their daughter was late for school so they shared her punishment – spending an hour with her in detention.

What a great story. Read the whole article–the best part is the last two paragraphs :D

Earlier today, David asked me if I was aware that the idea that 72 virgins are awarded to martyrs might actually come from a mistranslation. He encouraged me to Google it and see for myself.

So I did, and among the varied results I came across this interesting article:

The Virgins and the Grapes: the “Christian” Origins of the Koran (Surprise!)

I don’t really know anything about FreeRepublic.com. It appears to be a conservative activist website. The article includes a translation of an interview (originally in German) with the scholar who’s proposing that the Qu’ran is mistranslated. Some good questions are asked and answered.

Q. – Professor, why did you think it useful to conduct this re-reading of the Koran?

A. – “Because, in the Koran, there are many obscure points that, from the beginning, even the Arab commentators were not able to explain. Of these passages it is said that only God can comprehend them. Western research on the Koran, which has been conducted in a systematic manner only since about the middle of the 19th century, has always taken as its base the commentaries of the Arab scholars. But these have never gone beyond the etymological explanation of some terms of foreign origin.”

Q. – What makes your method different?

A. – “I began from the idea that the language of the Koran must be studied from an historical-linguistic point of view. When the Koran was composed, Arabic did not exist as a written language; thus it seemed evident to me that it was necessary to take into consideration, above all, Aramaic, which at the time, between the 4th and 7th centuries, was not only the language of written communication, but also the lingua franca of that area of Western Asia.”

Q. – Tell us how you proceeded.

A. – “At first I conducted a ‘synchronous’ reading. In other words, I kept in mind both Arabic and Aramaic. Thanks to this procedure, I was able to discover the extent of the previously unsuspected influence of Aramaic upon the language of the Koran: in point of fact, much of what now passes under the name of ‘classical Arabic’ is of Aramaic derivation.”

I’m all about the historical-linguistic point of view. :D Presuming the article isn’t mistranslated (wouldn’t that be ironic), it raises some really interesting questions.

I had a friend who converted to Islam, and she once mentioned the Qur’an passages that only God could understand. That always seemed weird to me. “Luxenberg” offers a pretty logical explanation.

A good read. Thanks for the tip, David.

Check out what Chris found.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/welsh/default.stm which is the welsh version of the bbc website. Now while that’s by itself isn’t all that cool, there’s a header on the left side that says “bbc vocab” and underneath that is a link that says turn on. When you do that it highlights all the words so that you can mouse over them to see the translation of the various welsh words. Now tell me that’s not cool! You can learn the almost dead language by reading the news.

Pretty crazy.

I have to admit that seeing the Welsh language referred to as “almost dead” made me sad. “Aubrey”, my maiden name, has its roots in Wales, as does my dad’s side of the family. Back in high school, I was really interested in Wales, enough that I did a lot of research into the history and culture. I bought a reference book called Wales, and I was on a constant quest to find a picture book of the country–I never have found one. I suppose it’s sentimentality that saddens me at the thought that the language that birthed my maiden name, the language of my ancestors, is dying.

I think what was striking to me about it was how matter-of-fact Chris’ statement was. Just another example of how things don’t really get to you sometimes until they’re personally relevant.

On the bright side, I just spotted a 2005 Wales calendar on Amazon.com!

Today, Geoffrey K. Pullum takes a hard look at attempts to “revive” the Cornish language, and gives us this sobering conclusion:

Always remember this, as we head into the sad time of massive language extinctions that is coming. Ask around the village and find the age of the youngest people using a language every day for all their normal conversational interaction. If the answer is a number larger than 5, the language is probably dying. If the answer is a number larger than 10, it is very probably doomed. If the answer is a number larger than 20, you can kiss it goodbye right now: no amount of nostalgic appreciation of it will make it last even one more generation as a going concern. That’s the way languages are.

Well, this sort of changes my opinion.

I’m guessing that since he didn’t expect it, he was so humiliated by being caught that he hoped to die quickly, to escape his embarrassment.

I’m not going to say that he “deserves” to die. It’s beyond my ability to judge what a twisted person like Kobayashi deserves. I just hope that whatever he gets keeps him off the streets for good.

While some devices, like a dying cellphone, require only a few minutes of charging to regain short-term use, most devices, like laptops, take much longer. It is not uncommon for users of electronics with more ravenous appetites to camp out for hours near an electrical outlet. In some cases, those staking a claim do so by plugging in a device – even a $2,000 laptop – only to leave it unattended while fetching a $4 coffee.

The battery problem lives on.

Yahoo! Entertainment: 10 Crazy Facts about Howard Hughes

I especially like number 10 :D

In his recent piece “The Twelfth Commandment“, Eric Burns underlines the dangers of generalizing with a very powerful example.

From Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough:

No one knows how long the shepherds on the island of La Gomera have used the rare whistled language called the Silbo Gomero, but American and Spanish researchers said on Wednesday that the brain processes it like a spoken language.

I’d like to know what other activities cause those regions of the brain to be used. Obviously, the whistling transmits semantic information, but I don’t think this study proves that it is a true language. How much variation is possible in a whistled language? Enough for a robust lexicon? What kinds of inflection exist in Siblo Gomero?