Author Archives: Xophmeister

你好

Posted on 16th February, 2012 by Xophmeister

My other half is Chinese, so naturally I am learning Mandarin — and some Shanghainese — from her. (What can I say: I’m the scholarly type and she’s a good teacher!) Anyway, like, I’m sure, many a Westerner embarking on … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal, Phonetics and Phonology, Random, 中文 | 2 Comments

My Friend Lily

Posted on 8th February, 2012 by Xophmeister

Here’s a curious bit of syntax.

Posted in Linguistics, Syntax | 2 Comments

The World’s Prose Mix

Posted on 23rd January, 2012 by Xophmeister

According to Wikipedia, at the time of writing there are a total of 205 sovereign states; including those that are disputed. That’s at least 205 different cultures, so the question is: Are there any concentrations of peoples in the world … Continue reading →

Posted in Ethnography, Random | Leave a comment

Apostrophe’s War

Posted on 16th January, 2012 by Xophmeister

With a title like “Apostrophe’s War”, you’ll be forgiven in thinking that this is yet another trite rant on the supposed abuse of the apostrophe in contemporary written English. However, those who know me as a linguist may think I … Continue reading →

Posted in Linguistics, Orthography and Grammatology, Rants | Leave a comment

Endianness

Posted on 10th January, 2012 by Xophmeister

In computer science, there’s a concept known as “endianness”. It refers to the order in which data is stored: “big endian” means that we start with the most significant bit and move to the least; “little endian” is the other … Continue reading →

Posted in Computer Science, Orthography and Grammatology, Random | Leave a comment

D Quine

Posted on 29th December, 2011 by Xophmeister

I have taken it upon myself to learn the D programming language: My motivation for doing so is involved, but bear with me!

Posted in D, Random, Software Engineering | 2 Comments

Sanitising with Insanity

Posted on 15th December, 2011 by Xophmeister

I do a lot of hacking around in an Oracle database and my chosen tool to interrogate the data is Oracle SQL Developer. Sometimes, I have to transfer the contents of one table into another schema and, because I don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Day Job, Oracle, SQL Developer, VIM | 1 Comment

Zeitgeist

Posted on 30th November, 2011 by Xophmeister

A short story that will probably get me put on the “No Fly” list.

Posted in Writing | Leave a comment

Cycling in the City

Posted on 5th November, 2011 by Xophmeister

I regularly commute through England’s metropolis: a 40km round trip that takes me about the same time as the train, but for free and without the claustrophobic cattle class that is South West Trains nor the carcinogenic underworld of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Cycling, Rants | 1 Comment

Counting with Subquery Factoring

Posted on 25th October, 2011 by Xophmeister

This is fairly trivial, but I thought I’d post it anyway! It’s a PL/SQL script I wrote using subquery factoring to count in natural language: from 1 to 10,000. (It will go higher, but there are gaps after 10,000.)

Posted in Oracle, PL/SQL, Random | Leave a comment