Nowadays, the most obvious way to blend all kinds of UTF-8 characters in nicely with all the other text on your page might be Webfonts, but I think there are definitely valid reasons not to utilize those to achieve consistent display of IPA characters on a page. This post will focus on a very simple method which ensures that IPA will look decent across a variety of operating systems and browsers.

This post is recycled, and was originally published on my former weblog on Saturday 2005-02-26 at 11:40:12 UTC. I tweaked some grammar and spelling here and there, but I resisted the urge to rewrite this entry almost entirely. I did not, however, refrain from commenting on myself. Sensitive souls beware: I added some brand new explicit content. Yesterday, I received my reissues of "Deaf Dumb Blind" (1993) and "Use Your Brain" (1995): two classic, quintessential Clawfinger albums. In addition to the original tracks, they both feature three bonus tracks and the video clips of the released singles of the original CD in SVCD quality. Let me go through both of the albums by my favorite songs. [Use Your Brain will be reviewed in a later post: no, that's not because I split this post in two for this special occasion or some such.] My less favorite songs are a little less good, but that doesn't mean they're bad. But you'll probably have to be more of a fan to appreciate them. [I added links to YouTube so you can actually listen to the songs.] Deaf Dumb Blind Nigger (3:47) The Truth (4:12) Rosegrove (4:02) Don't Get Me Wrong (3:12) I Need You (4:58) Catch Me (4:39) Warfair (3:48) Wonderful World (2:40) Sad to See Your Sorrow (5:18) I Don't Care (3:11) Get it* (4:43) Profit Preacher * (5:55) Stars & Stripes * (3:52) * Bonus Track + Videos: Nigger, The Truth, Warfair The first track of Deaf Dumb Blind is Nigger. Nigger is a song which immediately steps out of the gray of bad songs out there because of the power it contains. [I understand what I was trying to say here, but steps out of the gray of bad songs? The gray what?] Some people might think it's a racist song when they first hear it, but it is all but that. [I've all but finished this book, and it was anything but boring.] It is to be said that the chorus (repeating the word nigger a couple of times) is very easy to catch up with and some stupid racists might even like to sing along with it(!) Luckily that was all but the intention behind the song. I would consider "Rosegrove", the third song, sort of a ballad, although it doesn't really sound like one, neither in lyrics nor in melody. It's one of the more melodic sounds on the album and one of my favorite on the album. [Boy, I can sure eloquently express myself about one of my favorite songs on the album! Maybe you should have tried it in Dutch, just 19-year old self.] Track 5 is "I need you". It's quite easy to play really, but it sounds just great and I did once meet a bitch this song perfectly applied to. [I did? I rather doubt that. Teenagers, eh?] So when you are in a sort of love/hate mood situation problem thing, just put this up loud. Very very loud. [I can't comment on that (anymore?), but it is nice while working out.] "Catch me," the sixth track of the album, is one of the more interesting songs lyrical wise [I think you mean lyrically.] (and considering the general level of Clawfinger lyrics, that means a lot [Fanboy much?]). When I listen to one of my current favorite songs (Horse With No Name by America), I can almost imagine being in one by listening to the music. [One what? A desert? Are you talking about a freaking desert?] My personal fantasy is quite alright and I have no problem imaging deserts [No trouble imagining the vastness, at any rate. You don't quite comprehend just how hot they are. And no, I still don't.], but that song captures the spirit and puts you in one if you listen, disregarding your own imagination. [Are you on crack!?] The same applies to "Catch me": it's like Metallica's "Fade to black" on steroids. [Whatever you say.] It just seems to come from deeper within, or maybe Zak, Clawfinger's vocalist and lyrics writer, is just more on one line of thoughts with me, I don't know. Zak said the following on the song: Well Catch me is pretty much a direct translation from a Swedish punk song which I wrote an additional third verse for so the idea was already there! In other words it's not a personal song even if there have been times when I have felt those feelings! My other favorite song on the album is one of the bonus tracks, "Profit Preacher". I will just quote Zak on the bonus tracks. Profit preacher is about the American TV evangelists who preach faith, love & beauty, the more money you give them, the more blessed you will be! Obviously they are vultures profiting on peoples need for something or someone to believe in! I got the idea from Frank Zappa who has made a few songs on the same topic! Stars & stripes, damn I hardly even remember the fucking song, I guess it was just an excuse to throw some shit at the United States for how they choose to angle their news reports and sedate their people into believing they are being told the truth! I'll read it sometime soon and get back to you with a more detailed answer! :wink: In conclusion, despite this being their debut album and the Clawz having so much less experience than they have now, this album will still rock your house away. [Rock your house away? Whatever it will rock, it will most certainly not do that. Then again, I was probably just making up something as random as rock your socks off. Perhaps that's a better way to finish this entry. "Deaf Dumb Blind" will not merely rock your socks off, it will rock your fucking house away!]

Lately, I've been sorting out some old digital junk. Not because I'm short on space—I've got plenty—, but because some of it simply isn't worth keeping. Most of the posts on my former weblog fall in this category, but about half a dozen of them I just couldn't delete. I decided to integrate them with my current weblog. Initially, I was thinking of just slipping them in at the temporal beginning of the weblog, so they would silently appear in the year 2005. However, while I was investigating how I could make the Wordpress 1.5 database compatible with the current Wordpress 2.8 database, I changed my mind. It would be much easier to repost the entries on my current weblog, but that wouldn't be right if I didn't do it with a twist. While I was rereading some of the entries, I was thinking things like Were you on fucking crack!? Wouldn't it be amusing to make fun of the things I wrote back then by actually adding these thoughts to the entries themselves? Additionally, this would justify reposting them as entirely new entries. If nothing else, at least it will be amusing to me. You can expect the first three recycled entries this week, and a few more may follow, but I'm not promising anything.

Introducing the Space Dino drawing, t-shirt, and (lousy) poem.

There are three sounds usually represented in writing as g or ch that I can produce. Voiced velar fricative /ɣ/, as in Dutch gaan, transcribed as [ɣaːn]. Voiceless velar fricative /x/, as in German Kuchen, transcribed as [kuːxən]. Voiceless palatal fricative /ç/, as in German ich, transcribed as [ɪç]. From this list, you might guess that there is also a voiced palatal fricative, and you'd be right. I cannot, however, produce the /ʝ/, which can be seen as the Flemish equivalent to my Dutch /ɣ/. According to commonly accepted Dutch phonetics, the second g-sound occurs in words like acht, thus transcribed as [ɑxt], and also in words like chaos, thus transcribed as [xaɔs]. For me, this is not the case. I pronounce all of my words with the voiced velar fricative. It's definitely true that not all people do this: in the east of the Netherlands, where I lived for a few years, most local people thought the way I pronounce my gs at the end of words sounds aggressive merely because they employ a slightly different g, the /x/, in final positions. They may utilize it in certain other positions as well, but I'm fairly sure they do no such thing in a word like chaos. I may be wrong, though. I decided to investigate this further, and I think I may have found a possible explanation. If I force myself to pronounce echt with a clearly pronounced /t/, I do indeed find myself slightly more likely to use the /x/, although by no means as any kind of constant. This may very well be affected by my knowledge that it is more or less supposed to be this way, however, and I'm not sure if I would normally have done this at all. In normal usage, however, I'm more likely to either drop the /t/ or to come really close to dropping it, thus rendering echt waar into /ɛɣʋar/. I postulate that this might aid to preserve the /ɣ/ in my speech, at the possible expense of other phonemes that might weaken it. Nevertheless, I fully retain the /ɣ/ in acht, and also in things like acht gulden. As far as I can tell, Utrecht (or sometimes pronounced as Utrech), [ˈʏtrɛx(t)], is the only word in which the /x/ is actually established in my speech. I wonder if living there for a year might have affected my pronunciation of the name of the city, while leaving the rest of my speech unscathed, or if I've always pronounced it that way. This unscientific analysis would not be complete if I didn't add that some words, such as Michiel, and vliegje are pronounced with the /ç/. In other words, [mɪçil] and [vliçjə]. As far as I know any Dutch speaker will pronounce these words the same, though as should be obvious due to the very reason I'm writing all of this, I may be wrong. In conclusion, save for an almost negligible number of exceptions, I pronounce each and every g or ch that is not pronounced as /ç/ as /ɣ/.

My experience here in Antwerp has been very positive, but there were (and perhaps still are) some amusing language barriers here and there. I'll mention a few.

Yesterday, I was cutting slices of salami while eating lunch. In a move that wasn't quite as smart as it seemed at the time, I lifted the salami and started cutting it in mid-air. Because the cutting wasn't proceeding as swiftly as planned, I increased pressure on the sausage from both sides and somehow my thumb must have ended up in the cutting trajectory. A small drop of blood rears its head out of the cut, and that's the end of it. That night, while listening to one of Wil Wheaton's amusing podcasts, I felt my thumb throbbing a little and I decide to show it to her. Me Hon, I cut myself with a bread knife—um, I mean a butter knife. My wife Leave it to you to cut yourself with a butter knife. Me What are you talking about, they have sharp teeth and everything! My wife It's got a rounded corner and is not actually sharp. Just because they are slightly serrated doesn't mean that they're meant for cutting, or that anybody but you could manage to cut themselves with it. Me But–but–but, you could cut steaks with it too! My wife That's what steak knives are for. Sharp knives have sharp points. Why do you think that knives made for stabbing people aren't serrated? Me So you're saying that all of our kitchen knives are for stabbing people? My wife *softly slaps my chest* You're such a dork!

An overview of some things I find useful in regard to Ubuntu Linux.

I can't describe Ubuntu's default alt-tab behavior as anything other than "utter crap." In its defense, more recent versions have switched to the Static Application Switcher, which is much better than the absolutely horrific Application Switcher that, if I'm not mistaken, was used from version 6 through 8. However, it's no more than a slightly fancier, and in my opinion, inferior, version of the standard Windows/Metacity/whatever alt-tab behavior, which, frankly, has been outdated for at least half a decade due to applications like SmartTab.org and KWin. I wouldn't be surprised if it's been outdated since the '80s; it's merely me who's no longer ignorant of the existence of better solutions since about half a decade ago. The solution, SuperSwitcher, is not quite as nice as SmartTab.org because I can't switch applications as fast, but it does offer a nice way to easily switch between different desktops. Typing a part of the name of a window is just not as fast as alt plus a number or a letter that's already defined. All in all, it's the only way that I know of to get an acceptable alt-tab behavior in Gnome without using KWin or another alternative window manager.

Websites should list their password requirements on places other than when creating an account and when changing said password.