What is behind the "Blogs I Read" list? (sorta OT)

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2004/12/18 18:40 -08:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/michkap/archive/2004/12/18/325156.aspx

Someone actually sent me email about this very topic. They looked at the list of blogs I have down under the "Blogs I Read" category and scratched their head at how random it appeared to be. He did at least have the grace to point out he had too much free time on his hands.

So, what makes up the "Blogs I Read" list? Its a simple concept... wait for it...

Yes, it is kind of random. But then so am I, folks. If you read n posts from this blog (where n is greater than zero), or conversed by email or in person then you'd see that the things that interest me are varied.

Of course that is not the full list of blogs I read, but thats why the list is not entitled "All of the Blogs I Read". Because randomizing the hit traffic on the blogs of my niece and my sister-out-law¹ by putting a link here is just not a way to get invited to family events, if you know what I mean.

Now the list also changes from time to time, and that is really not due to a grudge or an argument or anything. It is just the fact that this list IS blogs I read. I get pissed very time I am looking at some random blog list that someone has where half of the links are bogus or point to their old blog that they abandoned two years ago in favor of a new one. Do people have the list just to look good? And how do the dead or comatose links make them look?² If I take a link off then I am not looking at them as regularly as I was -- but that does not mean I am not still looking from time to time....

So, my guarantee: If it's on my list, then I look at it on a regular basis. If it's not, then I may or may not be looking at it. But if you are Meredith or Rachel or Jenny or Zach or others (you know who you are!) then you can assume I am looking at it and am trying to keep the twelve people (geeks) who look at my blog from randomly heading off to yours....

This post brought to you by "ᄴ" (U+1134, a.k.a. HANGUL CHOSEONG SIOS-SSANGSIOS)³

1 - My sister Meredith's husband's family are Meredith's in-laws (obviously). I asked Jenny (Meredith's sister-in-law) a while back what does that make us, and after some searching around we realized it made us asbsolutely nothing whatsoever. Were Jenny uncool, I would have left it at that. But she is so exceptionally cool, as is the rest of my sister's husband's family, that I refused to leave it there. I told them that they are my cool "out-law" family, and everyone seemed receptive to the kind motives behind the idea, no matter how twisted the idea may in fact be.

2 - When I have pointed out such links to "dead" or "comatose" blogs in the past, people sometimes claim that it was intentional since the old location links to the new one. However sometimes the "new" one has also been abandoned. I think these people just list their team members or friends or something. The two-year-old site is certainly not what they are reading today....

3 - Inspired by the television show Sesame Street, which used to suggest that each episode was sponsored by various letters and numbers. While the folks at CTW get the high profile sponsors like A-Z and 0-9, I will be looking to the rest of Unicode to sponsor my posts, from now on....

Three sios in a single character? I just tried, but I can't type it with the Korean IME. Handwriting didn't work either (maybe I just am that bad) -- closest I can write is 싸.

Any clue where it's used? I know there are some things in Hangeul that aren't used these days, but I never heard of a "triple" sios.

I got a question for you. Why are there "gaps" in the Hangeul syllables? Like '쯄' (U+A8A0) -- the next char is 'Æ'. Then, after a bunch of non-hangeul, it continues with '쯅'.

My only guess is that it has to do with [de]composition of the syllables. Am I even close?

Well, U+1134 is the Hangul Jamo zone (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1100.pdf) and I think the IME only builds full Hangul syllables, not individual Jamo.

Maybe thats why it was willing to be the sponsor -- it has a tough time getting work!

For your other question, the charactr you have there is U+cbc4. The "next character" is 쯅, not Æ (U+00c6). So I am not sure what you mean.

Duh -- you're right and I'm an idiot. I was looking at the Windows Korean charset :S. But the question remains. If you look in the Korean charset, there seem to be gaps in the hangeul syllables. (Look at 0xA8A0 in the Korean set: U+CBC4 is at 0xA8A0, but U+CBC5 is at 0xA941.) Is that just legacy "stuff" or is there some interesting meaning behind it?

Thanks for the chart. There seem to be quite a few things in the Hanguel section that aren't used (much?) today and I guess cannot be written by current IMEs.

Idiot? Nah, not at all.

I don't know enough about the intended logic behind standards like KSC-5601 (the Korean National stanard upon which cp949 is based). But it may have some sort of pronunciation basis?

Of the 11,000 odd Hangul syllables, I am pretty sure that they are all used at least in historical contexts if nothing else. Of course to get to them you have to know the pronunciations, which make IMEs a better tool when you know what you want then when you are looking for things....

How's this for a topical comment: Although in english there is no technical term for the relationship between two various factions of a family which prompted the "sister-out-law", in Yiddish, such a term does exist: M'CHOOTENEM which is the technical term for the relationship between My parents, and My wife's parents (yours.

Ah yes, that is very topical!

Though you might get a few points off for not posting the actual Hebrew script characters for it? :-)

At the time I thought the "-out-law" concept was amusing and it had the following reactions:
--made your mom smile
--made your dad laugh
--made my dad shake his head
--made Jenny smile
--made my mom look at me like a third eye had popped up in my forehead

:-)

Aha! About that 'sister-out-law' thing. No wonder she is so decent to allow herself to be called an out-law. :)

On a different note, I always wondered why en-US and en-GB are so deficient in defining relationships. When you consider languages like Urdu, English really stands out as a deficient one.

I don't think English has distinct named relations for people like brothers and sisters of one's mother/father. They are all clumped into uncle and auntie. The list goes on and on.

It even gets weirder when you consider in-laws. We have separate named relations for elder and younger brothers of husband. Even sisters of one's mother-in-law is given a distinct name. :)

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