alphabet

E is for… EB. aka The Bean, aka The Buddha Ed.

Also comes with Super Realistic Flying Action!

“The Guide says that there is an art to flying,” said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack likes in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”
~ Douglas Adams, Life, The Universe and Everything

EB and I have been having Conversations for many years now. Most of which are collected over on another blog, but I present for your edification* a small sample.

Exhibit 1: 12th August, 2009

EB and I were discussing the universe. He came up with a question.

EB: Daddy?
Me: Yes, EB?
EB: how many universes are there?
Me: [thinks] as many as you want there to be.
EB: [pauses for thought] that’ll be twenty five then

Exhibit 2: 13th December, 2005

EB: There should be more daddies.
Me: Pardon?
EB: More daddies! Should be at least *two* daddies.
Me: erm. ok. Why?
EB: The ironing would get done faster.

[the boy has a point]

Me: righto.
EB: Make sure you buy another one when you go shopping, ‘k?

* see what I did there? Edification? Ed-ification? Oh, I give up. :-)

D is for… dakegra

That’s me. Hi. How are you?

It’s pronounced dah-keh-gruh, in case you were wondering. I’ve heard it pronounced various ways – dah-kee-grah, dake-grah, dake-gray. It’s made up of the first two letters of my first and middle names, and the first three of my surname. I decided to use it many years ago – it’s got the advantage of being unique, as well as being fairly short. If you see a dakegra around the internet, chances are it’s me. Unless they’re doing something naughty, in which case it’s definitely someone else. :-)

My name is Dave. I’m a blogger, photographer, writer, geek, juggler, caffeine junkie, the list of labels is as long as your arm. Married, father of two. I like shiny gadgets, funky websites, good coffee and taking photos of stuff.

I set up this blog to talk about any and all of the above. You can also find me on flickr, twitter, LinkedIn and other places around the internet.

Or you can email me: dakegra@gmail.com

I like emails.

I’ve been musing on a blog post series with an alphabetical bent – along the lines of A is for… B is for… then waffling about the particular subject.

Trouble is, I was stuck on A is for…

So I asked the twitterverse and my livejournal friendslist. I got an… interesting set of responses (I would expect nothing less, mind you). I decided, somewhat foolishly, to play along and write something (anything!) about each…

Aardvark
Relatively easy one this – a while back I bought the domain flyingaardvark.com, though I’ve still not decided quite what do do with it. I go through phases of buying domains – currently I own:
dakegra.net (obviously)
flyingaardvark.com
splorfle.com
webzerk.com

I’m open to suggestions for what I might be able to do with any/all of the above. :-)

Advice
I suppose that I was asking for Advice on what to do this post on, which is what I got!

Armadillos
Armadillos are cute. Especially baby ones. I think it’s the ears.

Attentive antelope assassins, and advanced aerobatics
I can just see a bunch of black-clad ninja antelopes, cartwheeling through a high-tech lair past the traditional mesh of laser trip-wires. Actually, EB has several books which feature either a set of super-intelligent time-travelling cows, or dinosaurs which fly spaceships. Perhaps ninja antelopes could be the Next Big Thing?

Awkward
Felt slightly awkward asking for help with this blog post. Does that count?

Ad-hoc solution
… which, as Martinoh said, is what this is. ’nuff said.

ADHD
Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. I’m fairly sure that I have a mild form of ADHD, without the H. P will be for Procrastination, I’m sure. Watch this spa… ooh, shiny things!

Annotated
I like annotating things*

Asynchronous
Hmm. Had to look this one up. Asynchronous. Not really sure I’m any the wiser, to be honest. I quite like the word Plesiochronous though, which is derived from the Greek plesio, meaning near, and chronos, time, and refers to the fact that plesiochronous systems run in a state where different parts of the system are almost, but not quite perfectly, synchronised.

It’s the ‘almost, but not quite’ bit that tickles me.

Addlepated
Had to look this one up too, though wikipedia let me down. According to thefreedictionary.com:

ad·dle·pat·ed
adj.
1. Befuddled; confused.
2. Eccentric; peculiar
3. Senseless; mad

10 bonus points if you can work it into a conversation today.

Agoraphobic
Fear of public places or open spaces. Not something I suffer from, thankfully. Though I do know a couple of people who do.

ATC (Artist Trading Card)
I only became aware of these recently – @callista posted a wonderful example on Twitter yesterday.

Apathy
yeah, whatever whatever.

Argyle
Assuming we’re talking about Argyll in Scotland, it’s a beautiful bit of the country. Various other uses exist though, the most familiar of which (to me, at least) is the argyle pattern of knitwear. I used to have several pairs of argyle socks, many years ago. See, don’t you feel better for knowing that?

Adams, Douglas
Famous for The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, naturally. Wikipedia seems to be a modern-day version of The Guide, which when coupled with a smartphone (or iPad, soon enough) will be virtually indistinguisable. Except The Guide in the TV series had cooler graphics. Which were all hand-drawn animation, I seem to recall.

My work desks over the years have, without exception, sported a jaunty yellow post-it note with the words Don’t Panic in large, friendly letters. And yes, I do know where my towel is.

I was looking for a suitable quote to go in here, then realised that you might as well just go and read the books. Certainly read H2G2, you could probably give the later ones a miss.

One quote which I did rather like is

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

And, on that note, we leave the letter A. Next up, B.

B is for…?

* like this**
** or this***
*** sometimes it gets silly. :-)