Gifted Typist

Update: got the bling back Did an update on my WordPress yesterday, but I seem to have lost some of the bling in the sidebars. Most importantly, my blogroll. I’m working on this and will have everything restored ASAP

Another little book has reached its last page. I carry these leather-bound notebooks around everywhere to record mental ephemera of every description. My little book contains grocery lists, movie recommendations, phone numbers, notes taken from interesting radio documentaries, jokes told to me, music recommendations, books I should (but probably won’t) read, strange thoughts, profound thoughts [...]

I’ve been tagged by musicologist Beth of Atlanta for this 7-things-you-didn’t-know meme. I’m usually hesitant about revealing too much personal information. These 7 facts will explain why: 1. I had a stalker for 3 years. 2. He had a mental illness and became delusional about moi. 3. Two years ago, he came to my neighbourhood [...]

When this typist first met fellow bloggers Jacy and Tanya Espanya, a little voice whispered in her ear: “Are you nuts?” it said. “You’ve never met these people in person. They could be axe murderers.” That was back in June. As it turned out, the visit was wonderful. No axes appeared. The same was true [...]

After a couple of reports about weird pop-ups showing up on GT, we began an investigation in conjunction with host Zipium, the folks at Stopbadware.org and Google. Last night we discovered a file called an iframe on this site. An iframe isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It allows you to include another website in your [...]

… until GT hightails ‘er up to Toronto to see The Police live in concert on Thursday. Reviews have been great and a weekend in Toronto is always divine. And almost as exciting as The Police concert is the “Early Typewriters” exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). For any typist, this would be a [...]

If you stumbled  uponGT Sunday afternoon and evening, you probably saw some strange pages displaying. That was my Sundayus Horriblis. GT suffered a major shutdown. It happened during an attempt to upgrade the WordPress platform. Directions were followed to the word. Files were downloaded, uploaded, moved around and deleted. And then Boom! It was gone. [...]

Turns out that this typist is not alone in being irritated by the new CBC radio taglines. Even the CBC’s own insider blog is quoting listeners who are being driven to distraction by the following cutesy little tropes.  If you live in Nova Scotia you hear: CBC radio – Soooooooo Nova Scotia If you are [...]

Time was when a simple typist never had to worry about things like the Universal Serial Bus or USB. You just typed until the little bell went off and then you pulled the carriage return. Sure, you had to fuss with carbon paper and liquid ink, but at least you knew what you were dealing [...]

And why is my website getting spammed with MSN image searches for her. I’ve never heard of Kate Bosworth, but starting last night my Stat Counter starting spiking with image requests for Kate Bosworth. Hits are coming from all over the world but the majority are coming from Quebec. I’ve had over 150 since last [...]

A year ago, I wasn’t even sure what a blog was, much less how to go about doing one. So what better time to launch my own blog with this post. I don’t think it worked because blogs don’t lend themselves to recycled newspaper content or writing styles. But hey. What did I know? Over [...]

Last week the Gifted Typist asked if “hey” is the new “hi”. Today a Toronto newspaper published a piece on the very same subject. Hmmmmmm. The words are not the same, but it is curious that the piece should appear so soon after GT’s post. Shall we sue? Thanks to the etymological work, historical citations [...]

It turns out that we might have been fooling ourselves with the “hi” to “hey” controversy. We were discussing when the word “hey” became the new “hi” and wondering if this was a Friendsism creeping into the language. It was at this point that the intrepid Holly entered the discussion with a very productive search [...]

I’ve been meme tagged by Grammar Grrrl Beth from A Cup of Coffey to answer five random questions. 1. Who was your Tiger Beat crush? Do you still find him cute? Tiger Beat was a teen magazine of the ’70s read by mostly pre-teen girls. My crush was Tony DeFranco who used to sing Heartbeat, [...]

Thanks to GT readers Yam, Rowan of Cheddar and Deepti who discovered the bug in the new Flickr plugin I installed last night. They informed me that the plugin didn’t work in Explorer. I got in touch with the developer and within hours he had a workaround. And guess what? It works. Have a look [...]