As soon as I started to pay attention, I noticed that contrary to what I naively believed, our language (or languages) don’t have words for each and every idea and concept that can come to our mind when thinking and communicating. There is constant need for new words, sometimes утолять by inventing them – "blog" is one example; more often these "new words" are made out of old ones, nailed into a new combination. These constellations of words seem transparent, as their meaning can be, at least partially, derived from composing words. They have a hidden side, however. Usually these multi-world constructions originate in communities of speakers and designate specific ideas or events (ideas are events, if they are born before your eyes). This part an outsider will miss. The "Rorschach insult" term, coined by Jim Yingst during a heated discussion in Meaningless Drivel, can serve as an example. I am unaware of any widely understood term that would mean "an insult that could be read differently and target different participants of the conversation".

The Head First gang is at it again, this time they're working on Head First Design Meditations, a creative design card deck for the software world -- created to be used as a brainstorming and inspiration tool, the card deck will contain small bits of software design wisdom, insights, idioms, inspiring quotes and perhaps even a chuckle or two. But, they can only build this deck with YOUR help and they are calling for submissions to be included in the deck. Visit the Creating Passionate Users web site for more details and to add your favorite design inspiration to the deck! Everyone who submits an on-topic entry will be entered in a drawing for winning a deck of Head First Design Meditations.

Eric Freeman

There is a popular question: if you were allowed to take three books with you on a deserted island, what books these would be?

I recently moved from Portland to San Francisco, and I had an opportunity to play this minimalist game with one modification: I could decide how many books I would take.

Here is the list, in no particular order.

A strange juxtaposition of ideas today...

I wonder if weblogs are making our reading and writing habits temporal and 'always unfinished' (to twist the term 'always on')? Having written an article for Digital Web Magazine (and I must get around to writing another one), I can confirm it takes at least a couple of weeks to 'craft'. Whereas with my weblog, although generally I write carefully crafted long-form posts, it's still of-the-moment and a lot of times it's an ongoing theme I'm exploring (ie it's not "finished").

Richard MacManus.Weblog Reading And Writing: Always Unfinished?
Via Mathemagenic.

James P. Carse. Finite and Infinite Games:

There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite.

A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

From Amazon's description of the book:

Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life, the games we play in business and politics, in the bedroom and on the battlefied -- games with winners and losers, a beginning and an end. Infinite games are more mysterious -- and ultimately more rewarding. They are unscripted and unpredictable; they are the source of true freedom.

This could be one reason why I am reading more and more blogs these days, and less and less books. Blogs are an infinite game. :-)

There are many ways to express this idea, but I liked Alistair Cockburn's best,

When we live through an experience, we parse it, to use the linguistic term. We chop the experience into separate, meaningful chunks that we store for later retrieval. The human mind does this whether we want it to or not.

There are many, and many different, patterns we can use to chop experience into pieces. Each pattern produces a unique perception of the experience.

Alistair Cockburn. "Agile Software Development"

In Keeping users engaged... Kathy talks about how to get people excited about your product. This reminded me about Ulu knife I found browsing Amazon's Kitchen supplies category (out of curiousity what do they have there). This certainly was an aesthetically pleasant discovery. I've never thought that a boring kitchen knife can look like this, and if to trust the product description, it is superb in its main mission: to cut.

The American Dialect Society announced "Word of the Year" in various categories. In the "Most Creative" category the winner is:

Pajamahadeen, n., bloggers who challenge and fact-check traditional media.

Via Language Log

Last years when visiting art galleries, I always find the oldest artifact most interesting. Even Greek and Roman art is already too... artificial. The latest art got bogged down in styles, beauty, details etc. In "primitive" pictures and sculptures you see the world without protective (and distorting) lenses of culture - how our ancient ancestors saw it. Can be scaring.

If you translate into a foreign language, your style will be non-native. If you translate into your own language, you'll miss the point of the original... You can't win.

Danilo Nogueira
Sorry Guys, You Can't Win.

Warning: if you are a Bush supporter, you probably won't like it.

I came across an interview with a French writer Frédéric Beigbeder. The original text is in Russian, here is my translation:

I was born in n Neuilly-sur-Seine, in a well-to-do family -- I was lucky. Usually a writer writes to obtain. But when you receive too much from your birth, you write to lose. I lose something with each of my books. "Holidays in a coma" -- 10 years of night clubbing, "Love lasts three years" -- my former wife, "99 francs" -- 10 years in advertising business. I am for the literature of burnt out ground. So that behind your back are burning ruins. This is a kind of a mental striptease.

There is something in this confession I can relate to... Definitely, with losts comes freedom, and life becomes interesting... Interesting, that Ihath called her blog "losing myself", and a lot of her entries (Losing Sanity, Losing Credibility, How I lost my religion in the holy lands...) are about "losing" - but only on a superficial level. They are all about gaining something more important on a deeper level.