Fun Size Bytes

So I’ve noticed something of a trend lately:

frageelay replied to your post: What did you accomplish in your morning meeting?

I made it to number 4 and took a nap because this overwhelms my brain.

mrsbadcrumble replied to your post: What did you accomplish in your morning meeting?

It actually HURTS MY BRAIN when you post like this.

abundanceofcaution replied to your post: SoundOfTheBeep Update 2012-09-10 

I don’t know what the heck you’re talking about but I love you anyway.

beefranck replied to your post: SoundOfTheBeep Update 2012-09-10 

Pillows are soft.

lindstifa replied to your post: Tumblr’s API, Lies, and SoundOfTheBeep’s return

I have 3 questions. 1) How big of a nerd are you? 2) Do I really have to read this? 3) Do I have to do anything or will it just reappear? 4) You don’t have to answer 1-2 because DUH.

rartastic replied to your post: Tumblr’s API, Lies, and SoundOfTheBeep’s return

TOO NERDY; DIDN’T READ

beefranck replied to your post: SoundOfTheBeep Update

I had jello today.

steelopus replied to your post: Tumblr’s API, Lies, and SoundOfTheBeep’s return

unicode.org defines the character “U + 1F615” as “CONFUSED FACE” as shown here: 😕

This is, of course, different than 1F616 “CONFOUNDED FACE” 😖

Anyway I didn’t go back and check (nor did I write a shell script to go back and check for me), but there seems like a definite “uptick” in me being… well, let’s go with “technical” (OK FINE, “NERDY” WHATEVER). Either that or my friends are just being more honest about it.

In any case, whenever I find myself worried that I might be losing the “Normals” I’ll try to add a little “Note For The Non-Nerdy” (or perhaps I should say “Differently Nerdy” because, let’s be honest, most of have something that we’re nerdy about, whether that’s cheese, or the finer points of “stitching vs sewing”, or what-have-you).

These “N4TNN” (which is how they will, no doubt, come to be colloquially referred to) are not meant to be condescending, but rather they are meant as translations, much the same way that someone who speaks French might make an aside to explain something to someone who doesn’t speak French, or who speaks only a little French.

The question, of course, is “How much explanation is enough?”

Let’s take this post that I wrote (but did not post) earlier:

I just tried to type “VHS” but “VH” is in TextExpander for “VanHœt” so I ended up with “VanHœtS”.

That sentences makes perfect sense to me but I suspect that it might not make sense to anyone who is fortunate enough to not inhabit my brain.

OK, let’s try again:

I just tried to type “VHS” but I forgot that “VH” is my TextExpander shortcut for “VanHœt” so I ended up with “VanHœtS”.

Now if you don’t know what TextExpander is, you could go to the page and find out. The word ‘shortcut’ might also explain it a little, given the context. But it still seems a little opaque.

What if you don’t know what “VanHœt” means? Google won’t really help (I just checked).

I “solved” the problem about TextExpander being obscure to non-nerds by putting a link in, and while I could put a link there:

I just tried to type “VHS” but I forgot that “VH” is my TextExpander shortcut for “VanHœt” so I ended up with “VanHœtS”.

but then it might seem like “VH” gives me a link to VanHœt when all it really does it type the word VanHœt.

So here’s the translated version.

I just tried to type “VHS” but I forgot that “VH” is my TextExpander shortcut for “VanHœt” [😕] so I ended up with “VanHœtS”.

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😕 Translation For The Non-Nerds: whenever I type an uppercase “V” followed by an uppercase “H”, TextExpander “expanded” it to “VanHœt”. These are sometimes referred to as “macros”. They are useful when you want to be able to type something but either: a) always spell it wrong or b) don’t want to type it out every time. For example, if I type “!add” (without the “) I get my full mailing address. I have a whole bunch for words which I often want to spell one way but which are actually spelled another way.

If you aren’t familiar Karl Van Hœt, let me introduce you:

Karl is a caricature of the fault-finding “neck-bearded” nerd. He is often invoked by Merlin on Back to Work to preemptively rebuff extremely literal criticism of minutia, particularly when the technicalities of a point or example may be inaccurate or imprecise – thus likely to receive critical feedback – but where the essence of the point would be unchanged by the clarification.

Merlin portrays Karl as a thick-tongued heavy breather with a deep voice who begins most of his sentences with “So…” followed by a correction or elaborate explication of a point. Where Karl appears in YLNT he is portrayed as extremely overweight.

~TL;DR~

When you see 😕 :

• Non Nerds “OK this is for me because TJ is apparently off his meds again.”

• Nerds “OK I can skip the rest of this because I knew what he was talking about.”

p.s. - So… turns out that I just realized “VanHœt” should have been “Van Hœt”. I will hang my head in nerd shame now.