Category Archives: On the Web

Words from wayback

The kind soul over at Tech Ramblings from the Rare Book Trade turned me on to World Wide Words.org.

This is a fascintaing site! It’s chock-full of tidbits and nuggets about word history and development. Lots of fun facts to memorize, just in time for the holiday party season! Maybe my wife won’t be too embarassed when I share that “January 5th was referred to as Old Christmas Day, back when the world was settling on a calendar”. That’s a nugget I picked up from this exhaustive article.

It’s as much fun as reading Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue.

Good stuff!

Birminghamsters… unite!

A local good soul has started a Birmingham, Alabama group over on LibraryThing. The potential is great. You should click over and check it out. I’ve already learned some local lore, just by clicking through to the B’ham based books list over on the BhamWiki.

The Wiki has lots of cool stuff. If you’re not careful you’ll loose an hour (or two) just clicking through all the uber-infomative related goodness.

Namath Naysayers

We talked about Joe Namath coming to town to sign books.

Well, one local blogger has the inside scoop on what Mr. Namath is like behind the scenes.

I can imagine famous people get tired of “having” to do “famous people stuff” and slum with all of us commoners. But there is no need to be a butt about it, ya know? I mean if you are so busy that you can’t sign a few extra books for fans who stood in line forever, then you really shouldn’t bother. Just ruins the whole thing.

Maybe it’s cause he’s not a real writer. He’s an athlete. So maybe that’s why his booksigning didn’t crank his tractor. I dunno.