Fantasist's Scroll

Well, it seems my antiquated Perl code is just a little too much for my new webhost’s servers to handle.

My web implementation of the Zompist Sound Change Applier almost killed their server this past weekend.  It uses a CPAN library that someone created, based on the Zompist code, and it’s getting a little “long in the tooth”, as Perl libraries go, so I suspect that has something to do with it.  So, in any case, the end result is that I had to take it off-line.  And, I don’t think it will ever be back.  I suppose, if I can find a way to port it to PHP, which is doubtful, it might make a return.  But, honestly, I wouldn’t count on it.

What I will do, in the next week or so, is post my code here, slightly cleaned, for you all to use and enjoy.  I won’t have time to support it, but I will make it available to anyone who wants to use it.  Also, if I can find it, I’ll make available the original Perl code that is NOT designed to run on the web, but on a local machine.  That way, if there’s some brave soul who’s willing to take that code and make it available to run from their website, they won’t have to do too much work to get a minimally functional system.
So, watch this space for forthcoming code!

Well, just weeks after announcing that all my conlang language machines are back on-line, I’ve had to take one down.  My Dialect Maker seems to be a CPU hog on the server.  Also, in spite of coding it so that it should only run one instance at a time, it somehow got two loaded on my ISP’s server.

So, I’ve tweaked the code an I’m waiting for my ISP to approve it before I load it up.  But, I have to tell you, if the sound changer is the only thing that has problems, I may just let it go.  It uses an old library for Perl that’s probably out of date.  Then, I hope, it would be easier to convert everything else to a PHP script/page/whatever and not have to rely on Perl.  I love using Perl, but it can be a resource hog.

Anyway, stay tuned for more news.

No, that title’s not a mistake, it’s an homage.
Today is the birthday of novelist Vladimir Nabokov. Though he was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on this day in 1899 Nabokov and his family had to flee Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. He sailed to America with his family in 1940, arriving in New York City poor and almost completely unknown. He struggled to support his family with a series of jobs teaching at New England colleges. Then, in the summer of 1951, he and his wife drove to Colorado in their Oldsmobile station wagon and he began to work on his most infamous novel, Lolita.

The novel was hugely controversial, but the controversy helped the novel become a big best-seller. Nabokov was finally able to quit teaching and move with his wife to a hotel in Switzerland where he continued writing.

Today is the birthday of Alfred M. Butts, the man who invented the game Scrabble.

Butts was born on this day in 1899, in Poughkeepsie, New York. He trademarked the game in 1949, but his game didn’t sell very well. Only a few thousand copies of the game were sold, until 1950s when the president of Macy’s played the game on vacation and got hooked. He ordered more for his store, and Scrabble became a great success.
Scrabble has been a favorite of many writers, including the novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who had a special Russian version made for himself and his wife.

For those few, brave souls that still read this blog, be of good cheer, for you will be the first to know that my infamous conlang scripts are reactivated.  Yes, that’s right, all those good, tasty scripts for generating languages on the fly are active once again.

My webhost has changed hands several times and the most current owner of my web account has done an update on the servers, so, we’ve tried reactivating the devilish conlang scripts that seemed to cause so many before them trouble.  No idea how long, or if, they’ll stay up and running, but, for the moment, they are.
Use them in good health!

Today is William Gibson’s Birthday!

For those of you who have been hiding under a rock for the past twenty years, or have been freshly cloned, William Gibson is the primary progenitor of the cyberpunk movement. He’s generally credited with coining the term “cyberspace” and popularizing a somewhat more realistic, if somewhat bleak, view of the future.
He also ran away to Canada in 1968 to avoid the draft. Which is the only bad thing I can say about him. I otherwise admire his work and thought processes. Certainly his literature is beyond compare. I admire his work very much and occasionally will reread some of his short stories, just to capture the feel of his prose.

Anyway, celebrate his birthday with a little science-fiction in thanks for what he’s done for the genre.

Today is the birthday of novelist and critic Anthony Burgess

He was born John Anthony Burgess Wilson in Manchester, England on this day in 1917. Though he had written several novels early in his career, none of them were particularly successful. His career took a different tur, however, when, in 1959, he began to suffer from severe headaches and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The doctor told him he only had one year to live. The diagnosis turned out to be incorrect. However, Burgess wrote five novels in that following year, the year he believed to be his last.

Though he wrote and edited a large body of work, including a fair selection of non-fiction, he’s best known for his novel A Clockwork Orange, which is perhaps most famous for the slang language he invented specifically for that work, called Nadsat.

Today is the birthday of Kurt Cobain.

The singer-songwriter who essentially founded the “grunge” music movement, was born in Hoquiam, Washington on this day in 1967. He started from humble beginings, working a job as a school janitor, but he started playing in local rock bands. He spent most of this time living at various friends’ houses and on the street, even occasionally sleeping under a bridge. In 1989, he and his bandmates saved up six hundred dollars to record their first album, Bleach, under the name Nirvana. The boys signed to a major label in 1991 for their next album, Nevermind, and Cobain was shocked when it sold more than 10 million copies.

He became internationally famous almost overnight, but Cobain hated being famous. He developed a heroin addiction that got worse and worse, and on April 5th of 1994 he committed suicide at his home in Seattle.