Let’s just clarify this a little.
Meredith is the #434 most common female first name
0.033% of females in the US are named Meredith.
Around 40425 US females are named Meredith!

Meridith is the #2776 most common female first name
0.002% of females in the US are named Meridith.
Around 2450 US females are named Meridith!

Merideth is the #3699 most common female first name
0.001% of females in the US are named Merideth.
Around 1225 US females are named Merideth!

That’s right, it’s the four hundred and thirty-fourth most common name. There are more than 40,000 American women with my name. Variants are exceedingly uncommon. So why does everybody get it wrong?! (Thanks to NameStatistics.com for the numbers.)

I’m writing this in a draft in Gmail because I can’t remember my WordPress password. The reason I can’t remember is I’m not on my normal computer operating system. raisinbottom emailed me today with questions about Ubuntu, and he mentioned Wubi, so I got all hyped up and spent the evening fighting with it. Again. My big problem, as usual, is the wireless stuff. When I mentioned to A what I was working on, she couldn’t believe it - I have installed and uninstalled Ubuntu at least four times now. I have a love/hate relationship with the damn thing. I was unable to get the wireless working, but I’m jacked straight into the network right now, so I can at least write this while in Ubuntu, save the draft, and go into Windows (where my passwords are all saved) and post it!

Anyway, today’s classes were pretty good. I enjoyed the project we did in Deaf Studies, and I was pleased to see another friend of mine is now in the class. A few other people joined too so it is now getting pretty crowded! More people came into my Linguistics class too, and it’s now huge, but we can’t get a bigger room so we are all jammed in tight in a semi-circle. It turns out one of the visiting students is emerge’s sister, I was tickled to find that out! I had some quibbles with some of the teacher’s opinions…I had asked about Gestuno, and then later I asked about Esperanto…and she tried to compare it back to Gestuno. In reality, Gestuno can be more accurately compared to Basic English, because Esperanto behaves very differently from either of those. She wouldn’t hear of it though - did I mention she’s excitable? Oh well.

I was corresponding with the creator of the Four Essential Travel Phrases website, and he suggested that I copy the old I Can Eat Glass information onto my site, just in case Archive.org takes it down. I doubt that will happen, but I figured it was a good idea to replicate the content so it can be modified and added to. I needed a method of data management, and I quickly came across PeanutKB. I wasn’t sure it would work out, so I tried TextPattern briefly - but that seemed very complex, so I went back to PeanutKB. I spent a few hours putting all of the old information into my site, so now there’s an I Can Eat Glass directory with all the old information. The only problem is that some characters didn’t render properly, so there are a few errors here and there. But it’s a fun nostalgia kick to remember the old I Can Eat Glass project…I may have to write to the original creator (he’s at MIT now, I think) and let him know what I’ve done with the idea. It would be good if I could do useful things at work, but I can’t really get into anything too intense because I keep having to get up to, like, work.

In the global economy we live with today, translation services are essential. Language123.com is a translation marketplace, where translators and interpreters can list their profiles, and clients can list jobs they have available. Proofreading services are also offered. The site doesn’t have all the world’s languages for translation, but it has a very good set with some interesting ones like Yoruba and Azerbaijani.

What caught my attention in particular was that “Sign Language” is one of the offered languages. It seems a bit odd that someone would seek such translation services in a traditionally text-based medium, but I can actually think of a really good use for this. Many deaf people do not feel confident in their command of English, and may seek proofreading help from native English speakers. I do this for some of my clients as part of my regular interpreting work, and I find it is easier to figure out what was intended because I know ASL grammar and construction. So I definitely see a place for “Sign Language” in an online translation marketplace; it’s really cool that Language123.com thought to add it!

Something I forgot to mention about this weekend is that at one point I had no fewer than six of my most favorite people all in front of me at once. I happen to have a lot of favorite people, but not all of them are local, so they don’t all usually come together like that. (Granted in this case most of them were locals, but it was still a good feeling.)

Also, the NGLTF dinner went amazingly well. At one point I asked fairerhiannon beforehand if she was nervous, because I was too, but I think we both did a great job. We’re pretty sure there were no deaf people in the audience, because the event wasn’t advertised as being interpreted, and it wasn’t filmed for posterity so we were just signing into the ether. I focused more on matching register than message, and I got really into it - then afterward, somebody came up and said I’d done a really good job, and wanted my business card! He turned out to be from the Washington Mystics, the local WNBA team…I’m not sure what he wanted me for but it will be interesting to see where that goes.

My friend Cricket has a website for a meme/project she started: it’s called Before I’m Gone. I am going to send in this list of ten things I’d like to do before I die. My list is focused on things that are actually achievable now rather than requiring new technology to be developed or for me to have skills I should have started learning as a child.
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My mom sent me a link to this article from my hometown newspaper, which is about the possibility of the school system adopting ASL as a foreign language. Currently there’s only one high school that offers a sign language class, and it’s only given as an elective credit. Here’s what I wrote to the editor, cc’d to the article’s author and the teacher mentioned in the article.
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The Speech Accent Archive is an absolutely fascinating collection from George Mason University. They have gathered 440 audio samples of persons from around the world reading a passage in English. Here is the passage:

Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.

You can listen to that read by everyone from an Afrikaans speaker from Pretoria to a Zulu speaker from Zimbabwe! Most languages have more than one sample; the English list is the longest with 113 different recordings. Most samples also include an IPA transcription.

I did notice a conspicuous omission from this project, though: deaf individuals reading the passage. I sent an e-mail to the comments address suggesting that they obtain samples from deaf Americans, including some who are native speakers of ASL and others whose native language is English. (They could theoretically expand beyond the United States with this, but to do so would risk duplicating the entire globe under that section, so keeping it to the U.S. seems reasonable.)

Added: He wrote back right away!

yes. an excellent idea. if you can sent us some good recordings, we
would be happy to post them.

So now I just need to find deaf people who are willing to record themselves reading that passage. Sure, that’s easy…anybody want to volunteer?

Last weekend, I went to Farpoint, a sci-fi/Trek convention. Monday night, I watched Trekkies, and was amused because I’d just been to the con. Tonight I noticed that Trekkies 2 was going to be on, and I’m watching it now. They just had a segment with people like Joanie Winston and Jacqueline Lichtenberg insisting that “Trekkie” is a put-down and that they are “Trekkers.” They also said that Trekkies are the ones who run down the aisle screaming at the stars at cons, the ones who go overboard. Yeah, well, y’know what? I’m a Trekkie. And it’s not because I go overboard - I don’t. I enjoy the shows, and I enjoy going to the cons for work (I couldn’t afford to go myself if I weren’t working), but I am not the type to dress up in a uniform or otherwise go over the top. I am a Trekkie because that was the original term (and Gene Roddenberry, before his death, said Trekkie was better than Trekker), because I’m old-school, because I don’t give things up easily. When I first heard the word Trekker I thought it sounded terribly pretentious, and I still do. Trekkie is more relaxed, more friendly, more personable. So I’m a Trekkie, and a Trekkie I’ll stay, even if it means I have to explain my reasoning to everybody who looks down on me for my word choice. But fuck ‘em, I can take it. I am what I am.

Also, I’m hoping to get my hands on a DVD of Trekkies 2 so I can go frame-by-frame through a couple of crowd shots. I was at Shore Leave when Denise Crosby was filming, and I’m curious to see if I made it into anything! It’s not completely impossible, because I do sit right up there onstage with the stars. I was also tickled to see Kett Kettering in the show, and I sent her an e-mail about her IMDb listing. Maybe if I am in a crowd shot I’ll suggest an IMDb credit for “Sign Language Interpreter” or something!

Added: Mariann wrote an entry in response to this one, and I did some more philosophical musing in her comment section.