Potato Salad by Zeamays (Originally uploaded to Wikipedia, here.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The incredible success of the potato salad Kickstarter is simply a modern example of performance art. Like the million dollar home page or the eBay-nanza of religious-icon toast before it, it won’t kill its medium (crowdfunding, web advertising, online auctions). No doom to say here, move along.

—jhunterj

Photo by TheAgency (CJStumpf) under CC BY-SA 3.0

This is the email I sent to the FCC commissioners at the end of April. I’ll rework it a bit to send to my senators and representatives. Feel free to use it as a basis for your own communications, and see this letter as well.

Dear FCC Commissioners:

As a paying consumer of Internet service, I am deeply concerned about the most recent announcements that would permit Internet Service Providers to charge a premium to content providers for improved handling of their data. I already pay a fee that is based on the hypothetical “maximum speed” of the data handling from my ISP to me. Even before this announcement, I routinely experience much lower speeds that I’m paying for. I expect this to get worse if the announced plan goes into effect.

It seems analogous to a protection racket. I’m already paying for Internet service, the content providers are already paying for Internet service, and now there’s a looming threat of “well, we won’t deliver the product you’re paying for at the contracted price; you have to pay extra or we’ll sideline your data”. The ability of Comcast to immediately boost Netflix traffic upon payment of this “protection money” indicates to me the kind of shenanigans that we can all expect from broader acceptance of this practice.

And it’s not just bad for the Internet service consumer. It’s bad for the economy overall: content consumers and providers are also part of that economic engine, and these practices will have the consequence (intended or unintended) or restricting market entry and innovation among content providers.

Please reaffirm your commitment to Net neutrality.

Sincerely,

J. Hunter Johnson

—jhunterj

By Mehran Moghtadaei (Own work) [GFDL, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Under the American style, however, next year is going to be the media bonanza: there will be a 3/14/15. Never mind that you should round that 5 to a 6; I’m willing to bet that the media coverage for 3/14/16 will not be as great. But then again, if you want to write it in this order, next year there will be a 3/14/15 9:26:53.58979… The prefect representation of pi!

As long as you use that calendar, clock, date notation, time notation, and sequence of date and time. The clock is based on an arbitrary division of the day into hours, the arbitrary hours into an arbitrary number of minutes, the arbitrary minutes into an arbitrary number of seconds, while the calendar is based on a “close-enough” alignment of Earth-rotations to Earth-revolutions, with a “best guess (at the time)” of the nativity of Christ.

Which is all well and good for most media coverage, but is there an option for selecting temporal units other than the arbitrary or Earth-centric seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years, and a 0-point (or “epoch”) other than a guess at the nativity? There is!

The metric system uses seconds (and so kiloseconds, megaseconds, teraseconds, and otherwise), but those are based on a particular definition of “second”, the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K. Since I don’t understand that, I won’t rely on it, and I wouldn’t expect the same selection to be made independently.

No, what we need are natural units, units whose definitions are based on universal constants. I think Planck time (t_P) would do admirably. It’s tiny, about 5.39106×10^−44 seconds. If a ZettaPlanck time (Zt_P) is a sextillion Planck times, 20 sextillion Zt_P would be just over a second. Without a change in our understanding of physics, there’s no such thing as a fraction of a Planck time. I don’t understand everything else around it, but it makes more sense than the definition of a second.

OK, so what about the selection of the start of our counting point? I think the Big Bang should serve here. It is estimated at 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years ago. So:

13,798,000,000 years × 31,556,952 seconds in the average Gregorian year ÷ 5.39106×10^−44 seconds per t_P puts us at about 8.0767571×10⁶⁰ t_P. So we’re waiting for 3.14159265358979…×10⁶¹ t_P to celebrate the next “Pi Planck Time” (Ï€t_P). That will happen around 39,872,000,000 AD (rounding off to five significant figures). The Big Bang is closer to us than that. Similarly, the last Ï€t_P was closer to the Big Bang than to us. It happened in 8,431,000,000 BC. Sigh. So I can see why the media will use the usual calendars and clocks instead.

—jhunterj

P.S. Any math or formula errors are mine. Please point them out in the comments.

Further Reading

Bang! The Complete History of the Universe , by Patrick Moore

Complexity and the Arrow of Time , by Charles H. Lineweaver

Pi: A Biography of the World’s Most Mysterious Number , by Alfred S. Posamentier

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal for December 26, 2013

First, I think it’s funny. I get the joke, and it’s a good one. SMBC is a great comic, and one that I read regularly through my RSS reader. That’s my disclaimer, since I’m about to pick nits, but they do not in any way make the comic unfunny or unworthy of your own subscription.

But: “nuclear” does not have only two syllables, even in the standard pronunciations. The IPA options are [ˈnu kli Éš], [ˈnju klɪ É™], or [ˈnu kjÉ™ lÉš] (see below). The two-syllable option I assume would be with the diphthong [ˈnu klɪɚ], as if it were “new clear”. To me, it sounds similar to the difference between “likelier” and “like Lear”.

The real dig of the comic, though, is at that third option, [ˈnu kjÉ™ lÉš], as if the word were spelled “nucular”, which is also a completely different word, the adjective form of “nucule”. Dictionary.com calls applying that pronunciation to “nuclear” an example of metathesis, the transposition of sounds, as when someone pronounces “ask” as if it were “ax”. Merriam-Webstar comes right out and labels it non-standard. Since the George W. Bush presidency, this non-standard pronunciation seems to have become even more vilified or ridiculed, since politics makes anything divisive more appealing, but there are other “non-standard” pronunciations that seem to be making gains toward acceptability.

Merriam-Webster, for example, also labels the pronuciation [ˈɔf tÉ™n] for “often” as non-standard, but I hardly ever hear “often” pronounced [ˈɔ fnÌ©] to rhyme with “soften”, no matter how educated the speaker or what accent they have. Amusingly, the “ax” pronunciation of “ask”, like the “acrosst” pronunciation of “across”, warrants only the label “dialect” or “chiefly dialect”, rather than “non-standard”.

Like the way the letters we use can affect the way we think about sounds (in the recent “Throwing in the Vowel” post), the pronunciations we use can affect the way we think about words. Check out Going Nucular: Language, Politics. and Culture in Confrontational Times for more about this (mis)pronunciation and other spins on words.

—jhunterj

Jungle Giant Weretyrannosaurus hybrid form, art by Dan Smith

Within the tribes of jungle giants, there are a few revered families whose members are blessed with the ability to transform into another rarely seen inhabitant of the expanse’s jungles: the tyrannosaurus! Such natural lycanthropes are not cast out from the tribe, since the jungle giants’ immunity to disease prevents the curse from spreading throughout the group.* Typical adventuring parties are safe from the curse as well, since it can only affect Huge, Gargantuan, or Colossal humanoids. In the warm forests of the Inner Sea region, that means afflicted weretyrannosauruses are limited to forest giants, great cyclopes, inverted giants, and storm giants.

Like other jungle giants, jungle giant weretyrannosauruses stand 17 feet tall and weigh 4,000 pounds, but they grow to 40 feet long and 14,000 pounds in hybrid form. The runic brands in their bark-like skin are still readily visible in the scaly hides of their hybrid form but disappear while in animal form.

Jungle giant weretyrannosaurus families are part of jungle giant tribes, and serve the same gender roles within the tribe; a female warrior of the family may even be her tribe’s matriarch. Male jungle giant weretyrannosauruses may assume animal form to serve as mounts for female jungle giant warriors (whether or not the female is also a weretyrannosaurus), but the females do not serve as mounts and the males rarely serve as mounts for male warriors.

* Lycanthropy’s status as a disease and a curse in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game makes calls like this tricky. I’m following the wisdom of a post on the Paizo forums, based on the efficacy of remove disease: lycanthropy is a disease until 3 days after you are first bitten, and then it becomes a curse.

Lycanthrope, Jungle Giant Weretyrannosaurus

This towering creature has a jungle giant’s body and the toothy head of a tyrannosaurus, with a pebbly texture on its bark-like hide.

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Archery Expert (Su)

A jungle giant weretyrannosaurus is proficient with all bows, and does not provoke an attack of opportunity when firing a bow in melee combat. Afflicted weretyrannosauruses do not gain this ability.

Change Shape (Su)

A weretyrannosaurus has three forms—a humanoid form, an animal form, and a hybrid form. Equipment does not meld with the new form between humanoid and hybrid form, but does between those forms and animal form. A natural weretyrannosaurus can shift to any of its three alternate forms as a move-equivalent action. An afflicted weretyrannosaurus can assume animal or hybrid form as a full-round action by making a DC 15 Constitution check, or humanoid form as a full-round action by making a DC 20 Constitution check. On nights when the full moon is visible, an afflicted weretyrannosaurus gains a +5 morale bonus to Constitution checks made to assume animal or hybrid form, but a −5 penalty to Constitution checks made to assume humanoid form. An afflicted weretyrannosaurus reverts to its humanoid form automatically with the next sunrise, or after 8 hours of rest, whichever comes first. A slain weretyrannosaurus reverts to its humanoid form, although it remains dead.

Curse of Lycanthropy (Su)

A natural weretyrannosaurus’ bite attack in animal or hybrid form infects a humanoid target with the lycanthropy curse (Fortitude DC 15 negates). If the victim’s size is not Huge or greater, this ability has no effect.

Lycanthropy

Type curse, injury; Save Fortitude DC 15 negates, Will DC 15 to avoid effects

Onset the next full moon; Frequency on the night of every full moon or whenever the target is injured.

Effect target transforms into a tyrannosaurus under the GM’s control until the next morning

Lycanthropic Empathy (Ex)

In any form, natural weretyrannosauruses can communicate and empathize with tyrannosauruses and megaraptors. They can use Diplomacy to alter such an animal’s attitude, and when so doing gain a +4 racial bonus on the check. Afflicted weretyrannosauruses only gain this ability in animal or hybrid form.

Powerful Bite (Ex)

A weretyrannosaurus applies twice its Strength modifier to bite damage in hybrid or animal form.

Spell Storing (Su)

Once per day as a immediate action, a jungle giant weretyrannosaurus can absorb a targeted or ranged touch spell used against it, negating the effects against it but not against any other targets. It can retain this stored power for up to 1 minute, during which time its tattoos glow with blue fire. If it damages a target with a successful hit using a melee or ranged weapon, it can cast the spell on the target as a free action, as if it were using a spell storing weapon. This spell uses the caster level and DC of the original caster. This discharges the stored spell. Afflicted weretyrannosauruses do not gain this ability.

Warding Tattoos (Su)

A jungle giant weretyrannosaurus’ magical tattoos grant it a +4 deflection bonus to Armor Class while in jungle giant or hybrid form. The giant loses this bonus if it wears armor. Afflicted weretyrannosauruses do not gain this ability.

ECOLOGY

Environment warm forests

Organization solitary, pair, pack (3–6), or part of a jungle giant tribe

Treasure NPC gear (masterwork composite longbow [+8 Str] with 40 arrows, other treasure)

—jhunterj

Compatibiliy & OGL

Compatibility with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game requires the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game from Paizo Publishing, LLC. See http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG for more information on the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Paizo Publishing, LLC does not guarantee compatibility, and does not endorse this product.

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A subjective diagram of relative mouth positioning for English/IPA vowels by Wikimedia Commons user Ordoon

If you’re a native English speaker, you probably learned in elementary school that there are five or six vowels: a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y. The letters that aren’t vowels are consonants. It’s a nice enough rule of thumb, and serves many purposes well.

But it’s not quite accurate.

First, there is a tiny set of words that would make this list “a, e, i, o, u, sometimes y, and very rarely w“. A cwm is a type of valley, and a crwth is a crowd, for example.

More importantly, though, there’s the problem that vowels are aural and letters are visual. In linguistics terms, the letters are graphemes while the vowels are phonemes (and possibly diphthongs and triphthongs, depending on which linguist is doing the labeling). There’s another -eme to complete the language triumvirate: graphemes are units of a language’s written representation, phonemes are units of a language’s spoken representation, and sememes are the units of a language’s meaning. English graphemes include letters, numbers, and punctuation. Phonemes are where you’ll find the vowels and consonants.

We try to line up the graphemes with the phonemes, but it’s a messy network of mappings once you get through all of English’s oddities, like the consonant sounds at the beginning of one, ewe, or union, or the vowel sounds in myth and cwm, or the derivation of ghoti. The network got a good shakeup during the Great Vowel Shift.

So instead, linguists created a new alphabet of graphemes that has a one-to-one mapping with the phonemes. It’s called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). American English’s vowel sounds are

• [i] (long e) as in seat
• [ɪ] (short i) as in sit
• [eɪ] (diphthong, long a) as in sate
• [É›] (short e) as in set
• [æ] (short a) as in sat
• [É‘] (short o) as in sot
• [o] (long o, also part of the diphthong [oÊŠ]) as in so
• [u] (long u) as in suit
• [ÊŠ] as in soot
• [ÊŒ] (short u) as in shut
• [aɪ] (diphthong, long i) as in site
• [aÊŠ] (diphthong) as in shout
• [ɔɪ] (diphthong) as in soy
• [É™] (schwa) as in the middle of separate, if you say it with three syllables
• [ɹ̩] (syllabic consonant) or [É?] (rhotic vowel) as in shirt
• [lÌ©] (syllabic consonant) as in subtle

or something close to that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bCM9RnDBZw

So keep all this in mind when people tell you that English is one of the hardest languages to learn.

—jhunterj

But back in October, these were my contributions:

• Run Tro Lola Run

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4m4lnjxkY

• The Matrix Multiplication
• The Knights Inn of the Sixth Happiness
• The China Beach Syndrome
• National Lampoon’s Velvet
• You’ve Got Plate Mail
• The Thin Red Zip Line
• What About Bob Dole?
• Wing Dings Commander
• The Seven Year Jock Itch
• Afterbirth of a Nation
• Grease 2

That last dig was not the only one in the mem; sequels are easy targets in this game. And my favorite from my own:

• The Fall Fashions of the House of Usher

—jhunterj

—jhunterj

Image of Privateer Press’ storm troll, from Handcannononline.

Male Troll Humanoid 6 / Druid 3 / Storm Kindler 4

NE Large humanoid (giant)

Init +3; Senses: Darkvision (60 ft.), Low-Light, Perception +7, Scent

AC 24, touch 13, flat-footed 21 (-1 size, +3 Dex, +6 natural, +1 deflection, +5 Studded Leather +2 (Large), +1 Ring of Protection)

hp 127 13d8+65, Regeneration 5 (acid or fire)

Fort +18, Ref +10, Will +15 (+2 Competence bonus against spells and effects with the air or water descriptors)

Defensive Abilities: Aura of Calm, Oceanic Spirit

Resistances: Oceanic Spirit

Speed 30 ft.; swim 60 ft.; fly 30 ft. (in whirlwind form)

Melee bite +15 (1d8+7/19-20)

Melee claw +15/+15 (1d6+7)

Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.

Special Attacks: Rend (1 claw, 1d6+7 plus 2 Con damage), Storm Burst (6/day)

Str 21, Dex 16, Con 21, Int 8, Wis 16, Cha 10

Base Atk +9; CMB +15; CMD 29

Feats: Armor Proficiency, Light, Armor Proficiency, Medium, Combat Reflexes, Improved Critical (Bite), Improved Natural Armor, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Rending Fury, Shield Proficiency, Storm-Lashed

Skills: Acrobatics +3, Climb +10, Craft (Ships) +3, Escape Artist +3, Fly +11, Heal +3, Intimidate +4, Knowledge (Geography) +4, Knowledge (History) +8, Knowledge (Nature) +10, Knowledge (Religion) +3, Perception +7, Profession (Sailor) +10, Ride +3, Sense Motive +3, Survival +9, Swim +15

Languages: Druidic, Giant, Polyglot

Archetypes: Storm Druid

Special Qualities: Darkvision, Low-Light Vision, Nature Bond, Nature Sense, Orisons, Regeneration 5 (acid or fire), Scent, Spontaneous Domain Casting, Storm Shape, Stormvoice, Wave Breaker, Wild Empathy +3, Windwalker

Special Abilities: Electricity resistance 5, Sonic resistance 5

Possessions studded leather +2 (large); ring of protection +1; cloak of resistance +1; amulet of mighty fists +2; feather token, anchor; unholy symbol (silver); pirate clothes (basic/large); spell component pouch; powdered metal and rare inks (100 gp value); 20 gp; 10 pp

Deity: Urxehl Domains: Storms Subdomain (Domain Spells: Obscuring Mist, Fog Cloud, Call Lightning)

Prepared Spells:

Druid: Spells per Day: (4/4/4/3 DC:14+spell level)

0th - Flare, Guidance, Know Direction, Spark

1st - Alter Winds, Bristle, Ray of Sickening, Summon Nature’s Ally I

2nd - Eagle Eye, Frigid Touch, Slipstream, Warp Wood

3rd - Create Treasure Map, Hydraulic Torrent, Poison

Aura of Calm (Su) Allies within 5 feet (including yourself) are treated as one size category larger for the purpose of wind effects (this stacks with the bonus from Storm-Lashed), and they gain a +2 competence bonus on all saving throws made to resist spells and effects with the air or water descriptors.

Darkvision (Ex) Range 60; Darkvision is the extraordinary ability to see with no light source at all.

Low-Light Vision (Ex) You can see 2x as far as humans in low illumination.

Nature Bond (Ex) You may not choose an animal companion. You must choose the Air or Weather domain, or the Cloud, Storms, or Wind subdomain.

Nature Sense (Ex) +2 bonus on Knowledge (Nature) and Survival skill checks.

Oceanic Spirit (Su) +4 bonus on Fly and Swim checks, and never needs to make concentration checks because of natural weather. She gains resistance to electricity 5 and sonic 5.

Orisons You can prepare a number of orisons, or 0-level spells. These spells are cast like any other spells, but they are not expended when used and may be used again.

Regeneration (Ex) You are difficult to kill. You heal damage at 5 points per round, as with fast healing, but you cannot die as long as your regeneration is still functioning (although you still fall unconscious when their hit points are below 0). Acid or fire causes your regeneration to stop functioning on the round following the attack. During this round, you cannot heal any damage and can die normally. Attack forms that don’t deal hit point damage are not healed by regeneration. Regeneration also does not restore hit points lost from starvation, thirst, or suffocation. You can regrow lost portions of you body and can reattach severed limbs or body parts if they are brought together within 1 hour of severing. Severed parts that are not reattached wither and die normally.

Rend (with Rending Fury) (Ex) If you hit with one or more natural attacks in 1 round, you can cause tremendous damage (1d6+7) by latching onto the opponent’s body and tearing flesh. This attack deals an additional amount of damage, but no more than once per round.

Scent (Ex) You can detect opponents within 30 feet by sense of smell. If the opponent is upwind, the range increases to 60 feet; if downwind, it drops to 15 feet. Strong scents, such as smoke or rotting garbage, can be detected at twice the ranges noted above. Overpowering scents, such as skunk musk or troglodyte stench, can be detected at triple normal range. When you detect a scent, the exact location of the source is not revealed–only its presence somewhere within range. You can take a move action to note the direction of the scent. When you are within 5 feet of the source, you pinpoint the source’s location. You can follow tracks by smell, making a Wisdom (or Survival) check to find or follow a track. The typical DC for a fresh trail is 10 (no matter what kind of surface holds the scent). This DC increases or decreases depending on how strong the quarry’s odor is, the number of creatures, and the age of the trail. For each hour that the trail is cold, the DC increases by 2. The ability otherwise follows the rules for the Survival skill. When tracking by scent you ignore the effects of surface conditions and poor visibility.

Spontaneous Domain Casting You can “lose” a prepared spell in order to cast any domain spell of the same level or lower.

Storm Burst (Sp) As a standard action, you can create a storm burst targeting any foe within 30 feet as a ranged touch attack. The storm burst deals 1d6+1 points of nonlethal damage. In addition, the target is buffeted by winds and rain, causing it to take a -2 penalty on attack rolls for 1 round. You can use this ability 6 times per day

Storm Shape (Su) As a standard action, you can transform yourself into a whirlwind (as whirlwind universal monster ability) for 4 minutes per day. This time need not be consecutive, but must be spent in 1-minute increments. As a swift action, you can change the height of your whirlwind form from a minimum of 10 feet tall to a maximum of 30 feet tall. If you are underwater when you use this ability, you instead transforms into a vortex of the same size (this functions identically to the whirlwind ability, but can form only underwater and can’t leave the water). You can breathe water while in vortex form. If you do not possess a fly or swim speed, you gain one (as appropriate to the new form) of 30 when in storm shape. With a fly speed, you have average maneuverability. You can damage and trap Medium or smaller creatures caught in the whirlwind, dealing lethal damage equal to your unarmed strike damage to each one that fails a Reflex save (DC 19) and lifting it into the air if it fails a second Reflex save.

Stormvoice (Ex) Your voice can magically carry over howling winds and peals of thunder. Whenever a Perception check is needed to hear your voice, the DC is reduced by 3.

Wave Breaker (Su) You gain a swim speed equal to 60. You may breathe water for 4 hours per day. This time need not be consecutive, but must be spent in 1-hour increments.

Wild Empathy (Ex) You can improve the attitude of an animal. This abilty functions just like Diplomacy check made to improve the attitude of a person. You roll 1d20+3 to determine the Wild Empathy check result. The typical domestic animal has a starting attitude of indifferent, while wild animals are usually unfriendly. To use Wild Empathy, you and the animal must be within 30 feet of one another under normal circumstances. Generally, influencing an animal in this way takes 1 minute, but as with influencing people, it might take more or less time. You can use this ability to influence a magical beast with an Intelligence score of 1 or 2, but you take a -4 penalty on the check.

Windwalker (Ex) The penalties from natural or magical wind effects (see page 439 of the Core Rulebook) are treated as one step less severe for you.

Compatibiliy & OGL

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Keys to the Kingdom by Joel Bennet (jaykul on Flickr), released under BY-NC-SA

Some quick rules of thumb for those of you with a website and a website admin (someone you contact when you need something changed or updated on the site), based on my attempts to do some things with those websites:

Is it your domain name, or the website admin’s? This is the realm of the web registrars. When you want a domain name (like my own jhunterj.com, or like amazon.com or whitehouse.gov), a registrar has to get involved. The registrars provide the service that enables the domain owners (registrants) to specify where browsers should go when those names are typed in or clicked on. The registrant has a name & password on the registrar site. If you have those, it’s your domain name. If your web admin has them, it’s their domain name, and you may be renting its use. If you ever want to change web admins, you’ll need that name and password, or you’ll need a new domain name.

Is it your website, or the website admin’s? This is the realm of web hosting providers. You might have the same company providing both registrar services and hosting services, but you don’t have to. The web host is where the files for the content of your web site are stored. These files determine what gets sent to the web browsers when your domain name is typed in or clicked on. The web host customer has a name & password on the web host site. If you have those, it’s your website. If your web admin has them, it’s their website, and you may be renting its use. If you ever want to change web admins, you’ll need that name and password, or you’ll need to build or rebuild your website.

There is nothing wrong with renting a domain name or website, any more than there’s anything wrong with renting office space or fleet vehicles. You do need to know what your business arrangement is, and what your options are as your business needs change. Often, the small business owners I’ve talked to didn’t fully understand their web presence arrangements or know how to make changes.

You might have two domain names pointing to the same website. You might have a single domain name with subdomains, and the subdomains might point to different web hosts. All kinds of complicated mix-n-matching is possible, as long as you have the keys.

So those are the two big things, the two keys to your web kingdom. One more important piece of modern web content is your content management system (CMS). Rather than contacting your web admin, web developer, or other such technical resource, there are several very friendly CMSes out there that can make putting up new content easy even for non-technical users. WordPress is the dominant one (and the one I use), and there are Joomla and Drupal too. The content managed by these CMSes might be blog articles, “static” web pages, galleries, “under construction” placeholders, or anything else. There’s nothing inherently different about a blog website from any other website or about a blog article from any other web page except in the expectations of the speaker and reader—from the perspective of the Internet tubes connecting them, they’re exactly the same. So you don’t need a separate domain for your blog, and your blog articles can be stored on the same web host as your static web pages. Of course, you can divide up your web presences and pages among multiple domain names and hosts as desired.

Taking questions in the comments! Or see WordPress for Beginners for more on that CMS.

—jhunterj

An example XO Box

If I were going to name that kind of thing, I might call it an “XO Box”, since that’s also a five-letter palindrome and the thing itself ends up in a box shape.

Hypothetically, that is. But enough theory; I think I’ll go write this blog post about it right now, and call it an “XO Box” for reals! I’d love to see some more examples (or 4×4s or 6×6s or …), in the comments or linked back.

—jhunterj