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Cassinus & Peter … My laptop smells like a cellar … „fristgerecht“ 31st of May, 2006 ANTE·MERIDIEM 09:20

Two College Sophs of Cambridge Growth,
Both special Wits, and Lovers both,
Conferring as they us'd to meet,
On Love and Books in Rapture sweet;
(Muse, find me Names to fix my Metre,
Cassinus this, and t'other Peter)
I like that turn of phrase; I must look into more of Jonathan Swift and his contemporaries, once I’ve run through that stack of unread books on my desk. I suspect ours is the last or next-to-last generation that can read that sort of thing from him in the same comfortable way his generation read Shakespeare; indeed, I only recognise “Sophs” because I went to TCD, which maintains much of the same specialised academic vocabulary as do Oxford and Cambridge—which specialised academic vocabulary was proportionally much better known among the English-language reading public three hundred years ago than it is today.

Yesterday ended badly; was typing something unrelated into this entry, knocked over my glass of wine, emptied half of it into my laptop’s keyboard. One night spent over a radiator and it’s doing not so bad as you might worry about—a couple of hours ago the l key worked one time in three when I used my thumb and pressed hard, so I went and changed my passwords to not use the letter. Now, it works, and interestingly the 27-character passphrase I use for my passwords file never had it, to my mild surprise.

Anyway. I’m off now to give notice at my current place of employment, and to let this machine dry out some more.

Word of the day: „fristgerecht“ is a German adjective meaning “within the specified time.” Happily, I’m still in my trial period here, so I only need two weeks before I can more on to better things.

From Sheila on the 31st of May at 15:01

Once I spilled beer in my keyboard and bought some spray at Radio Shack to clear it out. Good luck with your laptop!
From Sheila on the 31st of May at 15:06

(and I don’t have cohorts who use soph, nor do I, but I am not discomfited by it. but perhaps I use the wrong words to gather the meaning—sophists, sophomores.)
From Aidan Kehoe on the 31st of May at 16:19

Ah, of course, you folks use “sophomore.” I had forgotten about that word. And, wow, sophister, the word Trinity uses, has died out in formal use in Cambridge.
From michael on the 31st of May at 23:47

I believe that Jonathan Swift went to Trinity. He certainly went to my old school which was originally founded as a finishing school for students before they went on to study in Trinity.

Actually, wikipedia says he went to Trinity as well :)

Anyway, we read Gullivers Travels in Transition Year, the full 4 volume version not the abridged childrens versions/tv dramas most people are familiar with. It’s well worth reading. In fact next time I’m down in my parents I must dig out my old copy.
From Aidan Kehoe on the 1st of June at 9:03

I read an ancient copy of the full thing at twelve or thirteen; I’m sure I missed lots of the subtleties, but one thing I did pick up was the habit of writing in fourteen- or twenty-line paragraphs, which annoyed my teacher of the time. Heheh.

¡TCD represent!, or however it is that you punctuate it :-) .

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