Dev Doc Typos v2

Previously on this blog I mentioned a typo I found in the Apple SDK Docs relating to iPhone development.

Today I found this typo in the Twitter API documentation:

The image update methods require multipart form data. They do not accept a URL to an image not do they accept the raw image bytes.

Like the last one its one of those “the spellchecker won’t catch it” typos, and its inconsequential, but it furthers my theory that developer documentation rarely gets the attention that say, marketing copy might receive.

–

Today is tax day. I filed my taxes early this year.  This is the first time in 4 years my taxes got in on time (anyone see the pattern?).

–

In 1888 Mark Twain wrote:

The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter–it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

Which brings me to wood pussy.

During a scrabble game recently, this word highlighted at the top of the page of my Merriam-Webster’s hardcover dictionary was noticed, with much amusement, obviously.  It’s a noun, go ahead, go look it up.

–

Finally, one last note on language.  Do you know the word peripatetic?

It can mean Aristotelian or to describe something that wanders about (both are related, by the way).  I first learned this word this year when reading Snowball, the biography of Warren Buffet.

The author liked to show off her vocabulary, often in ways that made one wonder if she was writing the book with a thesaurus nearby–to increase character count.  I can’t say if she used peripatetic correctly, but she did use some other words in places where simpler words would have fit better.

Snowball is still a good book and you should read it, but after I looked up peripatetic, I never thought I would ever hear or read the word again.

But I was wrong.

I watched the moral drama that is the play turned movie, Doubt recently.  It is fantastic and the acting by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams is really superb, complementing the writing by John Patrick Shanley.

It joins Glengarry Glen Ross in my list of excellent movie adaptations of plays.

In the movie, Meryl Streep says:

“The wind is so peripatetic this year. Is that the word I want?”

I had to rewind the movie to replay the line, and sure enough there it was.

So go rent Doubt, and keep your vocab fresh.

You dirty wood pussy.

Reading elegance

I stopped in the best little indie bookstore in Steamboat and the girl working there talked highly of The Elegance of the Hedgehog which has been on my shelf.  I took a break from pleasure reading for technical reading, but with some flights I figured it was time for a good fun read and have started it.

I haven’t been dissapointed.  She said it was like Catcher in the Rye (a favorite) but with a girl.  Probably a little too concise, but apt nonetheless.

Here is my favorite passage from said girl so far:

…nothing is harder or more unfair than human reality: humans live in a world where it’s words and not deeds that have power…

I hope to create an organization I can work inside where deeds  matter more than words.  Where function masters form, and works trump politics.

Having just returned from an industry conference rife with worker stress, it seems this may be an uphill battle.  More on the conference later, but if you find yourself in DC, try the mushrooms at Zaytania, amazing.

Tonight is a full moon, I have all the makings for Cheezborgers, to be had at the world’s best place to spend a full moon night.