Adobe Reader 9 installation finishes and suggests me to defrag my hard drive

How nice it is of Adobe to suggest me to defrag my hard drive.

I wonder how many people bothered to read it instead of immediately clicking “Finish”.

Aharoni Manual of Style, paragraph 392: A footnote must fit on one page, no matter what.

A small ad for the Herzl Museum from the Jerusalem Post website:

The New Herzl Museum - Yes We Can

This, of course, refers to Herzl’s most famous quote: “If you will it, it is no legend”.

So, Google Wave is live for beta testing and i received an invitation. I still have a couple of them left, feel free to ask. First come, first served.

I and all of my friends who tried it have a “what now” feeling as soon as we log in. And then loneliness. It is like improved email, but we already have email.

The scrollbars are weird. Terribly weird. Not the way to go. They already made this mistake with Picasa. Please not again. I love the stupid old-school scrollbars.

Waves don’t become read after i click them. Silly bug, they’ll probably fix it.

— “No! It can’t be true! What a disgrace. Did you hear who received the Nobel Peace Prize?”

— “No. Who? Abu-Mazen?”

— “No, but the letters are almost the same.”

— “Eh… I don’t know.”

— “Obama.”

— “But what did he do?”

— “Exactly.”

When i became vegetarian, everyone told me that i am going to lose all the B12 i have and die in terrible pain. Well, i have been vegetarian for over four years and my B12 is steadily going up.

How do you look up words in a Hebrew dictionary?

For this post i would like to get as many comments as possible. If you are more comfortable reading or writing in Russian or in Hebrew, please see:

• The same post in Russian: Как вы ищете слова в словарях иврита?
• The same post in Hebrew: איך אתם מחפשים מילים במילון עברי?

What is difficult for you?

Is it difficult to find the root of the word? (This is relevant mostly for verbs, but in some dictionaries also for nouns.) How do you prefer to search for verbs – by the root, by the infinitive, by the past (perfect) tense, by the present (participle) tense?

Is it hard for you to separate the prefixes (conjunctions, prepositions) and the suffixes (tense, possession)?

Do you have any trouble reading Hebrew with or without vowel points (niqqud)? Do you need transcription in easy-to-read Latin characters or in IPA?

Do you understand abbreviations such as vt, n.pr.m., adv., impv., זו”נ‎, פעו”י‎, מ”ג‎, נ”ר? Do you notice them at all? Do they bother you in any way?

Do you remember any words that were particularly hard to find? Words or expressions, in order to find which you had to open several dictionaries? Words that you couldn’t find at all, anywhere?

Do you have any particular problems with the usage of the letters א‎, ו‎, י for vowels? If you can’t find the word תוכנה, do you know that you should try searching for תכנה? Is there a dictionary that you prefer, because it has a system for the usage of these letters that you like?

Do you have a preferred dictionary in general or a dictionary that you don’t like? Why? I am talking about mono- and bi-lingual ones, and about printed and electronic: Even-Shoshan, Ben-Yehuda, Gur, Ariel, BDB, Rav-Millim, Alkalai, Sapir, Ha-hove, Morfix etc.

These questions may seem a bit generic, but i am curious mostly about the aspect of using the dictionary and not general language difficulties.

Please write whatever comes to your mind, even if you think that it is embarrassing or too simple. Feel free to answer anonymously or to email me at amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il.

Many, many thanks in advance.

The second best way to enhance your English vocabulary is to read a thesaurus.

The best way is to read music reviews. Here’s what Robert Christgau has to say about Yo La Tengo’s Electr-O-Pura:

Brimful of punk, fuzz, feedback, noise, and the lovingly amped squelches of fingers sliding off strings, their seventh album is a subcultural tour de force, luxuriating so sybaritically in guitar sound that I’m reluctant to mention that the tunes are pretty good. That’s why it’s the best record they’ve ever made, though.

I thought that “sybaritically” is a typo.

It’s rather weird that i’ll complain about Windows Update, since i’m kinda anti-Windows in the first place, but why do Microsoft put a fugly JPG at the top of the Windows Update page? Haven’t they heard of PNG?

Welcome to Microsoft Update - notice the fugly pixels around the letters

EFF is an organization for freedom and privacy on the internet. I am on EFF’s mailing list. I am too busy to follow the emails, however, and they seem too USA-centric for me anyway, so i wanted to cancel them.

But what do you know, the unsubscribe link in the bottom of the email is invalid.

On the website i only found a place to subscribe to the mailing list, not to unsubscribe. And they ask for a ZIP code! It’s a privacy organization, i remind you.

Oh, and the Privacy Policy link on the website is 404.

I don’t like filters that delete unwanted emails. I like clean unsubscribing. And of all the organizations, the EFF proves to be the hardest to unsubscribe from.