I’m posting this blog entry from my Nintendo DS.

I am such a geek. :-p

Apple’s beta version of Safari for Windows is definitely not ready for prime time. Many people, myself included, have found that it doesn’t even display text in the UI on some configurations:

Edited 9:15 PM to add: Oh, this gets even funnier. A Bugzilla bug was started over at WebKit to document and troubleshoot this issue… and the consensus seems to be that it’s caused by having too many fonts installed for it to enumerate. Not anywhere near the maximum allowed by Windows; simply having over a thousand is enough to cause some fonts to be skipped.

Remember how, two years ago, there was a contestant in the National Spelling Bee whose placard said he was from “Roanoake”?

Well, the placard proofreaders have managed to embarrass themselves yet again. This year, as evidenced by this photo from The Baltimore Sun, there was one speller who hailed from Baltimore, Maryalnd. Yes, that’s right: “Maryalnd.” (For the curious, here’s the article in which the photo was included; however, there’s no reference to the typo in the article.)

(Thanks to the people involved in this post on Digg for spotting the misspelling and tracking down the original source of the photo.)

Edited to add: Oh, I had seen this one and totally forgotten about it! The Virginian-Pilot‘s contestant was from Norfolk, “Virgina.” The article from which the photo is taken even makes reference to this unfortunate typo, unlike the Sun article.

I’ve started a new blog on my site called Normal is Overrated, on the subject of autism and the autistic spectrum. Only an introductory post there so far, but I’ll definitely be adding more as time goes on.

After being in the National Spelling Bee 10 years ago (wow, it’s been that long?), it’s become a tradition for me to watch the Bee on TV every year.

So, congratulations to Evan O’Dorney, who won this year’s National Spelling Bee on the word “serrefine,” a small forceps used for closing blood vessels.

It’s funny; normally I try to work a bit of wordplay on the winning word into my yearly Bee post, but this year, the word simply wasn’t general enough. I suppose I could’ve said something about “clamping down on the words like a serrefine” or “examining the words like a surgeon with a serrefine,” but it feels like stretching to have to use a simile like that.

And, as always, congrats to everyone who made it into the national bee— just getting there in the first place can be enough of a challenge in many cases.

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