Friday, July 27, 2012

What is this circuitry I wrote in?! And since when did Aliens adopt Earth-speak? (Learn Meikar: Lesson 0)

Hello all! It's been too long since my last post, and I really need to get back on track! I guess I got a little more laid back than usual, eh? I'll try an article every two weeks if possible this semester! ^.^

...On topic, now!

Perhaps you might be wondering what that nice circuitry at the top is? Well to those who haven't met me, and to those who are looking at the circuitry in some weird fashion, that is my language, Meikar!

... You may or may not be asking me, depending who you are: Why in Hashem's holy Name would I even want to create something as complex, awkward and outright nonsensical as an invented tongue?"

There's two reasons I would, personally.

For one, It just seemed like a fun project. It's something my semi-logical mind would have fun experimenting with! That's a big no-brainer there. And who knows, something cool could come of it!

For the other, I like to write stories, especially comedy, classic-era and SCIFI! What's it gotta do with Meikar? Well, one of my life's goals is to write a hefty, scifi-fantasy, five-novel series, "A Reigner Of Terror." And basically put, the first of the books involves the main heroes gathering together and (for reasons kept a dark secret) head off to an Interstellar, Theocratic Utopia known as Meimaka Anopasufem (Triune Empire. Exactly what the circuitry says! ^_^), where three species live as a single civilization (hence "Meimaka," Three-One) under the Presidency of a "Gandalyin" and under the rule of their national Deity. This place is where Meikar happens to be spoken and written, and by billions of people. What all the plot is there, I'll explain part of it in some other post.

Basically, I put the language into the story because... let's create a scenario:

As the United States President, you've just made first contact. You sit back excited and wondering about the aliens' culture. "How do they keep time? How do they celebrate, offend, greet and bid farewell? Are they mysticists, maybe religious? How do they communicate, and can we mimic it?" Well, that last question is probably the most important one. Unless they've studied you long enough, and unless they speak and/or write, you're screwed in knowing them.

They arrive, and you're worried how you can greet them inoffensively. The mothership's doors open, and a 9-foot blue giant appears with a keratin skull. FREAKY! Well good news, we see a mouth and vocal cords behind its smile! It can speak! It extends its arm and shakes your hand. It motions for you to enter its ship, and afterwards flies you to its homeworld. You exit to see the planet's urban area, only to find a holographic sign reads, "Bienvenue a le planet Emprukizork!" ...As if it wasn't weird enough, all the city's signs are written in French.

...Wait, WHAT?! Translator, s'il vous plait!

Hilariously enough, the scenario's been a cliche on Television since the space race, perhaps even before then (Albeit it's usually "Aliens speaking English" rather than "Mother Planet using English") Besides Star Trek being the best-known, few TV series' alien cultures make an exception to the common hilarity of this magical adoption of a TV station's language as their mother tongue.


Anyways, the point of my little scenario is to give my reason for inventing Meikar. Having billions of semi-anthropomorphic reptilians living far from any earthly influence to suddenly speak English would not only take away from the mystery I intend to put into alien dialogue, but it'd be highly unrealistic. Lo tov, lo tov meod! :(


Now, to answer another question. WHAT is Meikar?

Besides being my personally invented language, it's also an attempt to mix together Japanese and Hebrew grammar, keep a Hebrew-style word-system, and make it look cool!

Basically, your consonants are here. Add that small bend to the bottom of a consonant and you can change the pronunciation to the parenthesized letter. Add the Z turned 90-degrees and you can make 5 certain consonants stand as... just consonants.



EDIT: KH is a soft of H as of a decision.

EDIT 2: The "Soft"  marker is now like the rest of the extensions! YAY for uniformity! :D

Unless you're Ancient Egyptian, normally 100% of your words will have some trace of a vowel sound. So in Meikar, for simplicity's sake there are 5 vowels, Ah Eh Ee Oh Oo (A E I O U), which are extra lines attached to the letters by those dots at the end.

Now here's the cool part! Wonder why all these consonants look like fractions? Well, it's not that they are fraction-like like they'd be in Devangari , that'd be too easy! Instead, those divider-looking things are all part of one line that connects the letters to represent a word or a phrase! Everything has a beginning and an end, and so do these phrases; take a look at my banner:

-The beginning dot marks the start, of anything. Words, phrases, etc. Is the concept confusing? Think like Spanish, where Questions start with an upside down question mark. Except this applies to almost anything you write.

-The little 90-degree forks at the end of the first word (and start of the second) basically mean "to be continued elsewhere." Notice how a second fork keeps the same line going? Think how some novels add a dash to part of a word that overlap the margins.
-The weird 45-degree fork at the very end, that means "end." It's your period, but if written differently can be your question or exclamation.

The Grammar, I can teach later on if anybody wants me to host an in-blog book on how to write and speak Meikar! :) Let me know, anyone!

Meikar ya keranmin yebo! :) (Meikar is my language!)

Friday, May 18, 2012

The Third Party

As many readers of my first post may know, I'm a Libertarian, to where I've even registered as one. The fact is that I've come to see (under my personal conclusion and opinion, others may think differently) that a Third Party would be a godsend for this nation. The problem, however, is that despite how much I love what a lot of third party candidates stand for, they have very little publicity on Television, Radio and hearsay. Even on the internet, one has to do some looking to realize such people exist.

Hence, few people in the US consider a vote for them. A common excuse is that they don't want to waste their vote, despite how much they like the person. This leads me to the conclusion that the reason third parties so seldom win is that the many people that would happily choose them, simply avoid them out of fear of loss, and that a third party could far more easily win if this fear could be removed.

Therefore, I'm thinking of starting an internet group dedicated to the publicizing of third parties in the U.S. While I'm not so good at maintaining groups, this is one cause I'm willing to start for the U.S.

Anyone have thoughts?

Sunday, May 6, 2012

My Cyrillo-Latin idea for the American English Alphabet

I'm not sure what prompted me to do this, probably just the want to play with the English language. either way, this was a fun little thing to attempt. This thing's still in its prototype stages, so I'm open to suggestions.

Upon writing down all the possible sounds in American English, I came to realize there are around 12 common vowel sounds and 27 different consonant sounds. So deciding to make a phonetic alphabet, I ended up with 37 letters and two dipthongs. But to make things easier (by using less letters), I made sure certain letters were variant forms of others.

The Alphabet so far:

A - Father
Ӓ - Law, Hawk
Æ - Mash, Camel
B* - Bat, Ball
Ḇ* - Vowel, Ventrilloquist
Г - Gate
Д - Dog, Deer
E - Elf, Red
Ё - Bud, Love
U - Ruin, Spoon
Ú - Weather
Ü - Put, Wood
З - Zoo, Zero
Ӟ - Treasure, Luge
H - Help, Himalayas
T - Talk, Tin
И - Heed, Read
Ӥ - Rift, Pill
Й - Yarn
K - Kepler
L - Looney
M - Munchies
Ƞ - Never, News
Ŋ - Thing, Surfing
O - Lord, Poor
П - Purple, Pants
Ԥ - Fall, Fantastic
Ф** - Philosophy
Р - Rope, Rift
Ш - Simple, Soup
Щ  - Shirt, Shins
Ө or Þ*** - Thistle, Thing
Ӫ or Đ*** - This, Rather
Ч - Church, Child
Ӌ - Jump, Joy
Ц - Gatsby, Pits
Ҵ - Ads, Cards

Dipthong-Vowels: AO makes the "ow" in "fowl," OU makes the "o" in "rope."

The Only Spelling Exception: Plurals end in Ш, EШ, З or EЗ. This especially applies to plural words that would otherwise end in Ц or Ҵ.

Considered letter: ь for a soft sound, like how the T is soft in "at."


*Б for B and В for V are being considered.

**I'm considering taking this out and leaving
Ԥ as its equivalent.

***I am not sure whether as to choose one, the other, or even accept both.


Let me know what you think! I'm always open to suggestions. :)

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Desktop Uniqueness At Its Finest

This is my desktop, after many hours of half-assed learning in the art of XML coding in Openbox. What isn’t shown are my three right-click menus and my keybard shortcuts:

Right-click the desktop: A standard menu with options for a Terminal, an Applications submenu, a Desktops submenu, the Software Center, Configuration programs, the option to lock my screen and to log out.

Alt+RightClick: Brings up the options to Suspend, Reboot or Shut Down my computer. Requires Admin password.

Ctrl+Shift+RightClick: Brings up a Language menu that lets me switch between English, Russian and Hebrew, along with the option to Toggle ibus, my Japanese input program.

My Common Keyboard Shortcuts:

Shift+Ctrl+M: Minimize

Shift+Ctrl+X: Maximize

Shift+Ctrl+S: Windowshade

Alt+W: Close Window

I’ve also taken the time to creep into my current theme’s (americana) picture files and edit the nice 12x12 px window buttons to become appropriate Japanese Ideographs, rather than the traditional X, Raised Bar, Square and Hyphen.

The Docks: The bottom one is for my favorite programs. I put most of the same ones in my RC-Menu in case the Dock program (cairo-dock) should fail, which it has many times with the RSS feed programs crashing whenever they can’t retrieve info. I’ve also included a little penguin buddy that slides, hovers and drives around my dock. :D

The left one I rarely use, but it’s for quick access to places on my HD.

The right one is used for information related to my system, ranging from RAM usage to Internet speeds to CPU usage to a System Tray, battery life, sound control and quick access to my media player. Even cooler is that all the graphs were hand selected from the individual themes, so each one is different to label it.

The top one is used for all my information about the real world, since I’m no avid TV watcher or visitor to news sites. Unfortunately, upon discovering they were the cause of the docks crashing, I’ve gotten rid of them. :\

That’s all I can share. Most of my XML coding for Openbox was learned through trial and error and my determination to have a non-stock desktop. I encourage all of my fellow brothers in Linux to be original with their desktop design as well. The more you make something for yourself, the easier it will be for you to use it. =]

Friday, April 27, 2012

Blogger, I dare object to the inability to add NewLine characters to your profile, as it makes expressing yourself a little difficult. Perhaps you should add an "Other info about yourself" text box that allows NewLines, so that I don't need to talk about myself in a post?

...Perhaps it may not be that bad. But it's regardless a tad annoying :\


Anyways, as you may have figured out, My name is Eric "E-Rock" Thompson, a semi-stereotypical software geek raised in the Western Charlotte suburbs that's grown with a decent case of social awkwardness. Of course, contrary to a lot of stereotypes and despite the awkwardness, I have my fair share of awesome friends, computer freaks or not.

Anyways, here's my info in list form, with stuff ranging from my spiritual path to my favorite OS. :D


Name - Eric N. “E-Rock” Thompson

Internet Aliases: DarkBallYE, LordRagnarock, ZeroGlaivelen

Age - 19 and rising! (Like everyone else’s age, apparently =] )

Born, Raised and Residing - Charlotte, NC

School - UNC Charlotte

Hobbies/Interests - Linguistics, Philosophy/Religion, Vintage Computing, Linux (Newbie :C), Computing Experiments, Writing Stories, Digital Art.

Religion/Path - Noahide/B’nei Noach, with elements from Eastern philosophy thrown in.

Languages Spoken - U.S. English, Japanese (A bit Elementary, bit it’s decent :D)

Languages Forgotten - Spanish, French

Languages Learning - Japanese, Hebrew (Biblical and Modern), Esperanto

Languages Inventing - Meikar (Behold the Header =] )

Number of Computers owned - Around 10 Notebooks and a Desktop, mostly Classic Macintosh.

Number of computers I use - Five. 17” MacBook Pro (2007), eMachines E520 (2009), Acer Aspire One (2010), PowerBook 1400c (1997), Power Macintosh 7500 (1997). I would have use for a G3 B+W Tower if the HD would boot >_>

Number that run Windows - 1 if you don’t count VMs, 2 if you do.

OS of choice - Linux, Mac OS Classic.

Favorite game - Shadow Wraith (Mac OS Classic)

Myers Briggs Personality Type: INTP. Having taken three tests, however, has revealed that the last three letters are very close to the middle, and thus have given me three different results: INTP, INTJ, INFP.

Political Preference - Libertarian Party, but overall prefers many 3rd Parties.


There you go! Blogger, perhaps you may be able to learn a little something from this annoyance? :P