Scribot has some interesting links sometimes...

http://www.nice-tits.org/ (mostly work-safe)

Not what you might think :)

4 ne govorh po-russki

(Cross-posted to linguaphiles)

While pasting some mixed Cyrillic/Latin text into Babelfish, I noticed that it transliterated the Latin text... apparently, it treats certain Latin letters and digits as surrogates for Cyrillic letters.

Specifically, it seems to use the following correspondence (with the bold ones being particularly noteworthy):

a	а
b	б
c	ч
d	д
e	е
f	ф
g	г
h	ю
i	и
j	ж
k	к
l	л
m	м
n	н
o	о
p	п
q	ц
r	р
s	с
t	т
u	у
v	в
w	ш
x	х
y	ы
z	з
1	й
3	э
4	я
5	щ
6	ь
7	ъ

I wonder whether this sort of transliteration scheme is common in Russian Internet use? Or is it something Altavista dreamed up by itself? (For example, is the association "5 = щ" as common in Russian as "3 = ع" in Arabic?)

Missionary work / Yay DSL

This evening, there was a fireside about missionary work, organised by the elders quorum and the ward mission leader. They wanted to show a video but the machine was acting up so the sound wasn't always there. The missionaries also showed three sample situations to say, "Hey, the worst thing they can do is say, 'No,' and often they're nicer than that."

Tomorrow will be the "active" part: meeting at nine (or at eight if you want to study the scriptures together with others in the ward meeting-house), then separate and do missionary work, either visiting inactive members, going door-to-door, or participating in exhibitions (what we used to call "street-board" in my mission) in two places in Harburg. Haven't decided yet which I'll do. Being rather introverted makes it more difficult for me than for most members, I think, and even others tend to be shy about speaking to other people about the church.

---

In unrelated news, the DSL/ISDN PCI card arrived today. Also, the telecom company said that they'd change our connection to ADSL on the 15th. Now the only thing missing is the ADSL splitter, then we're ready for broadband. Woohoo!

Only I'll probably not get around to installing everything until the end of the month since I've still got three presentations to prepare: a talk in church on the 20th, my YAPC presentation the week after that (on Thursday, I think), and the lesson in the elders quorum on the 27th.

And now I'm going to bed.