Hello again everybody! As promised, here’s the followup to my list of Open Source software you need to download for OS X.

I love Open Source Software, I really do. It’s good stuff, and most of the time, you’ll find what you need without paying for code. However, there are some software titles for the Mac that, frankly, are worth every penny. Also, it’s worth noting that although some of these are by large groups or corporations, lots of them are independent developers, so for those, Piracy just isn’t cool. Rest assured that anything that makes this list is, in my mind, worth every penny.

Note, I’m not getting a kickback on any of these links or programs. I just want to share some of the software I use that makes my life better.

The Grand Prize: LaunchBar ($19.95 for Home Users)

This is the first thing I install when I wipe my drive. Because of this, I can have a 2 icon dock, and just call up the obscure applications I don’t use often with a few keystrokes. In addition, it learns, based on your past habits, what you’re looking for with a given keystroke, and brings that up first. Add in the excellent iTunes search capabilities, and this software is worth every penny.

The Other Grand Prize: Mellel ($49.00, $35 for Students and Educators)

This is the single best Multilingual word processor in existence for OS X. Support for right to left as well as left to right writing, different languages, all sorts of obscure typesetting, and character style settings you’ll never know you need, Mellel’s got it all. Linguists, you’d better be buying this, there’s nothing better for writing grammars and making complex tables/glossed examples. Now with an XML format, for more document portability. This is what Office for Mac wishes it was. Great stuff.

The Third Grand Prize: Escape Velocity: Nova ($30.00) (No Universal Binary, Windows version available)

My vote for one of the greatest computer games ever. Great gameplay, great stories, and a really addictive experience. Prepare to sacrifice hours to this game, but know that it’s worth it. Also, if you do get it, look for a “Return to Earth” mission for the single most creative storyline ever. Great language use, too, discussed here.
The Runner Up: TextMate (€39)

Great for programming, great for TeX, great for just plain plaintext. If you’re CompSci, a programmer, or just somebody who messes around with scripts and files, the context highlighting and advanced features will make this worth your while. Also, it just works, and elegantly, at that. Worth every penny of the (admittedly large) price.

Other Recommendations (in no particular order):

Apple’s Keynote Software ($79, with *blech* Pages)

Imagine if Powerpoint were Mac-friendly, well supported, and just plain beautiful. Powerpoint can do everything Keynote can, but Keynote does it with style. Combine with Mellel and NeoOffice to eliminate your need for Office altogether. Keynote’s worth paying the Apple Tax. (Of note, I wouldn’t recommend “Pages”, Apple’s attempt at a typesetting program, if it weren’t included in the bundle with Keynote. It’s just a bit clunky, and not quite good enough at anything to be worth it alone).

The Missing Sync for PalmOS ($39.95)

Got a Treo/Lifedrive/Tungsten/Other Palm device? Got a Mac? Good. Now, throw out the CD that came with your device, and download Missing Sync. It integrates with Address Book, iCal, iTunes and more. Also, it lets you easily perform a Bluetooth sync with supported devices (press a button, and your phone and computer will sync from your belt). It’s really an incredible program, and handles everything Palm’s software does, except, you know, well.

Transmit 3 for OS X ($29.95)

This is, hands down, the best FTP/SFTP client for OSX. Compatible, easy, slick, and full featured, Transmit makes FTP a pleasure. This was one of the programs I really missed on Linux. If you do lots of FTP, this is what you’ve been searching for.

VoodooPad ($29.95)

Want to make your own Wiki for your everyday life? This is a great way to do it. Organize files, documents, and even pictures in Wiki form, with easy exportability and lots of great features. They’ve updated it since I got my license, so I’m sure it’s only gotten better.

Adobe Photoshop CS2 ($ Your Left Arm) (No Universal Binary)

It’s great for any sort of Graphics editing, and Bridge is as good of a Photo album viewer as exists. However, it’s really, really, really, really, really expensive. Not to mention the draconian licensing scheme. However, it’s really the only decent option for graphics editing (the Gimp or its derivatives don’t count, sorry), so it’s here.

Command and Conquer Generals Deluxe Pack ( $54.00)

It’s a guilty pleasure, and a great Mac port.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic ( $44.00) (No Universal Binary)

A great game with great graphics and an engaging storyline. A must for any Star Wars fans.

Cheating a bit: Joyent Connector ($15-100 per month)

This is cheating because it’s not actually a mac app, but a hosted web application for all platforms. I’ve been with Textdrive Hosting (great stuff) for a long time, and have always loved and recommended them. Recently, they merged with Joyent, and the Connector is Joyent’s flagship project. The Connector is a WebApp that handles your Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Bookmarks, and some files, with an emphasis on collaboration. However, even if you don’t collaborate with anybody, it’s great software for organizing your life and accessing it from anywhere. It’s got some bugs still, but they’re still offering lifetime plans (I’ve got one), so this is a good time to get in on the ground level if you’re expecting to use the service for a long time. (Update: Sadly, Joyent is still having trouble getting the bugs out and the basic functionality in. I can’t really recommend this as your sole email and productivity solution at this point. Sorry, Joyent.)

Conclusion:

Take a look at these programs, and see if they look right for you. As always, your mileage may vary, and although I hope you love them as much as I do, everybody’s got a different style. Many of these products have demos, so try before you buy. Take this with the appropriate grain of e-salt, and enjoy!

Tagged with Computers and Software, Notes | 1 Comment


We have some submissions from my earlier thread which discussed the Verbing of website names. In that thread, I asked for examples of a person’s name going directly to a verb in English (like “To google”, but with a person’s name). Well, some astute readers have shed light on a few examples.

The first is “to Merkle”, provide by PsyMar:

I finally came up with one. It’s been out of fashion for a while, but “Merkled” was a verb for a while meaning either “to make a bone-headed mistake” or “to not arrive”, depending on who you ask, but it was named after New York Giants baseball player Fred Merkle.

The second, and one I’m now kicking myself for not remembering, is “To Bogart”, submitted by personshaped (whose name links to his rather cool language blog):

Here’s one that’s still in common use. “to Bogart” is a verb whose general sense is to hog, or take more than one’s fair share of something. It derives from actor Humphrey Bogart, though how its sense is related to the actor or popular perceptions of him, I’m not sure.

Now, I believe I do know the origins here, or at least a decent folk etymology. My impression is that this term originated in the Marijuana-smoking culture of the 60′s and 70′s, and then, referred to somebody who would, when smoking a joint (marijuana cigarette) in a group setting, smoke most of it on their own without passing. The term “to bogart” originated because Humphrey Bogart, in his films, is usually depicted either holding a cigarette or with it hanging in his mouth, but seldom smoking it. So, somebody always holding on to something, even when others are waiting, is bogarting, a perfect example of the sort of Name -> Verb transitions I had asked for.

So, thanks Personshaped and PsyMar! For anybody else out there who might have an example, send it in. Because, I mean, dude, don’t bogart the lexicon, man.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language Usage, Words, Phrases, and Idioms | 1 Comment


So, today was a semi-interesting day in the online world with some very interesting language used. First, some background.

The Background

digg.com is a website that links to other sites, based on user voting. So, if there’s a new, cool site submitted by a digg user, digg will post a link to it, and if there are enough votes, it’ll make the digg frontpage.

Similarly, fark.com is a site which posts user submitted news items (strange and mainstream), as well as other cool sites, all with comedic, user-submitted headlines. As a disclaimer, I am a Farker (one who dwells on Fark), so I might have some bias here.

One thing these two sites have in common is their tendency to flood (and sometimes take offline) the sites that they link to on the main page. They both have a massive readership, and when something is linked on either the fark or digg mainpage, thousands of visitors will be clicking the link and viewing the site. If a site has an older, less capable server, sometimes the server can get overloaded (imagine trying to carry on a conversation with 50 people at once), and the site will cease to be viewable by anybody.

The fascinating language use here comes from the fact that the site names are used to describe this flooding effect. When digg links to a site on its mainpage and floods it with people, the receiving site is said to have gotten “Dugg”. Similarly, if Fark links to a site and takes it down, the site is said to have been “farked”.

Well, today, digg dugg fark, and then fark farked digg. These two, high traffic sites fired salvoes of readers at each other. Due to their robust servers, managed to both stay alive and healthy (so perhaps neither site was dugg nor farked), and the event itself was rather trivial, but the language use is still fascinating.

Verbing in the Virtual world

It’s not uncommon on the internet to have a site name get “verbed”, or turned into a verb indicating a particular function. Perhaps the most common example is “to google”, referring to looking up a phrase, person, or idea using an online search engine (interestingly, in modern usage, one could now “google” something on yahoo.com, much to google’s disdain). Another example, also describing the effect of a traffic surge is “to slashdot” a site, where a site is linked on slashdot.org. I’ve also seen examples of “to netflick” or “to netflix”, referring to ordering something through netflix.com. So, sites’ names are fairly frequently used as verbs which refer to the main service of the site.

Verboten in reality

(I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist the crosslinguistic pun)

What struck me, though, was the lack of this with non-virtual names in English. I asked a small group of people, and none of them could come up with an example of a person’s name which has become a verb indicating the action for which they are known. There are constructions that let us do that (“I heard he pulled a Kurt Kobain after getting the results”, pardoning the morbid example), and there are some people who are really only known for a single action (when I say “Monica Lewinsky”, you’re not going to be thinking about her current contributions to society). There are also examples where a person’s name can be placed on an object, and then transferred to an action and verbed (“Yeah, I hear he molotov’ed her car”, referring to a Molotov cocktail, named after Vyacheslav Molotov, a Stalin era soviet leader). However, I still can’t think of a person’s name going directly to a verb in English. If you find one (or know about this happening in other languages), leave a comment below, and I’ll post it up with credit to you.

Regardless, I think it’s time that I claimed my verb for Linguistic Mystic. I propose that, from this day forward, “to lingmystify” shall indicate my confusing the owner of obscure, language-related sites by linking to them and causing a sudden influx of around 10 or 15 hits. It might not be in anybody’s dinner conversation anytime soon, but hey, I’ll be one of the elite few who have their own verbs. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

EDIT: Check out this post for some reader submitted examples!

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language Usage, Language, Computers, and the Internet | 5 Comments

«Read newer posts — Read older posts »

All content © Linguistic Mystic 2006-2012 unless otherwise indicated.
Please contact me for permission to reprint or repost.

Site Information

  • Categories

  • Latest Non-linguistic Posts

  • Archives

    • Site features