Originally from Presentation Zen.
I’m pretty sure the baby name sites just make the meanings up. The definition at the top of the image above is (Odessa = “angry man”) is from Think Baby Names, the bottom definition (Odessa = “long journey”) is from Babynames.com.
Babynames.com is the one I would believe of the two, but the site is clearly built to sell ads first and helping people research baby names is somewhere further down the list. The only spaces that seem clear are the ones that sell ads. Even a website I generally like isn’t very good. I’m not sure what to call it because it doesn’t really have a name. Nameberry has balanced usability and advertising well. It’s too bad the data sucks.1
I have no faith in physical paper books anymore either. In my role-playing game days2 I had some severe character-naming paralysis. I’d write up a character and spend days trying to name him/her/it. I started buying baby naming books to help this out.3 But now that I look back on these little books I picked up at the checkout line at the supermarket what is to say they aren’t made up as well? That they cost $1.09 makes them more reliable?4 I’m sticking with my IDM-method of naming things and forgo the baby name sites. Life is more fun when you make stuff up anyway.5
- Everyone named Odessa is named for the Russian city? Really? ↩
- CHUT UP ↩
- Years of listening to IDM have cured me of this affliction. Watch this… “Verdelaine Meslath,” “Amonrab Alledâin,” “Bally Cromongast!” ↩
- Why the .09¢? I imagine an employee going into the bosses office to break the news that they really just can’t afford to make the baby name book for $1. It has to be $1.09 or they’ll go out of business. ↩
- There is a benefit though. Years ago I searched for my wife Alissa’s name and some website somewhere said her name meant “rational torture.” ↩
- Pssst. I know the footnote links don’t work. I wasn’t intending to screw around with this right now and spent too much time with it already.
Volkswagen’s “Transparent Factory” - I particularly love the rolling workstations powered via induction through the Canadian Maple flooring. The whole robot arms that lift cars to the height of the worker (so they do not have to crawl under the car) is pretty cool too. Oh, and that whole thing where you can make part of your own car that you buy.
More on it over at Core77
1970 Lancia Stratos Prototipo via Core77. Love the music too. It feels like a test reel for Robocop or Total Recall or something.
OMGZ. Chunky Bacon-ized Lorem Ipsum text.
That alone is worth the price of admission, but then, then… setting up a shell command in TextExpander (you can do that?!) and having it spit out random text on demand. Awesome.
Here’s some _why text*
Or perhaps you lack the time to face the window. And he says, Well, you look good on paper. When he talks to dolls. Okay, a couple of snarky residue. And, yeah, it’s funny. Revealed by kind contributor Oliver Sloppytongs …, this countdown to Hermione Granger’s 18th birthday calls that coming event The Bewitching Hour?
** It’s not actually _why who created it, but reconstituted from words of his.
There’s a bunch of other flavors too, including ones that spit out fake user data. Check it out!
via John Chandler
Kevin Holesh makes the Letterpress theme I use on Tumblr. I just want to take a moment and say thanks. Thanks for being awesome!
