Journal entries in 'Things I Like' for November, 2004

Today while configuring my graphics card I started reminiscing about a 3D screensaver I used to have about three or four years ago called VoodooLights. I searched the web to see if there was a cool new version of it available, but apparently its website has since gone defunct and been taken over by a cybersquatter.

But then I recalled an earlier screensaver I used to run back around the time we moved into Estancias, which means around 1996 or so...

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Ever since Jeff lent me his Battlefield Band CD and seeded my interest in them, one of the songs in particular, Birnie Bouzle, has always really amused me. It's a charming song where a guy tries to convince a girl to marry him, telling her how happy they'll be together. It's sort of like Layla's 200-year-old grandfather. What I find really interesting is the language. It's clear from the language used that this is an old song (as far as I can tell it was written sometime around 1800), and it seems to indicate that people in Scotland at the time spoke a dialect that melded Gaelic and English. But when I looked up the meanings of all the strange words, I found that many of them are surprisingly similar to the modern-day word, which suggests that those modern words are derived from the older forms spoken in Scotland at the end of the 18th century.

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