Diacritiques

I interrupt this blog’s unscheduled silence because of a disturbing annoucement.

When I’m online, I almost constantly hang out on a few IRC chanels on the server irc.freenode.net (website). This message was broadcast this evening, about 10min ago:

[22:17] -christel- [Global Notice] On the 12th September Rob Levin, known to many as Freenode's lilo, was hit by a car while riding his bike. He suffered head injuries and passed away in hospital on the 16th. For more information please visit #freenode-announce

This is a horrific thing. May lilo rest in peace.

I can’t say I knew him, strictly speaking, though I certainly knew some snippets about the person who used to send those regular Global Notices. The last time I exchanged a few words with him was after a particularly vile attempt at character assassination, when I basically said I appreciated the work he was doing to run the freenode service. He was, like many who pour themselves into a somewhat idealistic project, a controversial figure. And he will be missed.

<chryss> .seen lilo
<phenny> chryss: I last saw lilo at 2006-09-09 00:53:53 UTC on #joiito

On Digg.

(Practically crossposted from upstairs.)

In our ongoing series Language topics on the #wordpress IRC channel, we present the latest instalment. This morning’s discussions mainly dealt with nouns and verbs, and the purity of English.

The participants were spread out between Lausanne and Tokyo, and most but not all of them are native speakers of English (at least two are bilingual from childhood, and several more have acquired a near-native level in a foreign language). Both sexes were represented.

“Phenny”, who pitches in at the end of the excerpt, is not a human being, but a bot, capable of consulting a variety of dictionaries and carrying out Google searches.

This is a bit long, so please read on below the fold.

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