Λίγο χιούμορ λόγο της ημέρας του Halloween :-)

A little pre-Halloween humor. I came across these on Reddit last week: some off-brand costumes (I guess this is to not have to pay royalties ;-) ).

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've gone back and forth with this book. While listening to it some parts were just 2-stars and others were 4-stars. Perhaps the 4-star part was confirmation bias on my part. That said, some things in this book are just causes to roll your eyes, and other parts make a ton of sense. Over the past 15 years, when I've been quite productive, I've actually used some of the approaches discussed in this book (I just didn't know I was doing deep work). I think it's a wortwhile read, but at the same time it falls into a Malcolm Gladwell book: coming back to the same point over and over again with many different examples. What book 400 pages could have easily been an 20 page academic article.

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I guess you have to be of a certain age to get this reference (link to Pepsi commercial)

(original archive here)

I came across this video on Reddit the other day. I thought it would actually be a much more in-depth analysis of the game series, but it just seems like a whole lot of kvetching about Halo 5.  Since I don't yet have an xbox one I can't really say much about Halo 5, but Halo 4 wasn't really all that bad - if I remember correctly.

The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building by David J. Peterson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

While I don't see myself conlanging any time soon, this was quite a fun read (and a pretty good book if you are interested in linguistics but don't know where to start!) There were quite a few examples from Game of Thrones (which I guess is the most well known example of conlanging on modern television) and quite a few from Defiance.  There were other examples from another CW show that I am not familiar with (Star-Crossed) which I guess I'll be on the lookout for to see if it's any good :-)

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This just reminds me of the "Captain Obvious" Hotels.com commercials :-)

(original archive here)