The blogroll: it lives! On a page!

So I've finally reinstated The Engine Room's blogroll. You can access it using via the navigation bar at the top of the blog.

The blogroll is just the same as before, except that I've removed a few blogs that are in disuse. I have a lot of new discoveries to add to the blogroll, but that will have to wait for another day. I'd also like to display it in a more interesting way - again, that will have to wait.

Anyway, the blogroll lives on a 'page' rather than a post entry - I'm very glad that Blogger has finally added this feature. If you want to know more, see Blogger Buzz: Creating Pages in Blogger.

I've also added a little widget at the top of the sidebar on the right so you can easily find me elsewhere on the Internet.

Words Between the Spaces

One of my resolutions for 2010 is to share with you more of the blogs, sites and tools that I stumble across and enjoy.

So to kick things off I'd like to mention the blog Words Between the Spaces, written by a magazine copy editor in the US.

Having a background in consumer and business mags myself I'm always pleased to see a magazine copy editor or sub blogging - especially as most editing blogs seem to be kept by newspaper journos.

I'm adding Words Between the Spaces to my blogroll (in the 'Favourite Blogs' section, if only provisionally).

Friday roundup: The Engine Room is 500

I think it's time we had another Friday roundup, seeing as we've just passed the 500-post mark here on The Engine Room. How many hours of my life...

In celebration, here are our five most popular posts, this time brought to you by FeedBurner's aggregate item use analysis:

1. Photo special: toilets & disabled toilet
2. Friday roundup: odd book titles, scary comments
3. Headlines: celery eating paramedic
4. Eagle-eared listeners – and BraveStarr
5. Word of the day: Bankenstein

The fact they're all relatively recent posts is a good sign, I suppose.

On to other matters. One blog I've been meaning to plug for a while is The virtual linguist. The linguist behind it is a regular blogger and obviously passionate about language. But she doesn't have BraveStarr videos or photos of pub toilet doors on her blog – so I guess we win. I'll add her blog to our blogroll as a consolation prize.

Another linguist more knowledgeable than I is Garik; you may have noticed some of his insightful comments here on The Engine Room. He's a thoroughly nice chap to boot, so do check out Garik's blog.

Friday roundup: odd book titles, scary comments

First thing in this week's roundup: a guardian.co.uk photo-feature on some of the oddest book titles of the past 30 years. The feature itself is titled 'Oddest book title prize'; is it really the book titles that are odd, or just the prize? Either way, thanks for the link, Sarah.

And when did the Guardian website stop calling itself Guardian Unlimited? Missed that one completely.

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Second, my new favourite website: spEak You're bRanes, otherwise known as www.ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com. It's "a collection of ignorance, narcissism, stupidity, hypocrisy and bad grammar" found amongst the comments made on the BBC's 'Have Your Say' site. Hilarious, yet highly worrying.

Thanks for this one, Gareth.

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Last but not least, another good linguistics blog find: Literal-Minded. I'm going to add it to the blogroll.

Friday roundup: Batman, Goofy, TYWKIWDBI

Firstly, I should explain that I didn't post yesterday because I was on a 'Writing for the Web' refresher course all day (and then went to see the new Batman film in the evening). I took notes on the course and should have them up on this blog within the next couple of days.

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Secondly, are you having trouble viewing the comments in the 'Recent comments' widget on this blog? The comments should appear in the sidebar on the right but I have a sneaking suspicion that some firewalls prevent them showing. Could you let me know? And apologies if they aren't working for you.

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Thirdly, I meant to mention this in last week's Friday roundup but simply ran out of time - I've added Goofy's blog bradshaw of the future to the 'lingy/langy blogs' section of the blogroll. You may have noticed Goofy expressing some strong opinions here on The Engine Room (most recently concerning the use of less and fewer) but don't let that put you off as his blog is informative without being too strident.

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Finally, Chris Frumplington has drawn my attention to a blog called TYWKIWDBI, or Things You Wouldn't Know If We Didn't Blog It. Yes, you're right - it should be 'Them' not 'It'.

Chris says:

As ever, one should always be careful when choosing blog names. I wonder if TYWKIWDBT is still available. Must go see...

Friday roundup: blogs and Dilbert

You may or may not have noticed, but this week I've divided up my blogroll (over on the right) into 'editingish blogs' and 'lingy/langy blogs'. The first category comprises blogs that are written by or for sub editors, and those with a slightly more prescriptive feel generally; the second category comprises linguistics, language-learning blogs, and those that are more descriptive.

Some blogs didn't fall neatly into either camp but I've done the best I can. If you feel I've wrongly classified your blog, let me know and I can move it over to 'the other side'.

Additions to the blogroll include Editrix, "a blog for editors, editors at heart, and anyone else who thinks grammar is hot". Apart from its disturbing fascination with American Idol, it's all good. I've also added The Russian Way, which looks at culture more than language but which is interesting for me as I spent some time in Russia teaching English as a foreign language.

Lastly, I hope I won't get sued if I reproduce the following subbing-themed Dilbert (click for a larger image):

The first Friday roundup

When I started this blog with Apus almost a year ago, I planned to write one post every weekday but was afraid I’d struggle to find sufficient material. As it turned out, that wasn’t a problem – and nowadays my main concern is lack of time rather than lack of subject matter. Often I would love to blog about a particular topic but time constraints mean I have to let it go.

To address this, today I’m introducing a regular Friday round-up of everything that has interested me in the preceding week but that I haven’t had time to blog about in depth. Let me know what you think...

• Here's an interesting BBC article on how the names for police operations are selected.

• I recently wrote about cameraman Sami al-Hajj, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay. Shortly afterwards, MobLogic sent me a link to their rather more in-depth blog post on the same topic.

• I also wrote about the longest URL in the world – Gingerous pointed me to a site with information on long URLs (and other long things, if that’s your bag). Oh and since then, I found an even longer URL, this time with 370 characters. Unsurprisingly, it was on the same government website.

• Ridger, FCD is a regular commenter on this blog so I’d just like to give a plug to her own blog, The Greenbelt. Nothing to do with the music festival, there’s some good stuff about language, evolution, politics and, er, birds. You can even find out what FCD stands for (well, I didn't know).
  

• And just out of interest, the Engine Room has had mentions on the Visual Thesaurus and the blog Words at Work. I've added the latter to our blogroll, along with Fritinancy, which I believe used to be called Away With Words. Anyway, they're both worth checking out.