Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Back when I was drawing our names in Mayan hieroglyphs [1], I briefly considered doing the same thing but with Egyptian hieroglyphs. I was ultimately deterred because the rules for writing in Ancient Egyptian are a lot more rigid and I didn't want to have to draw every single glyph that I wanted to use. Furthermore, a full royal name in Egyptian consists of five names. This is called a fivefold titulary or royal protocol.[2] The first name, or Horus Name, is written inside a serekh, which represents the palace. It is called the Horus name because a falcon, the symbol of the Egyptian god Horus, is typically depicted on top of or nearby the serekh. The second name is also called the Nebty Name. Nebty means "two ladies" and refers to two goddesses, Nekhbet and Wadjet, who are heralds of Upper and Lower Egypt, respectively. The nebty name is typically preceded by a symbol that combines the symbols of the two goddesses (a vulture and a cobra) sitting on top of two baskets. The third name, or Golden Horus Name, is usually preceded by the falcon symbol perched on the symbol for gold. The last two names, the Throne Name (or praenomen) and the Personal Name (or nomen; i.e., "birth name") are written inside of cartouches (also called shen rings). The Throne Name is accompanied by the glyphs for a sedge and a bee (implying kingship over both the valley and delta regions of Ancient Egypt) while the Personal Name is accompanied by the glyphs for a duck and the sun (meaning "son/daughter of Ra").

So, what changed? Why am I drawing the Egyptian hieroglyphs now? Well, I noticed that Wikipedia has a script for writing hieroglyphics, so I simply figured out how to use it and then copied the pictures. Let me tell you how it works.

The Invisible Mazes of Chagunitzu and Paganitzu

In the early 1990s my parents bought their a PC running MS-DOS. Over time we played several different games on that and subsequent PCs, including Monuments of Mars, Pharaoh's Tomb, Jumpman Lives!, Crystal Caves, and Paganitzu. These were all shareware games from Apogee, so we only had the first part of each one. Later, I got the chance to play all three levels of Paganitzu [1], as well as Chagunitzu [2], the first outing of protagonist Alabama Smith. Both of these games have rooms that feature invisible mazes. You know me: I drew maps![3]

Women's Script

This is my final (for now [1]) post about the writing systems from Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive. As far as I understand, Brandon comes up with a general idea for how the writing system should function and then Isaac Stewart, Brandon's in-house artist, does the legwork of designing the letters. The women's script is the alphabet that is read by women on the planet of Roshar. It was designed to look like waveforms.[2][3] It is written left to right and has no punctuation except for a vertical line at the beginning of a passage that establishes the maximum character height. This is useful because some characters are identical except for their size.[4] Rosharans also like things to be symmetrical, so they often try to make their names have reflectional symmetry.[5][6] Let's see what my family's names look like written in the women's script. (And we'll just ignore that I, a man, am writing it.)

Thaylen Glyphs

Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive (which I read last year) takes place on a planet called Roshar. One of the countries on Roshar is called Thaylenah. Thaylen writing is based on the same letters that are used for making glyphpairs [1], but with some important differences.[2] First, Thaylen is an abjad, which is a writing system that only has consonants. As a result, the spoken language tends to produce large consonant clusters.[3] Second, Thaylen is written vertically. It is implied that Thaylen is a unique language, but in the pictures in The Stormlight Archive books they are used to write transliterated English. Just as I've already done with Rosharan glyphpairs, I decided to write the names of my family members using Thaylen letters.

Rosharan Glyphpairs

I resisted starting Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive for a long time because 1. he hasn't finished the series yet, 2. he says it's going to be 10 books long, 3. each book is over 1000 pages, and 4. it takes him 3–4 years to publish each one. The fourth book is set to publish this year (2020), which means that we can expect him to finish the series by 2038. 2038! By that time I'll be 58 years old. (And Brandon will be 63!) Brandon's books are so intricate that I don't think I can keep track of all the characters and plot details for that long. So my plan was to just wait until they were all published and then read all ten in one go. But then Leann started reading the first book, The Way of Kings, and I couldn't fall behind, so I started reading it along with her.[1] In the story we learn that men who follow the religion Vorinism are forbidden from learning to read.[2] Men will still use marks, called glyphs, to identify themselves or signify a particular idea.[3] The glyphs are formed from actual letters, but the letters are calligraphically stylized. Glyphs are often combined into a glyphpair. I decided to create glyphpairs for the members of my family.

Mayan Hieroglyphs, Part VII

It's been a few years, now, since I posted anything to this blog. Looking back I can see that the time I had available for blogging decreased with each new child. We now have three children, but I've only drawn Mayan hieroglyphic names for two of them.[1], Our third child is already three, but I've always had this nagging desire to draw a Mayan name for him so that everything will be rounded out and complete.

Funny Faces

For my maternal grandmother's 80th birthday, we (all of her descendents) wrote down our favorite memory of her [1], which was then bound into a book and given to her. At the same time, we also downloaded the PrankMirror app on our iPads and took funny/bizarre pictures of ourselves (which she then had to identify). Some of ours were too hilarious not to share with a broader audience. Let me know which ones are your favorites!

Lincoln's Milestones

I've been really awful about posting Lincoln's milestones, so you're going to get several of them at once. (And a few updates, too.)

Lincoln's First Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year

My apologies for not posting these sooner. I didn't have enough material for Thanksgiving to post by itself, so I waited for Christmas. We signed up for a free 1-month trial of Amazon Prime so we could take advantage of the free shipping for Christmas presents…and then I didn't have time to prepare this post because we were furiously watching shows on Amazon Prime before our free trial ran out.[1]

Lincoln's First Hallowe'en 2013

This year we went to the 'trunk-or-treat' [1] at the Church the weekend before Hallowe'en and then on Hallowe'en day we took Lilli trick-or-treating in the neighborhood south of our apartment complex. It was cold and rainy, so we only went to about ten houses. This actually worked in our favor because the people we visited were afraid they wouldn't get any more trick-or-treaters, so they gave Lilli handfuls of candy. She quickly caught on and started asking for "another person" as soon as she'd gotten her candy from someone.

Learning Numbers

It's been a while since Lilli learned her alphabet and what sounds are associated with each letter.[1] So lately we've been trying to teach Lilli her numbers, but somewhere along the way she got it in her head that they go: "one, two, three, nine…" [2] Despite extensive coaching, that's still what she usually says. I've been focued so much on correcting this issue that I didn't realize that Leann had moved on to higher numbers. So, I was a bit surprised when, while shooting this video, Lilli got past five and kept going!

Little Singer

Lilli has enjoyed music for a long time, now. When we still lived in Provo she became obsessed with "Call Me Maybe" (in particular the version by the US Olympic swimming team [1]). Another example: she hates riding in the car, but she'll tolerate it if we let her listen to a Disney soundtrack (her current favorite is The Little Mermaid). However, it wasn't until recently that she's started memorizing lyrics and singing them herself. It started with The Alphabet Song [2] and has been slowly expanding ever since. Here are some of the other children's songs she's learned:

Hallowe'en Bulwer-Lyttons I

I've previously described the concept behind the Bulwer-Lytton contest [1], but I'll briefly refresh you on the main points. The gist of it is to write the worst possible opening line for a novel. There is a formal contest held every year by the English Department of San José State University [2], but my friends of the former BYU 38th Ward Book Club and I like to hold an informal one every year for Hallowe'en (as part of what we call The Kingdom of Horror). What follows are the worst first lines I could come up with in the inaugural year of the Hallwe'en Bulwer-Lytton (2011). I am only posting my own creations here; however, if you just can't get enough of bad opening lines, you can also read those of my friends.[3] (Warning: Some are not for the faint in heart.)

Mayan Hieroglyphs VI

It's been a few years, now, since I last drew Mayan hieroglyphs [1], but now that we have a fourth member of our family [2] it's time to draw another. A quick glance at the archives will show that my posting frequency has been in decline. So even though Lincoln was born three weeks ago, it's taken me a while to actually post about it. I finished the drawing for this post several days ago, but I'm just now posting the description.

Henry Villas Zoo

When my sisters Melissa and Ashley were visiting a few weeks ago (when Lincoln was born [1]), we tried to go visit the Olbrich Botanical Gardens and Bolz Conservatory.[2] The website said the grounds were open until 8 PM, so we went around 4:30 PM. When we got there, it looked like it was closed. Unbeknownst to us they had closed early because of a severe storm advisory. But not all of the gates were closed, so we found a way in. We'd only been wandering around the gardens for a few minutes when it began to rain. So we slowly began to make our way back to the car. Then it began to pour. We were all soaked, including Lilli (but she didn't mind because I caught a toad and let her hold it [3]). I thought I could drive around Lake Monona and reach the hospital, but I got lost. We didn't get there until dinner time, so we stopped and bought some pizza from Pizza Hut. Needless to say, the visit to the botanical gardens was a bust: we didn't have time to see very many of the plants or take any pictures. So the next day we went to Madison's Henry Villas Zoo.

Graphical Web Page Representation

Today I stumbled onto this website: http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/. It runs an applet (so you must have Java installed) that analyzes the html code of any website you submit (must start with http://) and creates a representative graphical output. The result is pretty neat. Below I'll show you some of the maps I've created using this website.

Unexpected Delivery II

On the last day of my trip to Norwich, England [1], I was blithely sitting in the library of the John Innes Centre doing some DNA sequence analysis when my boss, the director of the Engineering Nitrogen Symbiosis for Africa project [2], and a postdoc who has a lot of managerial responsibilites on the ENSA project all came running up to me to tell me that Leann had gone into labor. (Leann was quick to point out that I appear to have a habit of being incommunicado when she goes into labor—when she went into labor with Lilli she tried to send my then-boss, Dr. Joel Griffitts, to find me because I wasn't answering my phone.) This was something of a surprise since she wasn't due for another four weeks (but it wasn't a complete surprise since Lilli was eight weeks early [3]). When I got on the plane to fly out of Norwich, Leann still hadn't delivered, but by the time I'd landed in Detroit our son, Lincoln had already been born. (My plane was somewhere over the English Channel when it happened.[4]) So, I wasn't there. But my sister Ashley was, and my sister Melissa, who was also visiting, watched Lilli. What follows is Leann's version of the events (transcribed partially by her mother and partially by me).

Matt's Trip to England

Last week I went to Norwich, England (which they pronounce NORR-idge, mouse over for IPA) with my boss for a conference related to the research I'm doing with rhizobia and cereals.[1] I was supposed to depart at 7 am on Saturday the 14th but I missed my flight because 1. my cab was 40 minutes late and 2. I forgot my passport. T-Mobile service in Madison is pretty shoddy, so my calls kept getting dropped. It was just as well, I suppose, because the first four tellers I talked to wouldn't let me keep the original flights I'd purchased tickets for. They all wanted to sell me new itineraries for an additional $1100 to $2300. The fifth teller put me back on my original flights and just sold me a new ticket from Madison to Detroit. (Leann brought me my passport.)

ABCs

Lilli has been able to sing The Alphabet Song for quite a while now. She can also sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; I Am a Child of God, several nursery rhymes, and a few songs from Disney movies…but never when the camera is on. If she sees Leann or me taking a video the song immediately degenerates into silliness and babbling. We've tried for a long time to get a decent video for Lilli's admiring public, but in vain.

Froggy

The night I got back from the 22nd North American Symbiotic Nitrogen Fixation Conference [1], Leann had to come pick me up at the bus station. I didn't get in until after Lilli's bedtime, so we had a friend come over and babysit (read: watch The Singles Ward while she slept) while Leann came to get me. While bringing my luggage into the apartment I spotted a medium-sized American Toad (Bufo americanus) hopping across the sidewalk. Of course, I had to catch it. The next morning I showed it to Lilli and then we let it go.