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A vs. An

You should use an “a” before all words that begin with consonants.

• a cat
• a pineapple
• a brown dog
• a popsicle
• a broken crayon

Use “an” before all words that begin with vowels.

• an apple
• an artichoke
• an orangutan
• an iceberg
• an elliptical orbit

There are, of course, a few exceptions to this rule. In American English, for words beginning with an “h,” use “a” if you pronounce the “h” and “an” if you don’t.

• a hotel
• an herbal bouquet
• a honeybee
• an honest reply

For words that begin with “u,” when the “u” sounds like the “y” in “you,” you should use “a” instead of “an.”

• a unicorn
• an umbrella

For words that begin with “o,” when the “o” sounds like the “w” in “won,” you should use “a” instead of “an.”

• a one-hit wonder
• an overbearing boss

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I picked up one of the new unibody aluminum MacBooks a week ago, and I’m enjoying every bit of it!

(Unboxing gallery on MobileMe)

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*This should really be called Grammar 1, since kids in elementary school learn this stuff. But I’ll call it Grammar 101, so I don’t hurt your feelings.

Introduction

Here’s a lesson in basic grammar for all of you Internet zombies who type away on Facebook, MySpace, digg, etc. hoping your web browser’s spell check will catch your mistakes (I’m giving you the benefit of doubt here by assuming you want proper spelling & grammar.). Your browser can’t help if you’re making an intent error.

What’s an intent error? The simplest way of putting it is, you. You made the mistake. The computer can’t fix intent errors.

Read on for some basic education for those of you who suffer from chronic grammar intent errors.

Read the rest of this entry »

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I was bored yesterday, and decided to pass the time by browsing some web server logs. After finding nothing of interest on guardian’s logs (apart from all the 404 errors from previously hosted people who don’t know how to update links), I moved on to my (mt) logs. Now, I’ve written about my (mt) account before, but this time I have something important to note. And that is that:

Wallsaver has been downloaded over 260,000 times.

Wow. I haven’t even had 260,000 hits to visits of my sites. Combined. Had I decided to charge money for Wallsaver (which seems like it would have been a good idea; I was thinking $1.99), I’d have $520,000! (Okay, I know I wouldn’t have that much. 1 download isn’t the same as 1 user. Some where around 50% of the downloads are people updating to the newest version. Even the estimated $50,000 is still a LOT of money.)

Who knows, I just might release Wallsaver 3.0 as shareware @ $1.99. I can think of quite a few uses of $50,000.

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My copy of Gears of War 2 (limited edition, of course) came in today, a day ahead of schedule. Originally, it wasn’t supposed to come in until Monday afternoon, but Amazon proved its awesomeness again by getting it to me before its official ship date.

Since I’m not the type that writes reviews on games, I’ll leave it to Meeshaan’s blog of game reviews goodness to answer your questions.

And it’s a good thing too, I thought I’d be stuck with nothing but homework on my Monday off.

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