the problem with your stupid naming scheme (a short, poorly-written rant)

[waider]

There has been an annoying trend in recent years - or possibly longer than that, and I wasn't cranky enough about it until now - to take an existing word and modify it in meaningless ways to label largely unrelated entities. I am, of course, referring to such delightful neologisms as "blogtastic", "warchalking", and the recently-mentioned-here "podslurping". Now, I'm skimming someone's page, and he's just mentioned gtkpod. And during the week I looked at monopod. One of these is a loader for iPod devices, the other is a "scraper" for "podcasts" (ugh, again) that doesn't require a portable media player of any sort, much less an actual Apple-brand one. But thanks to this wonderful trend, it's impossible to tell which is which without digging them up. It's not like all software should be usefully named (after all, my own media player loading code is labelled "MPLE" thanks to a sequence of characters I found in one of the file headers), but this predilection for inane reuse and permutation of overused words is just, well, stupid.

When I'm feeling less cranky about it, of course, it reminds me of a long-ago post to talk.bizarre.

Comments

monopods

[odaiwai.livejournal.com]

a monopod is a one-legged device with a camera mount on top which:

• a: allows you to take pictures when you need a stable platform to do so, but a tripod is too much hassle


• b: means that you have a large aluminium stick in your hands when some over-officious security guard, knife-wielding triad or religious loony decides that you shouldn't be taking pictures on his patch of public street, even though you have every right to do so.

It also means than you have a nice lightweight support if you need to make a quick getaway in the case of b: above.

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

To me, a monopod is a thing you put a camera on to stabilise it: like a tripod but with only one leg.

[waider.livejournal.com]

You and odaiwai can go stand in the corner and wail on each other with monopods (the stick, not the software).

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

I think it might be more fun if the two of us pushed you into a corner and wailed on you with monopods. ;)