I Swear, every friggin time I go there.....

Off-topic Chatter
21

I totally get where you are coming from, Robostud.

You are correct about the evolution of language, but if you personally are not offended by “irrregardless” and “ain’t” (which both get flagged by the Safari spell checker, BTW), than I don’t see how you can have any pet peeves with regard to language generally or the misspelling of “would’ve” specifically. Either we strive to use proper spelling and grammar, or we do not. To each, their own. In any event, we should not have a race to the bottom or concede any intellectual or cultural fight to the lowest common denominator.

You also didn’t use any caps at the beginning of your sentences. I’m sure some members here consider that their pet peeve.

Frankly, none of that bothers me. I personally strive to do better. I did grew up on a dirt road, but a lot of time, effort, and money was spent so that I wouldn’t sound like I did. While it has absolutely no relevance on a flashlight forum (or the internet, generally), being able to communicate intelligently goes a long way towards a person’s ability to succeed; I also find that hard work and good looks help as well. :nerd_face:

Of course, this is way off topic, but if anybody is interested, this book and this book may be enlightening. Or, not.

Just for the record, I’ve never corrected anyone here and will not in the future. I would not have brought this topic up but for someone else broaching the subject. While some of us are more cognizant of our spelling and grammar, we all butcher the language every know and again. I find that pointing it out is usually not helpful. To my way of thinking, it’s better to set a good example and maybe people will decide for themselves to improve. I think that’s the only way it works.

22

We do indeed. :slight_smile:

23

good luck holding back the tide of an evolving language. none, in all of history, have succeeded.

24

@ aAgedbriar- Oh, man! Did I mess up in there… ?

I don’t think we could, or even should, hold it back. Change is the only constant, as they say. That said, there are far more extinct languages than the amount spoken today; and given the demographics, we will be adding more to that list this century. Perhaps if people cared more about their language and culture, a few more would have survived the evolutionary process.

Like our Granny’s used to say, “If all your friends were going to jump off a bridge, would you?” Just because some people use “ain’t”, for example, doesn’t mean you should. Especially if you know better.

Moreover, I was merely suggesting that on a personal level we should all try to do better. And not just with language, but with everything. We all have room for improvement in all aspects of our lives.

25

you say evolution, but you mean degradation. you just associated language evolution with jumping off a bridge and with failing to do better. so you don’t mean evolution - a process of growth or development. you mean degradation - a process of reduction in quality.

language evolution is not language degradation. the evolution of language does not make the language more vulgar or common or low or whatever. it just makes it different. and there is no good/bad value in something that is different… unless you’re one of those people who fear change, and for you, change is bad.

26

And down the rabbit hole we go…

Very interesting, but would you say your failure to capitalize at the beginning of a sentence is evolution, degradation, a little of both, or neither? And what makes you think that degradation and evolution are not concurrent events?

I never said “change was bad”. In fact, I conceded that change is the only constant.

My only point is that while certain words, again, I’ll use “ain’t” in this example, are becoming normalized, it doesn’t mean that you, who clearly knows better, should sound like an ignorant rube. I mean, that is clearly not the path to success in the real world.

Plus, I was amused that you were explaining one of your grammar pet peeves in a post where you were repeatedly and knowingly making your own error. Kind of the pot calling the kettle black, no?

I look at it like this, I would not feel comfortable going for acute medical care if the physician was saying “ain’t” and “irregardless”.

And, just to be clear, I don’t expect anyone else to care about their personal spelling and grammar the way I do. I have very close friends and relatives that toss “ain’t” around like so much confetti and I love them just the same. And while I think it prudent to judge my doctor this way, I don’t judge my flashlight friends the same way. Completely different standard.

Moreover, I am far too impressed with the non-native speakers on this forum to ever even consider their occasional faux pas.

I have truly enjoyed our talk. For that, I say thanks. Just so you are clear that there are absolutely no hard feelings, I direct you to this thread.

And for all y’all who had to endure that… sorry.

27

Same here :bigsmile: And I don’t count all that $$$ they earn with banners. More ads less time online :bigsmile: Man, really, I don’t understand what happen to their forum. Have/had dozen of them (and all free, never paid for hosting and such) and never made such frequent “cleaning” :bigsmile:

28

It’s actually my job to avoid making errors. I write for a living. :slight_smile:

Still, I wouldn’t have noticed “irregardless” if my friend (the one with the pet peeve) hadn’t pointed it out to me. I only pointed it out because I think it would be helpful to anyone who didn’t know it was an error, like I didn’t.

Because this is a forum in (mostly) English, but contributed to by people from around the world, the English isn’t always of the highest quality, but it doesn’t matter—it’s just a bunch of dudes talking about flashlights! And besides, when I’m not working I like to let my haer down and make erors just liek anebody else.

To Robostud: yes, language evolution is unstoppable, but I would say that outright errors are undesirable. e.g. “ain’t” may not have been a word years ago, but it’s not really an error, so if it becomes a word, to me that’s no problem. Same with “blog”. “irregardless” though, is an error, in my mind anyway. I know English is full of words that grew out of errors, but that was before online dictionaries and spell-checkers. :slight_smile: The people I work with complain about the evolution, especially when it means accepting what were previously thought of as errors, but like you said, good luck stopping it.

Here’s a word that I think is right in the middle of evolving: “data”. Data is the plural of “datum”. So we should say “the data are stored on…”, but most people say “the data is stored on…” And instead of saying “this datum shows that…”, most people say “this data point shows that…” Similarly, at work when trying to describe one of a collection of print media (paper, film, etc), we intentionally wrote “media type” instead of “medium”. That bugged a lot of us, but we had to go with “media type” because “medium” seems to be evolving out of the language.

29

It’s not CPF bashing, it is speaking our mind about a piss poor website that has treated many of us with little to no respect. Since we can not speak freely over there, we do it here.

I have made the decision to not contribute any info on CPF because I have no desire to help that dirt hole of a website prosper in any way. My wish is that it becomes what it deserves to be. It will be populated by only the scum ranks who wish to lick the feet of the power hungery mods or feel abuse of power is ok. If all those people would stay there, and all the good people would come here, I would be happy.

30

sorry for what?

irregardless of our difference of opinion, there ain’t nothing to be sorry about.

at least, that’s what i would of thought.

31

Well, while you and I likely enjoyed our conversation, I am well aware that an undetermined percentage of the membership doesn’t particularly enjoy my company or the fact that I sometimes take a thread on a detour. As for what you and I were doing, I found it quite pleasurable and could, frankly, have those types of discussions all day long.

32

LOL

33

Troop, so when you are not taking amazing photos of military hardware you take shots of guys playing with Simunitions? San Diego sounds awesome! That guy in the foreground better not act up or he’ll have a welt on his mellon for sure. That S%$# stings.

34

Oh my….
Gentleman, relevance?

35

I too have a Mustang GT (2005) built for NASA American Iron Spec. Road Racing. As much as I like my lights, I like driving in anger more. No way would I sell it for more lights. I would maybe take up robbing banks instead. JK! Here is a picture of it.

36

See what I mean, Robostud, DarkSide doesn’t like threads to have a natural ebb and flow, to … dare I say it… evolve… or degrade… or whatever. :nerd_face:

Or, perhaps, like me, he was trying to be funny, but missed the mark.

Later edit- That was a nice teaser shot of the inside, YellowHorse. Now what about the rest of it.

37

I agree with that for the most part. Though speaking of BLF may get your post deleted over there and possibly your account suspended. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anyone at CPF say anything negative about BLF. But they’re still the establishment, so they don’t even need or want to acknowledge BLF.

CPF is still important or else we wouldn’t get updates of the smallest downtimes over there from our members. So don’t let the bashing fool you.

38

a lot of the people who post on BLF also post on CPF. it’s not like you have two separate and distinct membership groups who stand opposed to each other. there’s a lot of overlap among the two .

i think the question to really ask is why do folks express frustrations about CPF on BLF?

a lot of it is because between CPF’s heavy moderation and their constant down time, frustrated CPF members have nowhere else to express their frustrations than BLF. they can’t post about it there, so they post about it here.

why is frustration about BLF not expressed on CPF?

because if a BLFer is frustrated by something on BLF, they can post about it here. no need to go to CPF to express their frustration. they can just express it here, and it will be addressed.

39

To a certain point, a larger website is a much different beast to run versus a relatively tiny site like BLF. The crash of 2011 was tragic, and not really CPF’s fault… I believe that downtimes fir admins to backup data are very important, just incase something like that ever happens again. CPF has archives back to 2001, and higher traffic… I personally haunt both sites, as they have very different information, all of it very good. CPF just has a wider breadth of topics, and some VERY awesome builds from the past…… PVC lightstaff anyone? (lots of eneloops, long PVC pipe, high voltage incan bipin) >) someday, i’ll make a 30 eneloop long 1.5 meter lightstick with a buck driver for an xre behind an aspheric…doubles as a hiking stick! :heart_eyes:

40

"irregardless"

Please . . . don't use "evolving" language to justify ignorance. My written efforts are usually littered with punctuation errors but I do at least try to be correct. And when I am not, I don't attempt to redefine or cite precedence.

Apparently, there is nice skirting available and once installed you can't see the axles at all, irregardless your brother's nearby engine-less Firebird, rain swollen/urine stained couch cushoins, run-on sentence, and, comma, misuse.

Foy