Dr Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, skeptic, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
My on-line buddy Vladimir over at Diogenes's Bottle has blogged extensively and almost incomprehensibly about my humble personage. Just look at the possibly wonderful (or not) things he has to say about me!
La început - e drept - ideea ma amuza, caci citeam constant blogul lui Martin, un prieten suedez arheolog, care s-a mutat apoi de la Blogger catre bloggeristii profi-, adica cei platiti sa blogareasca. Martin era si este un personaj interesant. L-am cunoscut live on the web prin 2003-2004, când lucram la primul meu articol despre Basarabi si, din lipsa de materiale bune pe spatiul scandinav în România, un amic arheolog belgian m-a pus în legatura cu el. Ei doi erau prieteni buni si ca urmare Martin mi-a dat o mâna buna de ajutor, demonstrându-mi pas cu pas, într-o serie lunga de vreo 20 de mailuri, ca la Basarabii mei nu se aflase vreodata picior de viking. Au venit apoi alte mailuri cu bibliografie scanata si Martin s-a ocupat, cot la cot cu mine, de cercetare.
You wouldn't believe the number of unexpectedly placed cedillas and little semicircles I've had to strip from this quotation because I don't know how to code them.
Comments
Testing...
You shouldn't have to "know how to code" the cedillas et al. With correctly configured software, you should just be able to copy-and-paste the original, cedillas and all. Like I did in the above test.
SciBlogs doesn't help in that UTF-8 isn't used consistently; or in some cases, at all. Simplifying slightly, "UTF-8" is the name of the universal character set capable of representing most of the world's scripts (written languages). It's widely supported--it's been the default on Linux for years--and is the only sensible choice.
This blog seems to want to use ISO-8859-1, which is obsolete; if you must use a very limited ISO-8859 character set, it should be ISO-8859-15 (the most significant difference is -15 has the euro sign (€) whilst -1 does not). As a result of this use of ISO-8859(-1), this comment probably won't display correctly until you set your browser to use UTF-8.
It's possible for SciBlogs to use UTF-8 as the default. Many readers have begged and pleaded for SciBlogs to make a commitment to using UTF-8.
Posted by: blf | March 2, 2008 4:57 AM
You think you are praised, or you think it's Romanian?
Posted by: eleanora | March 2, 2008 7:05 AM
Romanian is supposed to use commas, not cedillas. Vladimir appears to be using commas under t but cedillas under c, the latter probably a remnant from the time when computers did not support c-comma (or t-comma, for that matter).
And yah, it's a total disgrace that SB doesn't just use Unicode.
Posted by: brtkrbzhnv | March 2, 2008 10:58 AM
Sb's Moveable Type installation was originally scaled for six blogs, all written by native English-speakers. It now supports over 70 blogs including mine with my weird characters. The whole edifice is creaking at the seams.
Posted by: Martin R | March 2, 2008 11:47 AM
I just skyped one of my romanian collegues and asked him to translate it...
Posted by: Lennart Nilsson | March 2, 2008 2:35 PM
Martin
Good thing your name is not the Swedish name Mats. A Romanian friend claims that it means "intestine" in his langue. (well, i don't know, maybe he was joking))
Posted by: simple z | March 3, 2008 5:00 AM
The Swedish word for curve, kurva, means prostitute in several Slavic languages. People from such backgrounds are always entertained when they pass Kungens kurva, "The King's Curve", on the highway to Stockholm.
Kungens kurva received its name in memory of a 1946 automobile accident, when a car containing the aged king Gustaf V drove off the road and into a water-filled ditch. Nobody was seriously injured.
Posted by: Martin R | March 3, 2008 5:06 AM
That "kurva" is actually etymologically related to the Swedish 4-letter version beginning with h.
Posted by: z again | March 3, 2008 8:43 AM
Then there's the dialectal hurva which means "small arable field". Something to plough into...
Posted by: Martin R | March 3, 2008 8:49 AM
In the beginning - it's true - the idea amused me, as I was regularly reading Martin's blog, a swedish friend and archaeologist, who later moved from Blogger to pro bloggers, meaning he was payed to write a blog. Martin was and still is an interesting character. I met him live on the web in 2003-2004, when I was working on my first article about Basarabi and, because of the lack of good materials about the scandinavian land in Romania, a belgian archaeologist and friend put me in contact with him. They were good friend, so Martin really helped me, proving step by step in a long thread of about 20 emails, that no viking had ever set foot in my Basarabi. Afterwards, more emails came with scanned bibliography and Martin took care of research side by side with me.
Posted by: Lennart Nilsson | March 3, 2008 10:10 AM
Thanks Lennart!
Posted by: Martin R | March 3, 2008 10:14 AM
And Basarabi=Bessarabia.
Another fun word is the Swedish "fika", which my Italian colleague found interesting. Let's go get a fika.
Posted by: Rien | March 3, 2008 12:02 PM
Well, Martin, don't take it too serious, it might get to your head... :D
Anyway, the whole post dealt with my early blogging experience, and since it came from your own blog's reading, I paid a small tribute to those pastime memories. I'm still reading your blog, not constantly though; only once every two weeks. Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Vladimir, the One | March 3, 2008 12:52 PM
Update: As per Tech Note: Diacritic Characters, Martin has fixed the character encoding issue, and this page now does use UTF-8. Hence, my original comment should now be displaying correctly unless you've forced your browser to not use UTF-8 (or your browser is using a very limited font which does not include the "strange" characters).
Posted by: blf | March 12, 2008 3:38 AM