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Life

Viva Mexico Stage Manager – The Dress Rehearsal

If you’re up to date on my Blogs you’ll know that I volunteered to be Stage Manager for our next show – Viva Mexico – only a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t been a Stage Manager before. In fact I’ve never worked backstage before. So “being thrown in at the deep end” is a bit of an understatement.

Never-the-less, I’m giving it my best shot.

Today was the dress rehearsal – tomorrow is opening night. The on-stage stuff went well. My bit went… badly. Cues were missed, curtains opened at the wrongs times, scene changes were slow… did I miss anything?

Well, they do say that a bad dress rehearsal is a sign of a good show. Apparantly. I hope so.

Anyway, my intention is to Blog after each night to keep you up-to-date with how it’s going (hence the number in the title). Keep your fingers crossed for me for opening night!

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Life

Infamy, Infamy…

Some fame! Kind of.

To the right you’ll find a scan of a news article in the December issue of PCW. And it’s about one of the websites I run for the Copy+ software which a friend of mine wrote.

Unfortunately, it’s technical inaccurate. But the fame is good!

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Life

Another Artiss, please step forward

Sometime late last week (may have been Friday. Or Thursday) I hit upon the idea of looking up my surname in the Skype directory. Found two people with Artiss as a surname so added them into Skype, with the hope that they’d talk. And one has.

Joseph D. Artiss, from Windsor in Canada, Vice President of ArtJen Complexus Holdings Corp.

He’s shed some further light onto our surname. Now, David J Artiss from the US had mentioned to me in the past that he believed the surname came from the Artois family in France. Now, without me saying anything to him about that, here’s Joseph Artiss’ take (with my own comments in red)…

It is our understanding that we were silk merchants in Artois France, although we do try to keep the French part hidden.

As the story goes, we ran amouk [amok?] of the local duke and we escaped to England. My father emigrated to Canada from Petaugh (sw England) when he was 1 year old. He always claimed that the escapees anglosized the name to Artis and in Canada people spelt it with 2 s’s so my grandfather just went with the flow and we became Artiss. I hope that that helps.

At the time being French in England was a really bad thing so I imagine that Anglosizing names was a fairly common thing. I remember when I was 14 my parents took me on a pilgramage to Petaugh (sorry I am not certain of the spelling but I think that it is near Ippswich) [Pettaugh is in Suffolk, which is SE England. But near Ipswich], we found distant cousins there but I can’t remember if they were Artiss’ or not. It may be that they were Gunn’s as my father’s stepsister’s maiden name was Gunn.

The information on the French connection actually came from a book some time ago so I cannot give you the reference. It may be that we are related or it may be that everybody that fled that area were called Artois.

He sounds to be a very busy man, but I must get in contact again to try and find his family details.

Categories
Life

Wedding Names

A wedding that I’m attending tomorrow has reminded me of something. When I created a website for my own wedding, I referred to it as “David and Jens” wedding. I knew someone would comment on the order of the names and I wasn’t wrong.

Categories
Life

Useful Grammar Checks

The following check list should help you with your grammar. It’s certainly made my grammar what it is today.

  1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
  2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
  3. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
  4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
  5. Avoid clichĂ©s like the plague. (They’re old hat)
  6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
  7. Be more or less specific.
  8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
  9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
  10. No sentence fragments.
  11. Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
  12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
  13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
  14. One should NEVER generalize.
  15. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
  16. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
  17. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
  18. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
  19. The passive voice is to be ignored.
  20. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
  21. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
  22. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
  23. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.
  24. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
  25. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
  26. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
  27. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
  28. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
  29. Who needs rhetorical questions?
  30. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
  31. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.