The last couple of years have not been great for how I allot my days and energy, which is also not great because the last couple of years have been some of my busiest.
#Semi demi hemi quaver how to#
This isn’t a bad thing! But it does have an effect on my online presence.Īlso also, in a larger sense it’s time for me to have a think about my overall time management - how to balance things I like doing and things I have to do and the things I want to do, along with the day-to-day aspects of, you know, actual life. So for two weeks this month I am entirely out of pocket with travel and events and seeing in the real world people that I like spending time with. But I am doing a serious think about what I want this place to be, for me, and for others.Īlso, this August I’m traveling quite a bit - to San Jose for Worldcon 76, where The Collapsing Empire is a finalist for the Hugo, and then the weekend after that to Albuquerque, where Mary Robinette Kowal and I are Guests of Honor at Bubonicon. To be clear, the site isn’t going anywhere - I’m not thinking of shutting it down or not writing here or such. This is a fact that among other things is causing me both practical and existential reflection on what this place is, and what it means to me, and what is the best way to keep doing it moving forward, particularly in an age where “blogs” are not the center of online gravity that they used to be. Demi- is an Old French reduction of Latin dimidius "split in two," made up of dis- "apart" + medius "half." English, of course, could not resist the temptation to help itself to them all.So, I don’t know if you know this, but next month will mark the 20th anniversary of the existence of Whatever. Hemi- is a Greek form meaning "half." Semi- is the Latin correlate derived from the same Proto-Indo-European root. Word History: The bizarre load of prefixes meaning "half" at the beginning of this word reflects our borrowing variants of the same original word from several languages. In Play: This long word might seem to belong to the music world: "Moseley, I think you are pausing a hemidemisemiquaver at the beginning of each bar, which puts you noticeably behind the other members of the orchestra by the end of the piece." However, the idea behind the word has caught on enough in England that hemidemisemi- is now a prefix referring to things exceptionally small: "I don't think that Germaine has so much as a hemidemisemi-idea of what this project is all about." I thought you might like to know why we have three of these little critters. I chose this word because it oddly reflects all the variants of the borrowed English prefixes for "half": hemi-, demi-, and semi.
Notes: This word is the kind of word musicians think up as they sit around discussing music and drinking late at night. It lasts half as long as a thirty-second note (or demisemiquaver) and a quarter as long as a sixteenth note (semiquaver). (Classical British terminology) A four-flagged musical note played for 1/64 of the duration of a whole note.
Pronunciation: he-mi-de-mi- se-mi-kway-vêr.