Man Made DIY

Each Wednesday, I post some of my favorite can't-miss links, images, and otherwise mindblowing goodies from across the web. 

A fun and informative flow chart that details the various ways that time travel works in film.… read more

Whisky fan, consummate actor, and proud Scot Brian Cox shares a intro guide to pronouncing more than forty-five different Scotches. Though it's possible the liquor store owner might not know any better, a good bartender certainly will, and perhaps you'll get a few extra drops for pronouncing it correctly.… read more

I'm the sort of guy who likes to learn to do things well.  If I make a cut on the table saw, I want it to be the best cut. If I set out to create a tasty meal, I want to do my best knife work, get the crustiest sear and the perfect seasoning. You call it obsessive perfectionism, I call it trying my best. Same same.

And I write and edit for a living, so I wanna use the English language as best as possible. (Yes, I started that particularly vulnerable sentence with and and used the colloquialism wanna.) So, I tend to love the various grammar geek posts and misused words infographics about the blogosphere, especially when there's new stuff to learn.

And this, my friends, is an especially good one. If you know all these tricks to proper comma usage, particularly that trickster identifier-name syntax,… read more

By some estimates, there are around 170,000 words in current use in the English language. The latest, twenty-volume edition of the Oxford English Dictionary records 171,476 words in current use, with 47,156 outdated words, and countless techinal terms, neologisms, and common words borrowed from other languages.

And yet, there are still those ideas that you wanna express, and simply can't find the right term...cause it doesn't exist. In English, at least.

But other languages have all kinds of interesting concepts and vocab words for things you just need to descibe. These terms don't have an English equivalent, but after reading this list, you'll sure wish… read more

This one's for all the grammar and type nerds: you've seen it - on handmade banners, store signs, that one grandparent who always puts smart quotes around your name on your birthday card, as if they're not really wishing you the best this year, "Chris"

Unnecessary quotation marks. Or worse, suspicious quotation… read more