The 2012 Make-Yer-Own Oscar Pool Page is live. Per tradition there has been exactly zero user testing, so let me know if you encounter bugs, typos, or miscellaneous weirdness.

The 2012 Make-Yer-Own Oscar Pool Page is live. Please please let me know if you encounter bugs, typos, or miscellaneous weirdness.

Some random thoughts and observations as I was getting this online:

• The Academy Awards has their own “DIY Oscar Pool” thing going this year, at http://oscar.go.com/mypicks. I’m sure it’s waaay slicker than what I have to offer but, alas, also appears to be one of those unholy Facebook hybrids. Buyer beware.
• I have seen zero of the “Best Picture” nominations as of the date of their announcement, something I don’t believe has ever happened before. Even as a Peace Corps volunteer I saw The English Patient in the year of its release.
• Speaking of Best Picture nominations, are you seriously telling me that they are only nine? The Academy expanded the field from five to ten in a transparent move to goose ticket sales, and now can’t even scrape together enough films to fill the available slots? It’s piracy that is killing the industry, truly.

The 2012 Make Yer Own Oscar Pool Page will go live next Monday, January 30th.

The 2011 Make-Yer-Own Oscar Pool Page is live. Please please let me know if you encounter any bugs or weirdness.

Let me update some thingies on the backend and I’ll roll it our Monday.

The 2010 Make-Yer-Own Oscar Pool Page is live. Go nuts: http://www.defectiveyeti.com/oscars.

If you encounter any errors or oddities, please drop me a line. I fix most errors immediately so, if you discover a bug, don’t assume it’s already been reported: you’ll probably be the first.

The 2010 Make-Yer-Own Oscar Pool Page will be live next Monday, February 8th.

For a list of other projects I am currently working on, please check back tomorrow.

The 2009 Create Your Own Oscar Pool Page is live.

If you notice anything amiss-bugs, broken links, wrong nominees, typos–mention it in the comments, or drop me a line at matthew@defectiveyeti.com.

The 2008 Create Your Own Oscar Pool Page is live.

If you notice anything amiss-bugs, broken links, wrong nominees, typos–mention it in the comments, or drop me a line at matthew@defectiveyeti.com.

The editors of the American Heritage dictionary recently compiled a list of “100 words they recommend every high school graduate should know.”

I always like to check out lists like this, and see how many of the entries I am already familiar with. The answer is, invariably, “nearly all of them.” Not because I have a stellar vocabulary, but because I cheat.

Not on purpose, of course. But, when performing this exercise, I’m always struck with “well that’s what I meant” syndrome. You know how it goes. You see the word, you say to yourself “that means X,” you check the definition, and when it turns out that it actually meant Y, you say, “ah, well, that’s I meant. And, jeeze, X and Y are practically the same thing … so, I’m going to give myself this one.” By the time I’m done, I have magnanimously “given” myself all of them, and have no idea how many I actually knew before I started.

So this time I tried something new: I wrote down my definitions first, and then compared them to the actual definitions afterwards. You can see the results in the comments.

If you’d like to do the same, here’s a little tool I wrote. First, select how many words from the American Heritage list you’d like to get tested on. (I wouldn’t recommend 100–that took me forever–but 23 is good.) You will then be given the opportunity to provide your definitions for each. You can then grade yourself, in comparison to the actual meanings. Lastly, the script will print out a final report, which you can then put in the comments of this psot on your own site. (Apparently Movable Type strips tables from comments, so posting ‘em here ain’t gonna work after all.)

By providing your own definitions first, you should get a somewhat more accurate picture of how many of the words you could truly use correctly in a sentence. But if you just want to grade yourself without providing your own definitions first, you can do that instead. Whatever. We aim to please.

You can find my results here (but, if you intend to test yourself, don’t look until you have done so, as the definitions of the words appear on that page).