Let there be trees!

I got a surprise on Monday night as I was heading for class (by way of a phở restaurant in an attempt to stave off a cold): Trees! While I was at work, a two-block stretch of Argyle had been assaulted by a Streets & San crew, who had cut about twenty 2' x 2' sections out of the sidewalks at regular intervals and planted them with saplings. I took a sampling of tags and found that they seemed to be an assortment of:

• Ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba, a.k.a. "maidenhair tree")
• Northern Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa, a.k.a. "cigartree")
• Kentucky Coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus, another tree with big seed pods)
• Honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos, a.k.a. "pod tree" if you're juniperesque)
• And something called a "Chicago Blue Black Locust" (some local varietal of Robinia pseudoacacia?)

We'll see how they do; it's a heavily-trafficked area not known for its hospitality towards living things. Also, the plants got in the ground just before the first freeze; there was snow on the ground today--snow! Only a dusting, but a rather surprising sight all the same.

You say "面向對象" and I say "物件導向"

Searching for a Chinese translation of "website", I found this excellent dictionary of Chinese computing terminology. The really cool feature is that it has two databases, one reflecting Mainland usage and the other Hong Kong, which you can search simultaneously and display results side-by-side. It's all I can do to prevent myself from imputting all the computer terms I know so I can ponder why, say, a Chinese bitmap is a 位圖 ("position map") whereas a Hong Kong bitmap is a 點陣圖 ("dot display map") or why Hong Kongers 偵 (i.e. "investigate") errors when they debug while their Mainland counterparts 排 (i.e. "expell") them. (除蟲 or "removing bugs" is so clearly a borrowing from the evil English language that it's no mystery why self-respecting Reds turn their noses up at it.)