Tuesday, May 16, 2006

My Ruined Shtick

On February 2, 2006, Bono (U2) made this speech at the American National Prayer Breakfast, in attendance of the American President, and First Lady, King Abdullah of Jordan and other distinguished guests and religious leaders.

He was speaking on the issue on world poverty and was giving a background on his spiritual upbringing; coming from a mix parentage of Protestant and Catholic faith in a religiously divided Ireland at that time, he was cynical God be politicized. He then continued to tell, that he later met a couple of British Christian who in his words "ruining his steak".

At this point I was not really sure I heard the right thing, I replayed the video several times and still could not figure it out. "Ruining my steak" just doesn't make much sense. So, left it at the assumption that it must have been some western slang to describe some one losing his or her values; as valuable as losing one's steak, regardless how corny it sounded.

I left it at that until I was thinking about the speech again while penning for this blog entry on poverty.

This is when I revisited the video again. This time I also happened to bump into the transcript of the speech and together with it, the opportunity to search for the "steak". And search I did.

I searched for the word "ruin" and it got me right to the exact phrase in question. But it was not "steak" as I thought it would be. It turned out to be "shtick".

"Ruining my shtick"

Hmmm, now that looks suspiciously a typo? Immediately I browsed to my trusted encarta and it turned out that it was the perfect word in the speech's context.

So here is the word.
shtick

shtick [ shtik ] (plural shticks) or schtick [ shtik ] (plural schticks) or shtik [ shtik ] (plural shtiks)

noun

Definition:

1. special attribute of somebody: something that especially characterizes somebody, e.g. an interest, talent, trait, job, or hobby ( slang )

2. entertainer's routine: a comedian's or entertainer's act or gimmick ( informal )

3. exaggeration: an exaggerated complaint or extreme position ( humorous )

[Mid-20th century. Via Yiddish, "piece, routine" < Old High German stucki]


kuancheen|singapore|20060512.0240
... there I've posted it, can I please have my steak back?








BlogMap FAQ #1 - ERROR: undeclared namespace prefix

One of the more common errors encountered when registering or updating your BlogMap is the XML "undeclared namespace prefix" error.

Example 1Unable to store blog. Please try again later. [ERROR: 'st1' is an undeclared namespace. Line 67, position 69.]

Example 2Unable to store blog. Please try again later. [ERROR: 'o' is an undeclared namespace. Line 197, position 420.]

To troubleshoot the error, I always find checking on the XML RSS feed to be helpful.

To do this, open your blog's XML feed link on you browser "http://[yourblogname].blogspot.com/atom.xml", e.g. the feed for this site is at http://kuancheen.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

In the case of Example 1, it threw this error:-

The XML page cannot be displayed

Cannot view XML input using CSS style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later.


Reference to undeclared namespace prefix: 'st1'. Error processing resource 'http://[yourblogname].blogspot.com/atom.xml'. Line 67...


<div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">[Written on Sunday 10/16/<st1:time hour="17" minute="0">05 3PM</st...


Basically, XML does not recognised the <st1:time> tag that is used to display the time entry.

To rectify this, just edit the entry manually and replace it with plain text, that is , instead of
[Written on Sunday 10/16/7<st1:time minute="0" hour="17">05 3PM</st1:time> (Bud time)]

change it to simply
[Written on Sunday 10/16/05 3PM (Bud time)]

For Example 2, one suggestion is to edit the entry with a text editor and replace the occurance of <o> and </o> tags.

Hope this helps!

kuancheen|singapore|20060516.0210
... XML: fickle fickle fickle