Bricks Farm - The Video

If you see the pictures of the same name on an article recently posted (see here), you'll notice there are some differences. It's larger for one and the layout has changed. There are now three farms, the main one in the middle and two smaller ones. There is a full screen feature to the right of the word YouTube you could click on the YouTube words and see the video on YouTube. It was taken by my drone camera circling overhead (just kidding).

A Moving Story

When travel was by ship

When I hear the word migrate, I think of animals or birds moving great distances, then returning later from where they started. Migrating is part of life for some creatures. Humans travel distances too so are they migrating? I personally rarely if ever describe a person as migrating and here's why. 

When people move, they are going to another location with the intent of it being permanent. So they are not migratory unless they have an itinerant lifestyle and that still doesn't sit comfortably with me. When leaving, they are emigrants. When they are arriving, they are immigrants. 

So if someone is spoken of as leaving their country, they are emigrating. When they are spoken of as heading to their destination, they are immigrating to that location. 

Based on those two examples, I don't have reason to describe a person as a migrant although if neither the departure location nor destination is inferred, then they are a migrant. Some use migrant at all times, perhaps the closeness of emigrant and immigrant is confusing to them. Think of emigrants as 'exit' and immigrants as 'inward'. 

P.S. I've just read an article in the Guardian Newspaper online with a headline about migration to Australia (see here). Is this just a deliberate move or substandard journalism? Either, way, I'd call it the latter. They also expect people to pay something toward this!

Maths & Stats

Abbreviations are part of language. Longer words are made quicker and easier to say. I assume that's why people do it. For example, statistics is fairly consistently pronounced stats although I have seen stat, for example when saying "That's an interesting stat" or using it when referring to a stat sheet. 

Mathematics is treated differently. In most English language countries the term maths is used but in North America and increasingly elsewhere -  when English is being taken over by US culture - math. You may wonder if it's important. If you grow up hearing a word pronounced a certain way and someone says it differently, it can sound grating. I find math grating to my ear. 

Regardless of my ear, one may debate why one way is better or another, yet others may say either is OK. For me just as statistics should be abbreviated to stats and statistic should be stat, mathematics should be maths. Mathematic is rare but if abbreviated, would be math. 

                                      It's a small point and I assume many don't care either way. If you want to know more I suggest you do some research. In other words, do the maths. Ah, that sounds nice.

Picture source here.

The Batsman

A living language is always evolving, with some words in the English language being added or discarded. The case below is one of the latter variety.

Batsman. 

In cricket, the term has been used to describe someone who bats as opposed to one who bowls or fields. In 2021, the term batsman was officially replaced by batter. When I hear batter, I immediately think of fish & chips. 

Why the change? Women now play the game so it was decided "to reinforce Cricket's inclusiveness as a game for all". Really? How pathetic! The fact is men who bat are still batsmen, even if women play the game too. If batswoman is not suitable, find a term that does suit women and if batter is that term, so be it. I doubt women cricketers worry about a man being called a batsman anyway.  

There is a third man fielding position and a lower ranked batsman coming in late in the day is called a nightwatchman. I wonder how the PC brigade at the MCC will address these gender excluding terms? Batsman has a long history of usage in the game and to throw it out when it should offend no one sums up the distorted and overbearing reasoning that we are subjected to in today's society. Go for it batsmen.

Bricks Farm

We're not big on collectibles at Supermarkets as you have to buy so much to get anywhere. We decided to collect a few and hand them on to others but it ended up the other way around. Now, we have a full set of items, we added some buildings and vehicles which can be purchased as individual items, unlike the other things.

So here is what we ended up with. A Lego style farm divided into three farmlets: produce, livestock and orchard. It's surprisingly therapeutic. The pictures are below. 

Afterward, you may want to see an updated version in a video. For that simply click here.

Full layout 

Full layout the opposite direction

Orchard 

Livestock

Produce

Orchard Rear

Homestead Rear 

Produce Rear

Livestock & Orchard Rear

Produce Rear