I wonder if at any point during writing, the heroic author of that Super Metroid guide learned that "missiles" are not spent "missles", and decided to own the mistake rather than reword the entire guide.

Also, the font used for the monospace examples in the post is a great kick to the nostalgia. Which one is it? It reminds me of https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/font?ibm_vga_...

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mananaysiempre 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Judging by the lowercase “m” it’s the 8x16 variation[1] and not the 9x16 one you linked, but otherwise yes, looks like the plain old VGA font? (Incorrectly displayed, as the site points out: the VGA didn’t have square pixels in either of those modes.) The site uses (AVIF) images in place of text, but it’s like 15 minutes to write a program that typesets an ASCII file in a given monospace bitmap font and writes out the result as say a PPM (and I’m sure ImageMagick can do it if you’d rather dig through docs than program), so this doesn’t seem to require any further explanation?

[1] https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/font?ibm_vga_...

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EGreg 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think you meant "spelt" rather than spent. A but ironic, all things considered.

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zdragnar 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Now I'm wondering if you meant to use but instead of bit intentionally or not... I'm not great with subtle humor in writing.

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card_zero 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Muphry's law, innit

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fwipsy an hour ago | parent [-]

oh ironny

	▲	Dban1 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I think you menat to spell "irony"

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firecall an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And there I was wondering about used missiles!

Apparently, I googled, “expended ordnance” is the term.

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aaron695 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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kibwen 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> learned that "missiles" are not spent "missles"

I choose to believe that the author was channeling the spirit of Noah Webster as a deliberate champion of phonetic spelling reform.

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cyphar an hour ago | parent | next [-]

And are British, at least in Australia (and the US, I guess?) we pronounce the second "i".

It is always fun when you notice where someone is from based on secondary clues like that -- my favourite is the choice of "a" or "an" where it is ambiguous (for instance, I recently ran across "an HTTP request" where I would've said "a HTTP request").

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somat 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Or Andrew Jackson approaching the problem from the other end.

“It is a damn poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word.”

As a rather, well... "creative" speller I blame Webster for locking things down and ruining it for the rest of us.

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jimmydddd an hour ago | parent [-]

I few years ago I saw a TV interview where some gen-z kid confidently stated: "the dictdionary is supposed to reflect how I talk, not the other was around."

	▲	xboxnolifes 16 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The tricky part is that spoken language and written language are not the same. Even if you are a descriptionist that believes dictionaries should represent how people write, it doesn't necessarily mean that the spelling changes based on how people pronounce it.
	▲	tux3 6 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Also known as descriptivism. That's what it do.
	▲	saulpw 7 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		A natural descriptivist.
	▲	eru an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That's actually how many of the dictionary people see themselves.

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saghm 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd argue that "le" is not really phonetic to how people pronounce words ending in that; "missils" would be more phonetic

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eru 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Should be missels then?

	▲	rkagerer an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They're where they keep the nuclear wessels.
	▲	rmunn an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Let's settle the argument by all agreeing on mussels instead, and enjoy a nice seafood dish with garlic and a white wine sauce. Delicious.