spell check. most notably, switch to US English

_posts/1900-01-02-konichiwa-ruby.md

@@ -51,18 +51,18 @@ Anyone who’s written a book can tell you how easily an author is distracted by
 visions of grandeur. In my experience, I stop twice for each paragraph, and four
 times for each panel of a comic, just to envision the wealth and prosperity that
 this book will procure for my lifestyle. I fear that the writing of this book
-will halt altogether to make way for the armada of SUVs and luxury towne cars
+will halt altogether to make way for the armada of SUVs and luxury town cars
 that are blazing away in my head.
 
 Rather than stop my production of the (Poignant) Guide, I’ve reserved this space
 as a safety zone for pouring my empty and vain wishes.
 
-Today I was at this Italian restaraunt, Granado’s, and I was paying my bill.
+Today I was at this Italian restaurant, Granado’s, and I was paying my bill.
 Happened to notice (under glass) a bottle of balsamic vinegar going for $150.
 Fairly small. I could conceal it in my palm. Aged twenty-two years.
 
 I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that bottle. It is often an accessory in
-some of these obsessive fantasies. In one fantasy, I walk into the restaraunt,
+some of these obsessive fantasies. In one fantasy, I walk into the restaurant,
 toss a stack of greenery on the counter and earnestly say to the cashier,
 “Quick! I have an important salad to make!”
 
@@ -73,9 +73,9 @@ Cold, hard cash, Mrs. Price.
 
 Soon, I will be expending hundreds for a block of myzithra cheese.
 
-My imaginations have now gone beyond posessions, though. Certainly, I have
-thought through my acquisition of grecian urns, motorcades, airlines, pyramids,
-dinosaur bones. Occassionally I’ll see wind-tossed cities on the news and I’ll
+My imaginations have now gone beyond possessions, though. Certainly, I have
+thought through my acquisition of Grecian urns, motorcades, airlines, pyramids,
+dinosaur bones. Occasionally I’ll see wind-tossed cities on the news and I’ll
 jot down on my shopping list: _Hurricane_.
 
 But, now I’m seeing a larger goal. Simply put: what if I amassed such a fortune
@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ So try this first bit of poignancy on for size:
 
 One day I was walking down one of those busy roads covered with car dealerships
 (this was shortly after my wedding was called off) and I found an orphaned dog
-on the road. A wooly, black dog with greenish red eyes. I was kind of feeling
+on the road. A woolly, black dog with greenish red eyes. I was kind of feeling
 like an orphan myself, so I took a couple balloons that were tied to a pole at
 the dealership and I relocated them to the dog’s collar. Then, I decided he
 would be my dog. I named him Bigelow.
@@ -127,7 +127,7 @@ had previously only been lost once, he was now lost twice. I slowed my pace
 towards the life of Milkbones and an extra recliner. I had a dog for five
 minutes.
 
-Stupid Benedict Arnold of a dog. I sat on a city bench and threw pinecones at a
+Stupid Benedict Arnold of a dog. I sat on a city bench and threw pine cones at a
 statue of three sheep crossing a bridge. After that, I wept for hours. The tears
 just came. Now there’s a little something poignant to get you started.
 
@@ -175,10 +175,10 @@ perfectly good chat. Their face doesn’t look so much like that childhood
 nemesis. You’ve met the Good Twin. You clicked.
 
 So whereas I should probably be pounding your teeth in with hype about Ruby and
-the tightly-knit cadre of pertinent ancronyms that accompany it everywhere
+the tightly-knit cadre of pertinent acronyms that accompany it everywhere
 (whetting the collective whistles of your bosses and their bosses’ bosses),
-instead I will just let you coast. I’ll let you freefall through some code,
-interjecting occassionally with my own heartfelt experiences. It’ll be quite
+instead I will just let you coast. I’ll let you free-fall through some code,
+interjecting occasionally with my own heartfelt experiences. It’ll be quite
 easy, quite natural.
 
 I should offer you some sort of motivation, though. So, Smotchkkiss, I’m going
@@ -250,7 +250,7 @@ maniacal laughing thing going on deep into that night. It was a real mess.
 
 But, since I don’t get along well with people, I hadn’t invited anyone but
 myself to the Opening Ceremonies of This Book. So it wasn’t really that
-embarassing. I kept it under wraps and no one found out about the whole ordeal.
+embarrassing. I kept it under wraps and no one found out about the whole ordeal.
 
 So you’ve got to know that **synergy** doesn’t actually mean **synergy** in this
 book. I can’t do normal **synergy**. No, in this book, **synergy** means

_posts/1900-01-03-quick-ride.md

@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ sections:
 
 ![The foxes show up.](../images/the.foxes-1.png "The foxes show up.")
 
-Yeah, these are the two. My asthma’s kickin in so I’ve got to go take a puff of
+Yeah, these are the two. My asthma’s kickin’ in so I’ve got to go take a puff of
 medicated air just now. Be with you in a moment.
 
 ![Foxes in boxes.](../images/the.foxes-2.png "Foxes in boxes.")
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ finally realize the gravity of their predicament.")
 
 My conscience won’t let me call Ruby a _computer_ language. That would imply
 that the language works primarily on the computer’s terms. That the language is
-designed to accomodate the computer, first and foremost. That therefore, we, the
+designed to accommodate the computer, first and foremost. That therefore, we, the
 coders, are foreigners, seeking citizenship in the computer’s locale. It’s the
 computer’s language and we are translators for the world.
 
@@ -148,7 +148,7 @@ farm of inky foxes.
 > **Sensible Hipster Standing on Curb in Urban Wilderness**: He calls himself
 > the lucky stiff.
 
-> (Pulls aside curtain to reveal grey corpse on a gurney.)
+> (Pulls aside curtain to reveal gray corpse on a gurney.)
 
 > **Hipster**: Some stiffs ain’t so lucky.
 
@@ -186,7 +186,7 @@ How about making fun of asthmatics directly?
 
 Adapt the book into a movie. And since, you know, I’m a character in this book,
 you could get someone like Alec Baldwin to play me. Someone who’s at a real
-lowpoint in his career.
+low point in his career.
 
 You could make it seem like I did tons of drugs. Like I was insane to work with.
 Like I kept firing people and locking them in the scooter room and making them
@@ -217,7 +217,7 @@ Now, I’ve got to thinking. See, and actually, Alec Baldwin did a decent
 voiceover in _The Royal Tenenbaums_. His career might be okay. You might not
 want to use him. He might not do it.
 
-Tell ya what. I’ll play the part. I’ve made a career out of lowpoints.
+Tell ya what. I’ll play the part. I’ve made a career out of low points.
 {% endcapture %}
 {{ sidebar | markdownify }}
 </aside></div>
@@ -301,7 +301,7 @@ quotes. Both single and double **quotes** are used to create strings.
 When you enclose characters in quotes, they are stored together as a single
 string.
 
-Think of a reporter who is jotting down the mouthnoises of a rambling celebrity.
+Think of a reporter who is jotting down the mouth noises of a rambling celebrity.
 “I’m a lot wiser,” says Avril Lavigne. “Now I know what the business is
 like—what you have to do and how to work it.”
 
@@ -443,7 +443,7 @@ Door::new( :oak )
 As seen above, the `new` class method is most often used to create things. In
 the above example, we’re asking Ruby to make a new oak door for us. Of course,
 Ruby has to have an understanding of how to make a door—as well as a wealth of
-timber, lumberjacks, and those long, wiggily, two-man saws.
+timber, lumberjacks, and those long, wiggly, two-man saws.
 
 ![Plenty of chunky bacon to go around.](../images/the.foxes-4e.png "Plenty of
 chunky bacon to go around.")
@@ -456,7 +456,7 @@ Variables which begin with a **dollar sign** are global.
 
 Most variables are rather temporary in nature. Some parts of your program are
 like little houses. You walk in and they have their own variables. In one house,
-you may have a `dad` that represents Archie, a travelling salesman and skeleton
+you may have a `dad` that represents Archie, a traveling salesman and skeleton
 collector. In another house, `dad` could represent Peter, a lion tamer with a
 great love for flannel. Each house has its own meaning for `dad`.
 
@@ -773,7 +773,7 @@ This caterpillar partakes of finer delicacies. An _array_ starts this example.
 In the array, three _strings_ `'toast'`, `'cheese'`, and `'wine'`. The whole
 array is trailed by a _method_ `each`.
 
-Inside of a _block_, the _block argument_ `food`, travelling down its little
+Inside of a _block_, the _block argument_ `food`, traveling down its little
 waterslide into the block. The _method_ `capitalize` then capitalizes the first
 letter of the block argument, which has become _variable_ `food`. This
 capitalized _string_ is passed to kernel _method_ `print`.
@@ -815,7 +815,7 @@ _string_ containing the path `'/en/LICENSE.txt'`. Now, notice that another
 method is chained onto `get`. The _method_ `body`. Then, the block closes with
 `end`.
 
-Doing okay? Just out of curiousity, can you guess what this example does?
+Doing okay? Just out of curiosity, can you guess what this example does?
 Hopefully, you’re seeing some patterns in Ruby. If not, just shake your head
 vigorously while you’ve got these examples in your mind. The code should break
 apart into manageable pieces.
@@ -833,8 +833,8 @@ http.get( '/en/LICENSE.txt' )
 We’re using Ruby to get a web page. You’ve probably used <span
 class="caps">HTTP</span> with your web browser. <span class="caps">HTTP</span>
 is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol. <span class="caps">HTTP</span> is used to
-transfer web pages across the internet. Conceptualize a bus driver that can
-drive across the internet and bring back web pages for us. On his hat are
+transfer web pages across the Internet. Conceptualize a bus driver that can
+drive across the Internet and bring back web pages for us. On his hat are
 stitched the letters <span class="caps">HTTP</span>.
 
 The variable `http` is that bus driver. The _method_ is a message to the bus

_posts/1900-01-04-floating-little-leaves.md

@@ -43,11 +43,11 @@ Yeah, that’s not the way I remember it. This Elf was paging me constantly. Whe
 I refused to call him back, he somehow left a message on my pager. Meaning: it
 beeped a couple times and then printed out a small slip of paper. The slip said
 something to the effect of, “Get down here quick!” and also, “We’ve got to rid
-the earth of this scourge of enterpreneurial caterpillars, these twisted insect
+the earth of this scourge of entrepreneurial caterpillars, these twisted insect
 vikings are suffocating my blue crystals!”
 
 Lately, the exchange rate has settled down between leaves and crystals. One
-treegrown note is worth five crystals. So the basic money situation looks like
+tree-grown note is worth five crystals. So the basic money situation looks like
 this:
 
 {% highlight rb %}
@@ -261,7 +261,7 @@ similar way, `nil` has a slightly sour note that it whistles.
 
 Generally speaking, **everything in Ruby has a positive charge to it**. This
 spark flows through strings, numbers, regexps, all of it. Only two keywords wear
-a shady cloak: `nil` and `false` draggin us down.
+a shady cloak: `nil` and `false` draggin’ us down.
 
 You can **test that charge** with an `if` keyword. It looks very much like the
 `do` blocks we saw in the last chapter, in that both end with an `end`.
@@ -461,7 +461,7 @@ message. To the value: “Are you nil? Are you empty?”
 If `at_hotel` is empty, Ruby doesn’t have any idea if I’m in the hotel or not.
 So `if` answers with the “No clue” string. In order to handle the `true` or
 `false` possibilities, the `elsif` keyword is used. While you can have only one
-`if` and one `else`, you can fill the inbetween with an exorbitant number of
+`if` and one `else`, you can fill the in-between with an exorbitant number of
 `elsif` keywords. Each `elsif` acts as **a further `if` test**. Checking for a
 positive charge.
 
@@ -678,7 +678,7 @@ dangerous word matched with its code word, handing each pair to the `gsub!`
 method for the actual replacement.
 
 In Ruby, `gsub` is short for _global substitution_. The method is used to search
-and replace. Here, we want to find all the occurences of a dangerous word and
+and replace. Here, we want to find all the occurrences of a dangerous word and
 replace with its safe code word. With `gsub`, you provide the **word to find as
 the first argument**, then the **word to put in its place as the second
 argument**.