Category: general

Yep, another link roundup. I love Yahoo! News’ Oddly Enough.

As China witnessed defeat early last week in some of its top events, such as women’s football, many blamed state media for creating a tense atmosphere and putting pressure on athletes.

Mari, Kelly, Chris and I were eating at Ruby Tuesday’s last week and watching the female gymnastics events. When the Chinese girls made their blunders, we joked to each other about how they were going to be executed when they got home. Apparently they were already thinking along the same lines. (And yes, yes we do have poor taste.)

Specialists at Washington’s home in Mount Vernon, Virginia, 16 miles (25.5 km) outside Washington, are gathering dozens of artefacts including snippets of hair and clothing that will be analysed over the next year.

Based on that information, they will make life-size models of the former president at three different points in his life that will go on display in 2006 as part of a new $85 million (54.17 million pounds) education centre and museum at Mount Vernon.

Sounds pretty neat.

I was interested to see that he lost his teeth at twenty…something that happens to people even today. In fact, it has occurred in my family.

The science of how they will reconstruct his face is remarkable. While it won’t be exact, it’ll be the closest we’ve ever gotten.

Historians have long assumed the ancient Mongolian ruler was illiterate, primarily because the Mongolian written language was created in the early 13th century, when Genghis Khan would have been in his 40s and not have had time to learn, the official Xinhua news agency said.

But now it looks like that wasn’t the case at all. Well, the man had to have been brilliant to do what he did. Maybe it just makes people uncomfortable to think so…

So, yeah.

I actually think it’s a great idea. They get to enjoy beautiful scenery (assuming there is scenery in South Dakota–hey, I don’t know!) and community-centered small town life while reenergizing the area with their growing business.

But it just seems so out there.

I hope more crazy new business ideas like this start popping up. Actually, I think it would be great if everyone owned a business, and we all had robots to perform the menial tasks. A true idea-world.

But then again, I’m nuts.

I just finished titling all my old articles.

While I was at it, I saved copies of images from Internet quizzes I’ve taken in the past, so if the quizzes ever get removed I’ll still have my result. I also started to put up a new picture gallery (from 2003), but Sean’s gaming, so I had to cut that short. Eventually, this post will be linked to the new gallery.

During the course of the renaming, I discovered a small error in my new template that I had to fix. Fortunately, everything seems to be fine now; let me know if you see any problems.

Four foreigners were killed in a head-on collision in Hanamatsu. My first reaction was, “Stupid foreigners, driving on the wrong side of the road”…but no, it was actually a Japanese person who made the error.

Crazy.

Anyone you know, Dawn? :>

A guy posted it to a forum. Not bad, I could put that span thing in the post template. Now it’s just a matter of whether or not I want to bother.

Thoughts, my loyal readers? Would it be better to have a paragraph or so on the front page, and then a link to read more? Or would that be inconvenient? Tell me what you think.

I’ve been working on my blog template today…lots of changes. I got rid of the old “archive” page that served no real purpose, and pointed the “archive” links to the little archive box on the lower right. I also made links to the other boxes on the right hand side, and I added a new box: search. With a little CSS, I was able to customize the box and button to make them less obtrusive.

The post content area is also horizontally expandable, thus bringing my website into the 21st century. Now I will monopolize your browser real estate regardless of your resolution…ahaha!

The archive month pages now only list post date, time, and title, instead of showing the entire post. This is more convenient for searching for a specific item (assuming you don’t, say, use the search), but it also means I need to go back into my archives and add titles for every post. No big deal, but I haven’t done it yet :P

Eventually I’m hoping to have a separate blog account for each section of my website, and they will all use this same template. Before I do that, I want to figure out a way to list all my blogs in my sidebar without doing it manually. Surely there is some way to do it. I’ve emailed Blogger to ask.

I wanted to create a “latest comments” area, which would list when the last few comments were posted and who posted them, with links to the comments…but there appears to be no way to do that, so I emailed Blogger.

I also wanted to do Blogger’s expandable post summaries hack, but check out this lovely bit at the bottom:

However, the “read more” link is in the template, so it will appear regardless of whether a post has been truncated or not. (Modifying this feature is left as an exercise for the reader.)

I suppose they thought that was cute. I, however, found it thoroughly obnoxious. Thanks, Blogger, for the totally useless “hack”.

I mean, seriously. Who wants to have “read more” written on posts that don’t have any additional content? I was trying to wrap my brain around a way to hide the “read more” link when it was unnecessary, and I’m sure it’s possible in JavaScript or something, but I’m not a programmer and it’s really a lot of hassle to solve a problem that Blogger could have dealt with by allowing for expandable post summaries in their WYSIWYG interface. (Post-Nuke, for example, has two text boxes, and if you have a really long post you can put the additional text in the second one.)

I realize that this is a free service and it’s lame to check the teeth of a pony you got as a present, but that last little snide comment just burns me up. “Left as an exercise for the reader”, my ass.

My dream of categories for my blog has pretty much died…I’m thinking about making different blogs for each category and then linking them on the sidebar, assuming Blogger responds with a way for me to list my blogs in that way. Here’s hoping. I think that I may be able to manipulate the RSS feeds to create a page with all the posts on it, but I’m not certain, and I’m trying not to get my hopes up.

Aaaaaaaand that’s about it.

Looks like they’re finally making this trashy-Western-romance-novel-transposed-into-Japanese-setting into a movie.

IMDB – ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ (2005)
Japan Today – Watanabe to star in ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’

Spielberg was originally set to direct. He’s producing, and Rob Marshall is directing.

I like how the IMDB says Sayuri “transcended her roots”, rather than “she was kidnapped, forced into slavery, and finally ‘rescued’ by a businessman who liked her beauty and slave-abilities”.

I have nothing against the geisha, but this book is dressed-up trash. The only thing it has going for it are the geisha secrets it reveals, which are quite interesting…and apparently used without permission, as I heard from my former Japanese instructor, and as explained in this article. (I’d believe the geisha over Golden…personal prejudice, I guess.)

Apparently Peter MacIntosh, who I’ve heard of before and whose geisha tours I’m very much interested in taking, helped Rob Marshall scout locations for the film. This seems weird in light of the lawsuit…however, you’ll note from the previous two articles that they did not, in fact, find a Japanese woman to play the main character. Make of that what you will.

At any rate, I’ll see the film. Even if it is based on a cheap romance novel, it’s sure to have some very pretty setpieces and costumes.

I’m beginning to think that Japan Today should be renamed as “Japan News for Stupid Foreigners”…because while they try to do a good job of reporting, ultimately their Comments sections are filled with “blah, this is stupid”, “Japan is stupid”, “the Japanese are stupid”, “this article is biased towards the Japanese”, etc. I think the only people who comment over there are bored English teachers living in Japan who feel homesick for their native countries.

I’ve considered posting there to try and add commentary that actually isn’t derogatory for a change, but ultimately I never do. It seems like too much hassle. Instead, I’ll just stop reading the comments ;P

Sean linked me to a horrible BBC article (and I subsequently dug up a much better CNN article) about a small, isolated tribe in Brazil called the Piraha. These are a people with only two “numbers” in their vocabulary: “one”/”a few” and “many”. Their pronouns don’t indicate number at all; “he” and “they” are represented by the same word.

People from this tribe have difficulty doing complex mathematical problems involving counting more than three items. During research testing, adults were unable to learn the names of more numbers…but children were.

These findings are great evidence for two linguistic theories: first, that children are more readily able to learn language (and any skill, really) than adults (this has been shown time and again in studies, but there are some who still don’t buy it); and second, that the language we speak affects how we understand the world. In simplistic terms: if we don’t have a word for something, then it’s harder–or impossible–for us to comprehend it. It can get far more complex, though; anyone who’s studied semantics knows how difficult it can be to properly define a text’s connotation. Language affects how we think about the world in varied and subtle ways.

Writers know this. They have to. Writers use language not only to transcribe actions, but to express ideas. There are straightforward ways of doing this, but writing is seen as art only when it presents an idea more subtly. Literary critics and Old English Teachers thrive on layers of meaning. To imbue a text with the sort of connotation that has readers gasping at the brilliance–and yet is just plain enough that readers can “figure it out” on their own, thus feeling brilliant themselves–a writer must be attuned to the quiet workings of language, beneath the uncomplicated surface. And the writer must then be able to manipulate those workings to her own ends.

Sometimes this is subconscious, brought about by innate ability. But I would argue that the larger portion of it is simply crafting. Working to bring out the intended ideas through prose that is tight, clear, and packed with meaning.

That’s the kind of writer I want to be, should I ever actually go back to writing.

While discussing the articles with Jes, we came around to the subject of English as a Second Language, and she mentioned that there is actually an ESL program right down the street from me. (How convenient!) So I’m thinking about calling them up and offering to teach…I do have a “Certificate in Applied Linguistics for Teaching English as a Second Language”, after all, and it’s just going to waste :> Jes usually teaches there, but she had to take this semester off due to a conflict with her course schedule. She plans to go back next semester, though, so we could share tips and stories with each other :) I mentioned the program to Brooke, and she’s interested too, although it might not be possible with her work schedule. It would be a lot of fun with more friends there, though :)

I have to say, this episode cheered me up. And it’s not a happy episode. That really speaks to how freaking depressing Touch was getting.

I feel like talking about it a little, so if you haven’t seen the episode, and you’re planning on it, and you hate spoilers, then for God’s sake what are you still reading for?!?!?

Mars is awesome. She’s not letting Venus get away with her cowardice. Because, of course, that’s what it is. She uses the “past life” as an excuse to hide from the operation that could save her life. She’d rather die on her own terms…but in doing so, she’s not living. Mars has been trying to show her that, but Venus is probably the master of stubborn. It had to come to this, and I’m glad it did. I’m interested to see where things will go from here.

Usagi’s not doing very well at the whole “smile like a fool” thing, but that’s understandable. At least she’s not pissed…

The day Nephrite begins stalking Ami draws ever closer.

Kunzite either decided that his “out” was dying–like how Nephrite died and was then reborn–or he didn’t want to be “brainwashed” by Zoisite’s powerful death melody, so he figured the only logical solution was to impale himself. Hmm.

Either way, I liked how Zoisite changed in this episode. He finally got past wishing his own will on Endymion, and to the proper place for an attendant: wishing for Endymion’s will to be done. I think that’s probably why his final bit of music was so powerful…he became much closer to what he used to be before he died.

Now I’m just waiting to see if he and Kunzite will pop up in the city as “humans”. I’m not sure what was signified by his stone breaking and crumbling to dust. It could mean he’s completely gone, but I don’t think so. I think the stones were simply the way Beryl trapped their souls; this is evidenced by the fact that when Jadeite was reborn from his stone, he was still in Dark Kingdom form and brainwashed to love Beryl. Maybe the stone being gone means that when Zoisite is reborn, he’ll be free of the spell just like Nephrite. Only time will tell in Kunzite’s case, because we didn’t see if his stone disintegrated or not…

…and I must say, I feel like a total shithead for making fun of Kazuya and his lemons.

I also feel rather betrayed–by my own first impression. I thought it was going to just keep being a funny, cute love triangle. But no, they had to go and start dealing with serious issues…issues that I, frankly, have not come to terms with.

I’m afraid to keep watching, because what if it goes back to being funny and cute? How can it, after that happened? But that’s what life is, it’s all about moving past the things that make us hurt, and forgetting the immediacy of it. Will Tatsuya and Minami forget? What will it mean, if they do?

Man…

NOBODY WANTS MY LEMONS!!!!!!!

I’m thinking about giving up on online “communities”. They’re not communities; they’re loose conglomerations of persons who all like one particular thing, and who spend their time whining, trolling, picking each other apart, and rambling about how special they are. I already hate forums in general, because no fan forum is ever “on-topic”, and there is always the “in group” that’s been there since “the beginning”. Keenspot forums are especially annoying because they have hazing rituals. I don’t even bother with those unless something weird happened with a comic and I want to see if there’s any information available.

What I really hate, though, is stupidity, and there is a special place in my Book of Despising for people who both are stupid, and who then accuse me of being stupid.

Really, sometimes I think I should just give up the Internet entirely :P

1 lap around complex with handweights

6 minutes stairclimber

5 minutes treadmill with handweights

50 crunches

20 knees to elbows

30 each side obliques

30 each side lats

30 back raises

20 wuss pushups

30 each side outside inner thigh raises

30 each side inside inner thigh raises

30 each side side leg lifts

20 scissor kicks

30 each side glutes

20 calf raises

I actually got up at 4:30 or so today. I guess I woke up naturally due to going to bed at a decent hour (9:30 pm). I took my time getting dressed and stretching, and even read the Spring House newsletter that came out yesterday (apparently they’re handing out free breakfast next Thursday…I always miss their free stuff, hopefully I’ll remember to go get something).

I’m wearing my contacts for the first time since Boston. You see, while there, I realized that I hadn’t brought any saline, so I borrowed David’s. Only it wasn’t saline, it was peroxide, and I was supposed to put in a little pill thingie to neutralize it. I did not do this.

Let’s just say that after I managed to claw the lens out of my right eye, it was bright red and smarting and remained so for the rest of the day.

When I found out about the neutralizing pill, I put them in with my contacts, and then when I got home I washed them repeatedly with saline…but until today I hadn’t tried putting them in again. Fortunately, it looks like they’re fine, and my eyes don’t hurt at all.

I do need to go to the eye doctor, though…my prescription is pretty old, so I might need a new one anyway.

It occurred to me this morning that blogging is right up my alley. In high school, I used to write journal entries on notebook paper, and then let other people read them. That was easier for me than actually telling them how I was feeling. I shared some pretty intense stuff with my friends that way. It was like a LiveJournal! Only, it was actually live! ;>

Work yesterday was fine. We didn’t get any orders while I was there (which is a horrible thing to rejoice about, but there you have it), and Robert and I discussed some ideas and changes in the online market (specifically, Google and Yahoo!’s forays into restaurant directories). I like it when we discuss the theories behind the business; that’s when I really feel like I’m learning stuff.

That’s about it. Need a quick shower before I head to work. Bye ;>