Here's an enjoyable article on the Slate about gameplay, in the context of retro-video games.
And for an example of gameplay in it's purest form, check out NetHack (an article about it titled "The Best Game Ever" can be found on Salon), which has a complete lack of graphics (besides ASCII characters) and is one of my periodic obsessions.
Oh yeah, today's word is hE (to drink)
yesterday's words: zài (again), jiàn (to see), xiànzài (now), kè (quarter hour)
Today's word (so far): máng (busy)
Language exchange went as well as could be expected. She seemed much younger than I expected and was very nice. However, I'm worried that it's going to be too one-sided. Instead of working on basic conversation, I ended up working on just the pronunciation of simple initial-final pairs. I felt pretty pathetic just repeating "shì, shì, shì" over and over again, interspersed with her trying to correct me. She says that all she wants is an opportunity to practice speaking english since it sounds like she pretty much speaks only Chinese at home and with her friends (Shanghainese, coincidentally enough), but the context and subject of the conversations may not be so helpful since she's planning on taking the medical certification exams, and her goal is to improve her speaking in that context (I think there's a practical section of the testing which simulates a patient evaluation). I hope she's not agreeing to continue simply because she's too nice to say no.
Oh, by the way, temperature in Andover when I left the office last night: -2°F
And a cool thing I found yesterday: an on-line Chinese-English dictionary that accepts and generates pinyin as well as traditional and simplified characters. Here are links to my name in Chinese: Yen(yan2) Kuo(guo2)-shing(xing4). I'm told that I was named by my grandfather. He wasn't too fond of the communists and apparently it's some kind of anti-communist slogan. I suspect it would be like being named "Freedom" or something. ("Hi, my name is 'Long-Live-the-Queen'...") I'll have to ask.
Language exchange tonight. Should be interesting.
I found this wandering into Luke's site today which I found both entertaining and terribly appropriate for tonight. I think I know all the pronunciations for everything in the poem (which thankfully doesn't have anything like that peculiar usage of "again" that you hear frequently in music and poetry) but I certainly don't know what any of the rules (and which are exceptions) that make them pronounced as they are.
Should be interesting, but I guess I already said that.
Today's words:
wanshang (evening)
bàn (half)
-men (plural suffix - eg "tAmen" = "they")
Yesterday's words:
diânzhOng (o'clock - eg "sì diânzhOng" = "four o'clock")
Home sick today.
July was sick most of last week and I made the mistake of thinking to myself that I'd finally whipped my immune system into shape and was feeling fine. I had this theory a few years ago that as long as I exercised regularly, ate decent meals and got a reasonable amount of sleep, I'd stay healthy. I'm not sure why I believed it, since I still seem to get sick although perhaps not as badly as that one year when I was working all the time and never left the house or office.
Anyway, that was last Friday morning on the drive to work. Friday night, I had a little headache. I was in denial most of Saturday, but skipped playing hoops in the morning because I dreamt that I got to basketball 2 hours early and got tired and then sick while waiting for people to show up. Yeah, that wasn't a good sign. Made it through the day just feeling a bit under the weather but pretty much gave up Saturday night after we got home from a birthday celebration.
So much for getting a workout in while the weather warmed up. It looks like it's gonna be single digits again by Wednesday. *sigh*
* * *
Sunday's words: zênmeyàng ("Is that OK?" a common expression), xièxie (thank you)
Today's words: xîhuan (to like), háishi (or), kêshì (but)
A little bit of Conjunction Junction today.
I have to say, I knew "xièxie" before, but part of this exercise is learning how to write it as well. Speaking of which, I finally signed up for classes at the Boston Language Institute. I wasn't sure what I was going to do because it seemed like the level 1 class was going to bore me, but since my speaking is so close to nonexistent, I was worried that I'd be in over my head in the level 2 class. I talked to Mom yesterday and she suggested I try the level 2 class and just switch down if I decided that it was too much for me. Duh. Sometimes it takes a little help to see the simple solution sitting in front of you.
So I called up BLI today and I'm now signed up for the 8 week session starting in February. The accelerated classes that start next week apparently didn't look like they would have enough students to be held. Hmmm, go figure. It probably works out for the best since it'll give me another few weeks to master (heh, right, master) the basics and see if the language exchange thing will work out. The only downside is that they only teach using the simplified characters. I guess this is the norm rather than the exception, but unfortunately, I've been studying the traditional characters so that I might have a chance of reading older texts that my parents have. Which really only means more work.
So on the Sun PC-PCI card in my workstation at work, I'm stuck running IE (I don't want to install anything that might piss off the IT folks) which defaults to MSN.com when I bring it up. Never bothered changing it because I try not to browse too much at work. *ahem* Yeah, that the ticket.
Ok. So my point is that they just launched a new version of the welcome page that clearly states that it's "Optimized for broadband."
Which to me, just says "We just added so much crap that it'll run like a dog UNLESS you have broadband." Stupid Microsoft.
Happy New Year, folks. A few (appropriately) random things going on:
We drove down to NYC to have dinner at Babbo last weekend. It was me, July, July's brother Levi, Levi's friend Megan, July's college friend Linda, and a last minute roster change with my college friend Ryan in for Linda's husband, Ben, who wasn't feeling well but also had to work. Got that? (It was good to see Ryan who I hadn't seen in almost 2 years)
July's brother is a 2nd degree of separation from Mario (or is it 1st? Or 3rd? I also get confused with the whole first-generation/second-generation American when you're the first to be born here) and worked a reservation last year and they decided it was so good, they'd go again this year. It was most excellent, although I was informed that it was better last year. B-team in the kitchen that night?
I have to say, Mario looks much friendlier on TV. He had kind of a scowl on his face or something.
Maybe he was just unhappy with the braised beef, too.
I don't generally subscribe to New Year's resolutions, but I decided to make one anyway this year. I'm once again trying to learn Chinese (Mandarin, despite my family mostly speaking Shanghainese because [A] I'm presuming that Mandarin will be understood by more people and [B] because I'm not sure where I'd exactly find places to learn shanghainese, outside of, say, Shanghai...Or at least anywhere near Boston), so my resolution is to learn at least one new word/character a day.
Today's word is "xingqi." Which really isn't so helpful without the tone markings. (For those curious, both i's should be first tones. It means "week." Add a number onto the end, and you get a day of the week: e.g. "xingqiyi" = "Monday." I'm sure you all knew that the "i" in "yi" was also a first tone, right?)
So far, so good. I've managed to study a little bit every day and have contacted a woman through the GBCCA to practice my speaking. (That's the Greater Boston Chinese Cultural Association -- their URL is http://www.gbcca.org but don't follow the link if you're running Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird since the site seems to like to crash those browsers) I'm a little nervous about it because the arrangement is that she'll help me with my Chinese and I'm supposed to help her with her English. Only, judging by her email, she's way ahead on the vocabulary department, and I'd hardly consider myself a proper speaker of the English language. I guess we'll find out soon enough -- we're meeting next Wednesday at the library. I still haven't decided whether or not to try a class at the Boston Language Institute or to get a private tutor.
Finally joined Friendster yesterday to see what all the fuss was about.
Initial reaction: "damn this thing runs slow."
Several months ago, a friend from my frisbee team kept asking me if I'd gotten her email. She said she'd been trying to contact me on Friendster and I had no idea what she was talking about. I'm still kind of wondering whether she was trying to send me email *from* Friendster (and had the wrong address), or if she did a user search and sent an invite to some random guy. Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this one day.
I've been mostly posting (bitching) about political stuff here, so I guess this will be a change of scenery...
I just installed the new Google Toolbar (I dunno, is it really new? I'm usually pretty far behind the technology curve these days, despite being in a technical field) Anyway, being notified when a pop-up is blocked has sort of highlighted something that I had noticed, but hadn't given much thought to because it wasn't always obvious when the pop-ups were being generated or who was serving the pop-ups. Could the browsers be themselves generating pop-ups?
Here's my simple test. Bring up two innocuous pages and see what happens. I bring up Netscape (specifically 4.72 -- Hey, I'm running on a Sun-PCI card in my Ultra-60 at work here) and go to Excite and then manually go to Yahoo and then back again. No big. Netscape brings up the pages and that's pretty much it.
I do the same thing in IE (Version 6.0.2800.1106) and the toolbar tells me that it blocked a pop-up on the way to Yahoo and half the time, it'll block a pop-up pulling up a page from Excite.
Evil empire? You make the call.
[UPDATE] Ok, July has suggested that it's probably some hook in IE that just doesn't work or exist in other browsers. And since everybody and their technically savvy grandmother will target their code to IE, it's gonna be IE that gets that many more pop-ups. So I guess the call is "not evil" in this instance. Kinda like you can't blame them entirely for having the lion's share of viruses, worms and other on-line nasties. If someone wants to attack the system, they hit the application that is being used by the largest segment of the population... So sometimes it isn't so great to be the king.
Although you have to admit, they're still doing pretty well with that world domination thing.
An interesting article from The Slate about the use of "Grandfather clauses" in lawmaking. Relevant to Bush's tax cuts, but also interesting in its use of California's Proposition 13 in 1978 as an example.
I remember Prop. 13. Although, being a kid, the biggest things that I noticed were that they cut the public fireworks display at the local park and that my parents pulled me out of public school that year.
The article: "Grandfather-clause Politics"Well, it's fall again. Practically winter, really.
July has often said that we haven't had a proper fall in quite a while. That is to say, she thinks it goes far too fast from summer hot and humid to F'ing cold, not leaving enough time to really appreciate the cool, crisp air, the autumnal colors. Too true, but it seems like all the seasons are just blowing by, even when I try to slow down and savour the moment when I can.
But it still has been beautiful out.
I witnessed snowfall for the first time this season on Wednesday; light flurries as I got into my car to head in to work, becoming an intermittent drizzle by the time I reached the office. There was no precipitation when I headed out although the ground was still wet and the clouds were still threatening.
That evening, we played pick-up in Lexington under the lights. By the time I reached the field, a steady drizzle had started. I was relieved to see several discs flying as I was worried that the inclement weather would keep people away. The outside temperature displayed in the car read 41F.
There's something about fall disc under the lights; I can't really explain it. There is a certain clarity, a crispness in everything you see. It feels like the cold air somehow locks everything into focus.
And the lights have their own magic. They highlight as much as they illuminate. I've caught myself staring at the trees on the perimeter of the field, strangely visible in the night, orange and yellow, the lights also outlining individual leaves like a halo, with blackness beyond.
This night, the trees are lit, as is the rain, falling so lightly it's not felt, only seen. And a beautiful sight it is. We play. It's still cold. I'm wearing at least 3 shirts and a fleece and my gloved fingers are still a little numb. But it feels good to be running and playing. Moving.
Being.
Outside.
Under the lights.
I just made a check-up appointment with my doctor. I called, got the receptionist's voicemail [Hmmm, ok, that's a new one. What's up with that?], left a message and received a return call a few minutes later. No big. When I asked for an appointment, I got his first available, in August.
August? As in next year, 2004, 10 months away, August?
Yep.
(And just to make it totally clear: helloooo? it's October.)
Does anybody else think this is totally screwed up? Whatever happened to the concept of wellcare? Preventative medicine?
And not to mention, in 10 months, my healthplan could change on me, again. Or I might get laid off. Or move out of state. There was a time when I wouldn't even have had a calendar around where I could write down an appointment that far ahead.
August?
*sigh*
The regularity with which something I read related to the current Bush Administration pisses me off is just unbelievable. Admittedly, I originally thought it was basically every day, but upon further reflection, it's not really everyday, and it's not really all about W. I suspect that part of what is keeping the count low is just that I cut back on the amount of time I spent reading and keeping up with the news. Chalk up a plus on the personal scoreboard for "improved mental state," and a minus for "staying informed."
Anyway, about a week ago, it was this article about the problematic wireless communications network being built in Iraq, which mentions a (yet another) questionable contract award without a formal bidding process, this time to MCI. (we already know about Halliburton, right?) Remember MCI? (That would be MCI/Worldcom.) They're trying to dump the WorldCom name to disassociate themselves with last year's accounting scandal. (Here, pick an article)
When I initially started this post, I was pretty pissed off about something the day before as well, but I'm beginning to think that it wasn't directly related to W. I think it might have been about all companies (besides MCI/Worldcom) changing their name to distance themselves from their historically poor reputations... oh yeah, that's the ticket, just that it centered on AOL/TimeWarner (TimeWarner) and made references to Philip-Morris (Altria) and Andersen Consulting (Accenture). But that's not really about W. It did send me off in some idle musings about Alfred Nobel. I remember someone telling me that he established the Nobel Peace prize because he didn't want to be remembered solely as the inventor of dynamite and its darker contribution to the world. And I wondered, in a 100 years, if the U.S. will be thought of as a country of great ideas and ideals, representing freedom and equality, or if we'll just be "USAria[tm]" or "AmeriCo[tm]." But I digress.
Anyway, the day before that (Wednesday, September 17, by my count), it was W's official statement that there was no proof of a connection between Saddam and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Which, in and of itself, is a good thing considering that apparently almost 70% of the American population thinks that there IS a connection. But the reason? Perhaps because he regularly ties the two together in public addresses, and then there are the comments from other members of his administration (such as Vice President Dick Cheney just a few days prior). I think this article gives a pretty good overview.
...which reminds me of this joke. And gives it a extra little "umph," dontcha think?
I've been locking horns with someone in a discussion group on the Jim's Big Ego homepage of all places. It all stems from Jim's posting of "The White House Resume" which upon first reading I found terribly depressing... and then, as I followed one poster, upsetting.
But, on the plus side, while looking for the exact wording for a quote by Thomas Jefferson, I did find this page, which I found heartening...perhaps like an on-line equivalent to the Phoenix Song in the Harry Potter Lexicon.
Interestingly enough, my search also came up with this site, which I found initially troubling, then amusing. I find this to be a common response when I view this type of site (other examples are http://www.whitehouse.org/ and http://www.landoverbaptist.org/).
And I realize that such sites poke fun by pushing their targets' perceived viewpoints and opinions to their logical (or illogical) extremes, but I sometimes wonder whether there are people out there who don't get the joke, or think to themselves "Spot on, you gentlemen have got the right idea." (Or perhaps "Yeah! Let's beat the $#%@ out of those commy-pinko[sic] bastards!")
*sigh*
Well, I was trying to be a good doogie, a fresh start as it were, and got in early ready to get back to work after an enjoyable weekend. But I made the mistake of taking a short break to check out the news online and read an article that got me upset enough that I couldn't get focussed again.
I thought I had a fairly articulate rant about the creeping lines of discrimination and prejudice (Thank you, AG Ashcroft and the Patriot Act), but I've managed to fat-finger delete the thing en toto. So I'll just drop in a link to the article in MSN Money which was original published in the Christian Science Monitor (but which charges a fee to read archived articles)
"Sabotaging a defense installation or a nuclear facility in a way that takes innocent life does not carry the federal death penalty," Bush said in calling on Congress to make these type of crimes punishable by death. "This kind of technicality should never protect terrorists from the ultimate justice."And I ask myself, exactly how does capital punishment serve as a deterrent to the type of person that would participate in a suicide attack? And while I'm at it, I was thinking about the latest tape that was released today that was purported to be of Osama bin Laden, and I wondered why our rhetoric couldn't be more about fighting religious extremists and addressing the problem by stamping out ignorance and misinformation rather than chest-thumping and carrying on about how we're going to squash our enemies who are, by definition, "servants of evil" like the bugs that they are?
