| Pot. Kettle. Black. |
[Jun. 16th, 2008|08:12 pm] |
Article on LOL and OMG and such creeping into student essays..."Everything is shorthand," Jeff Littwin, lead English teacher at Roosevelt High School. "No capitalization. The spelling is just awful. There's no commas, no periods." [emphasis mine] *sigh* |
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| Das deutsches Wort des Tages |
[May. 1st, 2008|12:58 am] |
Geschlechtsverkehr
Aw, German compounds, how I love thee.
(learned from watching The Lives of Others, with Dan. good movie.) |
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| Learning Russian grammar from spam |
[Apr. 21st, 2008|12:20 am] |
Aw, spam...
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| Safety Information |
[Jan. 15th, 2008|03:10 pm] |
Sitting on the shuttle last night, the girl next to me was on the phone speaking every other sentence/phrase/word in English vs. Russian, switching to English for technical things and certain idiomatic expressions.
Normally I'd just put on my headphones and listen to music but a) the English/Russian thing was amusing and b) she had a cute voice as well, so "eavesdropping" (if you can call it that when the person's directly beside you) was quite bearable.
Her phone call involved discussing sorting strategies for a toy website she made as a Ruby learning excercise:
http://safetyinformation.org/
Quite amusing.
I almost forgot to write about it, but then I saw this on reddit today:
:-) |
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| hardcore linguist |
[Aug. 8th, 2007|05:54 pm] |
In addition to watching about 6 episodes of Entourage last night before going to bed at 3:30 am or so, I read the entire Wikipedia article on the Voynich Manuscript, following dozens of links in the process.
The coolest part was reading about this dude who theorizes it's in an artificial alphabet representing the Manchu language, and went on to decode the first page, constructing this amazing table [mirror] in the process. Fucking crazy. |
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| ennui |
[Aug. 3rd, 2007|06:33 pm] |
I just learned a new word, via ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) torgo_x:ennuiWhy did I never know this word? |
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| Russian |
[Apr. 17th, 2007|06:01 pm] |
Off to Russian class in a bit here...
It's kinda sad that each week there's another person or so gone. I think the class started with 35 people and it's down to like 7. I wonder how many people will be there tonight.
Dan was telling me that his mother's German classes do the same thing each quarter, that it's common for people taking a language "for fun" in community/night/junior college to realize it's too much work or not interesting enough and quit early.
I might be considering quitting too, were it not for my brain starting to do those magical language-acquisition things that I find so cool about studying a language: when your brain starts to formalate words/sentences because "it feels right" and you can't logically say why, you didn't explicitly learn it, etc.
But really, there's no practical reason for me to learn Russian... it's just fun to learn a language, and Russian seems to be different enough from other languages I've studied to be interesting. It is a lot of work, though. I'm kinda stressed because I probably only study the minimum amount to do well on the tests (and not seem stupid in class), but when I study much more, I'm bored in class, the pace of which I can't control. So I'd rather be a little stressed (by studying lightly) and thus be engaged in class.
I've been speaking/writing German a fair bit lately with Angela (who I met in Belize, and is majoring in German at Berkeley), and it's painfully obvious how much better my German is than my Russian (naturally), but that's further discouraging, because a) while my German is pretty good, it's not fluent, which is a reminder that my Russian never will be great, and b) I want to be that good in Russian a lot sooner, but I know that it's probably 2-3 years away, at minimum, probably more.
I'm not sure this post had a point. |
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| Vocab Quizzer |
[Mar. 17th, 2007|04:48 pm] |
Updated my 7+ year old vocab quizzer program to be web-based. Actually I just rewrote it all.
Screenshot:
It keeps track of your history of failures, stats per-word, intelligently picks what word to give you next, and keeps bugging you about words until you've shown a history of getting it right (both times in a row most recently, and overall percentage).
You can create/change word lists, play again, etc.
I'm sure I'll add more later as I work on it more. But for now, I have a bunch of words to learn for a test on Tuesday. Clothing, colors, bunch of adjectives...
Time to stop hacking and start studying. |
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| "bike" ambiguity |
[Mar. 9th, 2007|11:02 am] |
I love both my bicycle and my motorcycle, but I hate both those nouns.
Yet the better noun for both, "bike", is now ambiguous.
The verbs "ride" and "bike" are a little better, as "ride" leans a little bit towards motorcycle, but not really. Not enough to be clear.
In any case, I rode my motorcycle to work today for the first time. I'm not sure it was any faster than bicycling to work (because I can go faster than traffic and break rules on my bicycle), but it sure was fun. I'm sure going home (which is 400 ft or so higher in elevation than work) will be faster by motorcycle, not having to pedal uphill in low gear.
Help me with wording! Qualifying each of these terms will drive me crazy. |
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| Russian Keyboard Layouts |
[Jan. 25th, 2007|10:09 am] |
So, it turns out that Linux, Mac, and Windows all have slightly different Russian keyboard layouts for phonetic mode.
Linux is shown in black here, Mac in red (where it differs). Windows isn't shown because there's no built-in phonetic mode... it's all "go download or make your own! fun fun!". So there exists about a dozen different variations on the net to download. Fortunately I don't use Windows.
But the Mac/Linux variation drives me crazy:
I suppose I could change Linux to match Mac, or vice-versa. Also need to switch the key binding to mode switch, but the built-in GNOME GUI for it doesn't give me any overlapping set of choices that the Mac does. More fun!
It's all enough to make me wonder if I should just learn the actual Russian keyboard layout.
P.S. What's with the two-level language/layout distinction in Windows that neither Mac nor Linux makes? I don't understand the difference. Does it actually inform the underlying application what language you're in? I guess I could see Word (spell checkers) using that data. But it seems that language+layout could be stored together as two properties of items in one list, rather than having a two level list... "Pick your language! Now pick your layout!" Which would be fine in a one-time admin GUI, but having two hotkeys to switch language vs. switch layout... wtf? I'm not seeing the use case. Multi-lingual people with 2 physical keyboards plugged in? |
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| Как вас зовут? Как вас зовут? .... |
[Jan. 23rd, 2007|09:55 pm] |
Back from first Russian class. It's 3 hours, once a week.
Tonight was letters (which Dina and I already knew), but also stuff like..
Как вас зовут? (over and over and over)
Меня зовут Брэд...
Кто это?
Это ....
что это?
Это ...
But mostly letters. So I focused on trying to learn vocabulary instead. Also learned a lot of the spelling rules which I'd read before but hadn't sunk in. (the combination of seeing it and hearing it is a lot more effective than just reading it....)
And I suck at saying ы, but I think I'm getting better.
Look forward to next week.... |
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| Russian, diving, Belize, .... |
[Jan. 22nd, 2007|08:20 pm] |
My first official Russian class is tomorrow night after work.
Want to go scuba diving... who's down for this weekend? I'm thinking Saturday morning. Then we come back Saturday evening and go to DNA Lounge in the evening for Pop Roxx?
I just booked Belize flights for me and Dina joining Henry, Frank and Tiffany, Whitaker and Erin, etc...
(TA 561)San Francisco to Belize City Saturday, March 24, 2007 01:35 - 09:50
(TA 411)Belize City to San Francisco Sunday, April 01, 2007 17:20 - 00:20 +1 day(s)
Dan, you in? Mischa?
Anybody else going to Belize or wanna? |
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| Les Dieux |
[Jan. 16th, 2007|11:18 pm] |
New goal: learn French by watching French-subtitled Battlestar Gallatica episodes from usenet. |
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| Русский |
[Jan. 2nd, 2007|09:07 pm] |
Enrolled in San Francisco City College just now so I can sign up for Russian classes when registration opens in 3 days... dina's gonna take 'em with me too, brushing up. (She took Russian in college but forgot everything, now counting in Russian один, два, три, quatorce, U2-style...) |
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| German Spam: What virus is this? |
[May. 15th, 2005|10:10 am] |
Between SpamAssassin and ClamAV, I haven't been getting much spam or viruses. A couple per day.
But this morning I check my mail to find over 100 German spam messages, most just saying "Lese selbst:" and some URL that's supposed to look like a news article about "Massenhafter Steuerbetrug durch auslaendische Arbeitnehmer" or something, but I'm sure is just porn or a worm.
Oh, and like 2 in English, just saying "Full Article:" and a URL in the same way. What virus is this? |
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| Naturfreunde |
[Apr. 16th, 2005|04:46 pm] |
Hiking for beer
( 4 images ) |
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| Mexico |
[Feb. 8th, 2005|11:31 am] |
 Mexico in a nutshell:
-- Thursday: arrive, lose my luggage at the airport (stolen? lost? dunno. it was sitting right next to me at the bar while we waited for everybody to get in....) ... walk up the beach
-- every day: drinking, hot tub, swimming in ocean, pool, walking around the city, going out to dinner, crazy, crazy taxi drivers, drinking at/in the hotel....
-- Friday: buying me new clothes at Gigante (could've gone to Walmart too, but it was further away and things were already getting sketch so far off the main tourist drag) ... drinking 40s on the street corner... walking up and down the beach...
-- Saturday: freak rain storm... city flooded... navigated city avoiding flooded streets best we could... went to Carnaval party in the streets later (rain had died)... birthday dinner.... went to a club de mujeres sin ropa... lisa got quoted prices for sex without even asking for it... got glared at by lots of mexicans.... gringos not belonging, etc. we wanted to buy them drinks to piss them off more, but we didn't get around to it. probably would get our asses kicked anyway.
-- Sunday: booze cruise ... out to another beach where we rode horses and banana boat and ate and played in the ocean ... (pics not developed yet.... waiting for PhotoCD) drunk mexican guy angry we didn't speak spanish... except our spanish was better than his english. whatever.
-- Monday: playing in pool/ocean/beach... volleyball... back to airport. got my luggage back from security. who knows.
Some pictures: http://www.picpix.com/brad/gallery/000ads8a (the fun-in-the-sun pictures are the ones on film.... had forgot my digital camera...) |
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| Flat tire |
[Jan. 9th, 2005|08:50 pm] |
Last night I was driving through a crappy parking lot and hit the biggest goddamn pothole I've ever seen. I'd known it was a crappy parking lot so I was already driving incredibly slowly, but the pothole was big enough to jolt my car like crazy and kill my front-right tire.
So once I realized the car was pulling to the right I pulled over around a corner off the main road (which I'd just turned onto out of the parking lot) and pulled right behind a Korean family also changing their tire.
They'd hit the same pothole.
Meanwhile, two random brothers (23 and 20) who were eating at the restaurant across the street were helping the Korean couple change their tire, which they were able to do once I turned on my headlights for them. (it was like 34 degrees, dark, and raining). It turns out the 20 year-old brother spoke Korean (and Spanish, and Japanese), so he was helping them.
After he helped them, he came back to try and help Dina and I, but my wheels are bizarre, and I didn't have a flashlight. Roadside assistance came about the same time the brothers started helping us, so we stepped back and talked, and we invited them to the party that we were on the way to. (luckily my car has a full-sized spare)
So then it turns out the 20 year-old-brother also swing dances, so he was dancing with a bunch of the girls at Tab's place, and ended up snuggling all night on the couch with one of them, and then going home with her.
Yeah, random night. |
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| thai restaurant |
[Jan. 4th, 2005|08:59 pm] |
I was at a Thai restaurant the other day and I ordered some spring rolls along with my entree. Because there was no lunch combo that included those two items, the waitress tried to clarify that I'd be charged separately....
She showed me her notepad where she'd written my order and pointed at one line and said, "Your phad thai", moves to the next line, "doesn't come with spring rolls...."
Except the lines she'd pointed out to me were written in Thai.
heh. :-) |
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| comedy of errors |
[Sep. 24th, 2004|07:51 pm] |
Before I forget, I shall now chronicle the story of our database servers:
August 12th: we order two new identical database servers: dual 64-bit Xeon (EMT64), 8GB ram for now (because 2GB sticks aren't available for a couple more months), and 12 15k scsi disks... 2xraid 1, 8xraid 10, 2 hot spares (1 per scsi channel).
August 13th-Aug 29th: I'm in Germany. I expect the servers to be back, racked, and with an operating system right before I return. I plan to setup MySQL and go. But I come back and they're not ready. Apparently Linux won't run on them... hangs during "checking processor flags".
-- SuperMicro gets us a bios fix
-- Now it boots, but only one NIC works.
-- SuperMicro gets us a fix, flashing the NIC's firmware
-- All gets working, but then they discover the motherboard/bios battery leaks, and if unplugged from the wall for 3 seconds or so, all the bios settings clear.
-- SuperMicro discovers some bad diodes were used in that board, but they can't get us a corrected board because Intel's chipset has been recalled and Intel's not making more because of a bug with PCI-Express or something.
-- SuperMicro offers to take our machines back and fix them by hand, soldering on new diodes. Since we don't need the PCI-E fixed, we can use the buggy Intel chipset still.
-- SuperMicro ships the boards back, and they work now on a table, but not in the case. (??) Kinda fuzzy on that communication. But then they find the BIOS would get corrupt too and the clock wouldn't even tick. So something was shorting.
-- At this point, a new motherboard is available, so we order that one. They arrive, but the memory doesn't. (these new boards take DDR2, not DDR)
-- The memory was supposed to arrive at the same time, but then it's bumped, and bumped, and bumped....
-- It was supposed to arrive today (Friday), but it got bumped again. Apparently it was still in Korea on its way from Samsung to ATP?
We're now promised Monday, but ... yeah.
A vote!
Poll #355784 Crap servers
Open to: All, results viewable to: AllThink the memory will arrive Monday? Think the server will work once it's all put together? Would you trust these two servers in production? |
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14 (10.9%)