robot mind

bsod+driving school

2009-02-23T22:55:00.000-08:00

my laptop got the bsod today at work, unrecoverable. thank god for incremental backup. I did what work I could, and then left a couple hours early after about 5 minutes of tapping my pencil and staring at my empty docking station. It should be good to go in the morning, but I still have pretty much all day tomorrow to reinstall and reconfigure my environment...ugh. I had driving school today from 5:30-9:00pm. I studied Japanese almost the entire time. My brain is still a little bruised i think :-p. almost 4 hours(i got there early) of fairly focused study, more than i've done at once thus far i think.

check out this link about organizing and decluttering your living space with an inventory.

late febuary resolutions

2009-02-22T20:39:00.001-08:00

- Never use food as entertainment or comfort. Make a conscious decision that I will not regret before every bite of food.

- Make Japanese study a more significant part of my day. Make it highly enjoyable. Never let it become a chore, but at the same time make it an unavoidable and required daily routine until it is a solid daily habit.

- I threw some stuff away this weekend, stuff I didn't and probably will never need. I also cleaned my apartment alot, did dishes and stuff. It didn't really take so much time that I couldn't have studied Japanese, but in my mind it did, and I badly needed to straighten up, so I chose to let the weekend play out how it did. I would like to get to a point where I have few enough posessions that I can evaluate the place that thing has in my life on a weekly basis.

tldr; make decisions instead of following habits, but replace good habits with bad habits where that's not practical.

tool roundup

2009-02-16T21:10:00.000-08:00

found a great addon for firefox to let you capture dynamic media(sound,video,pics) that may be hard to find a direct download for. I used it to pull some sentence audio off iknow.co.jp a little while ago.

hiveminder.com - if the todo list in your brain would be like the terrible offspring of a perl script and a soap opera(or worse, if it would look like a freshly erased sheet of notebook paper) then hiveminder is worth checking out. It has a simple interface that hides its many features until you need them. It also interprets natural language between [] well enough for my needs.

wiktionary.org - everyone knows about wikipedia.org, this is its compulsively thorough cousin. Need to make certain you haven't been misled on the meaning of 'the'? What about 'hey'? wiktionary is the place to go.

ubiquity for firefox - it's the cli of the future for the internet.

日く

2009-02-15T17:27:00.002-08:00

約 yaku - about
国 kuni/koku - city,homeland

あのふたり　はそくりでくべつできない
ano futari wa so kuride kubetsu dekinai
those two look identical and i can't tell them apart

くつしたにあながひらいている
kutsushita ni ana ga hiraiteiru (audio i have 'hiraiteru' sounds more like hiiteiru)
there are holes in my socks

pretty slow for 4 days. Time to reevaluate how much effort I'm putting into studying.

日はち

2009-02-13T07:12:00.000-08:00

new words
市 , いち , ichi- market
市 , し , shi - city
者 , もの , mono- person
前 , まえ , mae - past, front
できる, dekiru - to be able

new sentences
そこのかいだんをおりてください
soko　no kaidan wo　orite kudasai (i'm not really sure where the words end or begin anymore)
go down the stairs please

しゅくだいはまだおわっていません
shikudai wa mata owate imasen
i haven't finished my homework yet

learning full sentences seems to be a good strategy, now that i have some hirigana learned, learning a full sentence is not much more difficult than learning a single word, because I don't have to guess how the words should be put together.

日しち

2009-02-11T23:02:00.000-08:00

I cut down the word count to 6, but added a sentence.
その sono - that(near speaker)
問題 mondai - the matter,problem,question (this one's a pain to draw)
的 mato - mark, target
です desu - be(polite)
について nitsuite - about
これ kore - this one

here's the sentence
keんこうがいちばんたいseつだ
kenkou ga ichiban taisetsu da
your health is the most important thing.

I'm not even trying to tackle the kanji on this one. I plan to add more sentences a day at the expense of words, not sure how many. A whole sentence was suprisingly easy to learn, I may just pursue this route, thanks to the internet, I can find ALOT of whole sentences to use in different situations.

日roく

2009-02-10T19:19:00.000-08:00

I read this article and found this site and decided that I need to just memorize whole sentences. I'm a proponent of figuring out things for one's self, but language learning is really just about imitation. The better you imitate, the better you speak the language(up to the skill of the original speaker).

new words
同 dou - similar
へ he - synonym for に, but with different connotations
東京　toukyou - Tokyo
時　toki/jii - time
中　chuu/neka - inside,middle,during
ば ba - means if/suppose when ending a sentence
くる kuru - come(closer to speaker)
もの mono - thing, person, (also what?)

it's a secret to everyone

2009-02-09T21:49:00.000-08:00

I found this today. It's a character intro, it could possibly use a description of what the character is wearing, but other than that, it's complete. I think I will finish the rest of the story.
===========
The sun was bright in my face. I rolled over and covered my head with my plaid comforter. Silently I paniced and leapt from bed. I had overslept, nothing to be done now but remedy my failures thus far. I clothed myself in a whirlwind and then swiftly slid through my door, keys in hand, turning the lock before my satchel even had time to complete its motion and land with a thump at my side. I briskly walked towards the parking deck, organizing my thoughts for the upcoming proposal that I was to be making to Dr. Melgrove. The parking deck elevator was broken, either that or the light in the button had died, but I doubted that. Jogging up one flight of stairs I quickly ascended to the level where I had parked two nights ago, before submersing myself in last minute research and planning for this preliminary pitch to the head of the governing body of research. I was the only one parked on this level, unusual. I wasted no time on this fascinating but irrelevant fact, quickly starting my car and speeding down the endless left turn of the marquee street apartments parking deck. By the time I had reached the street, the lack of cars seemed less irrelevant.

catchup(aka: 日go)

2009-02-09T21:23:00.000-08:00

wiktionary is my new and more reliable source for definitions, though i still get sounds from saiga-jp.

氏し shi -- mr., family line
円　en(yen) -- yen(日本 currency) , circle
よう you -- comes after a verb to indicate desire for it to happen soon
この kono -- this
ため tame -- try, do for
まで made -- until, even
いう iiu -- tell
ます masu -- to increase, verb ending emphasizing politeness

I need to go back to drawing the words as I say them, and imagine their meaning, before I go to bed. and then repeating that the next morning. I retained much better then.

mikushi!

2009-02-05T22:28:00.000-08:00

mixi...I must get an account there. Unfortunately, it's both invite only, and it requires you to have a cell phone number in Japan. Hopefully I can get some kind of prepaid phone for relatively cheap and make this happen. What I'll do once I'm in is another matter, but looking for local Japanese exchange students to trade language skills with seems like the best alternative prospect. The way I've come to understand it, mixi is significantly more popular than facebook, and I only know like 1 person younger than 35 that doesn't have a fb account.

random note, blood type is a big deal in japan? So I hear, it's like comparable to your zodiac sign or something. I don't even know what my blood type is...time to donate. I better make a hiveminder task so I actually do it.

day shi(4)

2009-02-04T23:13:00.000-08:00

Last time I said short post, it was longer than the previous one.
I found a new resource which explains TONS about particles and connecting words.

人 ,hito - man,person,personality
年 ,two readings ,nen- age, and toshi - year
さん, san - three, numbers, calculations
なる, naru - grow, become, morph into, bear fruit
など, nado - equal
よ, ya - for joining elements of an incomplete list. EX: わたshi わ amerikajin よ student よいsoがshi です(I am american and student and busy)
日本, nihon/nippon - Japan!
good place to stop!

I am going to skip a day to review and research other resources.

day san(3)

2009-02-04T21:28:00.000-08:00

short post today, i have catching up to do, I didn't memorize these words well enough yesterday.
Up to hachi(8) words,
ある , aru -- a certain something, one thing?, to be alive, if a living thing, or to have if not living. one can "have" a pet, which is also alive, not sure how this works, that may be up to context and tone. i'm basically remembering this by associating the english words 'a' and 'alive' with possesion if not alive somehow falling in there.

いる, iru -- insert, exist, need. right now i'm remembering this by combining the long e sound from 'eexist' with a high pitched 'eeeeek!' type sound that you might make if someone gave you a shot(which is an alternate meaning). I think this can also mean 'the point' of a conversation, but i'm not really remembering that right now.

こと , koto -- fact,say/talk/tell,circumstances/current state,WORD! This is an awesome こと. One word that means fact,circumstances,say, and word seems ripe for overuse.

日, hi -- day, sun, abbreviation of Tokyo. mixing in kanji may seem confusing, but it was on my list, so, it's time to learn it.

ない , nai -- nothing,zero, etc. i've started counting from ないに ku instead of ichi に juu, in true coder style :-p. (I used に as a word indicating direction of movement: 0 に 9 , 1 に 10. I read that it can be used similarly to the word 'to' when denoting travel to a destination, i'm not sure if this is appropriate though)

も, mo -- lose, loss, mourn. seaweed,algae. apparently も can also mean one's own family? i'm going to assume it means loss most of the time, though I could see family being prevalent.

から , kara -- empty shell, from, because of, since. I see an empty carapace when i hear this word, that is like an empty void and the source of all things.

で , de -- appear,leave,pay. no tricks here as such i had some trouble remembering the meaning of this word, though i could write the hirigana and romanji without trouble.

I encountered one word that I could not find a meaning for and had to skip: れる
I couldn't find anything on any of the 7 sources that I use. Even something close I would have taken (ex: remember when I thought と meant only door, and commented on the Nihon obsession with doors? ).
If anyone knows the meaning of れる please let me know.

Something new besides Nihongo lesson reviews soon :-p

day に(ni,2)

2009-02-03T21:13:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I upped my words from san(3) to roku(6), I remembered that I knew how to count to juu(10) in Nihongo when I reached my first word of the day: ni(2,に).

ni, or に means two, and sometimes February, which makes alot of sense. Apparently, it can also be used to indicate direction of travel, similar to the english word 'to'. I find this to be a strange coincidence.

te, or て means hand or arm when used literally, and skill or ability in other contexts. It is easy for me to group all these things together.

to, or と I had some trouble with. The only translation that I was comfortable with was that of 'door', specifically a Japanese style door. Since it is so high up in frequency of use, I can't imagine that Japanese culture is that obsessed with doors. I'm assuming it is used frequently to refer to other kinds of portals, or to opportunities or barriers to opportunities, as a door can be either.

suru, or する means to rub,scrape,shave,scrub, and somewhat apart from these other things, print. I imagine that this is a very versitile word, but since my word frequency list was compiled from newspapers, perhaps する　は popular desu(deす).

ga or が is a particle that ends a sentence and denotes a question. As in something like 'anata wa と san deす ga?' I remember from a couple lessons at japanesepod101 that questions like the one above end in 'ka', at least that's how I heard it. Some sources I read grouped ga and ka together, as if they were different romaji of the same Nihongo. They are very similar sounding, so I'm going to keep this in the back of my mind for later.

da or だ is used to end a sentence to imply informality. It also seems to be possible to imply general apathy or violence with this word. Humorously, it is also considered masculine, and women frequently omit this word. Of this days words, I am by far the most uncertain about this one. I think I'll save speculation for later and simply remember that it's used to imply informality.

For now, I'm just going to stick with this and add more notes to my flash card if I discover alternate meanings.

getting started

2009-02-02T16:55:00.000-08:00

Here's what I wrote in my moleskine today:

Yesterday, I learned three Nihongo words, or "Nihongo no words" if you wanted to codeswitch
no, or の seems to be a particle denoting possession, like "me of book" to describe a book belonging to me. "watashi no book" is better though :-)

I also learned ta, or た which means many,frequently,and also(though the non-hirigana is different I'm sure) rice field. I am imagining た to mean something like "vast expanse containing many things, like grains of rice in a field" this may be wrong, but it's only the beginning of the evolution.

The last word i learned is ha, or は. I am least clear on the meaning of this word, but I understand it is to be a topic marker. I'm assuming this either means that it is a particle used after a word to denote what we are talking about(ex: he は ran) or it's used to refer to the implied topic (ex: は exciting desu)

I'm using mnemosyne to study Nihongo. It's a very cool [flash card] tool. simple, question, answer, link images and sound to both questions and answers, vise versa option, categories, system to refresh you on old material and not overwhelm you with new material. it's worth checking out unless you're not interested in learning or retaining.

I'm using wikipedia, wikiversity, some other site, and google image search for word meanings and previously mentioned other site for pronounciation. forvo too. I'm using wordfreq_ck [from this place] for a word list. It's some overhead, but, it's fun, it's how i learn new English words, and the different angles only help me better understand a word's greater meaning.

I'll be at 10 words/day soon, then it's just a matter of continuing for a year until I reach a critical state to start devouring wikipedia.jp. That's the intended goal. After that, it's ez-mode for my personality.
[apparently は is ha or wa in romanji, so I kinda already knew that word. My thanks to Rebecca]

cough cough

2009-02-02T16:22:00.000-08:00

It's gotten a bit dusty since I was last here... partially due to the fact that I've taken up the habit of writing in a moleskine. I feel terribly trendy doing it, but it's oh so useful. I'll be typing up things that I write or have written from time to time.

I learned to solve the rubix cube in part due to a plain but inspiring status update (thanks Andy :-). It's a compulsion now, like bouncing your knee or squeezing a stress ball.

I like simple things. I have a simple idea. The word 'the' is roughly 6% of written English. The first 2000 most commonly occurring words are 90% of the English language. 2000 isn't that many things. At one point a few years ago, I could have with some difficulty named 2000 Magic: The Gathering cards, along with a general summary of their rules text and suggested use. If i learned 10 words/day of a foreign language, I think I would be close enough to get started on that language's wikipedia in a year.

So, I'm putting together some resources to help me learn my 10 words/day and learn Japanese.

Priorities

2008-11-03T18:20:00.001-08:00

This one post a month thing is stupid. Alot of things that I do are stupid. After reading the worse is better theory I've decided that the theory fits the pattern of success in many things. I also really like the focus that "worse is better" puts on simplicity. Simple things are easier to understand and easier to change. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I am a minimalist at heart. In my opinion, as a general rule, unless there is a "good" reason for something, it's unneccesary. HOWEVER, the beauty of "worse is better" is that defining "good" is not a primary issue. The first task in worse is better is to keep things simple. Not creating anything is pretty simple, and that doesn't really violate worse is better(though it doesn't yield anything either). There is no better quote for this concept than "It is better to destroy than to create what is unneccesary." In the spirit of this philosophy of design and creation, I'm writing a short book. It will be at least 325 pages, and I will be finished on Dec. 31. Yes, that is a completely unreasonable deadline. When I am finished, I will decide where to proceed from there. I'm pretty much following WiB. I have a very rough(10 line) outline, but I didn't write that until I had already written a few pages of the book. I basically have no rules set for myself besides have 325 pgs written by midnight Dec. 31. Look forward to a post about my experiences with this experiment short after that.

Things to remember

2008-10-24T09:07:00.001-07:00

It's worth it.
It's meaningful.
It's valuable.
It's possible.
No Tomorrow.

Artsy stuff

2008-09-20T07:48:00.000-07:00

I need to spend what little free time I have focusing on more artsy, less logical stuff.
The short story of my life recently is Win32Ole, File::Monitor, ActiveRecord, and Script.aculo.us

I'll herald you with an epic ballad shortly.

working days

2008-08-26T16:41:00.000-07:00

So, my work is pretty amazing recently. I'm slowly whipping this mess of data and code into a desirable data product. As a side effect I'm producing some useful ruby methods like

class Hash
def intersection_is_equal?(other)
keys=self.keys.to_set.intersection(other.keys.to_set).to_a
self.select{|k,v|keys.include? k}.to_h== other.select{|k,v|keys.include? k}.to_h
end
end

Maybe I'll see about submitting them to ruby core.
Long story short, it's actually doing what it's supposed to do. AND I'm about to have a whole month of super overtime working on it with no one to randomly change the direction of the project.

Been writing alot of project specific code generators that are a part of my build process.
SVN is amazing, why I wasn't required to take 2 semesters on the pragprog starter kit is quite beyond me. Why I didn't have a class called "writing code generators" I'll never know.

The Storm

2008-07-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

I love rain.
To me rain is hope.
Hope that this rain heralds a violent and raucous storm.
A positive emotional event demanding the attention of every sense.
A spectacular demonstration of power to destroy, power to control.
Zombies shelter themselves away from the storm's power to destroy them, ignoring its beauty.
There is no safety in hiding.
The Storm is beautiful.

mobilizing neurons

2008-07-25T11:06:00.000-07:00

Ever notice an urge to snack on something while concentrating? Or play with something silly? It's a habit you learned because it HELPS. I've been reading about rewiring your brain recently, and it turns out stimulating as much of the brain as possible helps! Even if you would think it might be distracting. You can't use the same portion of your brain though, you have to do something completely different that doesn't require conscious thought. For those in the know, this might seem incredibly obvious to you, it fits right in line with the 'neurons that fire together, wire together' maxim.

So, I think I need a microfridge in my office with wasabi, ginger, jalepeno, lemon, lime, grapefruit, brown sugar, salt, basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary, cinnamon, lavendar, mint, etc. Just so I can get that part of my brain moving. The downside being me trying to fit everything into an MVC architecture next time I go eat sushi.
I also need some small objects with multiple textures to fiddle with at work.
And probably 5-10 small pictures that inspire emotions in me to help activate my 'right brain' more.
Music, well, yea, that's already done.

prejudice! lulz :-p

2008-07-25T06:20:00.000-07:00

most people aren't willing to stare into the face of madness to learn something new.
i'm happy to say i am.

the grind, and cufflinks

2008-07-17T17:46:00.002-07:00

It's been a long two weeks. I'm still not sweating perfect software, which makes me sad. I need to learn more libraries/modules/languages/code generators, plan more, and not start coding until i know what my requirements are. That or adapt a more iterative programming style. Immediate, repetitive results, with enough agility to adapt as requirements change.

I need some shiny things. cufflinks, a shirt to hold them, and a suit and shoes to match. and a hat(but not for the cufflinks) and some rings, and 2 watches. and about 5 colognes. I need to go shopping.

More on my shopping trip later.

zombies

2008-07-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

Seriously, why does everything stop on saturday and sunday? I can live with businesses being closed during the most natural human sleep cycle, but during the day? when the sun is bright and shining? More businesses need to realize dropping saturday and sunday from your customer support/shipping/production time means dropping 30% of your week. More people need to wake up and acknowledge their own mortality. Really. Estimate your time of death, figure out how many days you have left. Quit pissing it away. Or at least enjoy how you're pissing it away. Hate your job? Quit. Do something you love, even if it leaves you bankrupt and heartbroken. At least you didn't waste what you were given like everyone else.
screw acceptance.
self realization ftw.

Enlightenment

2008-07-06T18:41:00.000-07:00

I hit a speed bump. It slowed me down enough to see I'm heading in the wrong direction. You know how when you learn something substantial, the world either appears less or more magical and wonderous? The optimism of my paradigm generally alternates between rising and falling, but recently, it's been rising much more than falling. I feel very human recently. The fascades the world peel away in my mind. I see things more clearly now.

screw frustration.
knowledge ftw.

screen scraping

2008-07-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

Just read this article. I knew there was a reason I loved firebug. Time to start automating my keyboard into obsoletion.

openmoko

2008-07-04T09:32:00.000-07:00

Just got the openmoko neo freerunner next dayed. Here's hoping I'll write something meaningful for it.

edit: i guess next day doesn't mean saturday. I would have guessed coming from Taipei they would have at least shipped it by this point, since saturday is OVER in Taiwan and I don't think they were closed for the independence day of a foreign nation. Maybe I just didn't get a ups tracking number about it yet.

edit: yep. shipping the 7th. That's great. Time to try out UPS Intercept and see if I can get it delivered to my hotel.

whining

2008-07-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly moving towards the idea that personal blogs in general are for bitching and whining about whatever you can think of. So, here's me whining.

Shit doesn't go my way all the time...can someone please get to work resolving this issue?

Screw whining.
Whining ftl.

robotic financial nanny

2008-07-01T22:39:00.000-07:00

I'm not managing my money very well, roughly 0% effectively actually. If I ever get a couple days of free time I'm going to setup a SQL server, strip my financial info from the online banking sites I use, throw it all in there and send myself a text message when I'm being bad. I'll probably use rails or maybe catalyst instead if I can't find a simpler way to pull out the info than parsing the html.

tension

2008-06-30T17:31:00.000-07:00

Right now, I'm about as tense I'm capable of handling. I feel like a masterfully crafted suspension bridge. I think I've finally accepted and embraced the beautiful bittersweet mixture of maintaining gentle constant pressure on essentially every aspect of my life and train of thought. Encouraged by the persistently applied adverbs of Daft Punk's 'harder,better,faster,stronger'(i assume 'smarter' is implied) that has become my mantra recently and the sarcastic reality check of Blackalicious' 'nowhere fast' I avow that nothing less than the most rapidly developed, simplest, useful, scalable, portable, and universally distributable is acceptable. I am simultaneously caught up in the most hopeless romanticism, aggressively pursuing the things which I find most emotionally invigorating. Aggressively because I refuse to regret anything that I am capable of changing or continue to do anything with which I am unhappy.
screw relaxing.
productivity ftw.

milestone

2008-06-29T19:31:00.000-07:00

i just watched a site go down in realtime ~5min from when i linked to it from slashdot. that's enough of a reason to start a blog i guess.