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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Saturday, September 6th, 2008 |
ali_in_london
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4:31p |
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pne
|
9:53a |
SPIM So I opened Pidgin IM, as I do every once in a while... and get bombarded with MSN messages from people telling me to watch their cams or friend their other account.
It's rather tiring.
*sigh* SPIM Current Mood:  annoyed |
ali_in_london
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1:48a |
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natalief
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12:02a |
[loudtwitter] Microblogging Twitterings Sometimes this is the only blogging I manage to do. Feel free to skip it but then you may miss chunks of my life!( Click to read about my day ... ) |
| Friday, September 5th, 2008 |
sphyg
|
1:16p |
These temporary tattoos stay on a long time... |
wintrmute
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7:15p |
Grin & Grout So, our estate agent did the inspection they had insisted on doing at short notice when we couldn't be there and had no time to clean. And lo! They were unhappy with the bathroom, and will now be coming back again in 14 days.. at a time of my choosing.. to reinspect it. However, this does mean I need to find out how to clean the grouting between bathroom tiles. We have quite a lot of tiles, and thus miles of grouting to clean. Is there some kind of attachment I can get for my power drill that will help? I was thinking of using a small wire-brush attachment, but I'm worried that might scratch the tiles, or even remove the grout entirely. I could get a buffing attachment, but that might not actually remove the gunk. I suppose I should just drop into Bunnings[1] and ask them which is best, but I feel a bit silly asking a hardware store clerk something that, really, I presume most adults have figured out by now. [1: Bunnings is a brand of hardware/home/garden/DIY megastore here in Australia] In other news, I am having a lot of trouble getting the Thievery Corporation remix of David Byrne's Vaseline out of my head. Current Music: Dance on Vaseline |
pne
|
8:25a |
Rhottic vs. Rhoatic speech So... "rhotic" has the GOAT vowel ("rhoatic")? Why'd nobody ever tell me?
(Prompted by the 2 September entry of John Wells's phonetic blog.)
I suppose that's yet another word that I mispronounce because I've only seen it in writing. |
natalief
|
12:01a |
[loudtwitter] Microblogging Twitterings Sometimes this is the only blogging I manage to do. Feel free to skip it but then you may miss chunks of my life!( Click to read about my day ... ) |
| Thursday, September 4th, 2008 |
wintrmute
|
9:31p |
Toby at home in the evening Just me messing around.. |
shevek
|
12:07a |
My advanced driving lesson today went well. The examiner questioned my will to continue, apparently because I questioned his doctrine, something which has never happened before. I explained thus: If my previous driving instructor was adamant that his way was correct, and my current driving instructor is equally adamant about his technique, and furthermore, neither the basic technique will pass the advanced test, nor vice versa, then some justification for the mantra is required in order to decide what is correct. Driving shouldn't be a matter of religious technique. Every action should have a clear and supportable justification, and I want to know what they are, especially if they contradict a previous teaching.
For example, as a cyclist, I always look over my shoulder, rather than just in a mirror, before pulling across. I do the same in a car. My basic driving instructor told me that this was unnecessary, my advanced driving instructor tells me that it is required.
As another example, the mantra states that indicators are used "one second per ten miles an hour of speed" in advance of an intended manoeuvre. However, on one occasion, I noted, "If I indicate now, the driver behind will think I'm turning into the petrol station before the junction." This is very common in London. However, I'm not taking my test in London, so I've resolved not to drive like a Londoner (or worse, an Israeli or Californian) for the duration.
On the whole, I'm very happy with the process, and will continue, and I hope we settle down into a good relationship, even if I wish it were a little more discursive at times. Anyway, I don't remember mantra. I remember reason and purpose. I can memorize entire manuals, but not short poems. On the upside, my driving is apparently "acceptable" (the complaints of my passengers notwithstanding), and will improve.
---
As a dyslexic person, I find I don't always write left-to-right. Sometimes, I fill in letters I missed in the first pass, and it turns out fine. My (slightly befuzzled) brain just did the same thing for typing, except I can't type letters where they needed to go, the computer always puts them at the end, so the letters in each word came out in semi-random order. |
shevek
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12:01a |
O HALP I wrote software in Perl while drunk and now it's counting down to the end of the universe and I can't stop it... *sound of running feet* |
natalief
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12:02a |
[loudtwitter] Microblogging Twitterings Sometimes this is the only blogging I manage to do. Feel free to skip it but then you may miss chunks of my life!( Click to read about my day ... ) |
| Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 |
natalief
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2:25p |
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natalief
|
11:51a |
Sore throat and headache. Explains why I have been under the weather and zero spoons since I got home. :-/ |
pne
|
9:36a |
Google Chrome I wonder whether the tab bar can be moved to the bottom—that's the way I have it in Opera and Firefox (quite possibly because my Windows tab bar is also at the bottom).
One thing I miss in Google Chrome from Firefox 3 is remembering the zoom state per site.
For example, Facebook and Wikipedia always looked too small to me, and I was always zooming up; when I upgraded FF to version 3, I found that it remembered the zoom state for a given site, so all windows from that site would have the new state!
A bit unexpected at first, but a good idea.
I also miss the custom search keywords -- I've got used to typing in, say, "en Foo" to find the English Wikipedia article on "foo".
This worked in both Opera 9.5 and FF 3. |
pne
|
7:55a |
Amyism (In the context of coming home from kindergarten.)
Amy: “Ich will nicht, dass du kommst und mich aufhebst nicht!”
(Spot the English and Afrikaans.) Current Mood:  amused |
natalief
|
12:02a |
[loudtwitter] Microblogging Twitterings Sometimes this is the only blogging I manage to do. Feel free to skip it but then you may miss chunks of my life!( Click to read about my day ... ) |
| Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 |
pne
|
8:53p |
L-vocalisation Amy seems to have a fair bit of L-vocalisation going on in her English—"miok" for the white stuff that cows make, etc.
I can imagine that the fact that German has no "dark L" might contribute to her difficulty in making that sound, though that change is also one that native speakers in some parts make. (It's not one I think I make myself, though.)
Also, the other day, we talked about where we change busses, and I said, "at Harburg Rathaus", and she repeated it as "at Harburg Rathouse".
In other words, while I pronounced HR in German (code-switching the German name into the English sentence), she pronounced the final syllable with her English "ou" sound rather than her German one, perhaps because she thought that when speaking in English, one should use only English phonemes. (Though I think the remainder of the syllables she pronounced in German, like me, even though the German long A is not that close to my English "ah" sound, and the German uvular fricative R is completely missing from English....)
Still, I found it interesting. |
pne
|
2:58p |
Kriminalität gehört generell verboten Edit: this is a non-entry, better titled "Philip should read the context". See ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) elgrande's comment.
I happened on a page (in German) which describes various political parties present in Hamburg describing their views on a variety of topics.
One thing that just caught my eye was the PARTEI's statement on "Innenpolitik" (also visible here, along with other responses only from this party), which included this gem:
- Kriminalität gehört generell verboten.
That is, roughly: "All crime should be prohibited".
Which is kind of circular, isn't it? Or what's the definition of "crime"?
Dictionaries say, for example: "an action or an instance of negligence that [...] and that is legally prohibited" (Dictionary.com); "an act committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it [...]; unlawful activity" (AHD).
Both dictionaries also allow for extended senses such as "any offense"; "a foolish, senseless, or shameful act"; "a serious offense, especially one in violation of morality". But it seems to me that the primary meaning is related to legal prohibition, in which case demanding that crime be prohibited is useless: it's already prohibited, otherwise it wouldn't be a crime.
Ĉu ne? Current Mood: amused |
|
davorg_blog
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9:55a |
Their Own Worst Enemy http://blog.dave.org.uk/2008/09/their-own-worst-enemy.html Sometimes (actually, it's really quite often) Free Software enthusiasts are their own worst enemy. Their insistence on using completely free formats for audio and video instead of the proprietary formats that most people use means that their message is often only seen by a tiny minority of people - generally the people who don't need to see their message anyway as they are already converts. Here's an excellent case in point. The GNU project is twenty-five years old this month. And to celebrate the anniversary, Stephen Fry has recorded a video for them introducing the concepts of free software[1] and talking about the project. This would be a fabulous marketing tool for them, But the only people who will be able to watch it are already Free Software users. If you had a video to share with as many people as possible, the way that most people would do it would be to upload it to YouTube, Google Video or some other video sharing site. The GNU project won't do that as all of those sites use Flash video which is a proprietary format and the GNU project are sworn to spurn proprietary formats at all times. This religious adherance to their holy writ also prevents them from using the second best approach which would be to make Quicktime or MPG files available on their web site. Again, these are proprietary formats and therefore verboten. The approach that the GNU project takes is to make the video available as an Ogg Theora file. Now Ogg Theora is a perfectly good format. Videos in that format are reasonably sized and of pretty good quality. Also, and this is what the GNU project love about it, the format is completely free and open. For that reason, it's the format that the GNU project use for all of their videos. There's only one problem with the Ogg Theora format - almost no-one can view it. On most standard installations of Windows and Mac OSX, there is no software that can play an Ogg Theora file. Which, to my mind, rather defeats the object of having such a useful marketing tool. The GNU project are using this as a way to encourage people to install and use their new gNewSense software package, but I can't honestly see anyone installing all of that just to watch a Stephen Fry video. "Ah", I hear you saying, "but that's not really a problem, is it? Some clever geek will convert the Ogg Theora file and upload it to YouTube by the end of the day. We'll all watch it there." And you're probably right. There's a very good chance of that happening. But if it does, the GNU project will probably issue a takedown notice. You see they've released this video under a Creative
Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works licence in order to specifically prevent people from converting the video to a more friendly format. It's like they want to prevent people from seeing the video. Of course, this isn't a problem, for me. I use Linux on my desktop and that's the only major desktop platform which supports Ogg Theora out of the box. Or so I thought. My first attempt to play the video on my standard installation of Fedora 9 failed. I just saw a grey box and a Java applet error. I fiddled with the options a bit and tried again using the Totem video player. Ironically, that popped up a dialog message warning me that it needed a proprietary plugin to play the video and then telling me that no appropriate plugin was available. Ignoring the error, the video played fine anyway. I'm not sure what the problem is. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the BBC will play the video and lots of people will see that way. But getting Stephen Fry to record a video about your project is an incredibly powerful publicity tool. It is stupid to hang on to your religious beliefs to such an extent that you prevent most people from seeing it. [1] The Free Software Foundation never ever use the term "Open Source Software" as it dilutes their brand. Update: On investigating gNewSense further, I see that it's a completely new Linux distribution, because popular distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora are happy to include proprietary software. I despair. Update 2: In the comments, Paul points out that they are using a Java applet to play the video, which will mean that it works fine everywhere where Java is successfully installed (not, it appears, on my machine). But it's 2008. No-one uses Java applets any more. And anyway (as Paul also points out) Java was proprietary (and therefore verboten) until very recently. What did they do before that? |
pne
|
9:16a |
Amy's check-up Amy had her eighth regular check-up ("U8") the other day (for children between 3.5 and 4 years of age).
I think her speech was fine this time (as opposed to, say, her two-year check-up, where she spoke quite a bit less than "average"), as was her knowledge of things such as colours.
Her shortcomings were her motor skills: for example, she doesn't hop on one leg, and she's not very good at drawing (as opposed to colouring in). The square, circle, triangle, and cross she had to copy turned out rather wobbly and shapeless.
The doctor (a substitute, since our regular pædiatrician was on holiday) was a bit disapproving and told us to practise a lot with Amy (both drawing shapes and things such as walking with one foot in front of the other or hopping on one leg) and to come back for a repeat of the U8 in half a year, though the assistant later told Stella not to worry too much and that coming back in a year's time should be sufficient, and that Stella would know best where Amy could use more practice. |
| Monday, September 1st, 2008 |
shevek
|
11:48p |
How do you think washing machine designers design the programs?
Do they sit there going "Hm, we have 40 minutes to fill. Let's go left a bit. Right a bit. OK, we've been going right for a while now, let's go left a bit, then go WHIZZZ."
Do they have a huge computer simulation where they optimize for washing performance over the entire space of "left", "right" and "whizz" for 5 second segments over an hour?
Do they use an etch-a-sketch to draw a picture portrait of Boris Yeltsin and then translate the knob movements into drum movements?
Perhaps they observe a two-year-old attempting to fit the bright red square block into the bright green plastic box through the round hole and encode his every effort in the washing machine code.
Perhaps it's random. I could watch two entire cycles of my washing machine and compare them.
The washing machine has about 20 different programs. Are they all different, or do they derive from a base class? class Cotton90 : public Cotton, Temperature { Cotton90() : Cotton(), Temperature(90) { } };
Are they all different, or did some Greek like Archimedes with a stick and a bucket work it out once, and everyone's done it that way ever since (except James Dyson, of course). Maybe watching my machine for two cycles isn't enough, we need a national survey.
I bet there are imps in the back. I know there weren't in the old one, because I took the lid off and electrocuted myself on it, but perhaps there are in this new, modern one. |
ali_in_london
|
9:40p |
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shevek
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4:31p |
I went to wash the car last night, but the attendant was apologetic. "The car wash is out of order. Someone drove a car through it." I went to look, and they really did! There's a total disarray of roller brushes where a car wash used to be. Some uncultured swine clearly didn't appreciate the principle of the machine. Now I have to use a bucket. |
wintrmute
|
11:45p |
Housing
It looks like my housemate will be moving out. This presents me with the decision to stay here and get a new housemate, or to move out. The timeframe is.. around November, although I think there's a possibility of a new housemate moving in sooner than that. (Our contract runs out in Nov)
So.. if you have a room going spare then.. or if you would be interested in living here... give me a yell!
Basic details:
Townhouse, on Holden Street, in North Fitzroy. Great location! Includes secure carparking and private shared courtyard.
The agent may well put the rent up soon, but currently it is $420/week, or $1820/month in total. Thus, your share would be $910/month. Bills are extra, I think they run at about $150/month? Maybe a bit less actually.. it depends a lot on whether the weather is very hot or cold.
Ideally would suit a professional person, mid 20s to early 30s, who is reasonably neat and tidy. |
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