Thanners

la la la~ ♪

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:32:02 GMT

An update!

Not sure how this'll go due to a strange stuffiness in my head that's been making it hard to concentrate for the past week, but I'll deign to write a few sentences. (c: (Odd, isn't it, how I always feel most inclined to write when I'm least capable of coherent writing. Maybe it's because I'm even less able to focus enough to play video games. Anyway, whatever)

Books

So, since my last post about books, I've read

A Deepness In The Sky by Vernor Vinge
Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card
Brasyl by Ian McDonald
Last of the Wilds by Trudi Canavan
Voice of the Gods by Trudi Canavan
Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card

and next up, starting tomorrow:

Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge

I may (or may not) write a little more on them in the future, but suffice to say, I enjoyed reading all of those books, and recommend them. I hear that Orson Scott Card's books apparently go downhill a bit, but I figure I might as well keep on reading.

I'm also running out of space on my book shelf, but I can't stop myself buying new books (c:

Music(als)

So, recently I purchased DVDs for The Guild from Amazon, the ordering system of which craftily suggested that I also purchase Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. How could I not?

I did enjoy Dr Horrible when I watched it the first time on the net, but I do have to say I was a little put-out by the third act. However, time apart from it and now I enjoy it thoroughly. But! Even more awesome was the special features on the DVD (which you no doubt could find fairly easily on Youtube or whatever) including: Commentary! The Musical. It was nearly 40 minutes of more music, songs performed by the writers/actors playing exaggerated versions of themselves. Amusing lyrics and a fair variety of musical styles. Particular favourites included Nobody's Asian in the Movies performed by Maurissa Tancharoen, Heart, Broken, in which Joss Whedon sings of how stories get picked apart for the sake of DVD extras and tie-ins. Also, Neil's Turn has Neil Patrick Harris just being awesome.

Anyway, listening to it put me into this mood for musicals, and in particular I sought an old musical that my sister and I used to watch religiously until the VHS tape our grandmother had recorded it on broke. That musical is Into the Woods. And it's just as funny and awesome as I (vaguely, after 15, 20 years) remembered it to be.

It is a musical which combines several fairy-tales together, specifically Cinderella, Jack and Beanstalk, Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood. It also links them with a story of a baker and his wife who have been cursed by a witch to never have children (because the baker's father once stole magic beans from her garden). However, she will lift the curse if they prepare a potion for her, which requires various ingredients ("the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, and the slipper as pure as gold").

It's just such a funny, wonderful musical. If you haven't watched it before and have even any remote interest in musicals, I recommend you find the DVD of the original Broadway cast. Or you can borrow it. (c: (Once I receive my DVD sometime next week, anyway. I have to admit that I was impatient and watched it via.. other means first)

Anyway, time for sleeeeeeeep.

[GIP]

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 07:04:18 GMT

I'd asked a friend of mine if he could draw some personalised icons of me or of Thanners!Me to use on my LJ/etc; this is the first one he sent to me.

bookses redux

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:23:29 GMT

As I'd mentioned in my last post, I started reading Richard Morgan's "Black Man"/"Thirteen", but just couldn't seem to get into it for some reason. I'm sorry Richard, you even wrote "Enjoy! (I hope!)" on the insides of my books, too, when I'd admitted I hadn't actually read any of your stuff before. I do hope I'll go back to it again to enjoy it. At least I did enjoy "The Steel Remains".

So, I picked up "Ender's Game" instead. I have to say that I really enjoyed it. It was easy to get into, and an interesting read, enough so that I'm interested in the other books by Orson Scott Card. However, "Ender's Game" was the only book I'd actually heard of before; are the other books any good?

Next, I then moved onto Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon The Deep" (sci-fi), which I just recently finished. This one I really enjoyed reading. It was a book that I found very interesting from very early on, and I loved his aliens. In fact, I enjoyed reading the book in large part for more chances to read sections that involved this particular race, the "Tines" (this is not to say the parts that didn't focus on them were crap, I enjoyed those parts, too). I have to admit that while I do enjoy reading, I'm not very well-read, so maybe there's a whole host of other authors who would have elicited a similar response from me, or who have done similarly interesting things. Anyway, whatever. I was fascinated with his aliens from the earliest chapters they were introduced. I'm being deliberately vague because I took great pleasure in learning about the nature of them the first time, and wouldn't want to spoil that for anyone else.

If you've read this book, did you have the same fascination with the Tines as I did?

Anyway, next up is "Priestess of the White" by Trudi Canavan.

Bookses

Tue, 12 May 2009 13:17:06 GMT

Howdy all! Thought I'd post something since, well, it's been a while.

I'd once again resolved this year to read more (and more often). Swancon this year was helpful in kick-starting this interest again. I'd had the chance to see panels with the guest authors Richard Morgan and Trudi Canavan--neither of whom I'd actually heard of before, but who were interesting enough that I bought some of their books (and got them signed).

The first book I read since Swancon was Richard Morgan's "The Steel Remains", which is Richard Morgan's first foray into fantasy, and is of the fairly vicious, 'gritty' type of fantasy. Apparently it suits him down to the ground, though I haven't read any of his science fiction. It was a good read, and I await the next in the series.

A few days after finishing it, I started on Trudi Canavan's somewhat more "PG"-rated fantasy series "The Black Magician trilogy", starting with "The Magician's Guild". I've found it to be a highly enjoyable page-turner; I've already devoured the first two books and am trying to delay myself from reading the last one (because my eyes really need some rest. I haven't been glued to a book for some time, mainly because I haven't been reading anything new until recently).

Also by Richard Morgan, I have the science fiction book "Black Man" (called "Thirteen" in the U.S., I think). I'll probably read that next

Additionally, I picked up a group of second-hand books cheap at the Swancon auction: "Figures of Earth", "A Fire Upon The Deep", "The Ruins of Isis", and the one that made me bid on the bundle: "Ender's Game" (no, I hadn't read it yet. Really). It's nice to have new books in my reading queue again. (c:

Anyway, I'm afraid I've been murdering grammar because I'm tired and finding it really difficult to even string words together today, so I'll leave it at that.

No, wait, I have a haiku I composed in a few minutes this afternoon at work:

I am so weary,
I cannot wait for day's end
Um, five syllables.

Bouncing is what tiggers do best.

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 10:17:39 GMT

Generally I dislike anything that makes me feel as if I'm 'showing off', but because of the nature of this post.. it's pretty much just straight-up showing off. (c:

Anyway, some of you may know that I've started doing gymnastics. I started about November 2008, initially going just Wednesday afternoons, and then going both Wednesdays and Saturdays. It's a fairly informal class, with about half an hour to an hour of warm-up, stretching and maybe some technique work, and then it's mainly just 'free time'. Most of the people there do various things from tricking to martial arts, to break dance type stuff, so the motivations of people vary. Some did gymnastics and want a chance to regain skills, some just want to be able to use the equipment, the floor, the trampolines. However, even though it's not a very strict class, the coach is willing to assist, which is great.

I've sustained several injuries doing it. Anyone who knows me knows that I tend to be fairly injury-prone, which made gymnastics kind of an odd choice. (c: However, I'm also getting much better at treating my injuries and avoiding them, so.. I think it's working out. Currently I am still sporting a thumb-wrist injury from a couple of months ago that is still slooooowly getting better. I've had various pulled muscle in my lower abdomen, wrenched a shoulder, sprained ankles, and just had various other general soreness, typically of tendons. But I think I'm both getting better at knowing how to deal with injuries (and more importantly, how to avoid them), and my joints are slowly getting stronger.

So. Because I feel like I've already rambled without any particular direction long enough, I'll cut this post short here, with a very short video of a couple of the somersaults I've managed.

Fill-in-the-answers-with-songs-from-your-randomized-playlist-meme

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:49:57 GMT

1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each question.
3. Use the song title as the answer to each question.
4. NO CHEATING.

1. How am I feeling today?
"Always crashing in the same car." [david bowie. oddly fitting, since i'm totally Mr Injury-Prone today]

2. Where will I get married?
"The River of Dreams" [billy joel]

3. What is my best friend's theme song?
"The longest time" [billy joel]

4. What was high school like?
"body feels exit" [namie amuro]

5.What is the best thing about me?
"The Haunted Train" [Disco OC Remix, FF6]

6. How is today going to be?
"I go to extremes" [billy joel]

7. What is in store for this weekend?
"a new career in a new town" [david bowie]

8. What song describes my parents?
"WoWa" [Namie Amuro]

9. How is my life going?
"Scenes from an Italian restaurant" [billy joel]

10. What song will they play at my funeral?
"Jimmy Dean" [icehouse]

11. How does the world see me?
"My Darling" [namie amuro]

12. What do my friends really think of me?
"Pressure" [billy joel]

13. Do people secretly lust after me?
"We didn't start the fire" [billy joel]

14. How can I make myself happy?
"A walk in the park" [namie amuro]

15. What should I do with my life?
"Piano Man" [billy joel]

16. Will I ever have children?
"Time chill" [OC Remix, Chrono Trigger]

17. What is some good advice?
"Vienna" [billy joel -- actually, the _lyrics_ for this one would've been appropriate. "Slow down, you crazy child ... Where's the fire, what's the hurry about? you better cool it off before you burn it out."

18. What do I think my current theme song is?
"Don't ask me why" [billy joel]

19. What does everyone else think about my current life?
"This is the time" [billy joel]

20. What type of women/men do you like?
"You're only human (Second Wind)" [billy joel]

21. Will you get married?
"All About Soul" [billy joel]

22. What should I do with my love life?
"subterraneans" [david bowie]

23. Where will you live?
"An Innocent Man" [billy joel]

24. What will your dying words be?
"Let's get together" [Takeharu Ishimoto, Subarashiki Kono Sekai OST]

25. When I'm having sex, I say...
"Street Cafe" [icehouse]

26. When I meet a guy/girl for the first time I say...
"Allentown" [billy joel]

27. When my parents are angry I say...
"Serenity" [Kevin Riepl, UT2004 soundtrack]

Randomness

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 06:42:04 GMT

Just a random update at 3:30pm.

Games
Haven't really played anything on the PC for a while, but I have been playing my DS a fair bit more.

Chrono Trigger: (JRPG). Such an awesome game this third time around. I really like this one, it rates high on my personal 'top games' list. The DS version was pretty much a straight port of the original, but translation cleaned up, some cutscenes taken from the Playstation version, and an improved, (imo) cleaner interface that makes use of the dual-screen.

I haven't actually finished it, I've just been at the point (as you get in most Square RPGs) where you're close to the end, and have the freedom to do all the sidequests and become über powerful. But the other thing about it is the extra story you get by letting each of the characters go and.. do their thing. I'll probably play through it again to see each of the (twelve!) endings.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village: (Puzzle-adventure). Pretty much just a game of about 120 various puzzles (tile-sliding, simple maths, re-arrange the matchsticks, move the wolves & chickens across the river, etc...), wrapped up with a fairly reasonable story. Presentation was quite nice, too.

The World Ends With You: (Action JRPG). This was an interesting game. I wasn't sure about it when I first started it, and the main character being a bit of a git also made it harder to get into, but it was intriguing enough that I kept playing... And then at a certain point I suddenly realised I thought the game was awesome, and I began to find the world quite engaging.

The game itself is fairly linear; as Professor Layton was a game where you advanced through a linear story and solved puzzles along the way, in TWEWY you advance along a linear storyline and fight battles along the way. It's all really stylishly presented, though, both the art and soundtrack are pretty cool (YMMV), and it's a game that was clearly designed with the DS in mind.

The battle system is quite fun, if somewhat RSI-inducing and initially feeling very complicated. You have to control a fight with two people on both screens at the same time. The top character is controlled using the directional buttons (or B, A, Y, X if you prefer holding it the other way), while the bottom is controlled with the stylus, slashing/scratching/tapping/dragging, and occasionally by shouting into the microphone (choosing more mic-based attacks would probably reduce strain on the wrist. :P).

It also had other interesting things, like being able to set your current level to anywhere from 1 to your actual level, allowing for more of a challenge, but increased chance of rewards. So I'm currently playing through the game again with my level fixed at level 1, difficulty set to HARD, and seeing how I go. (c:

Other Things
Lost and Battlestar Galactica come back soon! YAY. In related news, I have the DVDs for BSG (miniseries + seasons 1, 2, 3 + Razor + first half of season 4), and intend to try to get my friends to catch up before the end. (c: (yeah, i know that's a Lot of watching..)

Temeraire: I still haven't picked up the fifth book, "Victory of Eagles", and it's killing me a little bit.

Wheel of Time: I'm up to "Winter's Heart" on my nth re-read of the series. I find myself skim-reading the Perrin & Faile chapters. Again. I feel like I started this re-read too soon, since the book won't be out until the end of this year, and that's only if I'm lucky.

Weddings: Also, I've been to another couple of weddings in the past couple of months, but I shall post about them in another post.

Also, just thought I'd share this. I was looking over a profile describing midwives data, which obviously has mother and child information on it. These thoughts flashed through my head in the space of about a second:

"Huh, so that must be the baby's sex, but what about the mother's?"
"..."
"Oh, wait."

*facepalm* Well, I did say it was 3:30pm, right?

Very cool animation.

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:11:55 GMT

So, this has been making its way around recently. Someone had taken extracted models from World of Warcraft, and storyboarded and animated a short video. Some very impressive animation camera, lighting and animation work, and quirky but strangely fitting choice of music. Wire-fu-type choreography, if you like that sort of thing. (c:

I think you can appreciate it even if you've never ever touched Warcraft before, as long as you can appreciate the animation.

[Video - BLIND] HD version looks better. Obviously.

Time flows like a river..

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 07:31:42 GMT

And history repeats...

And I forgot to save my game again, dammit!

Having picked up Chrono Trigger DS, I've been playing through it again (love this game). Despite it being a long time since I last finished it on the SNES, I've noticed there are certain things I do the same. There's a boss fight that I struggled on for ages, and I remember doing that last time, too (but obviously I didn't remember how I beat that boss, else I wouldn't have struggled for so long). And now a certain point, I have that feeling of déjàvu after doing a particular section, advancing further, wiping against a boss, and then remembering I hadn't saved since about 40 minutes ago.

Anyway, Happy December everyone, hope you're having a good one.

Auditorium

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:45:14 GMT

Stumbled across this flash game: Auditorium.

It's a puzzle game, where you move various objects around to deflect a flow of particles to fill containers, generating sound as the containers are filled. This description, while accurate, doesn't really do it justice. It's just presented in a fairly simple, stylish manner, and I've sat playing it for a while today. :P The music is quite soothing, so it isn't quite as frustrating when being stuck on a particular puzzle. Unless you're stuck on it for a loong time and haven't shifted the flow for a while, in which case it'll suddenly become apparent how short the section of looped music is. :P

Go have a look. (c:

Weekenderrific

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:58:42 GMT

Back at work after a reasonably busy weekend. Saturday was my friend Evan's Buck's Party. Involved going out for lunch, then playing super-golf (in the rain. grr). Later, we headed back to Evan's house for much drinking and random gaming and stuff, and then went into Northbridge, and I finally got home at 5:30am. Asleep by 6:30am, awake by 8:30am for some incredibly stupid reason, and then couldn't sleep anymore.

Then Sunday evening went to the Billy Joel concert. It was Awesome, and I am so glad that I'd taken the chance to watch him play live.

The weather wasn't great, with a fairly strong wind and occasional bursts of rain, but that hardly detracted from the experience at all. He truly is quite the entertainer. After opening with a couple of songs back to back, he stopped for awhile to address the audience: "Hi, I'm Billy's dad. Billy couldn't make it, he was too busy doing his hair.. I came along instead since I know all his shit." He was definitely a lot of fun.

I found myself thinking afterwards of songs that I wish he had done at the concert, but I also enjoyed every song that he did play. If he had played all of the songs I like, I think it would have had to go for twice as long.

Whew. Anyway, now just to stay ~~away~~ awake (yes, amusing typo) long enough to get through the rest of work today.

Wassup2008

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 11:09:40 GMT

Wassup 2008 advertisement. Heh.

Little over a week to go, hmm?

Randomness, some photos

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:34:17 GMT

I think I had more text, but since I can't remember, I'll compensate with photos.

First up, I had an attempt at a risotto about a week back. At some point, insanity took me, and I somehow put in about three or four times as much rice as I was meant to. I'll leave you to speculate what was (or wasn't) going on in my head at the time. This resulted in.. panic. And then I started looking around trying to get more stock to add. Unfortunately the bottom parts were a little burned, but my sister assures me that it came out all right (of course, she may have just been being nice). Here it is, and I threw cherry tomatos on top to make it colourful. :P

The risotto recipe was vaaaguely based on this recipe, but I ended up mixing in a bunch of different things from different risotto recipes.

And a few days later, I produced something that a generous person just might be inclined to call fried rice. Unfortunately, I burned the onions and garlic I threw in at the start, which resulted in parts of it having a.. slightly unpleasant taste. (My brother didn't really seem to notice, but that's probably because he burns all of his food. He fried some prata the other day, and I saw him with it over the sink, scraping the burnt bits off with a knife, until it was down to almost half-thickness). But it otherwise seemed to taste okay.

This one was basically from stephiepenguin's Nasi Goreng recipe, but with garlic, onion, spring onion and (a very small amount of) chicken.

And last of all, non-food-related. I'd let my hair grow out for a while, and, though I've cut it since (well, a few weeks ago now, I think), some people had wanted to see photos of it. So here's one of me sometime just after waking up and before applying the copious volume of water required to tame it:

Wherein Adam starts fumbling his way around the kitchen

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:05:18 GMT

So, with parents on holidays for the next month, my brother and I have been left to fend for ourselves. Despite various offers from uncles/aunts that we could go to their houses for food, I'm defiantly going to try to see how I manage. It is, after all, something that I really need to do.. And I feel like I'm trying to prove something, I guess. (c:

We ran out of leftovers yesterday (well, I'd specifically requested that my mum not try to really stock up the fridge and stuff before she went, because that would feel like a handicap. Yes, I'm treating it vaguely like a game, or challenge of sorts, and I want no easymode here. :P), so I decided to try cooking something for today. I went with this recipe for "Chicken and Penne Parmesan", replacing the asparagus with broccoli (and halving the quantities of ingredients). Came out like this:

I also threw together some spinach, capsicum, lettuce, tomato and red onion to serve as a salad.

So, that's one meal done, and I didn't burn down the kitchen/house. Although I did end up generating a lot more dishes to wash than necessary because I kept taking out stuff that I didn't need/was too small/wrong/whatever.

Now to decide what to do next. Probably should do something that'll let me use the rest of the ingredients that I didn't use up. Or maybe I should just make it again.

. . .

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:47:05 GMT

Just heard that Rob Guest died from a stroke. Wow. That was quite a shock..

Meme: chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 08:16:31 GMT

Been a little while since I posted a meme, I think. tommmo pointed me towards this one.

1 minute, 16 seconds

Things, and things.

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 07:10:57 GMT

Fending off a post-lunch coma at the moment, so thought I'd write some randomness.

Songbird
Been trying the media player Songbird a bit. It's an open-source music player, syncs with my iPod shuffle, and supports playlists and the usual.. stuff. It also has a web browser built in, integrates with Last.fm and SkreemR and other stuff, supports skinning and allows various other addons. The SkreemR integration is pretty neat, being able to download/play things in the player straight from the search results.

Google Chrome
You've probably heard of Google's browser Chrome by now. Played around with it a little bit.. seems nice, and I like being able to detach tabs from one window and pull them into another. Tab creation/destruction seemed reasonably quick. I didn't see how it handles plugins, or really complicated pages, though. I neeeeeeeeed certain addons in Firefox at the moment, though, so I can't see myself switching until there are equivalents for Chinese Pera-kun and Perapera-kun (Chinese and Japanese character mouse-over dictionaries), and No Script (or at least some sort of ad blocker).

Oh, and it insta-crashes (taking down all tabs), if you type in colon-percent (":%") into the address bar. Or if you mouse over a link that contains that.

Also, if you haven't, try typing in "about:internets" into the address field.

Games I'm vaguely anticipating in the near or distant future:

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning - After quitting WoW several months ago, I'm not sure if this is such a good thing. Oh well.
Chrono Trigger DS - Well, I know it's pretty much a direct port, no graphical upgrades or anything, but I really liked this game, and I wouldn't mind having another go at it. Especially since I've lost my old save game.
Guitar Hero 4 - Well, I only have a Nintendo Wii, and Rock Band offerings on there are rather.. poor.
Spore - Which is apparently already out. I just need the time to go get it/play it. Anyone else already got it/played it?
Starcraft 2 - heh.
Dawn of War 2
... Probably others, but those are the ones that spring to mind at the moment.

Misc:
Also, yay for getting a new 30%-off voucher for Borders. Feels like it's been a while since they sent out a no-strings-attached voucher worth any significant amount. When I finish reading Erikson's "Toll the Hounds"--which I feel I've been doing an admirable job of pacing myself through--I can go buy something else.

soundtracks/instrumental music

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:57:24 GMT

Does anyone remember me recently (or semi-recently) saying "this has an awesome soundtrack" in reference to.. I don't know. A movie? A video game? Because I'm almost certain I did at some point, and can no longer remember it, yet have a strange urge to listen to it, despite not knowing what it might be, or even what the music was like.

Failing that, does anyone have any music they'd like to recommend me? I'm currently after anything without singing (although if the voice is merely being used as another instrument, that'd be fine). Instrumental music would be good. Perhaps something grand and orchestral. Or maybe rock... with violins. I really don't know what I'm looking for, actually. I'm quite open to anything at the moment.

Couple of things..

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:01:29 GMT

第一：I tried cooking something, without assistance, for the first time.. umm.. ever, today. Okay, I guess I can do omelettes and a few other things, but in general, I haven't really ever tried cooking anything for consumption by people apart from myself, at least not without significant assistance, or in fact just being an assistant to someone else. Yes, I know, it's terrible. It's always too easy to let someone else cook, or to go buy something, and I really need to learn to cook.

Tried a really simple, fairly safe ham+pasta+vegetable casserole type thing. My cousin sunshine95 demonstrated it while I was in Seattle, as a safe, easy dish for someone like me to try, and I told her I'd try it again some time when I got home.

Well, it wasn't a failure! (c: It didn't quite end up as originally intended, but was still okay. Made a mistake with judging quantities of ingredients (chopped up waaaay too much vegetables, and boiled a little too much pasta), and made it a little too liquidy. It was edible, though, which is kind of my primary concern.

Looks like some random pasta dish.. :P

第二：A few days ago I saw someone write "for all intensive purposes" when, by context, I'm pretty sure they meant "for all intents and purposes". mango_kurisu pointed out a site to me, The Eggcorn Database, which is full of instances of that sort of a thing, and is awesome (your definition of 'awesome' may vary). Fairly cool thing is that most of them have examples of (mis-)uses "in the wild", and also some analysis on how they may have come about, and how they may be more or less valid..

Also, another site with a list of common errors: Paul Brian's Common Errors in English.

Chim chimery, chim chimery, chim chim, charoo...

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:16:03 GMT

Due to the thickness and kinda.. boofiness of my hair, I've had requests from several people at various points in time to grow a mini-afro. It's already thicker than I'd like it, but I'll see whether I can stand not shaving my hair for another month and see what it looks like.

I don't think my hair is actually suitable for doing an afro.. it might look a bit like one from a distance, but it lacks the severe curliness of an afro, instead just being kinda wavy. I think I can, however, do a reasonable approximation of a chimney sweep's brush.

Anyway, other randomness I felt inclined to post:

McCain's campaign blasted critics who questioned the senator’s account of an incident during his time as a prisoner of war Monday, citing an account from his former fellow POW Orson Swindle and blaming the controversy on “the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd.”. .. What..?

Beijing Olympics lego diorama thing (is that the right word?)

Randomness @ 200808182134

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:42:59 GMT

Do you ever get that feeling when you look at a perfectly ordinary word, and for some reason it just looks.. odd? You even know that it's right, but just at that moment, it looks strange. Sometimes it happens when I've had to write a particular word often in a short space of time (hmm, reminds me writing lines in primary school... or even high school :P). Anyway, for some reason I found the words "dizzying" and "dizziness" to be strange just recently.

Where am I going with this? Nowhere, just thought I'd mention it. (c:

ObOlympicsStuff:
Australia's women seem to be superior with the whole 'getting gold' thing, anyway. The guys are still doing fairly well for medals in general, though. (c:

Yay, Singapore got a medal (c: Olympic-level table tennis is amusingly intense.

I feel so sorry for the Chinese hurdler, Liu Xiang, who had to pull out because of injury. So much expectation leading up to the Olympics, and then to get injured pretty much just before your very first heat. yuck. "Such was the weight of national expectation on Liu that he had not even been allowed to drive a car for fear of injury in a carefully-closeted buildup to the Beijing Games."

Other stuff
I'm always open to suggestions to new web comics to check out. Most recent one I was pointed to was Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Humour varies, but I found several of them to be quite amusing.

Studying
Been trying to study more consistently this semester for mandarin, and it's been okay so far. But now a few weeks in I'm finding my study method isn't scaling very well. Number of characters to learn is rising greatly with each week, and then I find I need to learn the new stuff, but also need to revise the previous characters, and am not sure how best to allocate the couple of hours a night to ensure I'm getting the right mix of learn-new-stuff-but-don't-forget-last-week's-stuff. I need to prepare flash cards, or something.

北京奥运会的开幕式 :: Olympics Opening Ceremony, revisited

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:30:41 GMT

As I'd mentioned before, for the most part I did like the opening ceremony. And I still stand by that. But some of the information coming to light afterwards does put a bit of a downer on it. The faked fireworks.. not such a big deal, since they weren't the parts I was most impressed with, but the knowledge still was slightly disappointing. But a larger disappointment was finding that the young girl was lip-synching in place of the actual singer, Yang Peiyi, who was excluded from appearing "because of her external appearance".

Hmm. Well, Yang Peiyi apparently said, "I'm OK with it. ... My voice was used in the performance. I think that's enough." So I don't know whether other people are making more of it than really need be, but it still seems.. slightly wrong, somehow.

Also, tommmo brought to my attention an article that mentioned Ai Weiwei, an architect involved with the creation of the Bird's Nest stadium, who has been basically criticising the handling of the opening ceremony, and saying how he wishes to be disconnected from it. In his blog (mandarin) (googletranslated) he has entries that criticise the government and use of culture for the purpose of propaganda.

I must say that I'm surprised that he hasn't been .. silenced. I know that sounds horrible, and I certainly don't want him to be (c: Just given the government, I'm surprised they haven't really come down on him.

In other news, Australia's gold medal count is a bit weak, isn't it? (c: If not for our female swimmers, we'd be quite a bit further down the chart.

Reading obsessively, and other stuff.

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:18:10 GMT

Just finished reading "Throne of Jade". My discipline was much more lacking this time, having purchased it Friday and finished it a couple of minutes ago, compared with the first book which I purchased the Friday before that, and managed to pace myself such that I finished "Temeraire" on Thursday. Oops.

I generally have this problem with reading obsessively. It suddenly becomes a great effort to actually do other things until I've finished the book. I find a preference for food that can be eaten with chopsticks due to the fact it allows me a free hand to hold the book open. I've experienced many wonderful in-book events in strange in-world situations. My throat tightening as good friends die, making it difficult momentarily to continue eating lunch. Giggling like a nutter, appreciative of the comical banter between characters, while others without the benefit of the book in their hands are led to think I'm just a strange person, and shift a few seats further away from me on the bus. Grinning viciously as protagonists one-up their enemies. My food burning in a manner not unlike the unfortunate victims of incandescent sorcery being hurled about in fierce magical battles, in which I am too engrossed to actually check my food. "Such vivid imagery, I can almost smell the smoke!" Ahh, books.

In other news, after many recommendations, the most recent from hipikat when he told me to "drop everything and start watching 'Doctor Who'", I have done so. Started watching "Doctor Who", that is. Well, the new Doctor Who, anyway. I wasn't going to try to go hunting for the many, many ancient (and lost) episodes. Enjoying it so far.

Also, borrowed tommmo's DVD of "Donnie Darko" and watched it yesterday. Wow that was an odd movie. Good one, though, I thought, and probably worth a re-watch.

And while I'm speaking of movies, The Dark Knight is still #1 on the IMDB Top 250, after 216,883 votes. Looks pretty close up at the top now, though, with "The Dark Knight", "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Godfather" all with a score of 9.1.

北京奥运会的开幕式

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:21:37 GMT

Wow, the Olympic opening ceremony was pretty amazing, huh? Any other thoughts that I sometimes have when thinking of China (government, and other.. issues) were for those few hours suppressed as I sat and watched.

My head asplodes. Apologies in advance.

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:38:38 GMT

*attaches [sic] to the entire post*
I have been collecting, for sometime, a list of phrases and words (and usages thereof) that range from amusing me, to irritating me, to making my hands curl into claws, seeking to choke the person whom (mis-)used the words. I've been waiting for a chance to get enough of them to try to put together, and viola! I have finally done so. I won't leave you on tenderhooks for much longer, so here, for you're viewing pleasure:

Oftentimes, people misunderstand the roll of the apostrophe in words. They're apostrophes suffer from severe abuse, and alot of the time, you can find them being used arbitrarily to mark plurals in cases were they definitely should not be. Their are also "other" cases where "punctuation" is misused.

Irregardless of the fact that some words don't really exist, people continue to use them. What determines a 'real word', though? If enough people use, or misuse a word, can we say that it is now a real word? Or that an existing word has undergone semantic shift and, whatever it used to mean, it now means something else? I think it's a mute point. Back to the topic, though, of mis-used words, just quickly pouring over forums for awhile will yield some excellent examples.

Actually, forums are a great breeding ground for this, and excellent places to find more material. i.e. the World of Warcraft forum, in which there is much complaining about the overpowdered rouge class. Most common mistakes would be alleviated, I believe, if some people just used tools available to them (AKA spellcheckers). These tools aren't full proof, but they do help.

I understand that English is a crazy language. It is inconsistent, comprising a myriad of quirks from different languages. And I kinda like it like that. But it isn't just the mistakes that people make, per say, its there wilful refusal to put in token effort to make theirselves understood. Not everyone can have perfect spelling, and typos happen. They don't necessarily irritate me. I can tell when it's just a simple mistake. By enlarge, I tend to accept, and am often amused by, particular intentional mistakes. Certain idiomatic, joking expressions, ect. that intentionally break rules are usually okay, I guess. I don't mean to suddenly do a 360 here with what I'm saying, though..

Actually, now that I'm writing, I'm not sure what separates the ones that irritate me from the ones that don't. Huh. Just some things I'll completely happily ignore or disregard, while others will get under my skin and peak me, literally making my head explode.

Also, I know to improve the affect, I should of written this all as one large wall of text with no paragraphs, but I just couldn't do that. This is probably already painful enough to read, and removal of all formatting would only exasperate things even more. Asides, walls of text tend to be ignored right off the bat, and people don't even get to start looking at the mistakes hidden within.

I'm sure there are many other things that I've missed, or that might irk you more then they do me. If we pulled our resources, I'm certain we'd end up with a massive list. I think there are probably more than irk me, but not writing them down when I thought of them resulted in me loosing them.

Got any suggestions on other phrases or how to improve (further degrade) these paragraphs? Or comments, or flames? I'd welcome them all, and so await with baited breath.

edit: I totally forgot to add this highly appropriate quote from Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass":

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."
The question is," said Alice, "Whether you can make words mean different things."