Directed by ___________
Posted on January 27, 2007
Slashdot has an interesting poll up, asking who would be the best person to direct The Hobbit. Personally I voted for the CowboyNeal option, but if you don’t frequent Slashdot you aren’t likely to understand the cliches associated with that. The poll itself isn’t that interesting, but the responses are hilarious, and here are some great examples:
Quentin Tarantino
- Have you seen my ring? It’s the one with “BAD MOTHERFUCKER” inscribed in it.
- Say Precious again! I dare you, I double dare you, motherfucker. Say Precious one more goddamn time.
- Elvish, motherfucker, do you speak it?
George Lucas
- Hobbit lightsaber duel
- Yoda as Bilbo
There are plenty of other funny comments, so go check it out.
Filed Under Miscellaneous | Comments Off
Topics
Posted on January 25, 2007
Classes are going fairly well. I have to write a “big” paper for each class and have to come up with some topics. The problem is both instructors were somewhat ambiguous in what they wanted to see with regard to topics. In the TESOL class it was suggested we should write something along the lines of a problem-solution paper, though since I haven’t taught ESL this leaves unsure about what to pursue, since I can’t readily identify any problems.
The linguistics class was even more open-ended. The instructor gave an example or two regarding lingistic analysis, but it sounded like we weren’t bound to that. The example that sticks in my mind is someone did a paper on the ways the word like is used. Like, how it’s like, used in so many like, informal contexts. Like, wow, man.
Today in the linguistics class we talked a lot about neurolingustics and how different parts of the brain are responsible for different aspects of language. We discussed left-brain vs right-brain and auditory vs visual. It was pretty interesting. It got me thinking about amblyopia as a possible topic, probably because I work with ophthalmologists. On the other hand, I also thought it might be interesting to do a linguistic analysis of Brian’s “Sermon from the Window”.
Winterness
Posted on January 21, 2007
According to this article over at the Star, we should be having snow by now (up late again), but I don’t see any yet, and I haven’t heard any plows. Actually it sounds pretty quiet out, but it is the wee hours of a Sunday morning. All I hear is the click of the keyboard, the fan on the PC, and a distant train horn.
We are supposed to get four inches of snow before the game. Somehow, I don’t think it will bother any New England fans.
*** UPDATE ***
When I looked outside originally, it wasn’t snowing at all and didn’t like would anytime soon. That was 2 – 3 hours ago. I looked oustide a few minutes ago and we already have two inches on the ground. This is the most snow we’ve had all winter.
Neutrality
Posted on January 19, 2007
I’m not a big sports fan. I usually only begin to pay attention when local teams are in the playoffs, and even then I usually don’t pay that close attention. This weekend the Indianapolis Colts will host the New England Patriots, both of which are teams I’m interested in. I was born in Massachusetts, lived in Colorado for over 20 years, and now I live in Indianapolis, so the Pats, Broncos, and Colts are my teams. As it happens, they are all in the AFC, so what usually happens is two or three of them will get into the playoffs and the teams will end up playing against each other and usually one will get as far as conference championships. This year, the Colts and the Pats will be playing against each other for the right to go to the Super Bowl.
A few years ago, I came across a website called longbets.org. It’s a place where people make bets that certain things will happen in a certain timeframe, or that A will happen before B with no idea how long it might take for it to happen. The bet that caught my interest was one between Mike Elliot and Ted Danson (of Cheers fame). The bet was this: Mike Elliot wagered “The US men’s soccer team will win the World Cup before the Red Sox win the World Series.” Ted Danson countered that in order to win the World Series “…the Red Sox only really have to beat the Yankees.” The bet was established in 2002 and in 2004 the Red Sox finally won the World Series, and beat the Yankees to do it. (Okay they beat the Cardinals in the World Series, but they had to beat the Yankees to get there, and in a way that was a sweeter victory, especially when you consider how they beat the Yankees.)
The Colts seem to have a similar issue to the Red Sox when it comes to getting to the Super Bowl. They are a very good team, but when it comes to playing the Patriots in the post-season the Colts tend to lose. It doesn’t guarantee the Pats will go to the Super Bowl, let alone win it (though they’ve had a good record over the past decade), but the Colts haven’t gone to the Super Bowl since they moved to Indianapolis from Baltimore (They last won a Super Bowl in 1970). When I heard someone describe the Colts move to Indianapolis as similar to the Red Sox “Curse of the Bambino”, I smiled and thought maybe it’s true.
Of course, I also realize I’m committing sacrilege by comparing the Patriots to the Yankees, but it’s funny and in a way it’s true. The Colts have to beat the Patriots if they want to get to the Super Bowl.
OTOH, I think it would be interesting if to see a Pats-Bears Super Bowl. In 1986, Da Bears beat the Pats in one of the most lopsided Super Bowl victories ever. I think it would be sweet revenge to see the Pats beat the Bears in Super Bowl. BTW, the Bears haven’t gone to the Super Bowl since then, while the Patriots have gone four times since, and won three.
As for this weekend, I’m officially neutral, because no matter who wins, I know one of my teams is going to the Super Bowl.
Feeling productive
Posted on January 16, 2007
Another weekend, another messed up sleeping schedule. It’s almost a routine. I should come up with a handy dandy term for it one of these days. Maybe I can call it a Funky Sleep Night or FSN for short (not to be confused with FSM). Still, all things considered, I felt pretty productive for only getting ~two hours of sleep. At work, I finished most of the things that needed to be done today. For school, I finished the outline of the presentation yesterday and started to put it into a Powerpoint presentation. However, I’m procrastinating on finishing it at the moment. I want to get my blogging done first :-)
I got the textbook for the Intro to English Language class today. I called the bookstore on Friday and they didn’t have it in stock and didn’t expect it right away. When they told me this, I hit Amazon and ordered it online with two-day shipping so it would get delivered today, and delivered it was. The textbook is An Introduction to Language 8th edition. I barely thumbed through it and haven’t read the assigned chapters yet. I’m pretty sure I’ll be too tired to read it tonight. If it’s typical dry academic text, I’m sure to fall asleep while reading it. I hope to get a chance to read it tomorrow night. I’ve also got an assignment in that class that I haven’t started yet.
We finally got some snow. It snowed overnight, though it was barely more than a dusting. They didn’t even bother to plow the streets from what I saw. The snow didn’t really stick to the streets, though they did lay salt at the intersections. It also got cold and windy. It wouldn’t have been so cold if it wasn’t for the wind. Still, by the afternoon it got sunny and most of the snow melted except for the areas in shadow.
Trans-it
Posted on January 16, 2007
Being a fan of multiculturalism, I sometimes like to go to websites dealing with other countries. I’m also a fan of multilingualism, but my Japanese is rusty and my Russian consists of being able to sound things out, hopefully correctly. I use Ubuntu Linux at home and I knew there were some translation tools for it, but when I tried each one out they were mostly disappointing. Some (Pydict comes to mind) were written years ago and haven’t been updated since. Others seemd to be written for people who speak the other languages natively, and need help with English.
Russian isn’t so bad because I can sound it out. If it’s a loan word, I can usually guess the meaning. If all else fails, I can look the words up in the dictionary. That’s a semi-option with Japanese. Like Russian, I can try to sound it out if it is written in Hiragana or Katakana. And if it is in Hiragana and Katakana, I can also look it up in a dictionary. Even though the two writing systems are not technically alphabets, they do have a definite order, so they can be looked up in the Japanese dictionary I have. However, it’s not an option with Kanji.
Kanji is the Japanese writing system borrowed from the Chinese. Kanji literally means “Han Characters” refering to the Han Dynasty in China. Kanji and Hanzi (the Chinese writing system), consist of a system of radicals, which are mini-characters themselves. As if it weren’t bad enough that there are over 200 radicals, each Kanji or Hanzi character can have more than one. So I’ve got a lot of work to do when it comes to Kanji and/or Hanzi.
Needless to say, I’ve been looking for some nice translation software for Linux, and today I think I found it. The software is called Stardict, which confused me at first because there is an English-Chinese translation program for Linux called Stardic, which is worthless to me because I wanted a program that translates Chinese to English. Stardict is a basic GUI interface to many free downloadable dictionaries, most of which support the DICT protocol.
I had to install the software on my PC, which wasn’t a problem with Ubuntu’s Synaptic Package Manager. I started it up after that, but quickly found out it won’t work without a dictionary in the right spot. I went to the Stardict homepage and found the dictionaries page, downloaded some dictionaries, then installed them in /usr/share/stardict/dic. I tried the program again, but came up with some more errors. After a little trial and error, I found out the dictionaries I downloaded were English to Chinese dictionaries, not Chinese to English dictionaries. I didn’t give it much thought, but there is apparently a difference. I guess only a few are bi-directional dictionaries. Once I got it fugured out, I went a bit overboard and installed dictionaries for Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Korean, and I think I also downloaded dictionaries for Russian and German.
One of the nice things about Stardict is the ability to enable or disable dictionaries with a checkbox in the Preferences. Since I have a lot of dictionaries installed, this is almost a necessity. If I highlight a word in English, it will show me what it means in Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, and so on, even if I only want to know what it means in Japanese (for example). If I go to a Japanese website and highlight some Kanji, it will show me Japanese character means in English, but it will also show me what the Chinese character means in English also, since the two writing systems are closely related.
Anyway, the software is very nice and I highly recommend it. What I want now is a browser plugin for Firefox that will automatically translate a page into English. Google kind of has this ability, but the last time I tried it it was slow, and if you followed a link the Google translator wouldn’t follow it. It would be nice to have a browser button that a person could click on to translate a page automatically, like “Trans-it” or “Translate”. Knowing there would be a performance hit everytime a page had to be translated, it would probably be better if the user had to hit the button for each individual page rather than have it done automatically. Given time, I would wager something like this will happen.
Filed Under Culture, Journal, Open Source, TESOL | Comments Off
So this is Grad school
Posted on January 11, 2007
Two classes. Three textbooks, one of which I don’t have (more on that below). Seven chapters + two handouts to read. Two short essays to write. One small group presentation to co-develop. All by the middle of next week.
On Wednesdays is a class with along name which I’ve forgetten, but which everybody seems to call the TESOL Methods class. It’s actually three classes in one. It’s an upper level undergrad English class, a graduate Education class, and a graduate Linguistics class, if I remember correctly. It has about 20 students with a mix of grad/undergrad and English/Education majors, with a strong representation of Elementary Education majors. I think the rationale is that with growing number of immigrants and their families becoming part of the community, it might make Education majors more marketable if they have ESL/TESOL certification. In that class there are four chapter to read, plus a handout that was given in class and I think another one online. There is a short essay to write, but I think it might be optional. There is a group project due Wednesday, but I want to do the reading first, so the group agreed to do our work via email starting on Sunday.
On Thursdays (both classes are from 6:00 ~ 8:45) is a class deceptively titled Intro to the English Language. It reality it seems more like Intro to Linguistics, using English as an example. I thought the class would be re-teaching us all of the “proper” grammar rules we’ve forgotten since we learned them in grade school, in preparation for the grad students going out and teaching English to future generations. Teaching the teachers, essentially. Based on the class today, this will be more about language and less about English. The classes will use English as a common frame of reference, but it won’t be solely about English. It will be about structure and history, what language is and what language does. What is the purpose and how did it evolve. It will involve a bit of semiotics (study of symbols/signs), psychology, sociology, physics, biology, communications, and so on. Since I’m into multiculturalism I think the class will be fascinating, as well as intellectually stimulating. The downside is the syllabus wasn’t posted online until this afternoon (everybody is a week behind already) and the bookstore doesn’t have the textbook yet. They are supposed to have it tomorrow, though if they don’t I’ll just order from Amazon.
I guess I know what I’ll be doing this weekend. I’ll have to try and stay away from the PC and keep my nose in the books. Maybe I’ll go to a coffee shop and read there. If it is dry academic text, I’ll need the caffeine to stay awake.
Sleep
Posted on January 9, 2007
After screwing up my sleeping schedule during break, then not quite fixing it last week, I’m working on getting it straight for tomorrow. Yesterday, I stayed up until about 6:00 pm, figuring I would wake up about 2:00 am (I had my alarm clock set to go at 6:00 am just in case). I ended up waking up at 1:30, so I wasn’t too far off the mark. At least it was longer than a nap.
Tonight I’ll probably got to bed around 8:00 or 9:00 and plan on waking up around 4:00 or 5:00. The main reason I need to get my schedule set is tomorrow and Thursday I start my classes, which run from 6:00 pm to 8:45 pm, and I don’t want to be nodding off. I have a hard time staying awake at work in the afternoon. Though I do, it’s difficult sometimes. Strangely, I don’t think caffeine helps that much. Either that, or when it wears off, I get even more tired. Hopefully going to class will put me on a “normal” sleeping schedule.
Over the past year I read an article that mentioned something called “sleep hygiene”. I don’t even remember what the reference was, but I think it was regarding sleeping and stress, or something like that. In general, sleep hygiene is supposed to be as important to our overall health as oral hygiene and regular hygiene. I think one of the things that was mentioned was that people tend to sleep less during the week, then make up for it by sleeping in on the weekends. Not much of a surprise there.
Going to bed when I’m not tired isn’t something I normally do, though I think this is one of the key concepts behind sleep hygiene. The idea is that if you get your body used to going to bed at a certain time, it will eventually learn to get tired around that time. This is one of the hazards of caffeine, I think.
Usually an hour or two after I get home, I get very tired and want to go to sleep, but I know if I go to sleep then, it will likely only be for a few hours, and I’ll wake up and not be tired again until the wee hours of the morning, in which case I’ll only have a few hours of sleep before I have to wake up and go to work. It becomes a vicious circle. Come home, take a nap, wake up, stay up until 3:00 or 4:00, go to sleep, wake up for work, be tired at work because I didn’t get a full night’s sleep, come home, take a nap, etc.
The key to breaking the cycle is to stay up when I get home from work, even though I am tired. The odd thing about it is if I stay awake until 9:00 or so, then I become wide awake and not only am I not tired, I won’t be tired until around 12:00. I haven’t figured that part out yet. It’s not like I’m drinking coffee when I get home. The only time I drink coffee usually is at work. I kind of wonder if there is some sort of cyclical process for caffeine absorption – like time-release medication. Otherwise I can’t account for why I am tired when I get home, but wide awake a few hours later without having any caffiene in the interim. Strange.
Just another day
Posted on January 9, 2007
Today’s my birthday. I turn (breaks out the calculator)… 39 years old! At work they used to get a cake or something, but I think I’ve been able to break them of that since I don’t let them know, and the person who kept track of that doesn’t work there anymore. I figure it’s worth a note here, but I don’t make too much of it. Borders sent me an email for a free pastry, so I’ll probably take them up on that today.
Toil and trouble
Posted on January 7, 2007
So I stayed awake most of the night, creating the finest hand-crafted code for the ZenPhoto gallery. Toiling away at CSS to make the gallery emulate the look and feel of the WordPress theme. It was going fairly well. Usually, I would make a few changes to the CSS or a PHP file, then upload the changed files and refresh the browser to see how they work. I got the stylesheet about 85% of where I wanted it, then I started getting errors while uploading.
It was telling me I was out of disk space, which I thought was ridiculous. I login to the control panel for my web host and see that I was only using about 70 MB out of 1 GB available for my account, so I had a long way to go to run out of disk space. I SSH’d in to my account and checked around. I’d never used SSH in any signifcant amounts before, so mostly I was seeing what could be done. Basically it’s like a modern version of telnet, though the best way to describe it is a command line interface to a remote computer. If you are comfortable with the command line, it’s a pretty nice tool. When I was logged in with SSH, I tried another command that was new to me – df. In *nix, df is a very basic program that tells how much disk space is being used and how much is available. In this case it was very useful because it showed the main hard drive for the server was full.
I typed ps -A to take a look at the processes running, and it came up with a slew of multiple instances of similar daemons running – httpd, mysqld, and qmail were the most common. This shouldn’t be unusual since it is a webhost and the server hosts multiple domains, but I think the number of instances was a bit excessive. In SSH, I was able to look around the server and see the other domains the server hosted. I couldn’t access them due to *nix user space issues, but I could see the names. It looked like there were maybe a dozen or so websites listed, though there were around a hundred “user” directories. The number of redundant processes seemed excessive when compared to this.
I tried various things over the next few hours, with no luck. I couldn’t do anything but wait. If it happened during “normal” hours, I would have gone and done laundry, but since it was the wee hours of the morning, I didn’t want to wake the neighbors. I ended up taking a nap. When I woke up, the site at least seemed to be working though there were still some database issues. After another hour or so, that went away. I was able to upload without any errors, and I am able to write this post.
