Blog
9 days ago
15 days ago
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An old photo site, actually. A little while ago Flickr began accepting video uploads (no more than 150MB and 90 seconds). I just tried it out for the first time and this is the result:
17 days ago
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I just posted over at the swet.jp blog, which is where all the cool kids hang out. I was happy to be invited to write for that site because:
- It will focus my attention on thinking about the work that I do and writing something readable about it
- I can then repurpose that content, bringing it back here and further improving it so this place will sparkle and shine
- It will, um, make me famous and rich, somehow, I’m sure
- It means that right now, you like me!
So anyway, that’s that. I am about to grab a bite to eat and then hit the sack. This three-day work week is killing me. Hope the four-day weekend will be enough time to recover. Hail Golden Week!
Crap I just finished going through the rigamarole of updating to WP 2.5 and already 2.5.1 is available? Bah. March of progress? Bah.
26 days ago
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If you live in Japan, you get to watch American movies three months later than everyone else, and for more money to boot. Well, in the theater, anyway; if you’re renting disks it’s quite affordable but you get to wait six months instead. I’ve never gotten into the whole “download movies from the internets” thing, but I suppose that route is there for people who can’t wait to watch in a bit more comfort than a computer chair offers.
A few coming up that I’m interested in seeing are There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men. I’m a huge fan of Cormac McCarthy (thanks to James for cluing me in to him many years ago). I must admit this is my least favorite of his books—with the possible exception of The Sunset Limited (Amazon page), but I haven’t gotten to that one yet, so no ranking there. But I’m interested to see what happens when this makes it to the screen in the hands of the actors and directors involved with this project.
(I never saw the 2000 adaptation of All the Pretty Horses, but I’ve never seen reviews of it that made me feel like I was missing out. Would be nice to see someone in Hollywood approach the entire Border Trilogy in a serious fashion.)
McCarthy’s page at IMDB says that not only The Road but Blood Meridian and Outer Dark are also in production now. I wonder about the possibility of doing a good transition to the screen with those two—particularly Blood Meridian, which features massive violence and supernaturally intelligent bald giants and such. However, Ridley Scott is listed as the director for it, so maybe there’s a chance we’ll see a compelling Judge Holden on our movie screens. For me, on my TV six months later.
Good information on Cormac McCarthy is available at this site.
Apr 17, 2008
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Finally got this place updated to the latest flavor of WordPress. I was tired of seeing that “you are in danger of being hacked by Ukranian credit-card thieves” note every time I logged in.
More than that, though, I was tired of never being able to log in. This hosting company isn’t the best I could have chosen. Time to look into new digs for durf.org, I think.
Work remains busy. Baby remains adorable. Last night I had a quick drink or three with Jed the brave JAT webperson. He showed me his MacBook Air and the translation software he’s working on: langwidget. (LangWidget? He studiously avoids the shift key on that site so it’s hard to tell.) Looked very slick—it works in a browser and lets translators share their translation units (pairs of words or phrases for source and target languages) with the other folks using the software, using the Internet and data clouds and magic and so on. Not exactly the sort of product I could put to good use in my unpredictable, nonrepetitive work, but for many kinds of translation these tools are indeed helpful and his may one day be a nice, platform-agnostic addition to their number.
Apr 07, 2008
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Taken at Jindaiji in the late nineteenth century. Not. Actually it was taken at Jindaiji a few years ago (the original is here) and run through this cool online “old photo generator” called the 幕末古写真ジェネレーター (Bakumatsu old photo generator). Perfect for making your shots of Kabukicho neon last weekend look like they belong in an Isabella Bird book.
(Hat tip to Asiajin for this one.)
Apr 05, 2008
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A very quick post to link to the website of Hamada Nursing Baby (浜田ナーシングベビー). This Koganei clinic is run by an 80-year-old woman with strong massaging hands and plenty of advice for new mothers wondering what to do with their infants. Megumi has been going there for some months, and has made a number of friends in the neighborhood with babies about the same age as Sakura. (Here’s hoping this entry helps bump the place up a bit in search engine results.)
Apr 04, 2008
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I bought a MacBook here last year. You can get US English keyboards popped in for no extra charge if you don't like the JIS versions! 昼休みの散歩で時々店によって最新機種で遊んでいます。
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Status
Remembering that I have an account at Asoboo
Apr 03, 2008
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The next time you need to communicate with a tiny person raised in a Japanese-speaking environment, head over to the Goo Labs and take a look at the こども語辞書 (”baby-talk dictionary”). Toss your terms into the search field (you can use a baby term, like wanwan for a dog, or the normal word inu), or use one of the categorized lists listed lower on the page:
- Kana order (lists of terms for each character in the Japanese syllabary, either by baby sound or adult word represented)
- By genre (including such toddler favorites as “animals,” “foods and drinks,” and “song lyrics”)
- By sex of babies that tend to learn the term first (including months of vocabulary usage; boys lag by a half-month or so, with the exception of important words like “ramen”)
- By month of vocab usage
My favorite category is probably マニアックワード, “maniac words.” The imported term in Japanese refers not to the axe-wielding variety but to a hobby or other interest taken to extremes, often in a “really out there” area that not many people pay attention to. Some of the examples in the Goo Labs glossary are 殺虫剤 (insecticide), アフラック (Aflac, the insurance firm with the popular duck), and シュワッチ (Ultraman’s phrase “shuwatch,” to borrow the Wikipedia entry’s spelling). Crazy kids.
(Via ことば・言葉・コトバ.)
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A short post to link to a couple of posts I did over at the SWET blog: Learn the language, stay a while longer, on the possibility that Japanese language ability will let you get a work visa good for five years instead of three, and The translation problem solved again, which talks about the automated handheld translation system of the week. Read, enjoy, etc. etc.
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