What can you learn about yourself from a website?

Janelle showed me Pandora.com over the weekend, and it is the coolest thing I've seen online to date. Its even cooler than Google Earth, and that's saying something. What have I learned about myself? Well for starters, I've learned that I like "mild rythmic syncopation." All the music I like across genres seems to have it, but then again according to Wikipedia "Syncopation is used on occasion in many music styles, including classical music, but it is a fundamental constant presence in such styles as ragtime and jazz. In the form of a back beat, syncopation is used in virtually all contemporary popular music." It occurs to me that Pandora probably puts that in most music. Oh well.

One other thing I noticed over the weekend is how much the Firefox extention AdAware kicks ass. The first time I loaded pandora, I didn't even realize there were any ads on it... it wasn't until I opened it internet explorer that I noticed it has a really annoying flash ad right there in the upper right corner. AdAware cuts ads out of webpages before they load! My favorite example is my old yahoo mail account. There got to be a point when I gave up using it because of the annoying ads, but that was before I started using Firefox & AdAware. Check out the comparison below.

I've got to get going, peace out, and word to your respective mothers!

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A post-post note: Dr. Karen is right, I was talking about AdBlock, which stops ads from loading in webpages while using Firefox. AdAware is free software for the PC that protects against spyware. Oops!

I thought I would write; All of my friends a haiku; So I feel like writing

Two interpretations of today's Haiku... IN ENGLISH!

Interpretation #1
Halo can be fun
When I have nothing pressing
But I should right now

Interpretation #2
Halo can be fun
When I have nothing pressing
But I should write now

Ok not quite as multi dimentional as my Japanese Haiku, but wha'cha going to do? I just thought I would say hey to my five or so peeps who read this, and appologize for not writing more (more text/more often). By the by, its good to know that I'm at the top of my form playing Halo 2 when I havn't played for weeks. That's as good a reason as any to play it slightly less! On that note, I'm off to finish a paper I should have finished yesterday.

Is anyone else interested in turn of the century Russo-Japanese relations? I didn't think so. And for the record... writing historiographies suck.

Peace out homeys, and word to your respective mothers!
-Mr. Adam "Saibashi" Bento

OSXtreme for XP: It's not OSX but it's close

The title OSXtreme is in reference to a shell I made for the Pocket PC operating system back in the day, which took the crappy Pocket PC OS and gave it most of the functions of a Windows OS and gave it a cool OSX look. My goal is to now give Windows XP all the friendlyness and functionality of OSX... and do it for free... and be able to transfer this functionality from computer to computer. Before I had thought this impossible, but I have made some recent discoveries which lead me to believe that this is a goal well within reach.

ICONS:
Windows XP can use 64x64 pixel icons, but for some reason all of the standard windows icons are 32x32. Additionally, I have finally found free icon packing software, which can convert multiple images into an icon pack. I have converted and am currently using the Crystal icon set for Linux, and am setting these to all of the windows icon defaults. It looks pretty nice, and with any luck the windows theme creation tool should allow me to export these icons with relative ease. I would be happy to give these icon sets and themes to any of my friends who want them, but due to legal reasons, I do not want to post them online.

SEARCH FUNCTION:
OSX Tiger is supposed to put everything into a cache so that its search is instantaneous. In comparison, a Windows search can take up to 5 minutes. Yesterday, I found a tool that gives this functionality to Windows. It's another free tool from our newly public friends at Google called Google Desktop. Its quite something, type in a phrase and it will instantaneously give you every document on your computer with that phrase in its title or in its text. It also has integrated email search, rss reader (which you can use to keep track of all your friends updates to their blogs), and a whole bunch of other things which you can turn off if you so desire. I actually rather like the picture slideshow, I expected it to be a distraction, but I find it

EXPOSE:
A cool trick in OSX is Exposé; this has ability to hit a button which allows you to see every open window on the screen by shrinking them. You can then click on one of these small windows and everything will be restored to full size and the one you selected will be brought to the front. iEx is a free tool that does this for windows. I havn't tried it yet, but I plan to when I get back to my computer. And of course, it's free.

OTHER SOFTWARE, FIREFOX:
Why use Firefox in place of Internet Explorer? If the higher security, stronger ad blocking power, and hundreds of useful plug-ins aren't your thing, it also looks a lot nicer with its many skins. I like using Mostly Crystal, because it "mostly" uses the same Crystal icon set I am using to replace the windows icons and the curves are very pleasant on the eyes.

OTHER SOFTWARE, THUNDERBIRD:
Why use Thunderbird as your email client? Well it's about a hundred times more powerful than Outlook Express, and has all the high security and plug-in features of Firefox, and it can be skinned as well. I use the Mostly Crystal skin for this program as well.

OTHER SOFTWARE, OPEN OFFICE:
Open Office is an MS Office replacement (yes I know that this has nothing to do with OSX, but it has everything to do with functionality). It mimics each of the MS Office programs for free (except Outlook, see Thunderbird above), so if you find yourself without a legal copy of MS Office for your computer, why not make the leap to Open Office? Or you can just stick it to the man, you know you want to.

Oh well, I've got to get going, peace out and word to your respective mothers.

Small plans of the past; Make me believe in our great plans for the future

Yes, I stole the idea to open with a Haiku from Rob. Oh well, it's mine now! So anyway, if you havn't noticed, my titles are attempts at English haikus, but again I have problems counting syllables in English, so I'm always up for critique. But before I give you today's Japanese haiku, I would like to respond to something Rob said on my last post: "You know what I like about Japanese? It's so straightforward..." The lack of directness is mostly my fault, I chose to only write it as you would hear it spoken, without the Chinese characters that let a person reading it know what's going on. But this was my intention, as I was trying to mimic the effect of listening to a song, so that it was a little less straightforward... and I thought this would go well with the concept of a Haiku. This time, I will give the pronunciation again, but also give the Chinese characters of the interpretation I am translating. But there still is some ambiguity because in a Japanese sentence, you do not need a subject or an object... they can be inferred. I try to use this trick a lot to give it "deeper meaning", but the practical upside of this for someone who doesn't read Japanese is that when I say me, he, or we it very well might mean me (as in you), you, us, them, Rob (in #1 in particular) et cetera. Oh well, without further adieu, I give you, haiku:

かきあげる
Kaki ageru
こといるつもり
Koto iru tsumori
かきなぐる
Kaki naguru

Interpretation #1 (or what I was actually going for):
書き上げる
To finish writing
事要る積もり
Is what we plan to do.
書きなぐる
But we write so very quickly.

Interpretation #2 (for the fans: another interpretation revolving around food)
牡蛎揚げる
To fry oysters
事要る積もり
Is what I plan to do.
牡蛎殴る
I will pulverize the oysters.

Interpretation #3 (From the guiney pigs)
火気上げる
The flaming guitar rises
事要る積もり
That is his intention
火気殴る
This flame strikes me.

Interpretation #4 (ironically, here actually is ambiguous as to if the city is shot or is doing the shooting, I suppose this is a glass is half empty or half full question... either way, I suppose this is a rather grim haiku)
火器挙げる
Guns will raise
古都射る積もり
This is the plan, an ancient city will shoot/ There is a plan that an ancient city be shot
火気殴る
and a fire will strike
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Yeah, poetry writing is good at stirring up the creative juices. Let's see, I'm still looking forward to Janelle's Harry Potter party. I just wish I was seeing more of her lately.


I saw a bumper sticker yesterday which pissed me off... so I'll share it with all of you. It said: "Remember 9/11, the left has already forgotten." While I agree that complacency is a mistake, these sorts of blanket statements piss me off to no end. In an addition to Rob's critique of "conservatives" I would add predjudice. Not racism, predjudice. The attitude that one already knows everything about everyone and everything and there is no need to investigate the matter further. This oversimplification is as dangerous if not more dangerous than complacency, and let us not forget there are people complacent about national security who are both "conservatives" and "liberals". But disagreement on national security or any other topic does not inherently equal complacency and being a hawk is not inherently the cure all for the nation's security woes.


In lighter news, Strong Bad has his own space program now; it was a long time coming. I wish I had my very own teh Cheat/ Strap Coopmore, then I'd have my very on space program too.

That's a good note to end with as any,
Peace out and word to your respective mothers!





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A post-post note: You know, reading back over my translations, it seems like I'm making Engrish of my very own.

The flaming guitar rises
That is his intention
This flame strikes me

Seriously, I need to start my own Japanese T-shirt company.

I have a thought that; Haiku is good for you; let's Haiku together

Garth: We're looking down on Wayne's basement. Only that's not Wayne's basement. Isn't that weird?
Wayne: Garth, that was a haiku!


I've never much liked haiku, because well... I've never been good at counting syllables in English. I can't even tell if the above is a haiku. But I had a thought after talking to Rob about haiku, it would be a lot "easier" in Japanese! I mean, Japanese is a syllabic language, and was kinda built for haiku (or the other way around, eh who cares.) In addition, I was reading through the lyrics of a Cocco song the other day, and I realized several double meanings for many of the lyrics I had previously thought I understood, so I thought it would be cool to come up with my own poetry with multiple meanings. So here we go, I'll do it first in Japanese, then give a few possible translations (japanese is pronounced like latin... think spanish if the h's sound like h's):

nicchuu wa
kurushii darou
kyou iru no

にっちゅうは

くるしいだろう

きょういるの

Translation 1:
The middle of the day;
It can be rather difficult.
I need a day off

Translation 2:
The middle of the day;
It can be rather difficult.
I'm going back to sleep.

Translation 3:
The middle of the day;
It can be rather difficult.
The day is alive.

Translation 4:
The middle of the day;
It can be rather difficult.
Thus, I set into the day.

Translation 5:
The middle of the day;
It can be rather difficult.
Thus, I enter the sun.

Translation 6:
The middle of the day;
It can be rather difficult.
I'm going to deep fry a meal.

Translation 7:
Sino-Japanese relations
Can be rather tenuous.
They need to take a break.

I will leave you all with a link to the Homestar Runner halloween episode, wherefrom I have created an icon of Teh Cheat dressed as Toad from Super Mario Brothers 2.

Peace out, and word to your respective mothers.

Hello out there in the land of the living

Sorry for not posting in a while, I wish I could say I've been exceptionally busy or even that I've had nothing to write about, but both would be lies. So let me take a moment bring everyone up to speed with what's been going on in my life.
1) Al Lopez, the Baseball Hall of Famer died over the weekend. He was the only famous, semi-relative I've ever had.
2) I got my new "Cocco's Best" two disk CD set and I couldn't be happier with it. Well, maybe if there was one song with a banjo...
3) I can't wait to be grilled on pan-asian culture by the Rob-o-Bob-o-Bobulator, and to read some of his up and coming novel.
4) My pretty new laptop died, and I sent it off for repairs.
5) In despiration, I ripped appart my three year old broken Toshiba PDA and banged it with a hammer. Turns out it works now, and is being held together by solder and superglue. But hell, it works. Again, never buy a Toshiba product; I am pretty sure they are built to fall apart.
6) I got my pretty new laptop back, but not after Best Buy gave me some guff. I don't recommend purchasing from there either, at least if you ever want customer service with a repair.
7) So bottom line, I've now got a semi-operational PDA and a hopefully fully operational laptop. Funny the way that worked out... Janelle would you like to borrow one?
8) My favorite Homestar Runner episode in a while: Commandos in the Classroom. "I've got dysentery!"
9) I like adding links into my posts whenever possible: for example, Pinocchio is coming to the Hiroshima Noh Theatre November 19 & 20th. Crap, I guess I'll miss it.
10) I really should start two papers on 20th Century Russo-Japanese relations, I just don't know what to write about. Perhaps, one about pre-Communist relations and one about post Communist? I would need to know when to end the second one... perhaps 1945? I don't want to get into WWI and WWII too much but it seems that they are going to be unavoidable. Maybe I should just break down and do a WWI paper and a WWII paper. Sigh. The World Wars don't get links, chances are you've heard of them.
11) Work's pretty uneventful now, I think now is my time to shine.
12) I'm still awaiting an acceptance into grad. school, so I contacted the department friday, and they said that they were still awaiting my GRE scores that I took back on September 14. Seriously, almost 8 weeks have gone by... I need to get in contact with the GRE.
13) Boo! It's All Hallow's Eve, or Halloween for you modern folks. Not that anyone has noticed
13) I made sausage, pork and potato stew last night, ghetto sushi too. Too bad, I forgot my lunchbox.
14) I'm hungry, I think I'll go call Janelle and see if she'll bring Mr. Bento to school for me.

Yep, I think that's it for the moment, I'll do my best to keep you all posted with more regular posts in the future.
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A post-post note: Janelle slept in and is missing her class, so it looks like I'll be going to Burger King for lunch. How I pine for Mr. Bento! Oh, and my wife I guess. To think, I could be eating ghetto sushi right now!

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A post-post-post note: I like comments too...

It's the little things in life

Sorry I havn't posted in a while, I've been busy busy. Lets see, I got my new CD Barairo Pop and its good, though not exactly what I was expecting. It was a little brighter than Cocco before, but the thing that really surprised me was the banjo... and the fiddle. I guess you can chalk that up to the new band, but really I was not expecting a Japanese music group to have any songs with a banjo or a fiddle, much less two.

One other exciting thing happened today, I test drove Google's new personalized homepage. I had been using news.google.com as my homepage for months, but I like this much better. Its clean, simple, and completely customizable with news, email, weather and everything. C'est tres bien! Ahem, sorry still feeling a little French after John Stewart's interview with Bill O'Reilly.

That's all for now, peace out and word to your respective mothers.

Just like Bruce Lee in a Donkey Manger

Sorry about yesterday's post, I was a little frustrated at the time if you couldn't tell. Seriously though, I rarely get angry like that, and I thought I should put up another post so that it looks like I have gotten on with my life... which I have. So anyway, I guess I could put my current mood at nervous and excited, and by the way, I stole the emotional Data idea from something I saw on Janelle's old yearbook friend, Heather (heat-ray), so it wasn't exactly an original idea. So why am I nervous? I'm officially applying for grad. school today, and I won't be able to get a masters degree if I don't manage to get in.

On the other hand, I am ecstatic that Janelle bought me a few Cocco CD’s and the first one is due in the mail early next week. Yes, Cocco is still my favorite singer/songwriter: I find her lyrics thought provoking (once I understand them), and her vocals are near intoxicating, even if you don’t quite understand the words. I will be getting her compilation two disk set entitled “Cocco’s Best” in a few weeks.

But what sucked was that Cocco retired back when I began officially studying Japanese. I found this quite depressing, but she’s back! And this time she’s the vocalist/songwriter of a band: Singer Songer. AND I’ll have their new CD early next week! Let’s just say that it kicks more ass than Bruce Lee in a donkey manger… ask Eric.

Peace out, and word to your respective mothers!

PS: See? This time Data looks pretty happy.

Sometimes I hate my job

Yes, sometimes I hate my job. No I don't hate my boss, or the hours, or the pay, or the benefits. In fact, for the first time in a long time I am pretty happy with all of those. No today, I hate the actual work. This week, I was tasked with the assignment of calling students who had not filled out a form. Sounds simple enough, but it was quite possibly the most frustrating thing I can ever remember doing. These hundred or so students had not filled out a form that allows our office to disburse their financial aid the "Financial Aid Disbursement Authorization Statement," and I had to call the irresponsible brats to tell them that they had thousands of dollars of free money awaiting them and all they had to do was sign a form. They nearly all had stoned out voices and acted indifferent I mentioned the dollar amount that we were holding for them. At this point, a light bulb went on in their heads and they said they would come to sign the form.

Why did this piss me off so much? Because when I was their age, I was responsible for myself. Yes, I had financial aid, but I also had a job and paid my own bills. Sure, I didn't balance my checkbook as often as I should have, but I certainly would have noticed missing three thousand dollars. These kids, and I do call them kids because they each had the maturity level of a high school freshmen, don't deserve free money. I propose legislation that would take the money from kids like this and give it to responsible students who may be the same age, but are adults.

I normally am a very cool headed person, and it pisses me off even more that these little brats can so royally piss me off.

Anyways, peace out all and word to your respective mothers.

Yukihime

Since I've begun to blog, I have remembered to start reading one of my favorite blogs, www.yukihime.com, the adventures of an American in Japan. I found it while looking for websites about Cocco, my favorite Japanese artist. Turns out this guy is about as big a Cocco fan as I am.

I thought you all might be intersted in a few of my favorites such as "Why I love Ogawa: A play in two acts" and "I need to work on my cooking skill."

Enjoy!

I need a vacation

I have eighty eight hours of vacation time at work and I want to use them. All of them. But in particular, I want to take at least a weeklong vacation next year on our aniversary, April 10, to Northern Georgia. I also want to visit with my friends, Rob, Karen, Eric and Erin. It would be great to vacation with my friends; I think we should work these things together.

So why Northern Georgia? First of all because I have an appointment in Atlanta on April 11, the day after our aniversary. Second of all, because my family used to always take vacations to the mountains of Northern Georgia, the quaint little "Alpine Village" of Helen in particular. Besides being out in the middle of no where, which is fun in itself, they have some good German food and its been ages since I've had good sausages. In addition, close nearby there is a GA state park Unicoi with a nice hotel/lodge. I think it would be a blast if we could do this with a few friends. Attached is zoomed in sat photo of the Helen/Unicoi area courtesy of Google Earth, which if I havn't already mentioned, is the bomb.

It's not fun when I'm not in control

I wanted to make the following image a background image, but blogger wouldn't let me make an image from an outside site a background image. It's pretty frustrating. So I'm uploading it on a post.

Also for those who care, it doesn't like jpgs or pngs, just gifs. Now for the textboxes... I wonder if I can use gammas...

I have layers part 2 or the REAL first post

Janelle, the lovely authoress of janelle711.blogspot.com, guest/ghost wrote that last post, so I figure I should finally write one of my own.

The first and most important thing to cover is the title. Those who know me rather well know that Mr. Bento is the name of my cool new lunchbox. I really liked the name of the lunchbox, it in effect means "Mr. Layers," and I thought that it was a clever, catchy, and very engrish sounding name.

I have dozens of different things going on in my life. Since the tragic death of my PDA, my repository of knowledge, my second brain I kept in my back pocket, I have had a loggerhead of thoughts stuck in my brain eager to be siphoned off. I figured this might work out for me. And after all, all the cool people are doing it (see the links to the right).

Well that’s all for now,
Adam

I have layers.

Even better than parfait.
Mr. Bento!!