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
Monday, November 28, 2005
Thursday, November 17, 2005
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
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
__________________________________________
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!
_______________________________________________________
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.
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
__________________________________________
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!
_______________________________________________________
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.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
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.
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