all things me

First day at work — again. This time I’m hired for 3 months’ worth of hours but I do them when I can (I have course-duty). Only 444½ to go…

I’m dead-tired!! I don’t know why. I was still up around 2 am and I got up at 7:50 am so I probably got about 5 hours of sleep. Not that much.

At work, one of my tasks is to populate an ontology whose topic is not confirmed yet. That’s why I twiddled my thumbs for the majority of the day. I also have to continue my work with the parser/parser lexicon/parser grammar I familiarized myself with last summer.

Yesterday I downloaded Movable Type. No, I’m not changing to that but I gotta see what the hype is all about. And who knows, maybe I’ll think of something new to do with the help of MT…

I added a new category: WWW. It’s going to include posts that have links, test results (the web kind…) or other net stuff. I haven’t put many posts in it yet — I have a lazy moment. I would’ve made a big category Computer which would’ve had Site, Games and WWW as subcats and then Site would have Updates, Tweaks, and Fanlistings but they wouldn’t show on the write/edit post screen…

The redesign of all things me is finally done! Now I’m just waiting for the domain to start working to the right direction. (aaagh, 1 week free trial period and the domain won’t be registered before I pay the bill — but they won’t send me the bill!!)

So, I’ve changed from green/purple to purple (or lilac or violet — I don’t know!). I was planning to have my “colour depth of three” (black, white, purple) on the site but black was so bright!! So I made it a little “foggier” (#444444). I’ve used Harrington font in the pictures. I don’t know where that splash came from; I was looking for a nice bullet (which, in the end, I didn’t use) and then I decided to add it in front of the post titles to separate them more clearly when there’re several posts in one day.

The layout is flexible. That means the text is as wide as it can be (minus the menu). I used to have it at max 760 pixels which I — on a 1024×768 screen — didn’t like but I had to think about you little people. I mean, people with little screens — whoops!

Now that I have a proper domain I’ve enabled ping/trackbacks (not yet on all posts cause I have to click through them all dammit). I said bye-bye to category pictures. They just didn’t fit anywhere. Hmm… I *could* put them on a post’s individual page.

On to another topic. I finished reading Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah on September 27. At 4:40 am. Ssshhh, don’t tell anyone! Now I’m waiting for DTVII to arrive in the bookstores. It was published on 21st and when I went to ask when I could expect it to be on the shelves they said “in two weeks”, so I’ll probably check it this week (as I have to drag myself to the center on Friday — 2 months of work starts, again) and then, naturally, next week.

Now I’ll add the category image thingy…

I also changed from Pagination to "vBulletin Style page navigation".

Yesterday night I was glued to the screen reading a blog (Myrskymurmeli) that had a convenient page navigation (hmm… actually I think it’s the default WP navigation which I’d removed to enable ScriptyGoddess’s Pagination… anyway) and I read the whole blog to the very first entry… thank gawd there wasn’t a lot more entries — I would’ve been stuck to the screen till the wee hours.

I’m starting work tomorrow… I’ll be working for 3 months’ worth and doing as-long-as-I-can/want-days until I’ve filled the required hours. I’ll be working till the end of spring I bet

I’m in the process of moving my site to a new server. The domain will hopefully be working the whole time. I’m also redesigning all things me (the blog and surroundings) so the site maybe weird for a while (don’t know where from, though)
Anyway, yeah, just wanted to tell that.

Oh, I’m very excited about publishing the new layout. It’s pretty cool, if I may say so myself. It’s flexible and not green!!

… must be funny in a rich man’s world. (ABBA)

I went shopping today. Apparently the 2-hour gap between my intro to databases group meeting and localisation is very very dangerous! I have to think of something (reading!) to do on these occasions in the future. I bought the Dark Tower Concordance by Robin Furth although I was only supposed to ask when DT7 could be found on the shelves (“in about two weeks”). Then I bought two shirt/jacket things (two!) when I thought “I’ll just take a peek” (and actually I’ve been meaning to buy t-shirt type of things to wear under these blouses and jackets but actually, it’s nicer to have different things to wear *over* a simple shirt — excuses excuses :wink:). Oh, but they’re wonderful! The other is a sort of denim jacket type and the other is a 3/4-sleeve shirt with blue pinstripes.

Money burnt — big time. Luckily I paid for the clothes with plastic I could’ve felt remorse if it was paper money.

Today I remembered a thing from my first years of school (well, it must’ve been around grade 3, thus as a 10+-year-old, because I had just started learning English):
I was reading an Easter poem about daffodills (the yellow flower) and it went something like “up the hill, down the hill, I see an Easter daffodill” (I really don’t remember), then at one point there’s “I’m so happy, I’m so gay“. Well, gay was a new word to me and I didn’t have a dictionary of my own, so I marched to my mum and dad and asked “what does ‘gay’ mean?”. Well they ho’hummed and grh’hmmed for a moment and then started “well, it’s when two boys like each other…” I thought to myself “yeah, homosexual, I know *that*! But what does it mean in this poem?!”. I never got a proper answer from them (as I didn’t say my thoughts aloud) so I turned to the trusty dictionary and found out that ‘gay’ means ‘happy’ (eh, why the repetition…). I could’ve saved them a lot of blushing if I’d gone straight (no pun intended) to the dictionary…

What reminded me of this? My sister’s writing her first history essay and as I was in the same school I wrote the same thing back in my days. She asked me what my title had been and it included the species (or whatever) Homo Habilis. Oh how many giggles in the classroom all those stages of human evolution have produced through the years… Usually among guys. Oh, wait. Guys don’t giggle.

@ 1:31 (well, technically it’s Sunday, but I don’t bother starting the new day yet)
I have another language-related thing. A rule of thumb, actually. You know there are two different ways (two *correct* ways) to spell the colour of elephants. You know the other is American and the other is British. But how do you know which is which? Well, the American word is ‘gray’ and the British (or English) is ‘grey’. I’m so proud of that revelation.

Another revelation, math related. You know the “problem” of rice and chess board? In a story someone convinced a person to pay (or award) them with rice so that the first square on the chessboard has 1 grain of rice, the second has 2, third has 4 etc. (a square has twice the amount of rice as the previous). The other day Dad told me that he had tried to count that with paper and pencil (when he was at school, or something) but had only got to around 50th square. Well, I tossed and turned in my bed that night and suddenly built up an equation from it. I’m not going to spoil it here in the open, but continue reading after you’ve pondered it over by yourself. And don’t tell me I must be stupid or something — it was a real epiphany! I hadn’t thought about the problem before although I had heard about it.
Continues »

The university term of autumn, 2004 has slowly begun. I don’t have much to choose from because my major seems very scroogy in offering courses. I have found some however, from minors:
In translation studies I’m taking localisation, computer aided translation exercises (we’re learning to use Trados, basically), terminology, and translating bureau language. In computer studies there’re introduction to databases and application/program planning (whatever that is). In British and Irish Studies (not my minor or anything) I’m going to take introduction to British literature.

Spring is going to be hectic, but I hope I can take as many of the courses as I possibly can. I don’t want to do any of them independently so if I can’t go to the lectures, I’m going to wait for another term.

Firstly, Happy Birthday, Mariela!

How many times can I mess up one single thing: bachelor’s thesis. I sent my professor a message way back in June saying “Here’s the final version of my thesis, I’ll come by to bring the paper version too when it finishes printing.” Well, I never did — go by to bring the paper version — because it printed mess (symbols). Well, now I’d gotten an email from my professor asking if there was supposed to be an attachment with the email because he needed the final version for binding (binding!!). Oi oi oi. I had also forgotten to update the files on my homepage!

I’m always forgetting to attach things, especially when it comes to very important university courses…

Oh yeah, and now it won’t make a pdf from the tex file. I don’t know what I did back in… May. Luckily I had converted it already.

Updates At TGWLSK — a few new book titles in Russian, Albanian, Persian, Estonian, Spanish, Croatian, and Turkish (what I could find in the library system of the capital city area)

Quote of the Day

(…) the first mosquito of the new season buzzes blood-thirstily past your ear with that eye-watering hum that always makes you think it’s the sound loonies must hear just before they kill all their kids or close their eyes on the Interstate and put the gas pedal to the floor or tighten their toe on the trigger of the .30-.30 they just jammed into their quackers (…)
— ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King

Word of the Day: Discombobulate — to cause to be unclear in mind or intent; confuse

On the search page I added the list of categories a post belongs to. (When a search returns results, that is.)

I want to tell about the horrible cackle my localisation/CAT teacher made behind my back making me jump in the air at least somewhat and wondering what I’d done wrong. Me and the girl sitting next to me glanced at each other, most likely thinking “is it you or me?” (or actually, I was thinking “please, let it be you he’s laughing at rather than me”). In the end, he was laughing at the story we were translating.

I want to tell about the man behind whom I sat down yesterday in the bus. He had a yellow birch leaf stuck in his hair.

And that made me think of a man whom I once saw standing in the bus. Every so often he drew a few circles around his head with his hand.

I have written about my university term but I don’t want to publish it yet because I don’t want my latest language related post (in a long time, I might add) drown in the flood.

*slaps hands over ears, eyes, and mouth*

*goes to read Dark Tower VI*

This is wonderful! I just came across a way to get the monthly archives in chronological order while categories and main page are shown in the default way, descending order by date.

Adding &order=ASC to rewrite rules (the one that has index.php?year…) does the trick neatly!

Finland and Canada are skating against each other tonight. World Cup hockey. *fingers crossed* I’m NOT going to stay up and watch it though.