Isotropic is …
... my personal blog.
Unless otherwise indicated, anything I write here is simply my personal, probably ill-formed, opinion and does not represent the views, beliefs, positions, or opinions of any other person or entity.
Monthly Archives: December 2009
31 Dec 2009
Pixelated Dreams
Lately my dreams, or at least the rapidly evaporating-on-waking memories of them, seem more realistic. Most are brief snippets, but some are lengthy detailed stories.
Earlier times, if I remembered dreams at all, they were generally incoherent, often nightmarish. Occasionally there was no memory of content at all, just waking up with a pervasive [...]
30 Dec 2009
Miscellaneous Links 2009-12-30
Some random things I’ve run across the last few days:
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity
A quote from the commentary on the third law:
Our daily life is mostly, made of cases in which we lose money and/or time and/or energy and/or appetite, cheerfulness and good health because of the improbable action of some preposterous creature [...]
24 Dec 2009
The good, the bad, and the ugly
This picks up from where “So much for rest and relaxation” left off.
Good: The work crew didn’t finish, so we didn’t have to go in to move equipment.
Bad: They rescheduled it for the 29th. Good thing I didn’t have plans for then, eh?
Good: I went in anyway to finish updating my [...]
23 Dec 2009
Judge Bans Microsoft from Selling Word …
… or at least that’s what the headlines say.
Gets your attention doesn’t it? Being such a fan of Microsoft, I couldn’t help but get a little buzz when I read that.
Actually, Microsoft is banned from selling versions of Word that contain a particular piece of “XML technology” which i4i has patented.
This is effective January [...]
23 Dec 2009
So much for rest and relaxation
So far this week, “break” has been good-news / bad-news.
Monday
Bad: Went to work Monday at 9am, didn’t leave til 8pm. What with other things I needed to do after that, I didn’t get home til about 10:30pm.
Good: Got my office cleaned up a little bit, and I think I got all the [...]
19 Dec 2009
Christmas Break 2009
My Christmas break begins today. Officially I’m off until January 4th, but I may go into work Monday to take care of a few last-minute chores and catch up on office housekeeping I just didn’t want to deal with Friday evening. There are also three days when it’s my turn to drive in to rotate [...]
12 Dec 2009
TV Math
Are percentages really that hard? Now, journalism has a reputation for misreporting scientific studies, what with all that complicated mathematics, statistics, probability, and the drawing of logical conclusions, but this is ridiculous. After all, “per cent” sorta implies that the numbers should add up to some number relatively close to 100, and I [...]
10 Dec 2009
Learning Japanese: Computer Input
While you can use the Character Map accessory (Linux, Windows) to occasionally enter a few characters, you will want to install an input method if you intend to input Japanese characters with any frequency.
Linux
A popular method on Linux is SCIM + anthy. SCIM provides an input method engine that supports multiple languages, while anthy [...]
10 Dec 2009
Learning Japanese: Computer Fonts
Recent versions of operating systems should display Japanese characters without additional configuration. The following sample displays fine on Linux (tested: Firefox, Konqueror) and Windows XP (tested: Firefox, IE):
すべての人間は、生まれながらにして自由であり、
かつ、尊厳と権利と について平等である。
人間は、理性と良心とを授けられており、
互いに同胞の精神をもって行動しなければならない。
If you’re using IE8, you may have to click on [...]
05 Dec 2009
Learning Japanese: Pronunciation
Whatever course material you use to study will provide detailed guidelines for pronunciation. I’ll also discuss some audio reference material in a later post, once I get past the mechanics of the written language.
For a quick introduction you may want to view these articles: “Pronunciation of Japanese” provides a sample reading (from the beginning [...]
