In this post: basic sentences. Vacation soon over. Finished a report. Got a job interview. Exams way too soon. No money. Fluctuating mood. Have to run more. Cold weather. Twittering again.

WILLOW: I don’t know. You’ve been studying really a lot.

BUFFY: I try, but they’re already piling on the reading and, of course, Giles is filling in the little corners of free time with extra training. I’m starting to think this working hard is hard work.

WILLOW: Isn’t it crazy like that?

BUFFY: I thought it was gonna be more like in the movies. You know, inspirational music and a montage: me sharpening pencils, reading, writing, falling asleep on a big pile of books with my glasses all crooked because in the montage I have glasses. Real life is so slow and it hurts my occipital lobe.

Just for you, on the last day of the year, we enter a new era of SeSam.hu a day early. The reason is the game Norbi showed me yesterday, which is for sure the funnest thing I have played for a long time. Watch the screencast!
(The commentary is in Hungarian.)

You can download the demo or buy the full version for just $20 at 2D boy.

It’s weird not to be home for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. These really only mean anything if you are around people. And if we assess the situation honestly, my only acquaintances are online.

Obviously trees are not in fashion here, and why would I want one for just me. After watching a bit on a webcast how my family was decorating the tree at home, I mostly slept through the celebrations.

Now I’m undecided what to do for New Year’s. The Japanese custom is to visit a shrine. For instance Kyoto is unbelievably overcrowded this time of the year. But I’m not sure I want to be a “stranger by himself” among a host of people.

What if Mila Kunis was your healer in a heroic, huh? It could happen, if you’re alliance… (By the way, why do people choose poser alliance all the time? I mean, Felicia plays a gnome… eww…) What’s with the healing? I just have a hunch she’s a priest. Maybe a mage. But definitely a clothie. Anyway, if you dear readers haven’t already, go watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Also raise your hand if you wouldn’t notice it’s her speaking on Vent.

Happy Christmas / Hanukkah / Winter Solstice / Winter Veil to everyone!

Neil’s annual holiday story: Hanukkah with bells on.

English classes face a shakeup

A new teaching guideline released Monday calls for high school English classes to be taught primarily in English from the academic year beginning in April 2013.

[...]

However, there is some concern among English teachers about the draft guideline. It is scheduled to be finalized for announcement in February or March.

“This could embarrass particularly older teachers who know grammar well but are not very good at conversation,” one teacher said.

Oh god, some older language teachers who can’t actually speak the language they teach might get embarrassed. We can’t have that, no. Who cares if the kids don’t learn how to talk. After all, which idiot uses language to converse anyway…

The waiting is over. Well … almost!

We are very happy and proud to announce the release of our 9th studio album in April 2009! The album will be called The West Pole. You probably are curious who is singing on our new record. We have found a new [female] vocalist, and we will have two [also female] guest singers on The West Pole.

I want it all and I want it now!

How considerate:

Tokyo University of Foreign Studies announced Wednesday it will provide ¥100,000 grants by March to 30 exchange students who are paying their own expenses but suffering from the yen’s appreciation. (The Japan Times)

Of course this only applies to non-scholarship students. Nevertheless I find it mildly annoying that ever since I came to Japan the tendencies were quite not in my favour. Firstly  every single year there was a slight drop in the amount of scholarship I received, kudos to the Japanese government. Secondly the Yen was worth less and less compared to the Euro or HUF. In 2004 when I came here the Yen sold at almost 2 HUF. Just recently it dropped to less than  1.5, making my scholarship worth a lot less. For example the international plane tickets never changed with the conversion, if anything they cost more.

That is before the economic crisis started. Suddenly the Yen-HUF conversion flared up to 2.4. Which is quite typical: in a few months I will stop getting scholarship…

You may have noticed a recent issue with comment author links: they had  ’%20rel=’external%20nofollow” appended to the end of the URL. Apparently this is an incompatibility bug with the Google Analytics plugin by Rich Boakes (v0.68) and the latest release of WP. I found a thread on the WP support forums detailing a fix which I’m happy to say works. Simply change the following line in googleanalytics.php:

function comment_author_link($text) {
	static $anchorPattern = '(.*href\s*=\s*)[\"\']*(.*)[\"\'] (.*)';

To this:

function comment_author_link($text) {
	static $anchorPattern = '(.*href\s*=\s*)[\"\']*(.*\?)[\"\'] (.*)';

Gotta love regexp.