Tag: english

I hate bugs

July 25, 2011
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I mean, i don’t care about bugs, i have no problem with a big spider sitting on the wall or a worm crawling on a tree or whatever, no problem so long they don’t violate my territory. I don’t even mind if spiders spin their webs in the ceiling corners of my room where i have no chance of accidentally touching them, but when bugs are running-flying-crawling around in my room, then they are dead.

It’s not much of a problem so long the bugs in question are tiny flies or mosquitoes (though mosquitoes are damn annoying) or smaller “crawlers”, but when it comes to bigger roaches and their like, it gets ugly. On the one hand, they are damn creepy. On the other, when i kill them they need cleaning up. Which is again creepy.

Now the question is where the hell are they getting in. Both my windows and the kitchen and bathroom fans have bugnets (and my computer is firewalled), i pretty much doubt any bug of that size could squeeze itself in under my door (it shuts quite tight), and the drain of the kitchen and bathroom sinks have these plastic nets to catch stuff that could clog the pipes so those are impregnable too for creatures of this size.

The only possibilities left are the toilet and the bathtub. I can’t really do anything about the former (other than pouring in significant amounts of chemicals which I’d prefer not to), but i’ll have to do something about the latter.

Peacocks are birds After All

July 23, 2011
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The other album recommended to me during my rock’n’roll streak was the Peacocks’ album titled After All. For some mysterious reason during the week or so when i was only listening to 横浜銀蝿, Kings of Nuthin’, Elvis and this album, this album got the least listens even though i was playing on shuffle and it doesn’t have that much less songs compared to the Kings’ album (15 compared to 20). Either way, it’s definitely not because i didn’t like it, because like i did. A lot.

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Old habits die hard

July 21, 2011
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Back in the first days of July, when i had my rock’n’roll only days, The Kings of Nuthin’, which i did. They are indeed very similar, though quite different in many ways from 横浜銀蝿, which is more… traditionally rock’n’roll.

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Gigs

July 20, 2011
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None of the artists in your Library are playing near you at the moment. Check back once you have more music in your Library.

Last.fm

You’re kidding me, right? Right? Right?!

Music piracy and stuff

July 19, 2011
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I had to write a report of roughly four-five pages for one of my english classes, and this is what i ended up with. The topic is as the title says, online music piracy and its supposed and real effects on the industry. I know it’s not such a great writing, but derp.

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Not tonight

July 18, 2011
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For some mysterious reason i couldn’t sleep tonight. At all. I was rolling around in my bed for two hours or more, and i could still feel that my breath and heartbeat was as fast as if i was at least running a marathon or something. I haven’t drunk a coffee that could keep me up for so long either. Maybe it was that i slept three hours in the evening?

Sure, there was a huge storm going on outside, the likes of which i haven’t seen since that typhoon last year in Okinawa (actually it seems that one of the first typhoons this season is touching Japan now, and that causes this lovely weather), but usually when there’s a storm going on outside i can sleep even better than in clear weather. Actually for a while in high school, i was sleeping with a thunderstorm soundscape playing.

But not tonight. Suddenly i even got hungry so i gave up, woke up, had my cornflakes breakfast roughly five hours earlier than usual (i usually wake up after ten am, today it was six), edited a translation and will check two more, then i’ll start with today’s studying. Yesterday i managed to finish most of the microeconomy notes, so i’ll only have to do the problems once i get them, until then i can get started with macro.

Working against evolution

July 18, 2011
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That’s what humankind has been doing for quite a while. Humans have always been trying to help the weaker groups survive as well. Farming technology has advanced so much that a field that could maybe suffice for a family a thousand years ago could now maintain a whole village, or even more. With same or less work invested we’re getting better results. That’s all nice and fine, but the technological advance will never really be able to catch up to the growth of the weak groups. It can be seen in statistics that the birth rate in advanced societies is much lower than in developing ones. This can probably be traced back to that in developing societies the urge to multiply is still present, since children often die young. But thanks to advanced medical technologies more and more children survive to adulthood, while the productivity of the land they live on doesn’t grow so quickly. I’m not saying weak people should be abandoned and let the top only survive in a nice darwinian way, but that i’m not confident that with humankind growing fast in billions, a significant percentage of who are utterly unproductive, the productive groups will be able to maintain any kind of development at all–or in worst case, survive. It’s not so hard to imagine a scary scenario where the deadweight of useless people will pull down humanity as a whole into extinction.

E[c]onomy

July 16, 2011
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Last season i was doing the anime C for gg. It was all about economy with loads of technobabble, but now that i’m preparing for my exams i see that it was all about a variety of problems that economists face. For example, the big argument between the two main characters about whether it’s worth sacrificing the future for the present is a 1:1 interpretation of the problem of time preference. Also the concept of “losing the future” is very similar to something i read about in one of my classes papers about current actions limiting the possible routes of the future, and the idea of a “lost decade” is present in the japanese common knowledge like that. So yeah, C wasn’t all just a noitaminA Yugioh, it was a noitaminA Yugioh with lots of economy.

Study

July 12, 2011
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Somehow when i’ve to learn stuff in japanese that takes reading three times in my mothertongue to understand, then i feel the challenge. It’d be lovely though if the teachers actually followed some kind of a plan when compiling the curriculum, because “half a page from the notes, half from insert random book here, half from insert another random book here, half from the blackboard in class, half from being lucky enough to catch a side reference to it in what the teacher says and looking it up” doesn’t really help when i’ve to prepare for fourteen exams. I really respect the teachers who bother to hand out usable notes or at least write coherently on the blackboard, or if not even that, at least talk articulated so that the students have a slight chance maybe to take notes. The rest should just… well, let me quote the typical tsundere anime girls: “死ね”.

Today’s FFFFUUU

July 9, 2011
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The situation with all the various casts of anime just pisses me off. CrunchyRoll is doing its part by announcing shows the very last moment, and even then some projects end up very-late-casted, which doesn’t really concern speedsubbers. NicoNico and Funimation are just announcing stuff, but most of their stuff are either late, or low quality, or no one rips them.

I have the policy of not to compete with simulcasts, because it’s wasted work and definitely not fun, but it’s hard to plan at all when the companies are just announcing their shows but don’t bother saying how late it will be.

Also, why does it feel like i’m the only translator available in the summer? Everyone else is turning down jobs for the sake of going to the beach or what?