Tag: english

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?

A dream

July 7, 2011
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Before going to sleep last night i did the first episode of Nyanpire, and i guess it had some influence on my dreams. At least the very last one i still vaguely remember. Mostly just impressions remain, but i know one thing for sure: it was hell of a cool dream.

I was in a huge, huge jungle with my group or tribe. I get the feeling that we were once ambushed by vampires, but i can’t actually remember that part, and because of that we were all humanoid nyanpires (sic). We were wandering around the forest and encountered other tribes. There was an ice tribe (yeah, in the middle of the jungle), there was a tribe who used plants i think, and there was one more, but i really can’t remember that. And there was some common enemy that we, my tribe were running from, but the other tribes decided to stand against them – and against us as well, in cases.

Before waking up the last scene was me standing on the side of a small lake or river, with a village on my left, looking at the very high waterfall in front of me, because the enemy was coming from that direction, and it felt as if they were catching up.

It was really a cool dream. We should totally have devices to record dreams. This would make an amazing Hollywood movie.

A feast for crows

July 5, 2011
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I guess i read the first three books of the Song of Ice and Fire too quickly. Now i’m at the fourth one, and i don’t feel the urge to continue with it. Most of the book is set in King’s Landing, and let me be honest, i don’t give the slightest fuck about Cersei Lannsiter slowly going mad with power. Neither do i care how Brienne of Tarth is searching for a girl she will never find. And seriously, two or three chapters for Arya and Samwell each? Seriously? The only ones who have some kind of a story going on? (Though the ironman chapters weren’t bad either.)

I don’t even complain about how half of the characters don’t even appear in the book, if there will be Tyrion and Bran and Daenerys chapters i’ll be happy enough. At least with so much dead boring babble set in King’s Landing in the Feast for Crows, there will be less left for the Dance of Dragons. You know, if it has to be about the game of thrones, at least give me more chapters set in Dorne. Or more of Stannis. A game of thrones with one player on scene is hardly a game of thrones at all.

Not to mention that the slowness of the storytelling and the totally pointless page-long descriptions are even harder to suffer when there’s nothing happening anyway.

I’m seriously thinking of fast-forward reading the rest of the book, because otherwise…

Peach

July 5, 2011
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After i picked up today’s worth of papers from another class i’ve attended a grand total of one times, i went to deposit some cash to my account. Luckily the five-digit financial aid of my parents arrived today packed along my favorite dark chocolate and some cookies from my gran. I had to put in a few thousand because otherwise my cell provider couldn’t grab this month’s charge. They couldn’t last month, because i had exactly as much money as i claimed: none. (Not that i have that much more now.) As a result, i can only receive with my phone, not call/send. Lovely. Not that i have that much luck with my cell. I don’t even want to remember the dreadful days when they told me that computer data is not included in the unlimited data plan and thus i made myself a debt of six digits… Anyway.

Now when i was leaving the post office with a lighter pocket, there came a woman (girl) who brought along a touch of peachy aroma in the air. That moment something moved in me my stomach and i decided that i’ve to get some peaches. So i did. Probably will end up in a milkshake.