Tag: english

{quote} Microsoft

May 16, 2010
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I didn’t want to put the contents of the above {quote} in a post title. I’m learning a song by the Real McKenzies, titled Bugger off. In the chorus, there’s a really nice rhythm which ends in a big “fuck you”. That is the {quote}.

I know it’s not recent news for those following Gizmodo, but for me it is. And i’m very pissed off about it. Namely, that Microsoft cancelled the Courier project (worth reading the comments, i couldn’t agree more with plenty). I know it was not confirmed nor anything, but everyone could see the videos and articles about it, which were more than promising. To be honest, it was more or less the only gadget i would’ve been waiting for had it been confirmed. Tablets and the kind are a bit of a gimmick for me, but i would’ve bought a Courier.

I really wonder. Courier’s claimed to have been just an experiment on Microsoft’s side that will be “evaluated” and used in later products. The problem is, it was good as it was. Microsoft seems to be very low on innovation. I’ve been using Windows 7 every now and then lately, and it’s hardly any different from XP except for the fancy Aero theme and the fat taskbar. Windows Phone 7 might be interesting, but not so huge news to the market either. What is MS doing? Just developing what it already has and revert back to doing nothing but Windows and Office? Nice. Go on.

The Disappearance (Vanishment) of Suzumiya Haruhi

May 16, 2010
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Today i went to the Toyokawa Warner Mycal cinema to watch the Suzumiya Haruhi movie that came out this february, following the storyline of the Disappearance (sometimes translated as Vanishment) of Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒの消失) light novel. It was great. If you’re waiting for fansubbed versions, it’s really worth it. (The above picture is from the movie’s official website. On the left it says “because i’m a member of the SOS Brigade”.)

It’s timeline is pretty complicated, due to multiple alterations of the universe itself and simultaneously occurring time travels. It starts from an ordinary day of the extraordinary life of the SOS Brigade, but then everything changes out of nowhere, of course leaving all the trouble for Kyon to solve. And to do so, he has to go through a lot of trouble (and time planes).

The animation quality is great, as expected from a Suzumiya movie, the story is of the expected quality as well, so i can say, this movie is a success. Of course knowing the two anime series and possibly the light novels as well is very advised.

In the following spoilers may appear, so mind your way.

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Recharge

May 12, 2010
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I think japanese or probably pretty much no one will be able to understand what getting ill for me means. Even if it starts with the runny nose, or whatever order the symptoms of cold, that is runny nose, coughing and co. come out on me, they all show up, sooner or later. So while for many a cold is a runny nose for a few days, for me after that few days come at least just as much of terrible coughing. No matter what i do, as far as my experience goes—although i wouldn’t be surprised if i will be introduced to some ultimate cure by a nice girl in the (preferably near) future. (So far the Halls candy was protecting me, but apparently they don’t sell my favourite black hyper strong mint in Hikone.)

Anyways, in addition to practicing the guitar every day like crazy from now (i really want to be at some usable level when we start practicing for the club), i will also hurry with coding. I have one more website on the horizon, although not paying, it will be a challange i think. And i really want to see the blog working, working as it should’ve been working for years now, although the coding is definitely better (though so far i don’t know if faster as well) as in the current version. My biggest reason for that is the podcast ability, which i really miss now. Although most of my ideas collected in the past years were lost, i rebuilt a few of them somewhat, and of course new ideas don’t stop coming… So i’m waiting for myself.

A week

May 10, 2010
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A week has two parts: the weekend, which in my case ranges from friday afternoon to monday afternoon, and the time spent waiting for the weekend, colloquially called weekdays or workdays or whatever. Of course this view of mine might change as from now on i plan to actively take part in clubs, so the “waiting” will be full of events also worthy of preparing and waiting for, instead of just waiting their end or worse dreading them as in the case of classes.

Also, if the only part of the week worthy of mention is the weekend, a week passes way too quickly. Thinking what i did in the past week since coming back from Tokyo, i can’t recall anything. The curse of breaks, that they break me as well: even if i don’t get ill as i managed to this time, i sleep longer, spend more time doing nothing and don’t even get all that bothered by it. It really takes an effort to get myself to do anything, which in most cases would be coding the blog, just as most of the time in the past many years.

Or playing the guitar, as of recently, i started learning a plenty of songs, most of them still too hard and/or too fast, but this time i decided not to give up (as usual) and learn them properly (mostly Nirvana, White Stripes, sadly i couldn’t find any good tabs for the japanese songs i wanted to play so far). And finally finish that japanese homework i’ve been writing for scary long hours now.

@ home

May 10, 2010
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Today was the nomikai for the university music club. Started at four-thirty, i just arrived home. First the nomikai in some great pub in northern Hikone, where all the introductions and lots of drinking took place. Even some amazing 96 percent (190 proof) alcohol, the polish rectified spirit appeared—and of course i can’t miss such a chance to experience a raw material like that. Fine taste, but burns. As that ended, we went for karaoke to the same place as last friday and had a lot of fun till half past eleven. Then with a few other guys we headed for a quick Sukiya dinner and i’m home now. My cold’s getting better, though i still have to gargle with my home cure every now and then if i don’t want my cough to kill me.

Tomorrow will be about studying, given i can finally manage to wake up in normal time, as i have quite plenty to do… Not to mention after such a light week i really should get back into work pace. Especially since the music club events start from tuesday, so except for the wednesday soccer (which is a must-go from now on) i won’t really have that much free time anymore i’m afraid.

Ad 1. The K-On! anime seems to be great.

Ad 2. The past and current prime minister of Hungary, Orbán Viktor is a soccer star.

Newcomer

May 8, 2010
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Oh, yesterday i bought a shoe. It’s Nike, it’s black and red, and comfortable.

The good points

May 7, 2010
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I had time to sleep, no classes today. Because there are too many holidays on mondays, there wouldn’t be enough monday classes in this semester, so today’s considered monday at the university. In my case this means a four day weekend… And thanks to this freedom i don’t feel all that ashamed that after my alarm went off at eight i just couldn’t wake up enough to get out of my bed until ten. Though even like this i slept less than seven hours, i feel totally refreshed, and after my breakfast coffee (still the mandheling) my energy is on a long time top. Actually, that’s probably the reason i started writing. And here i am writing about why i’m writing, and now again. This morning browsing around twitter reminded me how these community services change the way you use them. It’s supposed to be about writing your statuses, but very quickly it turns into some kind of self-marketing and/or chat platform for most. That’s one point why i like blogs more: they are harder to change into something like that. Also, they contain more interesting and longer contents.

I think i’ll get a job.

Irritating

May 6, 2010
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Even though i went to bed around, before, roughly at, one in the night, i couldn’t get to sleep for way too long probably therefore was totally washed all day. Not fun. Apparently i shouldn’t have slept all way from Tokyo on the train. Also, it took way too long to script myself an alarm in bash for waking me up if i take a short nap for refreshing me. I forgot everything, and all, apparently, of what i learnt at my home university. I will have to revise. And even though i took that “refreshing” nap for ten-fifteen-twenty minutes, i don’t feel that refreshed at all. I even forgot why i wanted so much to write this post.

The disappearance of…

May 2, 2010
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A mistaken rm -r and so disappeared half of my documents folder. Luckily i had lots of junk in the early letters, so only my backups and received files (folder name also started with “b”) are gone—and probably a bunch of files i will never miss (now i recall, probably all my never-used Photoshop brushes as well, but i have the raw downloads of those). So now my first way is to the phpMyAdmin of valerauko.net and backup my database. I really wouldn’t like it if my blog contents disappeared just how they already did once three years ago.

Also, tomorrow i’m going to “disappear” in the morning, because we’re heading for Tokyo. We, meaning a bunch of us living around this region west of the Biwa lake, Gifu, Nagoya, Hikone… The EEM provides me the cheap methods for travel, though of course it won’t be nowhere as fast as going by shinkansen.

My linux is complete as well. The only thing left is to change the minor details of appearance, such as menu font size and the like, to my tastes. The defaults are a bit too big, taking up too much of the not-so-big laptop screen. I started using all four desktop workplaces as well, the first being for browsing and such, the second for instant messengers, the third always has a sudo’d terminal open fullscreen and the torrent client is running in the fourth. I really will be going under Windows only for playing and browser testing.

Block

May 1, 2010
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This afternoon my internet provider managed to scare me pretty well. I was trying various benefits of the linux environment (ssh and stuff), when suddenly i was no longer able to access valerauko.net—nor any of the other websites that share the same ip address. After asking around if it’s accessible for others and checking Google Translate (it works server-side, thus even if an address is blocked from me, i can “translate” it and see the contents–true it doesn’t really work with logins), i had to realize that the university router apparently blocked my website for no reason. (At least not one i could figure.) For a while, i didn’t bother, just looked for a web ftp, because i wanted to quickly fix a layout bug in the blog. But i forgot my ftp pass. So i installed Wine, and tried connecting with Total Commander. It didn’t work. Then i extracted my pass from the Total Commander ftp memory, and using that i managed to finally connect via a web ftp and fix the bug.

Then, i started working on how to actually access my own website. It became obvious that i have no control whatsoever over the router, and also there’s nothing else blocked (even though my torrent client is running non-stop for Stargate SG-1). I had to go with a proxy, but i only know one: the servers of my home university. Luckily they didn’t erase my access codes, so using that and help from Shamalt i was able to route my browser through there. Ironically, as soon as i managed to do that, out of nowhere i was able to access valerauko.net without using the proxy as well. Work for nothing. Well, at least i know how to do it, now. Had i been trying to do this from Windows, i couldn’t have, i’m sure of it.