Not so long ago a friend sent me an invitation to Lockerz. At first i couldn’t really get what’s the point of it all, but then they opened the preview of Redemption and launched Play, and it all starts to make a bit of (still not much) sense. I was wondering the purpose of the site: it obviously costs a lot of money to maintain, even if those numbers they’re saying are totally off (and i think they are not), so there must be some reason it will worth it. And now that Play’s on, it’s getting brighter: you get PTZ (pointz) for watching video, some of which are songs from popular artists or such. Advertising, i guess. And people will be happy to watch them, because they get PTZ, and PTZ are good. By default you can get around four PTZ a day: two for logging in, and two for answering an often totally random question. With Play, especially if more videos will be up, that number will go to infinity. I kind of doubled my PTZ in a day with videos (though still quite low). Let me quote their about section. “Our mission is to be your daily habit, not a site for your parents or grandparents looking for their long-lost friends from kindergarten.” “Too good to be true? Why are we doing this? To thank you for joining early. To build a Lockerz community of leaders and trendsetters.” I really wonder what Lockerz will turn into once out of beta and ready. Will it stay invitational? Anyway, it’s fun and free, and legit: they really send you what you order from your PTZ during a Redemption. Still, most of the people consider it mistaken spam when i ask them about it. My blog ain’t spam. If you want to get invited, leave a comment.
Recommendations
Yesterday i listened to a collaboration album featuring many bands, and i wanted to see if they were added to my last.fm library (they were). On the home page though, i saw some changes, some i am very happy about. Beside the event and artist recommendations, now there’s a new part showing new releases, by default from my most listened artists. I’m really grateful for this feature, because i always had trouble following who has a new album when. As can be seen, my library is quite diverse with loads of artists, so following and remembering each of them is kind of impossible. For example, wasn’t it for this new feature, i wouldn’t have realised that Pain of Salvation, Gamma Ray and Rage have new albums, even though i really love their music. And of course there is a page where there are the new releases from artists recommended “based on my musical taste”. Good choice to get to know new artists. The only problem is that artists or labels need to fill out those fields, apparently, and that’s no good. Many artists are not present on last.fm (meaning they don’t manage their profiles), also many albums are messed up. For example, in my case, what is Spock’s Beard‘s Octane doing there? That album was five years ago! (It’s okay when it’s shown that it’s a re-release or something, but just like that…)
Seven
One before the last, this week’s episode of the Series: Security by ~adimus.
Inter-numa-tional
Just now Doryan showed me the vietnamese version of the huge romanian hit Dragostea din tei. I have to confess honestly, i screamed out loud (sorry neighbours) and almost fell of my chair laughing when i heard it. But it got better. There was a chinese as well. And many more. I first thought about linking as many as i can, but then i found a collected version, which has many languages and versions, the chorus only cut after each other. It has afrikaans, brasilian portuegese, khmer (cambodian), english, finnish, hebrew, hungarian (that one’s pretty hilarious, i’ve to tell you), indonesian, korean, chinese, portuguese, russian, thai and vietnamese version of the “numa numa yee” beside the original romanian (i don’t know what they sing but that hard r in the chorus sounds great). (Just so everyone has something to be ashamed of.) It’s fantastic, instant love. My “funny” tag can’t explain it properly. I’ll try to embed the youtube video here, but i’m afraid my own security measures will prevent it.
The nerd writes
It’s so difficult. It’s so tempting. What am i talking about? The big three: smartphone, tablet pc, and laptop. The only problem is, i don’t need a smartphone, i don’t need a tablet pc, and i already have a good candidate for laptop. But still, when i see all the fuss going on about the new iPhone, the new Android-based whatever, most impressing still being the Nexus One, or the new Windows Phone 7, the iPad or the Microsoft Courier, i am way too tempted. It makes me want to buy one, even though i know i don’t need one, and that’s like a mantra i’m reciting in my head whenever i’m reading those articles. But still, if i were to choose, i wouldn’t choose the Apple stuff. First, it’s way too trendy. Everyone is or will be carrying around one of those (second) glossy, child-safe looking rounded stuff. I don’t like that. And also, when i watched a video of the iPad, it didn’t impress me nowhere as much as any promo material of Courier. Same goes for the iPhone vs (Nexus One OR Windows Phone 7). As of Nexus One vs Windows Phone 7, now that would be more difficult. Nexus One with Android is open, and thus closer. Also, the Win7 phone had Internet Explorer icons, which although the latest versions are quite sleek, i still can’t get myself to use it: the memories of the IE6 nightmares still linger around here. On the other hand, the Win7 phone looks simply great, and i’ve seen much more of it than of Nexus One. (Probably my fault.) As for the laptop, the only competitor possible for the above linked ASUS power machine is a high-end MacBook, but as i said, i don’t like Apple products by default…
Long time no sleep
Last thursday i started downwards on a slope. I did my philosophy essay for class, and that took long. Long into the night. I can’t recall exactly, but late. Then friday was painfully similar. Saturday i started working on my economy report on chaos, and i ended up playing with stock data until around four in the morning. And sunday i actually wrote that report, which took so long that it was almost five by the time i got to bed. So today, going to sleep at two is like midnight was in high school: still not ideal, but it could be loads worse.
Tomorrow (looking at the clock, today) will be my presentation on linguistics, starting from the origins of the hungarian language to end up 160 kya, at the beginnings of human culture. But that will be the easier part, i mean doing a presentation. Keeping it roughly ten minutes long will be a bit harder, considering that when i “talked shortly” about the outline, it turned out around thirty minutes. But this evening when i tested, it was not much longer than ten minutes. And again, that’s still not the hard part.
But thursday is the history day, i mean, the day i could write history here at Jail C, by killing a certain person. We are having an exam, on a quite nice range of stuff, most of which was hardly mentioned in class, where a certain person was enjoying himself screwing us instead of focusing on the curriculum. And a writing on Fukuzawa Yukichi is also to be handed in then. That’s what seems to be a bit interesting to complete all till thursday…
Names
The United States Census Bureau announced that Negro would be included on the 2010 United States Census, alongside “Black” and “African-American,” because some older Americans still self-identify with the term.
Wikipedia
In high school, we often had good laughs about the american way of saying everything “politically correct”. Change the name of something, because the old name has too many negative connotations. The only problem is, that until you use that new name for the same thing, or group of people, nothing will change. If that thing or group of people don’t change, those “negative connotations” will be back. Quick.
The same goes for the gipsies in Hungary, who have been campaigning to be called roma. I don’t have a problem with that, it’s their name for themselves in one of their languages. It feels good for me too when someone identifies me as “magyar” instead of “hungarian”. But in the case of roma as well, the new word started to gain the old word’s negative meanings. And that won’t change until there will be no place for negative preconceptions about that social group. (For some reason, jews apparently don’t care about their word being used as a swearword…)
Then, celebrations. I’ve heard about an american idea, that christmas should be called winter holiday instead, because the christian word isn’t appropriate for all the various religious holidays of that season. True, but. Christmas as-is has a tradition of at least a thousand years in western culture. And the States has its roots in a christian culture as well, how ever religiously unaligned it wants to be. In the jewish quarters of a big city, i guess i’d not see christmas celebrations. Whatever, long live the christmas creep.
I didn’t think it all through, before someone’d want to set me aflame.
The Tokyo Two
TOKYO, Japan — The United Nations has ruled that the Japanese Government breached international human rights law by detaining two Greenpeace activists who uncovered major corruption in the Japanese whaling programme.
CDNN
Please read that whole article. It kind of says it all. Two japanase environmental activists were arrested and tried because they uncovered a smuggling of whale meat, theoretically illegal. Apparently not. They intercepted a “cardboard” box, which contained stuff it was not supposed to contain: whale meat. The reaction of “justice” was just as expected. In Japan, apparently, they are the criminals, charged with theft and trespass. They are facing trial this monday, where they could be sentenced to up to ten years of prison. Note.
Japanese whaling is carried out under a provision of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling of 1946, which allows for the animals to be killed for scientific research and the leftover meat to be “processed” as that country sees fit.
CDNN
They slaughter the whales for scientific research. Economy is a science, so they could observe how well it sells. Also, gastronomy could be considered a science.
Starbucks Ethiopia Sidamo
Today i ran out of Gold Coast, so i went and bought a new pack. Of a new type, Ethiopia Sidamo. As the name suggests, it’s an arabica coffee from the horn of Africa, exactly from that one province of Ethiopia.
It’s strong. It has a very characteristic coffee-bitter taste, a good smokiness, and i hope a lot of caffeine, because i have to “wake up”. Its steam smells exactly how i’d imagine the smell of roasted flowers. It doesn’t have a thick body, but because of the strength mentioned earlier, i don’t miss it either. The ground coffee has a very, really very strong fresh smell. Actually, its smell carries the message “i’ll kick you high”, and it seems to be true. The whole coffee is fresh, strong and springy, and i like that.
I get the feeling that i’ll really like this one, maybe as much as my grand favourite Italian roast.
Work, work
Just as all the nice green orc peons say. Work, work. Today i want to finish at least two of my reports, and the powerpoint for my presentation. I hope i won’t end up like `aquasixio‘s character in Blowing Bubbles–at least not before i’m done.
