I just saw a somewhat cynical view of what Obama (or any half-decent President) could accomplish in four years. What do I hope for? How pleased would I be at the Obama administration after four or eight years?
Off the top of my head:
- Afghanistan is stable, Pakistan is democratic, and Iraq is sufficiently stable and democratic such that our soldiers are no longer stationed there.
- Israel and Palestine on track to a peaceful, two-state solution.
- We have helped reduce the damage done to the world’s poorest due to famine, natural disaster, disease, and war.
- Economic opportunity at home, quality education more readily available.
- All Americans have access to health care.
- We have devised a way to reduce our carbon emissions over time to reduce our contribution to Global Warming.
- Obama does not favor gay marriage, but he should not stand in the way of civil rights. We should repeal the Defense of Marriage Act!
- The federal budget should be (closer to) balanced.
What have you got?
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I have to give a shout out to this web site which provides both word translations and illustrated explanations of characters. 谢谢! I forgot about the pinyin while drawing this with the pencil, and when I went to sneak it in the right-hand corner I did it in pen right off the bat. After scanning, I used Gimp to clean up a few lines and to re-draw the left half of the 猫. Funny enough, the left half of the character, which means “cat” was a bit larger and looked like it was part of kitty-chan herself. So, I re-drew it smaller in Gimp.
And I skipped the English translation since it was somewhat obvious.
ä½ å¥½ == ni(3)hao(3) == hello
猫 == mao(1) == cat
å’ª == mi(1) == meow
猫咪 == mao(1)mi(1) == kitty
Best I can tell, if you inquired about ä½ å¥½ 猫咪 in China people would be puzzled, since around the world this Japanese emissary of cuteness and love is known by her English name: “Hello Kitty”.
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Over Christmas I found some index cards in my pocket. I don’t know when I doodled them. Probably around 2004 . . .
On the back it says “Feb 1920, at Restaurant.” But not in my handwriting . . . possibly the ex-wife’s?
Just nervous energy.
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I was thinking maybe just maybe I might enroll in a Chinese class. Then I might even learn something, but CCSF started classes last week. I also been thinking it might be great to get more of a regular habit of drawing or doodling. Then I was thinking I might as well just wrap them up together, and illustrate Chinese words. So, here we go: a little homage to Dr Seuss!
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Well, I found a torrent and acquired the .iso file. How to verify that it is legitimate? Well, unlike free software projects, Microsoft doesn’t supply checksums, so I Googled the md5sum:
0-23:03 djh@noneedto Windows 7 Official Beta 1 build 7000 x64 EN$ md5sum Windows\ 7\ Official\ Beta\ 1\ build\ 7000\ x64\ EN.iso
773fc9cc60338c612af716a2a14f177d Windows 7 Official Beta 1 build 7000 x64 EN.iso
Well, no panics over a trojan. The install process was quite boring. It loaded files, then it presented, of all things, a blue screen! But not the blue screen of death, but the blue screen of light glowing from the top. The computer sat there a good five minutes showing me the blue screen of light as I wondered to myself whether the install had wedged. Eventually a button appeared that said like “Install Windows Now” and I chose my old Windows XP partition. You can’t “upgrade” from Windows XP: it just moves the old Windows out of the way and you get to dig around your hard drive to find all your old files and drag them to where Windows 7 can find them.
I also had to whip out the old Knoppix Live Boot CD to restore my bootblock, because unlike free software projects, Microsoft assumes that there is only one Operating System you care to run on your computer. I Googled up this reference page and ran the following:
sudo grub
> root (hd0,1)
> setup (hd0)
> quit
My details differ slightly because my Linux partition is on the second partition, whilst Windows is on the first.
The initial impression is that it is really zippy. I installed the free version of Avira AntiVir and Windows shut up about virus protection. I was pleased when Windows gave me a dialog asking if I really wanted Avira to edit the system settings so that it could start on boot: hopefully this will lead to less cruft in users’ systems as Windows 7 gets deployed.
The “Shutdown” item doesn’t actually present a menu to Shutdown or Reboot, it just shuts the thing down–fast!
My next adventure will be to figure out how to turn down the power supply fan speed. I accomplished this with lm-sensors and the like so now Linux runs very quietly–until Windows can run without aggravating my Tinnitus I’m not likely to use it much. I’m also not sure what I would do with Windows, besides occasionally play a PC game or possibly manage photos. I have gotten very much at home with Linux.
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As someone who has wondered at the issues involving monastic vows of sexual abstinence, I found myself dog-earing the following passage from an interview with a Buddhist couple who gave up the monastic life for marriage, as interviewed by Leslee Goodman in the January, 2009 issue of The Sun. (more…)
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A bit that got me laughing out loud, from a New Yorker article on breast milk:
In 1735, when the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus first sorted out the animal kingdom, he classed humans in a category called Quadrupedia: four-footed beasts. Even those of Linnaeus’s contemporaries who conceded the animality of man averred that people have two feet, not four. Ah, but hands are just feet that can grip, Linnaeus countered. This proved unpersuasive. By 1758, in a process that the Stanford historian of science Londa Schiebinger has reconstructed, Linnaeus had abandoned Quadrupedia in favor of a word that he made up, Mammalia: animals with milk-producing nipples. (The Latin root, mamma, meaning breast, teat, or udder, is closely related to the onomatopoeic mama—“motherâ€â€”thought to derive from the sound that a baby makes while suckling.) As categories go, “mammal†is an improvement over “quadruped,†especially if you’re thinking about what we have in common with whales. But, for a while, at least, it was deemed scandalously erotic. (Linnaeus’s classification of plants based on their reproductive organs, stamens and pistils, fell prey to a similar attack. “Loathsome harlotry,†one botanist called it.) More important, the name falls something short of capacious: only female mammals lactate; males, strictly speaking, are not mammals.
Personally, I think I would approve of anything that was scandalously erotic. Oh my! Also, my high school biology teacher said that I, a male mammal, could indeed lactate, if given the right hormones. I was glad to hear that I had the capability, just in case . . .
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Ever since I upgraded the guts in my computer my Windows XP partition has failed to boot. Even the Windows XP install / recovery disk blue screens! Oh well: I guess I’m stuck on Linux or whatever, which had flaky support for the Ethernet until one day Ubuntu updated its kernel and then my Ethernet device started working consistently. I guess I just can’t play games. Still, it would be nice to be able to boot into Windows, you know? I could watch Netflix-on-demand, and Windows XP is probably the nicest interface for uploading photos in to Flickr. Though, GNOME or whatever I’m using right now works okay . . .
I have heard that Windows 7 is Microsoft backing away from Vista, which I have never had occasion to use, and just kind of going back and fleshing out the utilitarian OS that is or was Windows XP. Hell, I loathe Microsoft but I like Windows XP! So, when I heard about the free Beta download I was eager to try it out.
But I can’t. I register and everything and get to the download screen which has a big “Download Now” button on it and I click and click and nothing happens. Why is that?
What web browsers support the Windows 7 Beta download experience?
Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 support the Windows 7 Beta download experience. Please note that Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 users behind a proxy server should use the automatic configuration for their proxy server for the best download experience.
Windows Beta 7 Download Experience? OMFG you have got to be kidding me! In order to transfer a file to a remote computer you skip decades of open, portable, universally-supported protocols like FTP, HTTP, or even BitTorrent and opt instead for an experience? An “experience” that only works for those who are running the latest version of the Microsoft Web Browser on the Microsoft Operating System? Because, you know, I guess the geeky kids willing to try out weird new Operating Systems would all be running Windows on their desktop, right?
I’ll give them credit for trying to open up with a “public beta” but better luck next time, Microsoft!
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Google Calendar would like to remind me:
How did we ever manage before computers? It must have been rough.
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Per Araya Diaz, patriotic Americans of every sex are encouraged to go “Bush Free” this inauguration. For those who live in San Francisco, one can even hire a very special clown as a (NSFW) party facilitator.
Pass it along!
UPDATE: See also: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=33001844363 and Shave the Date
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After another long hiatus, I fixed up my Photos Flickr WordPress plugin.
Changes
- Now works with WordPress 2.7
- Renamed some functions to play nicely in the WordPress codebase
- The HTTP argument “tag” has been renamed “phototag”
- Now maintained in WordPress SVN Repository
- Fixed up
readme.txt
- Moved hosting to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/photos-flickr/
- Disabled (broken) pretty-link functionality.
See Photos Flickr in Action
You can track plans and progress on my “projects” page.
Update: looks like pagination is broken. Joy!
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