Kef's Mirror of Darkness

Screwy steps

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 23:05:45 GMT

I love instructions. Two days ago my grandfather gave me his old scanner and yesterday morning I connected it to my computer. Before the first step, the instructions say, "Before you begin, make sure you've turned on the computer and have quit all applications." The four following steps explain how to connect it to the computer. So what's step 5? "Turn on your computer."

- Kef

Sexismo

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:06:20 GMT

Oh my God... I've seen lots of sexist jokes in Condorito, but this one takes the cake:

Translation:

Sign 1: Equality for women
Sign 2: No more abuse
Wall: Let's give women more space
Banner: Feminine liberation

So Condorito changes the writing on the wall to read:

"Let's give women more space: make the kitchen bigger!"

And this isn't a webcomic, either. This is a newspaper comic.

- Kef

Lang-8

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:20:23 GMT

I started a new journal... there's this site, lang-8.com, where you basically write a journal in whatever language you're studying, and people come along and correct whatever you've written using a special system designed to make such corrections easy and thorough. I'm going to be writing entries there in Spanish from time to time, and eventually I'll write there in Japanese as well. Here's my journal page there for all zero of you who are curious.

Since what I wrote there today has relevance to what I'm doing, I'll go ahead and post a translation of what I wrote there:

Today I'm going to begin the process of moving my vocabulary and grammar flashcards from SuperMemo to Anki. This process will be long because there are 2506 cards! I'm not even sure I can count to 2506 in Spanish... ;) "Dos mil cincocientos y seis"? *looks it up* ...No, "dos mil quinientos y seis". The number 500 is irregular. I can't believe I still don't know the cardinal numbers!

Well, I have to move "dos mil *quinientos* y seis" flash cards from SuperMemo to Anki. Why? Because I hate SuperMemo and I don't want to use it anymore! The program is very badly written and I could write something better myself! (That'd be a good exercise, but I already have too much to do.) While I do that, I should rewrite many of them because they're not very good and they don't help me as much as they could.

Let's begin...

- Kef

Get a Clue

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 09:11:19 GMT

I'm addicted to the board game Clue. Until a couple days ago I'd never played it before, and I finally got around to seeing what it's all about and I see it's utterly brilliant. On the one hand, it's a shame that I couldn't have discovered it when I was younger, but on the other, I'm not sure I'd have fully appreciated the brilliance when I was younger anyway.

I think in the near future I'll end up writing my own version of Clue. I know there's already a few PC ports of Clue, but it'll be fun anyway. (A new one was released this year, but it doesn't include netplay. $20 for a computerized board game that doesn't include netplay? Please!) I've never done network programming before, so that might be a challenge, but I'll see what I can do...

- Kef

Heisig abandoned

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:51:32 GMT

Well, I'm officially abandoning the Heisig method of learning kanji. I decided that the method has outlived its usefulness, and getting around to learning the remaining kanji in the book would not be worth the time and effort. Oh, it'd be useful, sure, but I think it'd be even more useful to finally get off my ass and learn some real, honest-to-God Japanese. After taking a break... a few days of not doing any kanji repetitions will surely lift my spirits, I think.

It's a bit of a shame that I never did finish the kanji book, though. But hey, I still got 89.4% of the way there! It sounds like an insane time to quit, I know, and that's what I had been thinking... but I really have not felt the motivation to add new kanji for months. That's no way to learn anything, is it? So it's time to face facts and move on, I guess.

- Kef

Mattresses

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 17:08:03 GMT

No, the title says "mattresses", not "mistresses". You can stop being excited now.

So my new mattress arrived on Tuesday. (So why did I wait until Sunday to write about it? Because I'm fuckin' lazy, that's why. :P) The mattress is a little harder than I expected... I mean, if you press your hand into it, it feels soft enough, but lying on it, it feels a bit stiff. Maybe I'm just not used to it. I still slept pretty well on it regardless, although I still haven't had a truly good night's sleep yet. Haven't had one in ages, which probably explains the depression I've been having. Anyway, yesterday this mattress started giving me back pain too. Oy. The old one would be difficult just to get comfortable with within a few minutes of hopping in, but this one only hurts my back when I've been in it for a long time. Still, it's doin' it... maybe I'll get used to that and it'll stop, I dunno.

Oh yeah, and this thing is tall. The new box spring and mattress combine to probably almost twice the height of the old one. No more jumping into bed; I have to climb into it now. (Ah well, less likely I'll screw this one up by flopping down hard on it too often.) I don't mind it except it makes it a pain in the ass to use this fan... I have to raise it up to maximum height for it to be high enough, and then when I get out of bed I have to lower it to near minimum height, and the raising and lowering is slightly cumbersome. Oh well.

- Kef

How in the hell

Sat, 31 May 2008 00:07:04 GMT

<furrykef> what the fuck
<furrykef> I'm reading tvtropes.org and found this one in the article "Getting Crap Past The Radar":
<furrykef> 'An episode of 30 Rock saw Liz Lemon's father, named Richard, announcing that "It's not a Lemon party without old Dick!"'

Thumbnail Metal Gear Solid

Tue, 27 May 2008 04:49:26 GMT

Here's a very funny parody of Metal Gear Solid. (Note that if you haven't played the game, it contains a ton of spoilers and probably won't make much sense anyway.)

If MGS isn't your thing, there's some other Thumbnail Theatre parodies too.

- Kef

Failure

Sat, 24 May 2008 23:30:39 GMT

I have attained a new level of loserhood.

I am unable to successfully score even with a sex toy.

That is all. :P

- Kef

Featured user

Wed, 21 May 2008 04:50:16 GMT

WTF. Apparently, I'm a featured user at YTMND now. I submitted this site today and after a while I noticed it was on the list of YTMNDs by Featured Users.

It's nice to know that someone out there thinks I'm funny. Even if YTMND's standards of humor are pretty damn low. :P

- Kef

Relationships

Sat, 17 May 2008 11:35:04 GMT

If you don't think you would make a good boyfriend (or girlfriend, as the case may be), do you have a moral obligation not to get involved in a relationship?

That's how I feel about myself, at least, but I keep getting involved with people anyway. :/

- Kef

Scrabble

Sat, 10 May 2008 10:38:35 GMT

You can play Scrabble online at Scrabulous.com. Y'know what I found out? I suck at Scrabble. :P

(If you play there: be warned that their servers kinda suck and the game often hangs while you wait for it to register your turn, eating up time all the while. Definitely be aware that you can request more time, and your opponents will usually grant it to you.)

- Kef

Las langostas

Fri, 02 May 2008 07:38:44 GMT

It's funny that "lobster" and "locust" are the same word in Spanish (langosta). I wonder if some poor soul has ever wandered into a restaurant and tried to order locust. And if he did, if he actually got one.

- Kef

FREE MONEY

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:29:48 GMT

This looks like spam, but trust me, this is real money here.

Revolution Money Exchange is a new online alternative to PayPal. If you sign up for them, you get $25 and, if you use the button below I get $10. Nothin' to it... you can plunk it right in the bank if you want. This offer is valid until May 15th.

Here are the potential snags:

You need to be a citizen or alien resident of the US.

You need to have a Social Security number. (If you meet the above requirement, you should have one anyway.)

You'll need a bank account to withdraw your funds, or you can choose to take a check for a $2.50 fee. (Thanks to GreenReaper for reminding me of the check option... not to mention telling me about this whole thing in the first place.)

If you meet all the above requirements, you should be able to get the money without any problem. Notice I say "should". I can't make any guarantees... I'm not the guy running the business, after all.

I've been having difficulty getting people to sign up because they think it's a scam. But do know that it has some big names behind it... like Steve Case, former CEO of AOL. I mean, the guy might be a jerk, but he's not gonna raid your bank account, y'know? ;)

Remember to use the above button to sign up so I get my $10 referral!

- Kef

Voglio imparare l'italiano! Ma quando?

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:44:37 GMT

I so want to learn Italian right now. It looks beautiful, it sounds beautiful, it looks like fun. But I've already been neglecting Japanese for months, and still have a ways to go before achieving even basic fluency in Spanish. I also worry about getting confused between Spanish and Italian. On top of all that, my flash cards are getting burdensome and starting a new language would only increase the workload. What to do?

Unfortunately, I think the only acceptable option would be to keep putting off Italian. Either that, or officially set Japanese aside for a while... I don't think I should set Japanese aside until I finish my kanji book, though. So I guess I'll do my kanji book. Perhaps soon I should put in a couple hundred Italian words just to ease my appetite, though...

- Kef

¿Soy yo un hombre triste o un triste hombre?

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 05:04:13 GMT

(Kitsune, si estás leyendo esto -- aunque lo dudo -- no sé si quieres leerlo. Pero no voy a impedirte... not that I could at this point. :P)

Este mensaje es un poco 'random', pero me da igual. Lo que me importa es que digo lo que quiero decir (aunque a veces eso también puede ser difícil...). No sé por qué escribo esto en español, salvo que pocos pueden entenderme así... sin embargo, es difícil expresarme totalmente.

Bueno...

Es que me siento solo. Y -- no sé por qué -- me apetece hablar en español cuando me siento así. Tal vez relaciono el español con la emoción. ¡Felicitaciones, español, ya eres el idioma de los emofags! :P

A menudo me siento que no encajo con el mundo. No, sé que no encajo... a ciencia cierta. Pero no sé qué puedo hacer para encajar. (¿Se dice "encajar" o "encajarme" aquí? Eh, no importa.) En efecto, no estoy seguro de que quiero encajar.

¿Sabes qué lastima más que no ser querido? Que alguien quiere a otro en lugar de ti. Es verdad que creo en amor libre... la parte que lastima es la de "en lugar de ti". No sé por qué me tiene tal efecto, y no quiero que sea así... pero lo es.

Umm, creo que he escrito bastante... si no he escrito demasiado. No se preocupen por mí. Creo que sólo necesito dormir mejor, pero no puedo hasta que compre un nuevo 'box-spring'... bueno, ahora voy a hacer clic en "post entry"...

- Kef

I think virus scanners are themselves viruses

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:35:17 GMT

Memo to programmers of virus scanners: DO NOT FUCKING INTERRUPT MY GAMES. WHAT KIND OF ASSHOLE DESIGNS A PROGRAM THAT YANKS THE COMPUTER OUT OF YOUR CONTROL JUST TO TELL YOU THAT IT'S UPDATING ITS GODDAMN SORRY-ASS SOFTWARE? SERIOUSLY.

(No, the virus scanner didn't cause me to die or anything. If it did, then I'd be really pissed...)

- Kef

Por falta de 5 MB

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:43:08 GMT

I'm trying to get an 840 MB file off BitTorrent and it's been stuck at 99.4% for a couple of days now. Only about five megs missing and nobody's coming in to seed it. Bastards.

La han cogido

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 04:54:32 GMT

Yesterday I, ah, "acquired" a copy of Metal Gear Solid in Spanish. It's the PSX PAL version of the game. Unfortunately I'm having trouble playing it in an emulator... you see, PAL has slightly more vertical resolution that NTSC (the TV standard used in the US and Japan), and game systems take advantage of this. Unfortunately, ePSXe and pSX, the two emulators I've tried so far, are not giving me this extra resolution, meaning the bottom of the image is clipped off. This is bad because it means I can't read the captions to cutscene dialogue, and I need captions in order to understand what's being said. *grumblegrumble* Oh well, I'll probably figure something out. If anybody has any suggestions, though, throw them at me.

Incidentally, my friend Kitsune Sniper (foxhack) looked at clips of this game on YouTube and he found this gem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jsuaCcIjXk

Translation of the first three lines:

Colonel: How are you doing, Snake?
Snake: I've been better.
Naomi: What about Meryl?

Now, how you read the next line depends on where you're from. If you're from Spain, which is where the translation is from, "La han cogido" means "They've taken her". But in many other countries, including Mexico, it also means "They've taken her"... but in a rather different sense of the word "taken". :P (In fact, "coger" is more or less an equivalent of the word "fuck".) It's made even funnier by how hesitant Snake is to say it.

Then Colonel responds with, "...Mierda." ("...Shit.") This word doesn't quite have the same force in Spanish as it does in English, but I still find it funny.

- Kef

Programming maxim

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:00:32 GMT

Knowing and discovering clever programming tricks makes you a genius. Using them on a regular basis makes you a moron.

Psychopathy

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 11:25:10 GMT

I was looking at the Wikipedia article on psychopathy and found this gem:

"It is estimated that approximately 1% of the general population are psychopaths. They are overrepresented in the prison system, at the top ranks of corporations, in politics, law enforcement agencies, law firms, and the media."

- Kef

Nintendo 64

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 09:14:38 GMT

Today (technically yesterday by now) I stumbled upon my old N64 games and controllers. They had been missing for about five years. Where were they, you ask? Well, they were in this box in the corner near the TV the whole time. I had always assumed that it had Don's stuff in it, my mother probably assumed the same, and Don probably always assumed that it had my stuff in it, so nobody ever bothered with it. What's funny is if it had been an unmarked box, maybe somebody would have looked in it sooner. But it was the box for a DVD case rack and for some reason that gave me the impression it had nothing interesting in it. It didn't help that I probably expected my stuff to be in a square box rather than a long, rectangular one. I guess I forgot that a box is just a box.

The sad thing is, I'd probably have appreciated this a lot more a few years ago. By now I'm jaded and don't really care much about console games anymore, so I don't feel a particularly strong urge to play my old games some more. 'Cept I might get all those medals on Star Fox 64 again. I never did recover them all after my cousins inadvertently deleted my save data some years ago. And I can finally get Wonder Project J2 and an adapter without worrying about also buying a controller and buying my old games back.

- Kef

Instinct and extinct

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:57:29 GMT

Instinct is the set of innate behaviors of a species.

Extinct is what happens when those behaviors are not good enough.

Time

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 08:59:58 GMT

We all know that time flies when you're not doing something you're supposed to be doing. Unfortunately, I've discovered that it also flies when you are doing it and you have a tight deadline. Today I've had an entire hour feel like 10 minutes, even though I was focused on the task, no screwing around at all. None.

So what brought this up? Well, this month I was aiming to finish up my game's prototype so we can get it submitted to the publisher and see what they think. Today I was told that we should have a prototype that can run on the Nintendo DS. That is, in C++, not in Python. And there are two weeks left in the month. Joy.

That means I don't have terribly much time. Especially not time to waste with writing LJ posts. See you in two weeks, guys.

- Kef

EDIT: The _____Salmon LJ troll struck again. The conversation was resolved quickly; the other party also got bit by one before. Sigh. I wish whoever's doing that would stop.

Salmon

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:58:28 GMT

Update on the bizarre IM thing: unsurprisingly, I'm not alone in getting bizarre IMs as described in my previous entry. I didn't post the MysteryMan screen name because I didn't want anybody IMing it (who knows who it could relay the message to at any given moment?), but it seems that the screen names used for this purpose all follow the pattern of <Adjective>Salmon. So if you post to LJ and you get a random IM from that kind of name, you know what you're up against.

- Kef