Singularity on the Plane

Word dump: colors - 8:45 PM 8/28/2006

After understanding the colors themselves, I memorized the Japanese names:

The katakana can be regarded as a bonus because most of them sound like the English counterparts.

I couldn’t find the Japanese of teal, cyan, and fuchsia/magenta. Some of the words there also doesn’t seem to refer to the color but to the object that the English color name is derived from. An example is ターコイズ (turquoise) which seems to mean a type of precious stone named “turquoise”. I could probably add 色 behind them to mean the color, just like 金色 (gold, the color) is derived from 金 (gold, the element).

There are many synonyms that I didn’t include. For example, ねずみいろ, しもをおいた, かいはく, and しもふり are other EDICT entries which means gray. I think it’s better to start with at most 2 Japanese words for each English word. Other synonyms could be memorized at a later date.

With the addition of those 54 words, my word count is now 1480.

The next word dump will be body parts. It will make my word count exceeds 1500, which means that I will then focus on drilling those first 1500 (or so) words.

モロ ノ モレ - 5:14 PM 8/26/2006

Moro, the largest shopping center in Purwokerto, was on fire yesterday. I’m currently eating a chocolate bar bought there.

(written on 11:22 PM 8/25/2006)

Because of lingustic vocabulary ignorance, I’m just going to call the words I’m dumping “time pointers”. The time is not in the scale of seconds, minutes, and hours, but in the scale of days, weeks, months, and years. Here are the new words I gathered:

With those words and some other words I’ve memorized before, I can now make a time pointer reference in the form of tables.

First is the oftenly used “previous”, “current”, and “next” (e.g. “yesterday”, “today”, and “tomorrow”):

Next is “two units before current” and “two units after current” (e.g. “the day before tomorrow” and “the day after tomorrow”):

Legend:

• Red means that the entry is not tagged with (P) (popular) in EDICT
• Bold means that I haven’t learned the kanji

To test my beefed-up knowledge (no grammar guarantees):

今日は金曜日だ. きのうは木曜日だ. おとといは火曜日だ. 明日は土曜日だ. 明後日は日曜日だ.

今月は8月だ. 先月は7月だ. 先々月は6月だ. 来月は9月だ. さらいげつは10月だ.

今年は2006年だ. さくねんは2005年だ. おととしは2004年だ. 来年は2007年だ. さらいねんは2008年だ.

Anyway, with the addition of 31 new words, my word count is now 1427.

Word dump: astronomy - 4:35 PM 8/22/2006

The current theme of the word dump is astronomy:

I managed to gather 24 words. Now my word count is 1396.

The literal translation of the planet names is interesting. Mercury (水星) is “water star”, Venus (金星) is “gold star”, Mars (火星) is “fire star”, Jupiter (木星) is “tree star”, Saturn (土星) is “soil star”, Uranus (天王星) is “heaven king star”, and Neptune is (海王星) “sea king star”. I haven’t learned all the kanji needed for Earth and Pluto.

I’ve actually learned some astronomical words before this. Some are from grade 1 kanji (月 = moon, 日 = sun). Some others are from songs, like:

• ほうきぼし = comet (from Younha’s Houkiboshi): “moshi atashi ga HOUKIBOSHI ni nareta naraba”
• ながれぼし = meteor (from Momusu’s Furusato): “NAGAREBOSHI wo mitara… nani wo inorou ka na…”
• たいよう = sun (from Momusu’s Ai Araba IT’S ALL RIGHT): “ai araba it’s all right… TAIYOU wa subete omitooshi sa

The next topical word dump will probably be relative time pointer (today, tomorrow, yesterday, etc).

Color fidelity - 12:13 AM 8/21/2006

I already knew the name of some colors in Japanese (黒, 白, 赤, 青, みどり, 黄色,　茶色, ピンク) and planned to memorize some more. Of course, first I needed to gather the name of the colors in English.

For that purpose I used the color selection widget in SharpDevelop 2’s form designer:

SD’s color selection widget

From the many colors listed, I picked the ones I’ve heard before. Here are my selection:

Sadly, eventhough I’ve heard words like “maroon”, “tan”, “indigo”, and “magenta” before, I didn’t know how the colors looked. “gray” and “silver” would be identified by me as “gray” (with differnt shades). “maroon”, “brown”, and “chocolate” would be identified as “brown”. “tan” and “beige” were unidentified for me. “gold” would be identified as a shade of yellow. I would probably call “olive” as “yucky green” and “lime” as “light green”.

“Aquamarine”, “turquoise”, “teal”, “cyan”, and “azure” would be identified as “blue”. Likewise, “indigo”, “magenta/fuchsia”, and “violet” were all “purple”. “Crimson” would be identified as a shade of “red”. “Pink” is an oft-overheard color in the current society so I knew it pretty well.

To enhance my color identification, I made a program called Quizzer:

The program is made using C# and Windows Forms. It runs on .NET 2.0 and Mono 1.1.16.

Basically, the program will show a random color on the window and you need to name it. If the answer is correct, another color will be shown. If the answer is wrong, there will be a message box showing the correct name.

When you give an incorrect name (for example “blacj” for “black”), the program will increase the chance that the wrongly named color will be displayed again. If you misname it for another color (for example “gray” for “silver”), both colors’ chance to appear again will be increased.

When you correctly categorize a certain color over and over, eventually that color won’t be asked again.

With the help of the program, I can now identify most of the colors correctly. I still have difficulties with “maroon” vs. “brown”, “crimson” vs. “red”, and sometimes “turquoise” vs. “cyan”. “Azure” and “white” is impossibly difficult to identify (unless put besides each other) and I hopelessly make the mistake over and over. I usually cheat for “azure”/”white” by comparing it to the white color of the text box.

Identifying them in the program is one thing, seeing colors in the real word another. In the real word, I encounter more shades in between those colors so it often difficult to name the colors I see.

Some color names are also the name for elements (silver, gold), stones (aquamarine, turquoise), plants (orange, olive, lime), food (chocolate), and town (magenta, a town in Italy). The name maroon comes from the French word “marron” which means chestnut. Purple comes from Latin “purpura” which in turn comes from Greek “porphyra” which is a shellfish. The name fuchsia comes from a plant scientist Leonhard Fuchs.

The source and executable for Quizzer is here.

Recalling items in an ordered list - 5:22 PM 8/18/2006

Consider an ordered list like days (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday) and the first 10 natural numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). It is interesting that the ability to quickly enumerate the items forward doesn’t translate to the ability to do it backwards.

For example, I can say ‘a’ to ‘z’ very quickly, but I can’t say ‘z’ to ‘a’ quickly. Here are some lists and my ability to enumerate it:

• Natural numbers from 1 to 10: forward and backwards
• ‘a’ to ‘z’: forward
• Musical notes (’do’ to a higher ‘do’): forward and backwards
• Days: forward
• Months: forward

Speaking about numbers and letters, it’s weird that I can compare 2 numbers blazingly fast but my letter comparing speed is very low. For example, given two numbers like 3 and 8 I can quickly grasp that 3 is smaller. However, given 2 letters like ‘o’ and ‘g’ I need to ponder a while before I can decide that ‘g’ comes before ‘o’. Is this because the set of numeric symbols is smaller (10 compared to 26)? Will backward orientation (practicing enumerating ‘z’ to ‘a’) help?

Word dump: random - 4:57 PM 8/18/2006

29 random words which makes my word count 1372:

I’ve exhausted my randow word stock so it’s time to do a topical word hunting (colors, body parts, etc).

A long sought program: StarDict - 6:18 PM 8/15/2006

StarDict is a free (as in beer)/open source/libre/GPL offline dictionary written in GTK. It is only a frontend, so depending on the installed data it can be an English to English dictionary, Japanese to English dictionary, or anything else.

Everything needed to get StarDict up and running on Windows is on its website, http://stardict.sourceforge.net (it is actually cross-platform so a Linux version is also available). First, download install the GTK+ runtime environment linked from the front page. After that download and install the Windows version of StarDict. The last step is to download at least one dictionary from StarDict’s dictionary page.

I downloaded the tarballs of “Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English”, “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary”, and “dictd_www.dict.org_gcide”. To install the dictionaries, just extract them to “dic” folder inside the StarDict installation folder (e.g. “C:\Program Files\StarDict\dic”).

Some screenshots:

The dictionary can search for “dictionary”. I just had to confirm it.

StarDict supports search using ? and *.

StarDict can do Fuzzy search (start the search term with “/”). This will search for a “closest” word (whatever that means). Very useful if we aren’t sure of the correct spelling for a word.

Because the data of “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary” is available for StarDict, there is no reason to reinstall “Oxford Advanced Genie”, my previous dictionary program.

Word dump: random - 6:16 PM 8/15/2006

Here are 30 words I’ve gathered from various sources:

Now my word count is 1343.

Word Dump: サマーナイトタウン - 9:19 PM 8/12/2006

This word dump is from サマーナイトタウン by モーニング娘。 (Summer Night Town by Morning Musume). It’s Momusu’s 2nd single and the first one with an 8-member lineup.

Stats! Stats!

• Previous “average new words/song”: 21.2
• New words in this song: 29 (whoa, a lot! previous was 20)
• New “average new words/song”: 22.5
• Total words in word list: 1313

Because the word count has passed 1300, it’s now time for free word hunting. I will start by memorizing words I’ve encountered randomly (from TV shows, doramas, talks with 日本語-enabled people, etc). This free word hunting will continue until the word count reaches 1500.

Different place, different price - 10:17 PM 8/10/2006

My friend told me that buying an optical media (DVD-R etc) in Gejayan is cheaper than in CD House (near North MIPA). It is very much true. A Verbatim DVD-R (4,707,319,808 bytes) costs Rp. 4,500 in Gejayan but Rp. 7,500 in CD House. The Rp. 3,000 price difference is worth every cycle of my bike.

Explorer’s useless thumbnail - 8:37 PM 8/10/2006

This is a screenshot from a folder full of video files:

Explorer cleverly fetches the first frame for all files, so the result is darkness (well, except for the white one down there)! Thumbnail view, which ideally should help file identification visually, does nothing except to eat precious CPU cycles.

GNOME’s Nautilus is way ahead of time. I don’t know what algorithm it uses to select the frame for the thumbnail (random?), but rest assured it doesn’t just blindly select the first frame. The result is beautiful, and I would love to post it here. However it is impossible because after my partition was screwed I haven’t installed Ubuntu again. (Using the Live CD won’t do since the required codecs aren’t installed. Installing the codecs on the Live system isn’t possible since I haven’t downloaded the Dapper ones.)

(I think the screenshot deserves to be in http://explorer.istheshit.net.

Explorer’s self-mutilation - 8:14 PM 8/10/2006

Try doing this:

• Open Windows Explorer
• Make sure the “Task” pane on the left is on (turn off “Folders” or “Search” pane)
• Go to a folder that contains an “avi” file and is in “Details” view mode (the system and hidden file thumbs.db shouldn’t be on the folder)
• Select a file, then quickly press F2 to rename the file
• Quickly append a new extension, for example changing “movie.avi” to “movie.avi.a”

If you’re fast enough, a message like this will pop out: “Cannot rename [filename]: It is being used by another person or program. Close any programs that might be using the file and try again.”

The hillarious thing about the message is that the “problematic” program seems to be no other than Explorer itself! When a video file is selected, Explorer will “open” the file and display its thumbnail on the left panel like so:

My guess is that the thumbnail generation process interferes the file renaming attempt. The weird thing is that if we rename it other than describe before (for example changing “movie.avi” to “movie2.avi”) the process never fails.

The workaround is obviously to wait a moment before renaming. However, this greatly slows down file management which kinda beats the purpose of a modern GUI file manager. Irritating!

I remember reporting some bugs to Microsoft a long time ago, but AFAIK there is no easily memorizable URL for it. Ubuntu has www.launchpad.net, Mozilla has bugzilla.mozilla.org, and Mono has bugzilla.ximian.com. Microsoft should have something like bugreport.microsoft.com.

Merging files in win32 - 8:34 PM 8/9/2006

To transfer a large file between computers using a removable media (flash disk, floppy disk, etc), we often need to split the file. There are many programs that does this (google “file splitter”).

However, to join/merge the files back we don’t need a special program. In Windows, just type:

copy /b [part1]+[part2]+…+[partn] [output]

For example:

copy /b movie.avi.1+movie.avi.2+movie.avi.3 movie.avi

Will merge the files “movie.avi.1″, “movie.avi.2″, and “movie.avi.3″ into “movie.avi”.

“/b” stands for binary mode, which if ommitted won’t guarantee that the parts’ content will be duplicated exactly into the result file. In simpler terms, don’t forget it or the result can be corrupted.

Word dump: モーニングコーヒー - 8:14 PM 8/9/2006

This word dump is from モーニングコーヒー by モーニング娘。 (Morning Coffee by Morning Musume).

The PV is just a bunch of girls standing and singing. Compared to later Momusu PVs, it’s obvious that they couldn’t dance yet.

Obligatory statistics:

• Previous “average new words/song”: 21.5
• New words in this song: 20 (down from 24)
• New “average new words/song”: 21.2
• Total words in word list: 1284

My current plan is to stop harvesting words from songs after the word count reaches 1300. Instead I will choose my own words to memorize until my word count reaches 1500.

A new era of UPT internet cafe - Just before posting

At last, after ages, some computers on the UPT internet cafe are starting to get a USB extension cable! I hope they plan to eventually stick it on all computers there.

Word dump: LOVE涙色 - 6:10 PM 8/5/2006

The current word dump is LOVE涙色 by 松浦亜弥 (LOVE Namida Iro by Matsuura Aya). I first knew the existence of this song while reading my friend’s Musume Monogatari (a manga about Momusu). I then heard it sung by Niigaki Risa and Tsuji Nozomi on H!P’s Wonderful Hearts.

I heard the original song by searching for the MP3. Later on I also watched Momusu’s 5th gen candidates singing this song for their audition.

The stats:

• Previous “average new words/song”: 20.67
• New words in this song: 24 (last one was 23)
• New “average new words/song”: 21.5
• Total words in word list: 1264

Average new words is rising on and on…

Copy-paste in Putty - 10:37 PM 8/4/2006

Putty is a nice Windows SSH client.

Right clicking its title bar brings a pop-up menu but frustratingly the I didn’t find “copy” and “paste” there. (In gnome-terminal, copying and pasting can be done with Ctrl+Shift+C and Ctrl+Shift+V, respectively)

Accidently, I found that to copy a text from the console you just need to highlight it. To paste, right click anywhere in the console.

7th semester registration - 10:29 PM 8/4/2006

Registration just got simpler:

• Go to Bank Mandiri with your student card and the required money. Trade the money for 2 receipts (green and yellow).
• Go to the academic section of your faculty. Give the yellow receipt and fill a payment form. Get a new GMC by showing your old GMC.
• Stick a photograph to the new GMC and get an official stamp at Gedung Pusat.

Filling KRS haven’t started yet. I’ve been told that KRS modification happens before classes start (lame) and classes start before KKN ends (again, lame).

Stone in the middle - 9:31 PM 8/2/2006

After applying a whole-surface label on my DVD-R, I noticed that there was somthing bumpy. Alas, a small stone was sandwidched between the label and the DVD-R top suface! I’m thinking of a way to safely do a mini surgery, and from now on I’ll make sure the top surface of a DVD-R (or CD-R) is clear before sticking a label into it.

Word Dump: 好きすぎて バカみたい - 8:34 AM 8/2/2006

The current word dump is 好きすぎて バカみたい (Suki Sugite Baka Mitai) by DEF.DIVA (a H!P unit consisting of Abe Natsumi, Goto Maki, Ishikawa Rika, and Matsuura Aya).

Stats:

• Previous “average new words/song”: 19.5
• New words in this song: 23 (same as previous one)
• New “average new words/song”: 20.67
• Total words in word list: 1240

Without a digital English-English dictionary - 8:37 PM 8/1/2006

When I reinstalled my Windows, I backed up Oxford Dictionary’s folder. However running the executable on the new Windows didn’t work because the program seemed to require a library which was unregistered. Therefore I’m now left without a digital dictionary.

PS: Previously I installed the Oxford dictionary (called “Oxford Advanced Genie) from a CD that wasn’t mine. The content is of course superb (you can even hear the sound of each word), however it isn’t free and the user interface is terrible.

OpenOffice.org Writer’s thesaurus isn’t always helpful. For example, giving the thesaurus “gourmet” as an input brings “epicure”, “gastronome”, “bon vivant”, “epicurean”, “foodie”, and “sensualist (general term)” as synomyms. “Sensualist” didn’t seem to fit the context (it was about food). “Foodie” is a term that is absolutely related to food, but what does it mean? A person that likes to eat a lot? No idea. The other words are complete aliens to me.

How about Wiktionary? The entry for “gourmet” is probably there but I can’t access it from home, obviously.

Somehow, I have the installer for linguist (probably copied off a friend). Since it can function as an English to Indonesian dictionary, I installed it. Searching for “gourmet” gives “ahli pencicip makanan”. Nice, but it seems to be a commercial program (which I somehow have illegally obtained) so I’m quite reluctant to use it.

So, currently my legal alternative is a good old printed dictionary (God bless the trees). I currently have “OXFORD Advanced Learner’s DICTIONARY” (4th edition, 1989) which I borrowed from my uncle. “gourmet” gives “person who enjoys and is exper in the choice of fine food, wines, etc”. Nice description.

Another alternative is a “SAT I” book I own. It has a 3500 word list. There, “gourmet” means “connoisseur of food and drink” and “connoisseur” (an alien word) means “person competent to act as a judge of art”. You can’t count on every word being on this book, but when it’s there, you get a nice definition and an example sentence.

Because a paper dictionary is quite a bother to use, I’m going to search for a freely available English to English dictionary database. Something like EDICT, where you can download the database and use any client to view it (or make your own).

Btw, I encountered the word “gourmet” while learning Japanese. In “Hello! Project DVD MAGAZINE volume 7″, the sentence “ゴルメレポーター。。。” popped on the screen:

Searching “ゴルメ” (gorume) in EDICT gives “gourmet”, an English word unknown to me (”レポーター” (repootaa) obviously means “reporter”). This is not the first time something like this happened. “curfew”, “stingy”, “sulk”, and “fickle” are some other English words I stumbled upon while learning Japanese. It’s interesting that learning Japanese reveals a lot of my English vocabulary deficiency.

Update: The solution is to use StarDict.

Bad handphone design - 10:41 PM 7/29/2006

On my phone (Samsung something) the disconnect button (the one with the red phone icon) is placed above the “3/def” button and below the “options” button. When writing an SMS, pressing that button will discard the message and bring you straight to the main screen. The message will be lost!

With that design, a user that accidentally presses the button will lose the message. Murphy’s law states that “when something bad can happen, it WILL happen”. It happened to me already around 2 or 3 times, and I was really pissed off when it happened.

I can envision 2 improvements:

• When the “discard” button is pressed, prompt the user. This behavior can be found anywhere from Notepad (”The text in the “xyz” file has changed. Do you want to save the changes”) to Firefox (”You are about to close “x” open tabs. Are you sure you want to continue?”)
• Go to the main menu directly, but save the message in the drafts folder. This “no need to save” behavior can be seen in some programs like Tomboy (a great GTK# note taking program).

It’s pretty simple, really. The principle is “don’t let users do disastrous things easily”. Things like this are now taught on a standard Computer Science course, “Human Computer Interaction” (but not if you get my lecturer since he didn’t have a clue what the course is all about).