Here’s a short list on display with rather particular first names in Zimbabwe, definitely worth a look on Antonia’s weblog.
An old friend from I-House times, Bryan Nykon, made an entertaining short film and posted in on Youtube – enjoy The Commuter.
Looking at a dozen weblogs – probably all by former or current I-House bloggers – I noticed that all of them were missing a feature. Only in one case I had a contact page or an emailaddress I could write to. My own weblog didn’t have a contact page either… that changed.
O.k., that’s it. I tinkered with my old layout, tried to fix some of the glitches that have always been there and annoyed me… but instead of fixing it, somewhere along the line I got tired with the whole thing. Expect a new layout sooner or later.
Definitely later.
p.s.: In the meanwhile, enjoy white as milk by Azeem Azeez.
My wife paid a visit to the 32nd International Dental Show in Cologne today. As road shows go, all booths try to lure customers to their counter and hold on to them as long as possible – or a deal is worked out. Some have novelties on display, magazines, all kinds of freebies. Ironically, everyone offers sweets, cookies and chocolate. Cavities, sir? No problem, please have a seat. Want a Cookie?
Click on more to watch a great video about truth (via SecurityTinker).
Want to hunt terrorists? Can’t afford the ticket to Afghanistan? Now here’s your chance: Download Google Earth and zoom in to the Afghan-Pakistani border. This wired article explains how and why you can spot every house, child and goat in the Hindu Kush mountains, and maybe even a very tall guy with a long beard and an AK-47
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Just yesterday or the day before I thought, wouldn’t it be great if my camera were able to take pictures and remember the location automagically? A build-in GPS (or better, Galileo) would save the image as well as the exact position along other EXIF information. Then, when uploading it to flickr, your map would be updated accordingly. Having Google Earth updated and linked with taken images would be even better. I tried the flickr map function with two sets, but it’s taking too long to enter the info manually and it’s far from exact, so I pass this feature until I buy a new camera: In five years or so, I thought, when I need to buy a replacement, it might just happen that cameras have such a feature, but obviously somebody had this idea some time ago. Great!
I’ve been looking for free music and soundeffects on the net, here are a few sites I’d like to share:
Jamendo
and of course creativecommons.org/audio
In the search for podcasting websites, I stumbled upon Japancasting at BlogMatrix. If you’re studying Japan or English as a Foreign Language, take a look. The weblog also touches other subjects, use of technology, the web, etc.
The find of the day night: Loudblog
It’s a well coded CMS for publishing media like podcasts on the net. I’m not planning to start podcasting personally, but lately I was asked about this from various sides and started looking for software, scripts that make your life easier. Loudblog seems like the most promising tool out there.
…about the future human condition. Check out the list:
50 books list from the Rand corporation.
Little children are like a combination of a blank canvas and a sponge: Whatever you show them, they try it out, play with it, learn everything about it. After a while, they even start to develop a certain sense of humor. Jun is now … well, in the beginning, I used to know exactly how many days, then weeks or months he’s old, now I have to fall back on such great online tools as altersrechner:
1 Jahr, 4 Monate, 3 Wochen, 3 Tage, 11 Stunden, 35 Minuten
16 Monate, 3 Wochen, 3 Tage, 11 Stunden, 35 Minuten
73 Wochen, 1 Tag, 11 Stunden, 35 Minuten
512 Tage, 11 Stunden, 35 Minuten
12299 Stunden, 35 Minuten
737975 Minuten
Since he started to walk several months ago, the number of unbelievably interesting novelties that moved within his range rose exponentially. Things like knives in drawers, cups full to the brim with milk, juice or, if we’re lucky, just water, wall sockets, computer keyboards and last but not least the stove. We have a Bosch stove with irresistible switches: If you want to turn on a stovetop, first you have to push one of the switches to have it snap out of the stove and then turn the switch to the program or temperature you need. If the switch is set to a certain temperature, you can’t push it back in, only when it’s set to zero. This way to can stand far away and still see in a split-second whether the device is turned on or off. The snapping in and out is the eye-catcher here. Pushing it out and back in over and over again is a real time filler when you’re 16 months old. So, the provident parents that we are try to avert Jun from the stove and forbid him to touch the switches. If he tries to snap them out, we tell him not to do it and take his hand away from it. Most of the time, it now works just by telling him not to touch it (he’s scared by hot food so it’s not that difficult), but sometimes curiosity prevails. Today though, he found a way to please us and gratify his appetite: Instead of using the hands, he started pushing the switches with his head, grinning all over the face.
besmirch means exactly what you think it means. Who would have thought that beschmieren entered the English language?
Salon.com News | Submarine accident sparks debate over Navy policy
I read again through a few hundred pages of trivial literature, but it wasn’t not too worthwhile this time. It was the first one for several years, since my studies curbed my appetite for books unrelated to seminars. My wife usually starts reading something and I jump on the wagon and join her. In this case, we’ve read a book by Chang-Rae Lee, A Gesture Life in its German translation, Fremd im Eigenen Leben. My English is far from being free from errors, but I’m certain that the translator either didn’t have much time or was incompetent. On the first few pages already you get strangely translated words (false friends), throughout the whole book I never had the feeling that the translation was close to the original… somehow… bumpy, inaccurate. The lector also must have been in a hurry, the number of grammar and spelling errors was telling. The story itself was interesting, though, verbose at times, with a predictable character developement. On the bright side, that’s not to say that the characters weren’t intruiging, the relation to reality, a Zainichi in the Japanese Imperial Army is a tantalizing foundation for a story, but the execution was surprisingly uninspired – the author won the PEN/Hemingway Award for another book. Maybe it’s the translation, maybe my expectations were too high. If you’re looking for information about Japan’s war history and the notorios Comfort Women system, better turn to Yoshimi Yoshiaki or Buruma.
Has anybody seen this? Too bad it’s not available in Germany.
Films Media Group – Spirits of the State: Japan’s Yasukuni Shrine
Ever wondered why this sentence is used in typewriting software? I just found out (bless Google and Wikipedia), it’s a pangram: All letters of the English alphabet are used in it. Franz jagt im komplett verwahrlosten Taxi quer durch Bayern is the most famous German pendant, but it’s not a real pangram (i.e. the Umlauts are missing). In Japan, it’s the iroha-song. Korea…?
It’s Jun’s first birthday! Looking back, the last twelve months went over so quickly. He starts to walk and talk, little by little, and it’s great to see his growing ability to interact with the people and objects around him. We’re in Korea since Oct 2nd, introducing him to the Korean half of the family. He gets along with everybody very smoothly, playing with his three cousins and his grandparents, his uncle and aunts. I’ll be staying in South Korea until Nov 2nd, Heejoo and Jun until Nov 30th. It’ll be hard without him for a whole month, but I already introduced skype to my sister-in-law and got her a webcam, so I hope we will have a few video calls in November. I still can remember that when I was 5 or so and alone with my mother in Croatia, my Dad wasn’t around for several weeks, I was afraid of the unfamiliar guy coming through the door one day.
p.s.: In a conversation with a friend, I realized that Jun’s initials are JPG (Jun Philipp Grabić).
p.p.s.: I tried out Windows Live Writer for this post… curiosity killed the cat.
Yet Another Test Post. I bought a Flickr Pro Account per Paypal, it took me two minutes and the setting up of my Wordpress blog in Flickr was simple. Great.
p.s.: Uploading works, although there’s an error message in Flickr – but I think I know where the error comes from. I’d also have to choose a category from within the blog. Well, nothing’s perfect, but it suits my needs.
This is an attempt to see how Wordpress and Google Video work together. Looks o.k., doesn’t it? I think I’ll add a few more over the time. This video is the first one I took just a few hours after Jun’s birth.
A telling 11 days after CA, Spiegel Online reports about the prejudice map.
Kushibo, a regular reader and commentator at CA who said that national pride would be the #1 stereotype mentioned about Koreans, made me curious enough to find it out myself… this is the top ten I got, using the same modus operandi (results can differ since the web changes every second):
- “The Koreans are known for solving for low cost, and the Americans? Nah, they’re petrol heads.”
- “Avi, the North Koreans are known for playing hard and nasty on the soccer field.”
- “Koreans are known for liking their food very very very hot and spicy..yuMm!”
- “North Koreans are known for bluffing and running there mouths off to get attention.”
- “The Koreans are known for wanting everything yesterday!”
- “Typically, the Koreans are known for churning out low-cost cars from basic platforms and exporting them globally.”
- “Koreans are known for hiding their age well.”
- “Koreans are known for their boat-shaped shoes.”
- “Koreans are known for separating their family members, such as separating the sexes and the young from the old.”
- “Koreans are known for their negotiating skills, and they often do not look for absolutes, as most things are subject to change.”
Surprisingly, nothing about national pride, but cars, food and soccer.
Since spontaneous crib death was rampant in earlier centuries, Koreans started to celebrate the life (and survival) of every Korean baby that made it through the rough first 100 days. Nowadays, with the wonders of modern medicine and overall improvement of life conditions, the custom lost its original reason, but the celebration remained. Today, Jun is 100 days old, so, according to Korean tradition we prepared a rich table with rice, miyokguk (미역국), and fruits for Samshinhalmoni (삼신할머니). She’s the Korean version of the western storck you want to propitiate so your offspring can live happy ever after (the first 100 days). Actually, there’s supposed to be baekseolgi (백설기), a variation of steamed rice on the table, but the store where we ordered it, Kims Asia Shop at Stresemannstrasse, happened to forgot our order and had only a cheap excuse why they didn’t make it. Speaking of cheap, they’re one of the cheapest stores for Asian food in Düsseldorf, but you really have to be careful what you buy since they tend to overwrite the expiration date on their products. Jun slept though most of his 100th day, and I was so fortunate to get to eat everything we prepared for Samshinhalmoni. Oh happy day…
For the record, I didn’t get him the kitschy outfit, but he’s almost outgrown it anyway. At his fourth regular examination (U4) – the day before – the doctor said that with his 65cm and 6,850g he’s ambitiously scratching at the upper limit for normal growth.
For movie enthusiasts, this is a valuable website: Many popular actors and actresses from movies and television series are listed, together with their German counterpart dubbing artists, their profiles including a filmography, a picture and – most interesting for Germans and non-Germans alike – a short sample in German (mp3/ram). Almost all foreign movies are dubbed, so everybody can watch movies without having to read subtitles. It is odd to see Michael Douglas’ “2nd” face, but every German who hears this voice knows it’s Michael Douglas speaking. Nobody knows Volker Brandt’s face, a fate he shares with all his fellow artists. On another note, dubbing artists over time “accumulate” actors, i.e. there’s only one dubbing artist for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta, Dennis Quaid, Nick Nolte, Dan Akroyd, Christopher Lambert, John Cleese, Michael York, Adriano Celentano, Terence Hill and Rutger Hauer. If you want to know who that unbelievable multitalent is who replaces all of those actors all by himself, take a look:
popular dubbing artists in Germany
Not a patch on those dubbing artists, but I prefer the original voice and language in 99% of the cases. Play on words and subtle humor is easily lost, although sometimes the original text can even be improved by a not too faithful translation. Wikipedia even mentiones the Hungarian version of the Flintstones to have the entire text in rhymes.
update: Of course, I had to choose Volker Brandt as an example… he’s a dubbing artist, alright, but beside that known for parts in TV, movies and theaters – his face is not as unknown as I wrote. (thx, Dennis)
It’s a peculiar feeling – on the one hand, you think, I knew this would happen sooner or later, on the other hand, it’s a huge surprise. As you can see on the picture, Jun is coming into his own. This afternoon he was holding his head up for the first time – but I wasn’t there! I had to work from 2 p.m. until late into the night, and I can only hope this is the last progress I’ll miss. Of course, there’ll be numerous other occasions where he’ll master the next step and I won’t be present. Note to myself: over 60% of all 400 pictures and videos I took so far (I know, I know, 400…) are blurred and darker pictures have so much noise, I desperately need a new camera. Any recommendations?
Great news – one of the best sites for statistics on the net, Nationmaster.com, opens its doors wide open. It beats the CIA Factbook by far.
NationMaster.com Becomes Entirely Free
related: Factbites is an alternative search machine that combines encyclopedia with a search form. better than Google for encyclopedia-style content
is what they say – I’m impressed so far.
It seems like Wordpress 2.0 and Gallery2 don’t like each other. None of the links to individual pages work, not the archive nor the category links, so at the moment, the main page is all you can get. There’re good news though, I’ve resolved most of the quirks the blog had. I’m slowly expanding the gallery section, and now you can also leave comments for individual photos. There’s more, but I’ll rather wait until I get it working 100% before I write about it.