| (no subject) |
[May. 2nd, 2005|08:16 pm] |
From pinyin.info:
Four characters: Hua she tian zu, Draw snake add feet. Means to do something superfluously out of a feeling of inadequacy. You’d think the Chinese have said it more economically, but all you need to do is know the back story. Four guys, one bottle of wine. They had a snake drawing competition to see who got it. One guy finished first. When he saw the others still drawing, he thought there must be something missing from his drawing, so he added feet. |
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| Je dors, mais mon coeur veille |
[Apr. 23rd, 2005|08:48 am] |
| [ | music |
| | sibelius :: en saga | ] |
I don't seem to be exactly insomniac as missomniac. I went to bed three and a half hours ago, didn't try to go to sleep until now, and now I find that I'm more awake than I have been all day. But I know (from the experience of the last few days) that if I try a bit harder I can fall asleep for 9 hours or so. Sadly, I only need four hours sleep; this was meant to be an "afternoon nap". Ok, I know it's before 9am, what's that got to do with it? In the words of Ford Prefect "time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so"; Appropriate quotes from the philostopher de Selby could no doubt be adduced, too.
Bah. But some light blogging, perhaps.
Update: I slept for nine hours. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 21st, 2005|06:09 pm] |
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Hi there, I'm going to Poland for two weeks, so that means even less posts than usual. I'll try not to eat 5x10^13 eggs this time. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 9th, 2005|09:07 am] |
Huh? What's happening to me? I went to bed at 12:30 last night, and got up at 8am.
(Yes, this post is a feeble attempt to initiate self-blogulation) |
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| Hiatus |
[Jan. 27th, 2005|02:03 pm] |
As you'll have noticed, I'm on hiatus from this blog. It's not permanent; the primordial urge to blog runs too strongly in my veins for me to stop. But rather, my life is on hiatus.
So, I living in Dublin, very quietly. I'm utterly, terribly, tragically, disgracefully broke and looking for a job. I'm so broke that I've been avoiding friends, so as not to suffer the embarrassment of relying utterly on them to pay for e.g. drinks, food and the bus home. So if you're one of those friends (and if you not sure, then you are), wondering what country I live in (I get confused too), or what I'm doing, be not offended; I will return in glory soon and rejoin the world.
I was in London on Monday for an interview for a very interesting scientific-programmer type job; I got word today that I didn't get it, but the whole experience was rather interesting, so I don't mind. I don't really want to go back to England, but I actually (in the face of all sanity, I know) wouldn't mind living in London for a while, once I could return to Dublin easily enough on the occasional weekend.
Today's a bit confusing. I need to pay a credit card bill over the next few days, which I should be able to do; but I am waiting anxiously for a week's worth of unemployment benefit to drop into my account. What's perplexing is that first of all, the postman
never came today (I'm awaiting the payslip, to reassure me that the money is actually on the way), second the €€€ hasn't appeared yet, and most bizarrely, calls to the welfare office aren't being answered. My working hypothesis is that the government has disappeared.
But, regarding the postman, there is the precedent of that day a few years ago when he didn't turn up in person, but at around 16:30 the mail was delivered by a 7 year-old boy. Such things must always be borne in mind. |
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| Uncleftish Beholding |
[Dec. 31st, 2004|04:48 pm] |
Most samesteads of every firststuff are unabiding. Their kernels break up, each at its own speed. This speed is written as the *half-life*, which is how long it takes half of any deal of the samestead thus to shift itself. The doing is known as *lightrotting*. It may happen fast or slowly, and in any of sundry ways, offhanging on the makeup of the kernel.
More |
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| The Great Unwritten Novels, no. 14 |
[Dec. 20th, 2004|01:23 pm] |
In a world where digestive juices are increasingly rare...
Pre-digested foodstuffs are like gold-dust:
Chyme Is Money
Coming soon! |
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| JRR Tolkien and Tom Waits (!) |
[Oct. 17th, 2004|07:43 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | tom waits :: real gone :: baby gonna leave me | ] |
There's a song on Tom Waits' new album, Real Gone, and it's called Baby gonna leave me. But I don't want to talk about the name of the song. After all, it's an utterly typical Tom Waits song name.
Something about the lyrics struck me each time I heard it, and after listening more carefully, I heard the following:
..I'll get my 32/20 and it'll
Have to do
Na na na na na na
Gone like the wind in the meadow
And the rain on the hill
You even left your lipstick
And your powder and your blush
'Sblood! Strike me with a piece o' John Dory if he hasn't been lifting lyrics from The Lord of the Rings. I'd guess he's seen it in the film, since that verse is given quite a bit of prominence there - it even appeared in heavily cut form in the trailer for The Two Towers, though with these lines preserved.
( Read more... ) |
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| Boring entry. |
[Oct. 14th, 2004|05:56 am] |
Níl mé in ann dul a codlata aríst. Nuair a bhí mé i mo leaba, bhí mé ag feachaint ar na n-íomhánna ipneogoideacha agus ag smaoineamh faoi grammadach na Ghaelige, agus cén fáth nach scríobhaim iontráil i mo dhá (nó trí) bhloig níos coitianta. Mar a deir ˌser.ənˈdɪp.ɪ.ti,
j’ai un blogage. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 8th, 2004|06:20 pm] |
CANADIAN Prime Minister Paul Martin...
I confess that this chap has such a bland name that I took him for an Australian prime minister. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 7th, 2004|04:34 am] |
| [ | music |
| | ludwig van beethoven :: string quartet op. 131 | ] |
Added the following to my userinfo page, in the "how did you hear about LJ bit?":
2 yrs ago: read slashdot >went to /. meetup >met a go player >joined goclub >met guy >found his blog.
Convoluted, but true.
(the guy was ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) gustavolacerda)
Chuir mé an slíocht seo (ach as Béarla) ar mo leathanach fháisneas, sa bhosca "conas a chula tú faoi LJ?":
2 bhlian seo caite: léigh mé slashdot>chuaigh mé go cruinniú uime>bhuail mé le himreoir "go">chuaigh mé i gcumann gho >bhuil mé le duine eile >tháinig mé ar a bhlog
an-chasta, ach scéal fíor.
(ba é gustavolacerda an duine seo) |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 5th, 2004|08:43 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  busy | ] |
| [ | music |
| | the thin monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes | ] |
So, it's 08:45, the wind's come up, the sun is blowing, and it's nearly time to go to bed again. Iza left ten days ago; while she was here, I was getting up at 06:30, and I've already slipped back to my abnorimably (sic, zappaism) lengthy day, which travels around the dial with an angular velocity of one day per fortnight.
I'm drinking coffee, naturally, but pointlessly, since it only makes me more tired - more physically awake, but more mentally dissolute and distractable. In any case, the transition from night to day is always enough, no matter how tired or fresh I am, to completely frazzle my mind.
I need to get a job soon, before I seriously consider any more universities. But for the moment I'm living my reclusive, inside-out life; the last few nights have been spent in the company of Gurney's The Hittites. I for one am all too eager to equate, on the basis of my few inklings of Hittite phonology, the land of Ahhiyawā with the Achaeians (Αχαιοι < ΑχαιϜοι), its king Attarissiyas with Atreus, Tawagalawas with Eteocles (originally ΕτεϜοκλεϜης Etewoklewes before Greek lost its ws), etc, etc, and of course Alaksandus king of Ϝιλυσα (W)ilusa with Alexander-Paris, king of Ilium or Troy. It may not be good history, but it’s good fun.
I've been alternating the Hittite book with Ó Siadhail's Learning Irish. I'm trying to fly through it, and it's going pretty well. It's a great feeling to be finally writing Irish - even if it's just silly sentences from the exercises, and actually getting the grammar and phonetic mutations right. For the moment, though, it's only the exercises that I'm writing accurately...
( Leagan Gaeilge thar an LJ-cut... ) |
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| Cofa's Tree |
[Jun. 30th, 2004|03:56 pm] |
Spotted in this description of Coventry:
The centre is divided into the pedestrianised shopping precinct to the west (the Lower Precinct has recently undergone a £50 restoration) and the Cathedral Quarter to the east.
That explains a bit, actually.
I'm leaving Coventry today. I'd like to take a last walk through the Cathedral , but don't have the house keys anymore, so once I leave, I can't come back. Still, the last thing I need is another melancholy final-type event.
I won't be back to Coventry next year either, since I decided to graduate this year. I've gone down a grade in my exams every years that I've been here, and I think I should probably get out now. Seven years of being an undergrad is enough.
No more undergraduate degrees for me! Never again! (unless they're really interesting) |
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| Results! |
[Jun. 24th, 2004|01:33 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | bill bailey :: bewilderness :: dr. qui | ] |
It's a II.2. Barely. I mean, by the smallest of margins. A II.2 is also the grade I'll get in my degree if I choose to graduate this year, though this incorporates the marks of previous years, meaning that my degree score would be 56%.
( More, lots and lots more... ) |
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| LJ comment stats thingy |
[Jun. 18th, 2004|12:40 pm] |
I'm only posting it because it won't display unless it's in an LJ. I could read the LJ tags in the source, but that seems unnecessarily perverse.
( Read more... ) |
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| A Rant |
[May. 21st, 2004|09:14 am] |
A long letter I've just sent to my Academic Tutor. Concerning the apparant contradiction between "I love maths, and am quite good at it" and "I'm probably going to fail the year" in which it is shewn that these Diverse Passions are of a type, and often engender one another
( Read more... ) |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 11th, 2004|09:27 pm] |
Googling for "average walking speed" + kmh, yields many helpful results.
Helpful, at least, if you're looking for possibly inaccurate average walking speeds of humanoid robots (1.6 km/h), horses ("70 km/h"), unrealistic characters in maths problems (19km/h), stroke victims using a neuroprosthesis (1.5km/h), Meltran II (a robotic pair of legs) (0.5km/h) or dinosaurs ("a few km/h"). |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 5th, 2004|03:12 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | einstürzende neubauten :: tabula rasa :: 12305te nacht | ] |
Brief outline of Things I Really Should Lj About, One Day
- Visiting Prague in January. Mysterious journeys in dodgy night trains to Poland
- Stephen's Adventures at Heathrow as Girlfriend is Interrogated by Immigration, or, I told you entering the UK wouldn't be so easy
- A visit to the Brother, in the County Leitrim, or, Adventures with a Friulian Rat Lover
- Welche Idioma is aqui? Learning Spanish to live with Germans in a Catalan-speaking town
- Barcelona
- A Dublin Interlude
- Coventry to Poznań, the hard way
- The Berlin-Kiev night train
- Nie, dzienkuję, nie mogę jeść jeszce jednego jajka (*): Easter in Poland
It's been a busy year.
Last night was my 9292th night on lyfe.
* nie mogę zjesc już więcej jajek, really, but my Polish isn't that good. |
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