http://www.cartoonlabs.com/comics/index.php?date=2009-07-10&show=sinfest

Sinfest
Tatsuya Ishida

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jcreed/papers/thesis-fd-color.pdf
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jcreed/papers/thesis-fd-bw.pdf

Current time is 3:23 in the morning.
Current emotional state is a convex combination of "wug" and "FFFFUUUU".

For those of you following along at home, today is the day that my thesis final draft is ostensibly due, or to be more accurate, one week overdue, but I kind of got a one week leniency, with a "but seriously, get it done by then" proviso. So I just emailed the above to my committee. It contains both flaws and some good ideas. We'll see what they think.

New Mech Warrior game! For PC and XBOX 360!

http://www.mektek.net/index.php?ind=news&op=news_show_single&ide=1065

It does...on Ananda.

Next, to get it working on Linus.

I'm trying to write an email to my (incredibly well spoken Englishwise) German exchange, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to say
I've not heard of (bandname).
I'm not sure if it'd be a literal translation, or...
Gah!
Could anyone help me out? :(

Vielen Dank im voraus!

What does the first part of this sentence mean?

Das mag zwar für dich vielleicht wenig klingen, aber angesichts der letzten Wochen, ist es sehr warm.


Thank you!

While I severely question the need and benefit of any bottled water (it really is a scam on the dim), this really is amazingly cute and, frankly, technically amazing.

http://www.cartoonlabs.com/comics/index.php?date=2009-07-09&show=sinfest

Sinfest
Tatsuya Ishida

Term of art: Dragon Marriage Condition

I'm trying to organize an apartment to rent in Trier in Germany and this is an email I just got. I'm having a problem just understanding exactly what the second last line means

Grundsätzlich wäre die Eigentümerin mit zwei Personen in diesem App.
einverstanden. Könnten Sie mir bitte noch mitteilen, ob Sie an die Uni oder
FH kommen? Dieses App. hat eine große Schlafcouch, die als Doppelbett zu
nutzen wäre. Das App. ist wirklich so eingerichtet wie eine Ferienwohnung.
Allerdings ist die Anmietung Ende September zu spät, da der Wohnraum in
Trier, gerade ordentliche komplett möblierte App. sehr knapp ist. Eine
Anmietung müsste schon zum 01.08.09 wie auch in der Anzeige steht erfolgen.
Bei Rückfragen stehe ich Ihnen gerne zur Verfügung.

Anmietung is the lease, yes?

Does this sentence mean we'd have to pay a deposit or part of a lease before the 1st of August or that we'd have to be living there by August?

( Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina June 2009 )

Long story short: we had a great time. I love Croatia with all my heart, it's such a beautiful country and it was a great experience to drive down the entire coast. Dubrovnik was just as awesome as I had expected it to be and I still cannot believe how blue the Adriatic Sea is. I also really enjoyed exploring Bosnia and Herzegovina for a bit, even though we didn't get to see much of it. I'd definitely like to come back to Bosnia & Herzegovina some day to see some more of it!

The pictures shown here are just a selection, the full set can be found at Selmer's Flickr page.

My boss is the other big SF (and reality TV) nut in my office, so when Torchwood, Children of Earth started this week, I made sure he knew about it too. He even has the wife at home to start downloads. But yesterday he hadn't watched it, though he promised to catch up last night. Today, he called in sick.

So I have nobody to have the "OMG did you see that?" water cooler discussion with! Argh!

I went over to a coworker who sometimes keeps up and told him to get it, so maybe tomorrow I'll have someone else.. but today I must suffer in silence.....

besides being the guy who hit the go-ahead 2-run homer off Darvish tonight that eventually won the Lions the game 4-3.

Seriously, you know I'm a walking player meikan and even I was like "I've never heard of this guy" when he came up to bat. It seems that he's been with the Lions organization for like 7 years, but he hit his first pro home run on Sunday against Rakuten... and his second today against us. WTF.

Anyway, I sat in the front row of the outfield at the Seibu Dome because I knew some people sitting up there and when I arrived I just ran up like "hi! let me sit with you!" and they were like "...sure?"

I was so grumpy about the Fighters losing that I basically went to Lawson's around 11:30pm tonight and I bought baseball tickets for 7/31 and 8/1 in Sapporo. So, I think this means I am going to Hokkaido. I have to go get plane tickets next. They will be slightly more expensive than the baseball tickets.

Hmm... I should seriously consider getting the Seishun 18 pass and use that to go to Koshien and whatnot. The only question is whether I can somehow make it work out with Oren and Carl visiting here. It'd be pretty funny to travel with them where they can take a 3-hour shinkansen and I take 10-hour local trains :)

http://www.cartoonlabs.com/comics/index.php?date=2009-07-08&show=sinfest

Sinfest
Tatsuya Ishida

Mi transdonis la Esperantajn sondosierojn faritajn de arono por Panorama Racławice al la panoramestro, kiu poste retpoŝtis dankon pro la profesia kvalito de la registrado. Tio estis kontentiga traduka laboro por ni kaj amuza kunlaboro kun Arono, kaj ni feliĉas, ke la panoramestro tiom volonte akceptis Esperantan version de la prezento, do ekde nun estos ĉiam eble aŭdi la programon en Esperanto. Ni iros al SES en Slovakujo ĵaŭdovespere, sed post semajno mi esperas havi ŝancon iri kaj aŭdi la panoraman programon surloke!

We gave the Esperanto sound files which arono made for Panorama Racławice to the panorama director, who later emailed thanks for the professional quality of the recording. That was pleasing translation work for us and fun cooperation with Arono, and we're happy that the panorama director was so eager to have an Esperanto version of the presentation, so from now on it will always be possible to hear the program in Esperanto. We're going to SES in Slovakia Thursday night, but after a week I hope to have a chance to go hear the panorama program on site!

School was school. As usual I don't talk about it in public entries and I haven't even been writing friendslocked entries recently, though maybe I should be.

I left promptly at 5pm and ran to the train station and got on a train and managed to arrive at Seibu Kyujo-mae at 6:09pm, bought a ticket and a sandwich and ran into the stadium in time to get there halfway through the bottom of the 1st inning. Couldn't find any of my friends quickly so I sat in the back with Akki and his friends for the first few innings, THEN I spotted people I knew up front so I ran up and sat with them for a while, then saw other friends on the way back up. The nice thing about Seibu on a weekday is that it is totally uncrowded since it's so far from Tokyo.

Itokazu forgot his jersey so he was pitching wearing Brian Sweeney's jersey, which was pretty funny. (Akki was even yelling "Ganbare ganbare Sweeney!" instead of Itokazu.) Unfortunately, the Lions won the game 6-4 as Takayuki Kishi pitched a complete game. Sigh. But, Yoshihiro Satoh hit a home run in his first ichi-gun at-bat of the year, and I got to see that at least, yay! I just saw him play all weekend in Kamagaya so it was kind of weird.

Halfway through the game they announced that Wednesday's starter is Darvish, so I guess I am going back for another day of this craziness after all!

The game was over at 9pm, which would normally make me grumpy, but it was a good thing this time because I got home around 10:30pm after a short errands run to Ito Yokado, and could go to sleep around 11:30pm. It's a really exhausting day to get up at 6:30 and go to work from 8-5, then go to the stadium so far away, cheer my heart out for 3 hours, ride home for an hour, etc... but I really don't regret it.

Also I checked with some of my friends and while they all have plans to go to Hokkaido to watch the Fighters this year, they are all at DIFFERENT TIMES. Some are going during Obon or right after (which is RIGHT OUT), one guy is going in September, things like that. I might be going to Sendai at the same time as some of my friends though, so that is good. But, the upshot is, I should plan my Hokkaido trip on my own and when I think is best... and maybe talk to others about closer trips like Sendai/etc.

So we had this long weekend for July 4th, didn't we?

I seem to be accumulating July babies as friends lately, and Friday the 3rd was my friend B's 21st. Where else were we spending it but Disneyland! (Oh yeah, in my last post I forgot to mention that on the 1st I was able to beat B's high score that had beaten my high among my friends, so I'm the champ again!). He was opening the park, but with a day off work I was instead sleeping late, so I arranged to meet up with him in the afternoon.

In other news, R (my USUAL Disney buddy) had a friend, H, in from Toronto, and though R isn't a fan of the place, since H wanted somewhere vegetarian-friendly, they were going to Souplantation for lunch and wanted to know if I felt like joining them. Sure! So I met them there, and we had a really great lunch: H is a doctor and has lived in Canada all his life, so we had a lot of fun conversation.

After that, it was off to B's party at Disney, which was also a lot of fun. Since it was his 21st, a stop by the Hearthstone Lounge before dinner was in order for his first legal drink (possibly his first ever, I dunno): his friend the wine guy ordered him a sparkling red that I did think was pretty good when I got a sip, but for B's first drink... not so much. I've always heard you need to ease into reds. From this experience I'd guess "they" are right. We headed back into the park after dinner and got a special treat: Disneyland was playing their July 4th fireworks on the 3rd as well! So that was really keen! After that and a few rides, it was home from a nice day.

The 4th was the by now traditional dinner and fireworks over at Andy's Mom's place. With the view up the coast it's really quite amazing, and the weather cooperated this year: we could see shows from Palos Verdes right in front of us all the way up to (and maybe past, we weren't sure) Malibu. It's really cool to see so many shows going off up the coastline and inland! As a bonus, while Andy's Mom talked with her relatives, Andy and I got to play Le Havre! So yay!

Sunday I had agreed to go with Andy and his shopping buddy S to lunch. I don't particularly get along with S, but it turned out to be a nice (if long) lunch: S brought along a couple of friends and the conversation was interesting. After lunch it was errand time: groceries, laundry, etc. It turned out that H was still in town and interested in dinner at Souplantation, so I bowed out of my WoW raid for the night and joined them. We had more good conversation (they had asked where a good beach to walk on was and I had directed them to Newport so we had that to talk about as well), and afterward H was interested in all of these "games" R had told him about, so we headed back to my place and ended up playing Thurn & Taxis: Power and Glory, and then after Andy arrived TransAmerica.

So all in all a pretty good weekend!

Oh and in WoW news (non-WoW players, you can stop reading now, the rest is gibberish): they almost got Mimiron without me on Wed. when I went to R's birthday, but as expected our third night of 25 fizzled. BUT, the shaman lead and I got a 10-person group together for Thursday that rocked, not only doing almost all of the watchers, but also managing Hodir Hard mode. Sunday they got Mimi without me with some Vezax attempts, and then last night (after a weak Sarth+2 and Maly fail night at less-than-25) we one-shotted Vezax (a guild first) giving us a good hour of Yogg attempts. So much fun!!! I still stayed up late to watch Torchwood after it finished downloading, but I really should have gotten sleep....

Итак, наконец то я дошел до второго дня соревнований, о первом дне я написал уже чуть выше.

День второй, утро

Первым делом мне нужно было проводить жену и ребенка, которые уезжали утренним поездом в Оснабрюк, к родителям. Конечно, пришлось встать пораньше (в 7 часов), чтобы довести до конца все приготовления к поездке и нормально добраться до вокзала. Поезд, как это ни странно (так как он собственно начинается здесь же и едет до нас только 1 станцию) опоздал аж на 20 минут. В результате я был дома только где-то к 11 часам дня, зайдя предварительно в магазин и закупившись колой.
Итого через 13 часов соревнования у нас не было ни работающей виртуальной машины, ни какого-либо решения для самой проблемы со сменой орбиты спутниками.
( И мы стали ваять наш проект... )
Продолжение следует...

Let's see if I can scrape the time together this week to actually post some content...

The first of this month was R's birthday, and he managed (through a friend) to get reservations at Disneyland's exclusive Club 33 for dinner. I took a half-day from work and hung out with R, C and M for a while at the park, then R's family met us and we went up to the club. There was a bit of delay (and drama) as Andy was stuck late at work, but eventually everyone got there and things worked out okay. I of course did a little souvenir shopping after dinner as well. :) The fun thing was that I surprised R with a cake: when we got word of the reservation I made a few calls and got one ordered up to surprise him. As we came into the club I saw the telltale pink cake box over to the side, but fortunately he didn't place it, and later it was actually out on the counter as he went by to the restroom, but when it was brought out instead the little freebie dessert he was expecting, it was a shock to him! Win!

We didn't get to do anything in the park afterward of course because it was a long dinner, but it was a fun day.

http://www.cartoonlabs.com/comics/index.php?date=2009-07-07&show=sinfest

Sinfest
Tatsuya Ishida