16:10 amenities

Two big Far's fit nicely side-by-side on my 2007WFP. Now I have two Far's on my start menu, a right Far and a left Far, and two keyboard shortcuts. The only drawback of this arrangement is that panel operations between the two Far's don't work as visually expected. I had to resource-hack two copies of Far.exe for full effect, though. Gaheh ^..^

Coining Ukrainian words

The Ukrainian language has been hampered for a long time by a certain timidity in its users, engendered by conservatism and overprotectiveness (not unwarranted, I admit). This timidity prevents the natural generation of new native Ukrainian words and leads to unnecessary and unsystematic borrowing from other languages, thus defeating its own original impulse. Some people try to overcome the difficulty, and I will from time to time write here the best results of word creation activity. Today's two entries are

вбух for implosion

and

попих for thrust.

Added on Nov 5: I have created another good word, посмик., but am at a loss regarding what does it stand for. Help! :)
Updated on Apr 25: it will stand for tug. I should have known at once! ^.^

Gentleman's things

Came back from a visit to friends' with these picturesque items.

Sister's bag

Radish

New 500GB hard drive

Spectacles

Street sign

Painful quotes

...because what we had in a number of our early staff members was an inability to be responsible, which meant also an inability to define one's own character, to form an integrated concept of one's place in the school or in the world, a difficulty in formulating one's own individual makings. I think it is very closely related to a need for personal friendships as a means of shoring up the individual concerned, a means of filling the vacuum created by his lack of self-esteem and lack of well defined character. What such an individual is looking for... is other people's intimate intrusion upon himself, other people's getting into him and becoming part of him.

... I'm not saying that whole people are incapable of interpersonal relations... they don't hungrily seek them out at every turn as a substitute for their own undeveloped personality...

Daniel Greenberg, «Announcing a New School» (emphasis mine)

Anti-statements

If you are saying «I am a white man, I can afford this», you are merely trying to convince yourself. You'll arrive when this thought doesn't cross your mind anymore.

The same can be said about «Stop treating me like a child» and its relatives. Usually, an adult would neither say this nor think like this.

Afterthought added on Dec 20: in relationships, «I trust you» often has similarly self-deceptive character. Sometimes, as in answer to a question, «I trust you» may attempt to simply state a fact, but even then it is difficult to disentangle the statement and the anti-statement, i.e. the rational and the emotional content.

Dumping more random links

These are MotorWave microturbines.

Krolyk's article about PC cooling systems somehow fits with the microturbines.

Tyler Cowen links to a list of best sci-fi, but it's a bother to buy these from Ukraine. Maybe I'll read a couple of titles from this list someday.

F. L. Allen writes about the great stock market crash of 1929.

In From Sea to Sea, R. Kipling writes about Japan, among other things. I liked his idea of establishing a world protectorate over Japan (so she would not have to absorb Western influences) until the West grew up to Japan's level.

This update closes some hole or other in Windows's Server service. When the Server crashes because of this hole, Windows Audio goes down too and it's very annoying to have to restart it.

~shel-yang draws fabulous anime-style watercolors, among other things.

Claymore Extra Scene 4

Yippee! Claymore Extra Scene 4 is out. As usual, the Chinese got it scanned and online first[1], or so I gather. It's not even half bad. Now it's until November 2 when hopefully we'll get Chapter 74.
A pity the anime directors decided to modify the plot so much in the final episodes (and that fight amidst lava looked so cheap after Star Wars III...) There's no way they can go back to the manga now for the second season which their half-assed ending seems to suggest. Besides, in action manga it seems that the normal rate is 3 chapters per episode (with non-action manga it's more like 1 chapter per episode), so they'd have to accumulate 3 years worth of monthly instalments of the manga to get enough material for even a 13-episode season. Business, meh.

[1] Claymore Extra Scene 4 – link is for informative purposes only.

«The Lord of the Rings» in Latin

Wow! Somebody is translating The Lord of the Rings into Latin! So far, it seems that only three chapters have been translated[1], but I hope this project continues. If and when I get around to learning Latin, I'll use this as a study text. He-he.

[1] «Dominus Anulorum» – unknown author

Finally, a new monitor

Finally got my backside off the chair and ordered this Dell UltraSharp 2007WFP to replace my ancient ViewSonic pf775. Also, my anime collection has expanded so much that I had to order a 500Gb hard drive in addition to the 300Gb one I have now. I hate keeping stuff on DVD-Rs and similar media. HDDs are only marginally more expensive per Gb, they don't scratch, take up less space and are always available.

A bit bananas

This Japanese juice package looks gorgeous, but isn't writing where to stick in the straw a bit idiotic?