some lists of useful Chinese characters
Thursday, August 18th, 2005
There are some great documents in Chinese on this site, including:
Archive for August, 2005
How many Chinese characters do you know?
Thursday, August 18th, 2005
This cool Java applet will test your knowledge of Chinese characters and estimate how many you know. I took the 24 question beginner test, got 9 correct, and it estimated that I know 113 characters. I suspect I know 9 
Clutter, a cool graphical interface for iTunes
Thursday, August 18th, 2005
Clutter is an auxiliary app that can control itunes, and presents an
interface based on album cover art rather than text. Picture a floor
strewn with albums that you dig through to find the album you
want. It’s pretty amusing. And free, open-source, etc.
annoyances - dead hard disk, palm desktop
Sunday, August 14th, 2005
I always preach that people should back up their data frequently, but in practice it’s not so simple. I had an ibook hard disk die on me, and although I have backed it up in the fairly recent past, it’s not as recent a backup as I’d like. Ah well.
So now I’m setting up a fresh new Tiger partition to run from on a new drive. Just to keep things extra-fresh, instead of restoring from backup I’m just copying over the files that matter to me from the backup, and am installing applications using the installers.
My Treo has now gone since 8/11/05 without syncing (and that was to the hard drive that is now dead), and I want to be able to access all of its info on the new system. So I went to palm’s website to download the latest version of Palm Desktop…
Palm™ Desktop 4.2.1 Rev B for Mac August 11, 2005 Not available at this time We apologize for the inconvenience, but the web download of Palm Desktop 4.2.1 Rev B for Mac has become temporarily unavailable. Within the next week, we expect to make this file available again. Until then, please install Palm Desktop from the CD-ROM that came with your device. Thank you for your patience.Are they crazy? Argh. I’d be happy to install any old version of Palm Desktop and get it working just to be able to get my mac addressbook sync’ed. Why take down the download? I don’t have my Treo install CD handy, in fact it’s hidden away in the treo box in the back of my storage area in the garage behind an old monitor and a Costco-size pack of toilet paper. I never install from manufacturer supplied CDs, which may have been sitting in the product box for months and become outdated — it is always wiser to download the newer versions from manufacturer’s websites. For this reason I don’t keep the useless install CDs handy.
I wonder how long the Palm Desktop download link will be down.
– [8-18-05 — the download is still down, but the previous version of Palm Desktop for Mac is available and it works just fine for us non-Treo 650 folk]
Super City
Thursday, August 11th, 2005
Threadless.com has a very interesting business model. They’re constantly running contests for T-shirt design on their community-based site, and the designs that win the popular vote are then printed and sold. They’re currently running a contest related to New York, and I decided to create and submit an entry.
I think the design came together very well. It’s a bit off from the initial sketch, which looked a bit more crowded and simcity-ish, but when positioning the buildings in 3D I found the starkness more appealing if the buildings were scattered further apart and there was a hint of perspective.
I miss the WTC.
watching international TV over the net
Monday, August 8th, 2005
This is the coolest thing ever. A list of international TV streams, categorized by language. I’m listening to a discussion of eBay on Taiwan’s NTDTV right now. Hopefully I’ll pick up a few useful words.
Numa Numa Dance
Sunday, August 7th, 2005
You know you’re out of the loop when you’ve missed out on the funniest bit of viral media around. My brother just sent me a link to a clip of the Numa Numa Dance, a hilarious video performance by 19 year-old Gary Brolsma.
The video has been compared to the Star Wars Kid video, but there is a major difference between the two. Brolsma is obviously in on the joke and is a talented comic. His video gives the viewer a chance to “laugh with” rather than “laugh at”, a point lost on the writers of this New York Times article. It’s definitely worth a watch or two. I love the timing of the eyebrow movements. Kudos to Mr. Brolsma.
Surf’s up at Venice Beach
Sunday, August 7th, 2005
Actually, there are only 1ft waves here right now, but if there were any actual waves to speak of they’d be visible in the cool panoramic webcam images here. That site also states the wind speed, weather reaport, air and water temperatures, and wave height.
a list of ways to get free frequent flyer miles
Thursday, August 4th, 2005
This looks like a good site to read through: Free Frequent Flyer Miles.
How to read a Chinese restaurant menu
Monday, August 1st, 2005
I’ve been working towards reading Chinese restaurant menus for a little while. This site ought to help.
