Older blog entries for badvogato (starting at number 370)

I got this super bargain: a miniature 15 column copper beads abacus mounted on a stab of marble at local flea market a couple of months ago. That is a treasure of its kind.

I don't think I've ever learned how to do square root and cubic root on a Chinese abacus. I did know it also does hexadecimal calculations. Traditional Chinese weighing units was a hexadecimal system. One jin (斤) equals sixteen liang (兩). Abaci were commonly used in market place to calculate with these hexadecimal units. When all the beads in the Chinese abacus are used, each column can be used to represent numbers between 0 to 15 (two 5s and five 1s.) Computation in decimal and hexadecimal is very similar except one extra bead from both the upper and lower deck are used.

iSquint (free) & VisualHub (~$20) are _cool_ apps.

This works!

i got this beautiful Chinese fonts for Windows to work in my Mac nodebox.net application . _very_ satisfied. Still some characters, like the middle one of my name "澍" is missing in that particular font collection...Hmm...what it takes to be able to add my own glyphs to the existing font library? i wonder ...

btw, cornu curves in nodebox accredits to Raph Levien's algorithm. what a small and wonderful world again!

hi ion, how do you publish YouTube video clip directly in this diary? I LOVE JWTNY's animated re-creation of Billy Collins poetry

And this Chinese paintings and calligraphy in 3D is awesome!

cool python app NodeBox.net for compiling my poetry books...

WordNet explode isn't working for me but this does the trick:

en = ximport("en")
explode = ximport("explode")
reload(explode)

 font("Arial", 14)
fill(0.2)
strokewidth(0.5)

 root = "love"
explode.explode(root, en.noun.hyponym(root), 500, 500)
print en.noun.gloss(root)

Keith Waldrop's new translation of Baudelaire 'Les Fleur du Mal' is an interesting read...
Did Baudelaire believe in God?
I don't know. But he jotted down one of the most interesting theological claims I've come across."God is the only being," he wrote, "who, in order to reign, need not even exist."

... more from Translator's Introduction by Keith Waldrop

philosophy page for children

Rilke's 'Duino Elegies' are divine.

There is NO 'the day after tomorrow'

Untitled
Ko Un

In the old days a poet once said
our nation is destroyed
yet the mountains and rivers survive

Today's poet says
the mountains and rivers are destroyed
yet our nation survives

Tomorrow's poet will say
the mountains and rivers are destroyed
our nation is destroyed and Alas!
you and I are completely destroyed

GhostOfTiber:
and then?! AND THEN? AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN?

The Day After Tomorrow's poet will say
the mountains have sunk and rivers overrun
our nation is completely submerged and alas
you and I should have listened to Gore.

What score will you give GhostOfTiber on Koan 101?

you and I are completely destroyed, like:

An atom walks into a bar and orders a double. The bartender gives him his drink and says "What's the matter, man, you look terrible."

The atom, with a horrible look on his face responds,
"well... I lost an electron today."

"Are you sure?" asks the bartender.

After a second, the atom replies, "I'm positive."

Replay the second,
oh NO! the atom was annilated into photons and killed the bartendar

THE END:
There is no "the day after tomorrow"

On translation, untranslatable language bindings and et al...

I made an attempt to translate poems by a Chinese Singaporian I came to know quite well. I personally love his poems because it carries dark meanings in surprisingly simple utterances and keen observations of daily life. In order to cross the barriers of language construct, I located some contextual imageries for interposing the Chinese characters.

Not surprisingly, reaction to my rendering is mostly negative. This make me thinking what nerve I touched that violated unmarked comfort zone for the readers.

Title: the moment I AM SO full of myself

penis_scarf

Diary of Sun Wukong - the stone monkey

Babe I left behind

Adulterous woman

Your dimple is so full when you smile

where is the beauty queen?

Tree and leaves

Perfect Eve

Dream lover - from The Peony Pavilion

Babe I left behind

Babe I left behind
has silksoft skin and dreamy eyes
long braids and sigh like night falls.

I am the man she turned away
now alone in the chill of autumn air.

babe, the boy who takes your hand
is no different than I

babe, you left me
and you take my longing with you
braided on tips of your hair
bloody clear dancing with the wind.

babe, I diserted you
I am the only man that follows
your turning away with pensive loving stare.

Adulterous woman

The child in my womb
can't be his.
It must be by my husband.
For us, we only had
one moment.

Young woman thus think
She vomited and threw her brain out
Afterwards, full of hope again.

That this child in her body is his.
Even though, they only had
one time and never again.

Your dimple is so full when you smile

Your dimple is so full when you smile
like the torrent in the high sea
swirling dead body strangled with long hair
.

Your eyes are so red when you cry
Red as if on fire
and streams of fountain gushing through.

That's your tears?
salty, bitter like the sea foams
touch a drop,
send me straight to hell.

Then you took out a napkin
wipe out teardrops
yesterday's love
with that soiled papertowel
dropped in the waste bin.

Where is the beauty queen?

where is the beauty queen?
she is hiding in float glass.
Where is float glass
it stuffed the throat of beauty queen

why the beauty queen is frozen?
why is she so cold?

She never waited on my return
never wait till I see her flush on the cheek
never wait till sun shines on her nose
never wait till flowers bloom on her breast
never wait till my finger spread her thighs.

like smoke blowed up by the wind
like float glass frozen in the icy river
like a dream stilled by smiling face of the dead
like that tall wall once eavedrop our murmurs
ice age seperates you and me, like wind spears woods
since then, one hard ass is one and only ass
you and I are separate beings in seperate worlds

You, full of sweet promises, frozen in the ice age.

read more on 论诗的出神入画与诗意的跳跃，变迁

I'm going nuts. They don't like my nutty HAIKU YOU. oh well, going nuts is life.

HAIKU YOU Roll your troll:

Purple Sun Melts Blue Snow/
My Black Stones live/
by The White Moon/

 AllThingsGO/
Roll your Troll/
make days new./

 "i hear dog barking at his own shadow sees a God deadly

looking after the male and female heads of datacomp. Zap!

power went off and segfault is on. Show me the money. baby.

i'm short of 200 for primary colors due 12 noon" - badvo's
light bulb went off on Nov 16, 2002 here and now...
 rusty cunt minded United Fool
name a few fancy nobody
but HAIKU YOU

 Smoking Juan failed me
Piltman loves to hide
his teeth in the holy hole.

 haiku YOU, senryu too/
break idiot's chained object codes/
laughing saga's burp/

 feed my starving cock/
hens are pecking his dong/
gay day's gone when cocks mute/

 barnyard sex is rarely a test/
duck-tape your flying bums/
rape the downjones mothergoose/