Recent blog entries for fzort

A theory

Zaitcev, chalst: hjclub once posted a guide on piercing the Great Firewall of China (Google Translator - click on "Translate"), which is noble and everything. Maybe that's what made atai give him/her the certification. It's possible that hjclub simply doesn't understand English very well, and certified the spammer because (s)he liked the cute pandas. Don't ascribe to malice, et cetera.

Could any of the Chinese-speaking Advogato users out there convince hjclub to lift the certification?

Edit: I was wrong.

ncm: why? Hard to imagine how it could be more idiotic than the shuttle. (Not trolling, just curious.)

Moving out

I'm moving my "diary" to livejournal. Once in a while I feel like writing about stuff that's off topic for Advogato (I've just posted an entry on politics there). I haven't been doing a lot of free software lately, anyway.

chalst: base32?

Deluxe agglutination

Yume no naka e itte mitai to omoimasen ka?
    -- lyrics for an old Japanese pop hit

• yume no naka: inside a dream
• iku: to go (infinitive)
• itte: going (-te form of iku - gerund, kinda)
• itte miru: try going
• itte mitai: want to try going
• itte mitai to omoimasu: think about wanting to try going
• itte mitai to omoimasen ka?: how about wanting to try going?
• yume no naka e itte mitai to omoimasen ka?: don't you want to try going into a dream?

Yeah yeah, off-topic for Advogato... but who's reading this anyway?

Yeah, "Go". Like it usually happens with anything coming from Google, I got bombarded with links to this from random people.

Far be it from me to disagree with Ken Thompson, but I respectfully take issue with the following item in their FAQ:

Go doesn't provide assertions. They are undeniably convenient, but our experience has been that programmers use them as a crutch to avoid thinking about proper error handling and reporting.

assert() is not meant to be used for error handling and reporting. It should be used to enforce (and document) invariants. Leave it out of your language if you will, but I'll keep using it until someone pries it from my cold, dead fingers.

On other news, still studying Japanese. Less than one month to the test.

Cheat Sheet

• mado o shimemasu: I close the window.
• mado o shimemashou: let's close the window!
• mado o shimetai desu: I want to close the window.
• mado o shimenagara (...): while I close the window (...)
• mado no shimekata ga wakarimasu: I know how to close the window.
• (place e) mado o shime ni ikimashita: I went (to place) to close the window.
• mado o shimete imasu: I am closing the window.
• mado o shimete (kara), (...): after I close the window, (...)
• mado o shimete kudasai: please close the window.
• mado o shimete mo ii desu: you may close the window.
• mado o shimete wa ikemasen: you may not close the window.
• mado o shimete dame desu: you may not close the window (rude).
• (person ni) mado o shimete hoshii desu: I want (person|you) to close the window.
• mada mado o shimete imasen: I haven't closed the window yet.
• mado o shimete mimashou: let's try and close the window.
• mado o shimeru: I close the window (plain form - avoid if you're older than 6).
• mado o shimeru mae ni (...): before I close the window (...)
• mado o shimeru koto ga dekimasu: I (can|am able to) close the window.
• mado o shimeru koto ga adjective desu: closing the window is adjective.
• mado o shimeru tsumori desu: I'm planning to close the window.
• mado o shimeru (kara|no de) (...): I close the window, therefore (...)

I'm taking the Japanese Language Proficiency Test Level 4 (the easiest one) in December. This means I have a couple of months to memorize a huge list of words and kanjis. I started to write a small drill application to help me (screenshot), because I didn't like the ones I found. I wanted something like the excellent kanatest, but with kanjis and complete words as well. Randomly generated sentences would also be nice.

dkg: seriously dude, WTF? I just had a look at an article linked from your post, with a transcription of the supposedly controversial bits of Mark Shuttleworth's talk. Isn't the word "guys" gender-neutral in that context? Also, how hard is it to understand from the context that he obviously intended the world "girl" to mean "non-techie companion of the opposite sex", whatever that sex may be?

Get a grip, you people. I'm alright with folks denouncing the oppressive patriarchy, but calling Shuttleworth's talk "sexist" is crossing the line towards utter batshit insanity. You guys (and here I'm using the word in a non-gender-specific way) are the ones who owe him an apology.

ncm: good one. I didn't find the tone "insulting" at all. Well, maybe he took issue with the last paragraph...