Older blog entries for nymia (starting at number 1152)

Spanglish

One of my favorite blogger, romanika, wrote an interesting entry about the usage of Spanglish.

-Hey, where have you been? No te he visto all day.
-Ah, it's just that I was en la house de mi dad... and well, I  
 didn't come back hasta ahorita.
-Y tu dad, ¿qué te dijo? Is he coming o qué?
-No sé. Maybe sí. Le voy a decir que we should go somewhere 
 fun today.
-Yeah, tell him... porque tomorrow me voy con mi mom.

Also noted was the keen eye detecting the usage of foreign words in the grammar.

One woman was interviewed, and as she described a mix-up with a goverment agency, she stated: Los papeles no matcheaban. Then, a professional on the field, of Hispanic background, was asked a few things on the subject, and he said: Las personas vienen, siempre se introducen, son buenas... .

In the first case, we find "matcheaban" from English "to match". The frase translates to "The papers did not match". This woman here feels it's easier simply to make the verb look like Spanish on analogy with cognates in both languages, for example, as in the case of to describe and describir. The same thing occurred the man in this interview who used introducir from English to introduce instead of the usual presentarse. What he wanted to say was People come, always introduce themselves, they're good [people]. In Spanish, however, the verb introducir means to introduce but by means of putting something inside of something else. What he should have said was: Las personas vienen, siempre se presentan... .

Romanika vividly writes the cause how it is assembled during the construction of the sentence.

If I could describe Spanglish in one word, it would be spontaneous. In the same manner that someone might say Le voy a decir que we should go somewhere, he could say instead I'm going to tell him que deberíamos ir somewhere; or, porque tomorrow me voy a la house and because manaña I'm going to the house. It is the moment that dictates what is going to be said, in what language, and in which order.

Desultor

Desultor made an interesting experiment shown below:

-----------------------------   -------
string 	                        # hits
-----------------------------   -------
"if worse comes to worse" 	10,200
"if worst comes to worst" 	6,640
"if worse comes to worst" 	3,570
"if worse come to worse" 	404
"if worst comes to worse" 	404
"if worst come to worst" 	246
"if worse come to worst" 	66
"if worst come to worse" 	6

I didn't write the correct answer, might turn out a good game, though. Figure out the correct phrase.

Dilemma

Not sure how will I handle this, but it looks like there is going to be a big scheduling issue about to surface next week. Firstly, one client called up, said they wanted to change an existing feature. I told them it will require coding time which will cost them X amount of dollars. Secondly, next week I will be working for a project down in Southern California(SoCal). Lastly, next week, my favorite company wants to thrash the Learning Management System and design a new one from scratch. New money, probably coming from the Angels made them think a new and better LMS would be the way to go.

What should I do now? I don't know. Maybe I should raise my rates and see how they will react. Or, find a subcon and let them do it.

Kid Testing

Just for fun, I brought my kid to work after getting permission. Currently watching the interaction how the program is being used in different ways.

C#

It looks like I'll be using C# a lot more, developing widgets for the in-house app I'm working on.

Widget Set

Spent a lot of time creating several controls on top of System.Windows.Form for Pnet, Mono and Windows. The latest control implemented was the Collapsible Splitter control which was taken from a sample code posted on a newsgroup. This Splitter Control really rocks, it goes well with the PropertyGrid control perfectly.

Currently working on other run-time/design-time controls. It might turn out the widget set will become open sourced, similar to CodeJock and probably compete with them as well.

I haven't shown it to Colin yet. He is pretty good in animations, especially, in the sketching and shading department. I'm hoping on getting him in doing all those nifty stuff.

Language

Made progress by using the Subject-Object-Verb(SOV) format. At the moment, some old mental structures are being rebuilt to accomodate this kind of style. Found it quite strange writing this way setting up the thought and then writing the sentence down in a broken fashion. Example shown below:

   The boy give large roses to the girl.
   Step 1: Puer ------- ------ ----- ---. 
   Step 2: Puer ------- ------ ----- dat.
   Step 3: Puer ------- magnas rosas dat.
   Step 4: Puer puellae magnas rosas dat.

Volleyball And 24-Hour Fitness

Been enjoying the week playing Volleyball and working out in the gym. Need to lose 45 pounds down to range of 170 to 180 pounds. Yesterday's game was really fun, there were a lot good kills and saves.

PropertyGrid

Started playing with the grid again. Will test the interface part and see if it can receive the property collection.

Altar

Thought about building an altar for my new patron St.Expeditus where I would make my prayers. I just got my first paycheck from the project and it seems likely better to just roll it back as capital. Better get this activity moving and get more business out there.

Hodie! Hodie! as they would say. There is no time to lose. Gotta get things moving.

New Project

There is a good chance I could get this running by bottom-sweeping the market. It could happen by simply offering it to both platforms, though.

The market is god

Noticed two or more blogs have written about the topic of a new god to be the market. Though I'm waiting for a blogger to write about the state as a candidate for god as well.

Volleyball

Had a good game yesterday. I'm slowly getting back playing again. Though the leg was a bit off trying to adjust, the right leg seemed to have compensated for it.

Property Grid

Wondered about the possibility of coding the PropertyGrid control on Pnet. The interface is defined but the implementation remains to be coded.

sye

Think for moment about the life of the person.

More Killings

On Saturday 10 April up to 400,000 
Vietnamese Christians, from the Degar 
people, gathered in several Vietnamese 
cities to demonstrate against the 
government's refusal to allow them 
to follow the Christian faith freely.

The demonstrators in the cities, 
which included the Central Highland 
city of Buonmathuot, were attacked 
by soldiers, police and other 
Vietnamese civilians. The Christians 
were shot at, beaten with electric 
batons and bombarded with rocks and 
stones. Hundreds were killed (400 
according to one report) and many 
others have suffered broken bones 
reports the Barnabas Fund which works 
to support Christian communities 
in the Islamic world. [1]

Christian peacemakers in Iraq have 
reported harrowing scenes including 
the killing of women and children 
by US forces following an overnight 
humanitarian mission to Fallujah.

Iraqi doctors and international 
volunteers assisting Doctors Without 
Borders entered the city on 
Saturday, April 10 in a bus loaded 
with medical supplies from agencies 
in Baghdad. The city had been under 
siege by US troops for six days 
following the lynching of four U.S. 
security agents.

Volunteers assisting Doctors 
Without Borders in Fallujah 
reported that U.S. Marine snipers 
were "shooting at anyone who moves". [2]

Please write to this person who needs help

Officials described Gong as a model prisoner in 
every respect except one: He refuses to denounce 
his faith in Jesus Christ, and he will not stop 
praying and preaching.
 "He is so into the Bible that he has lost 
touch with reality," Gong's sisters were told. 
 Said Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for VOM: 
"The man in charge of the prison says this is 
a model prisoner, yet he has already spent 
411 days with his arms and legs chained. 
Without God's help, this innocent man is 
not likely to survive many more weeks in 
Hongshan Prison."
 [1]
 Gong Shengliang
Prison Section Four Te Yi Hao
Hongshan Prison, Miaoshan Development Zone
Jiangxia District, Wuhan City, Hubei Province
People's Republic of China 430223

PropertyGrid, ICustomTypeDescriptor

Played around with PropertyGrid control looking for a way of showing custom properties. Figured I had to implement ICustomTypeDescriptor to get the customization in place.

I think these features are not available yet on both Pnet and Mono. It would be really nice to have the PropertyGrid control setup on both of them, along with other bells and whistles like the designer in there as well.

Language Binding

The issue over what other language(s) to use for Gnome should be discussed more. Developers who are directly involved should say what they have to say and let everyone know what other language(s) will be best suited for the Gnome API. I, for one, am waiting for the outcome in preparation for what may come next. If no decision is made within 12 or 18 months, Mono might become the default due to proximity to Gnome.

Java Notes

James Gosling wrote in his blog about the future Java after the settlement. Stating the position they are in, Java provides the freedom defined letting third party developers to use the language according the virtues of the license.

A third part of the letter demonstrated the hidden agenda of Free Software in perpuating the political objective.

Grail Bloodline

Still reading the book. Found a lot of interesting stories about the family during the first and second century.

Paleo vs. Neo

Spent some time following the debate between two communities espousing their degree of adherence. Realized my preferences belong to the Paleo group.

Interview

Had a talk with the owner of a small scale (but growing) one-man consulting firm. Asked a couple of questions on where most of the code runs on, how his customers deal with applications and lastly, how he manages to stay afloat.

Also asked him about his experience on consulting and software development.

Novus Ordo

Currently coding the property model. I realized the error of tying the UI widgets directly to the class which made the app feel stiffer. The solution was to break the relation by setting up an interface between them. This would allow the widget to change from a pull-down to a list depending on what was selected in the property model. This method of indirection will apply to other widgets as well. Allowing the user to view the object in several ways.