The reminder that comes with tragedy

Today, my mother put up some baby pics of my sister and I from back when we lived in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The tragedy which happened there serves as a reminder to me that something like this could happen anywhere, to anyone. My sister went to school there. Those children were just like my sister or even just like me. 

We are always told to keep our head up because there is someone out there is has it less lucky than we do. We tend to ignore this fact despite knowing it perfectly well because we imagine somebody a world away from us. But its a small world after all. 

Never stop appreciating how luck you are, no matter who you are and what condition you're in.

Stream of Conciousness: WIKIWIKI

So I realized that i completely lack content here... there is absolutely nothing interesting about this blog to attract users.

So I thought to myself, what can I write about? Inspiration struck me. "I always have these great ideas but I have trouble getting it down in words. So what if i just wrote about anything as i think about it! Yes!"

So this is me just letting out the words as they come to my mind. Unfortunately I dont have anything particularly interesting on my mind.


Damn I need to do my Bio Wiki Entry. You're probably thinking to yourself "Huhhhh?" Lemme explain. In my biology class, we have to write a journal everyday for homework. We have to write about what we did or learned. Instead of writing it up and handing it in, we post it onto a wiki. We each get a page for ourselves and we post our journal entries

Incase you dont know what at wiki is, allow me to explain. Actually, I could direct you to the WIKIPEDIA article about it. Wikipedia is a perfect example of a wiki. Anyone can go in and edit it. The creators don't create the content; the users do.

Now some people have criticized this, saying "oh if anyone can edit, you dont know if its accurate". An example of this is this blog post (which actually happens to mention me, xD)

...I think google is a better search engine than wikipedia. My main reason is because google doesn't allow thousands of people to contribute & edit information,so you are assured that the info will be 100% correct.But that doesn't mean that wikipedia is bad, it just means that google is slightly more assertive. This is why I think google is better to search with than wikipedia.

Now this guy tries to make some sort of point, saying that he trusts google more than wikipedia... what?

I wrote this comment back

I have to disagree with your point about Wikipedia vs Google. First of all, they are completely different, so they are difficult to compare. But google is actually just as open as wikipedia. Google is a search engine, and so the Google corperation themselves dont make any of the content. On top of that, the fact that any given page can not be editted by anyone can make the information less accurate. I could make a page on the internet with completely innacurate information and it could end up showing up on google. And even if somebody knows that the info is wrong, they can not edit my website. But if I made a page with completely innacurate info on wikipedia, people could find it and say "hey this isn't right" and fix it themselves. And if they make it even more incorrect, there will still be someone coming in and correcting it. The fact that hundreds of thousands of people edit it just makes it more accurate because there are more people to check the facts.

Ok well I'm done with my ranting. I'll try to do this more often. Peace out

~NEO

(PS Wow this was actually a terrible stream of conciousness lmao)

Philosophy

So I was going to make some sort of really philisophical post about society and the concept of "there is no wrong opinion" but then I kinda forogot what point i was trying to make so screw it.

kTHXbye

~Neo

9 Linux Myth Debunked

When it comes to anti-Linux people, there are 3 kinds of people, those who never heard of it, those who are afraid of it, and those who hate it and spread falsities about it.

read more | digg story

Japanese Writing

A couple of days ago I got a cool little thing that lets me type in Japanese. I just hit Alt+Shift and viola: 日本語。

Reading and writing is certainly one of the most difficult parts of learning Japanese. There are three writing systems. Romaji, Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.

Romaji is the easiest of the four. Romaji is Japanese written with Roman characters. So you already know Romaji! Example: Rōmaji

Hiragana is a syllabic writing system. That means that each symbol represents a syllable. Hiragana tends to look very smooth, squiggly, and curvy. Example: ひらがな　

Katakana is also a syllabic writing system. It is usually used for foreign words. Katakana tends to look very angular. Example: カタカナ

Kanji is the most difficult of the four. Kanji is the chinese writing system adapted for Japanese. The symbols do not represent sounds, but rather concepts. In fact any given Kanji could have multiple ways of being pronounced. Example: 漢字


So how about we learn some Japanese writing now? I'll be teaching you Kiragana, as that will be the most useful to start with.

First we're going to learn "O." In hiragana, that would be written お。

Next is "To." (Note: That would be pronounced like "Tow Truck") That would be written と。

Now I'll show you "Ko." This is Ko: こ

Finally, I will show you "No." This would be written like this: の

So how about we put these together and write a word? Let's write "otokonoko" which means "boy."

Otokonoko would be spelt 「おとこのこ。」


Of course, If we were to include kanji, then it would be written like this：　男の子　



I hope you enjoyed this little lesson ^^

Sentence Structure

Hello, people

Wazzaaa? I'm just gonna start off right where I left off in the last post.

Learning Japanese. As a speaker of the English language, it is certainly more difficult than learning a language like Spanish. First of all, the grammar is totally different. In the case of Spanish, you can usually translate word for word and it will mostly make sense. Not so with Japanese. English an Japanese are totally different. You basically have to learn to put sentences together from scratch.

In Japanese sentences are structured "*Subject* *Object* *Verb*", unlike English which is structured "*Subject* *Verb* *Object*." Lemme explain that in a different way for people who are not understanding. In English you would say "the girl drinks water." In Japanese you would say "onnanoko wa mizu o nonde imasu" (おんなのこわみずおのんでいま) which word for word is "Girl *Subject Particle* Water *Object Particle* drink *Verb ending*."

As you can see: totally different. I would love to write more but my friend is calling me and we need to talk about something important. Seeya!

-Neo

Japanese

Hey guys, sup? Yeah its been forevs since I made a blog post. Not that any one actually reads this bullcrap.

So do you know what I've been doing over the summer? Absolutely nothing.

Ok I guess "nothing" is a bit of a hyperbole. I began learning Japanese. I was also gonna start learning Chinese, but I decided I don't have the time for that. I'm going to get my Japanese really good first, then I will work on Chinese. Probably won't start Chinese for a year or two.

So seeing as I've brought this up, i might as well share some of the basics with you

Good Morning
Ohayou gozaimasu (Ohio Go-za-ee-mass)
おはようございます

Good Afternoon
Konnichiwa
こんにちは

Good Evening
Konbanwa
こんばんは


I'll consider writing up some more of these little lessons as I learn. If a native speaker notices any errors, please do not hesitate to correct me.

So I'm sure you guys are wondering how I am learning. I'm learning from multiple sources. I'm learning from several websites like these:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese
http://www.genkienglish.net/genkijapan/menu.htm
http://www.freejapaneselessons.com/
http://www.thejapanesepage.com/
http://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/


Of course I'm learning a significant bit from a cool little program (which I'm sure you've all heard about), Rosetta Stone. I'm using V3, and I have to say, I've learned more from it than from all those sites combined. It's really quite amazing, cause it teaches you without translation, so that you learn the same way you learned your first language. Instead of getting translations, you just get pictures. That way you associate the word with what you see in the picture, instead of associating it with the English word.

So you might see something like this:

ねこ
猫
Neko













Anyways, it's a cool program, but mad expensive. (lol I made a typo while typing this, instead of writing "program," I wrote "prorgasm") Japanese Level 1 costs $219 on the official website and Levels 1, 2, and 3 in a a pack together costs $499. But I hear there are places on the internet where you can "buy" it for pretty "cheap" ;)

I'll talk about what I find difficult and what I find easy about learning Japanese in my next blog post, but right now I need to go jogigng so I don't turn into a fatty.


-Neo