Media today:
- Chinese introductory calligraphy videos
October 2019
29 posts
Maxwell JoslynI spent yesterday upgrading from an old computer to a new one. From the lowly depths of a 2012 MacBook Pro, I ascended to the lofty heights of a ... 2013 MacBook Pro.
The venture gained me an onboard SSD and a Retina screen, but cost me 2 inches of screen (15" to 13") and half my onboard storage (1 TB to 500 GB). Despite these tradeoffs, switching was worth it: the SSD is a breath of fresh air for load times; I'm nowhere near 500 GB of documents; and the 2 inches of screen size means nothing since this laptop spends nearly all its life hooked up to an external monitor.
With advice from Greg McVerry, Aaron Parecki, and Ryan Barrett, I finished getting this blog set up for subscription using the `h-feed` microformat, and made other improvements along the way.
How this benefits you:
- You can now subscribe to this website if your reader understands
h-feed - Posts which have received updates since publishing now display their "last updated time"
- For posts with explicit titles, the blog index displays them, making it more rewarding to manually browse the index
In addition to the above, all pages' titles now link to themselves, and each link in the blog index now has proper h-entry markup.
Another day, another website upgrade. My script for counting total words of written material was including articles, but leaving out blog posts. Now it's been fixed!
Figuring Out When I Began This Website
While editing my books page, I became curious about exactly when I started this website.
One of the two earliest pages was "Max and Ruby", which I made to ask a girl out (it worked.) My text message records show that I delivered the goods at 09:07 AM, on Monday, 2018-08-06.
I know I had the image all ready to go during the weekend before that Monday. I know the website existed at least a short time before "Max and Ruby," since I remember having one other page available. And I know there was a significant lag between buying this domain, and actually setting up the website. The records at my DNS provider indicate that I bought the domain in September of 2017.
In Which I Attempt to Give Amazon Money
This evening, I wanted to purchase The Ode Less Traveled, a poetry manual by Stephen Fry. I went to Amazon, noticed the Kindle version was $7, and decided to give that a shot.
I had to decide whether to log in with my account, or my mother's. I would pay the bill myself either way, but my Kindle reader was originally hers, and I had a niggling suspicion that it would matter. I should have listened to my suspicion!
Logging into my account went smoothly, as did "purchasing" the book. I decided to read the book on the Kindle Android app.
I've laid another tiny upgrade at my website's feet. The blog/feed now mentions how many posts there are.
In a blog post yesterday, I discussed adding time-of-publication information to future blog posts. In that post, I decided against adding a fake publication time to prior posts which were made without recording that information.
Today, I've reversed my decision. I added time information as one step toward making the blog available to subscription tools. Adding my blog to your viewer of choice will be easier if all my blog posts come with a canonical publication time.
If you visit posts made before 2019-10-20, such as this one, you'll see I've changed their publication notices to indicate that the time given is suspect. That's good enough for me.
Improved Time Stamps
As of right now, the publication timestamp before this paragraph reads "Published on 2019-10-20, around 18:14:20". This timestamp is also a permalink for this page.
The dates on these posts ("2019-10-20") have been there since soon after I started this blog, but I just added the time-of-day information ("around 18:14:20") today. A machine-readable version of the time, including the time zone, has also been invisibly included in the permalink's HTML.
I did this as one step in upgrading my website so that other people can subscribe to it. If I only provided the date of publication, but not the time, someone else's reader program wouldn't be able to put my post in chronological order when compared with another post.
Iron Bull and Sick Duck
Introduction
This is my translation of 《铁牛和病鸭》, by Lao She. The (rough) first draft was finished on 2020-02-15. The second draft was finished on 2020-03-04. Many thanks to Chris Stasse for helping me take this from rough draft to final version.
I chose to translate this story for the challenge of rendering the sections which deal with Sick Duck's mental landscape. As far as I am aware, I am the first person to have translated this story into English. It is not listed in the table of contents for Blades of Grass, nor in the contents of Crescent Moon and Other Stories; nor does the Modern Chinese Literature and Culture resource center list this story in its bibliography of English translations of Lao She.
I'm in Santa Monica for the first time, staying with my friends Alexi and Anna Leah. [2019-10-21: It was a lovely, energizing weekend, and my two friends deserve the greatest of thanks for hosting me.]
Below my translation of "Mr. Breeches," I've added a new section which discusses and criticizes another translation of the same short story.
Today, between laps at the local pool, I stopped to observe the women's water polo team. I'm a novice swimmer, and my form needs work. I thought I might glean something useful from watching athletes practice.
I was right! I noticed the tight, efficient movements with which they lifted their arms out of the water and shot them back in. I also noted the quick cadence of the players' strokes.
I applied the same economy and vigor of motion on my next lap, and was rewarded with an immediate increase in the speed and smoothness with which I moved through the water. I managed six or eight short, sharp strokes between breaths, instead of four sloppy ones, and I learned viscerally what swimmers and surfers mean by "pulling yourself through the water."
I'm pleased to announce that, thanks to one Nicole, the Sith Lord Challenge has received its 25th entry!
The Peerless Drongo
While traveling on the group tour which inspired "A Gift for Gadi", a friend and I spent a day stumbling around a foreign marketplace, our bellies stuffed and our eyes wide. We were totally out of place -- yet we were at ease. I invented a word to describe the feeling of wandering aimlessly without a care: "roaming around like a couple of drongos."
The word "drongo" doesn't have a pithy definition, but this poem (and its companion, "Drongo Explained") should help you get the idea. A hedonist, a bon vivant, a fish out of water, an artist, a scrounger, a drifter, or a jester might all be drongos.
Zim Pi
by
She's a Kaminoan and she's angry.
Don't be fooled: what appears to be a human nose is actually two Kaminoan nose slits, pierced with a nose ring.
Two Thirds of a Sonnet for Chance
Written in response to something nice that Chance, a new friend, said to me. This is "two thirds" of a sonnet because a real sonnet needs a third four-line verse before the ending couplet.
Has it occurred to you that you deserve To be called not just chill, but chill supreme? I have a softness in my heart for those Who follow through—who realize the dream Of living in a world where effort's fruits Are by most sincere comments justly met Much thanks, for 'tis upon my horn you toot Exchanging digits was a winning bet A sonnet, or two thirds of one, for thee With gratitude from You-Know-Who and me
Today I watched La Faim, an 11-minute animated film by Peter Foldes. The principal character eats and eats, and becomes grotesque. I recommend you try it, because the animation has a delightfully bizarre quality to it. The characters' bodies sort of morph into new positions. It's a bit hard to describe -- just watch the video.
Translating a Conference Slide from Google Developer Days, China 2019
While browsing the Web, I came across this blog post, which announced a new version of Google's cross-platform Flutter framework.
My attention was seized by the image at the top, because there were Chinese words on the presenter's slide! As a little exercise, I annotated the image with English translations of the Chinese terms.
[2020-05-03: The picture below may be broken. It's a known issue as I work to improve the site for better display on small screens.]
Poem for Cameron and Felix
Written late at night, after getting to know these two fellows at a meetup. If you join the second and third lines in each stanza, the meter becomes iambic tetrameter (save for the line beginning "Knowledge", which must be read as a trochee.)
Tonight I've met a pair of men Whom I hope I may Call new friends Two buds, pointed at PhDs Knowledge sets both their Means and ends Two dudes, united by one car Stick-shift - they're off! in Homeward flight Let's meet again, cognition crew To pass another Pleasant night
Here are two good reads about how and why people form mental models:
I've reorganized and updated the links page, on which I recommend websites, blogs, and projects which I think are worth your time. The page is (currently) organized into my favorites, things that are worth a long investigation, and things which are worth at least a passing glance. Let your eyes rove over the page, and try something which strikes your fancy.
Translating a War Banner
Introduction
As I watched a friend play the ninja videogame Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, I noticed an inscription on an enemy samurai's war banner. I wrote it down; now I'm translating it.
有死之荣，无生之辱
Source and Translation
A rough translation of just this phrase is:
Having the honor of death, not the shame of life
This quotation comes from the Wuzi, a Chinese military classic by Wu Qi, a Legalist philosopher who lived during the Warring States period. He was a military leader in Wei and, later, a politician in Chu.
The full quote, reproduced below, is a sentence which concludes the first passage of the section 论将 Lùnjiàng.
I've finished translating Mr. Breeches, a laugh-out-loud short story by Lao She. I hope you enjoy it.
Review of Transparent Things
I had not read any Nabokov before this book. From the first page, I knew I was in for something unique. "Wordplay" usually means puns and such, but this whole novella feels like "wordplay" in the literal sense of playing with words.
Review of A Poetry Handbook
This tiny book was underwhelming, but at least it taught me some terms for kinds of metric feet, and inspired me to read some Yeats.
Mr. Breeches
Introduction
This is my translation of 《马裤先生》, by Lao She. The first draft was published on 2019-10-02. The second draft was published on 2019-10-04 (with thanks to Chris Stasse for some minor improvements.) Portions are marked if I'm still wrestling with them. I worked from the story as published in 《老舍小说集》 ("Collected Fiction of Lao She," ed. Fang Wei, China Society Press, 2004).
Translation
At Beijing Station, the train still had not set off. The man sharing my compartment, in the upper bunk, wore plain glass spectacles, a Western-style green satin shirt, and breeches. In his shirt pocket was a small writing brush; on his feet were dark woolen boots. The man asked, in a friendly manner, "Did you also board at Beijing?"
Review of Dear Los Angeles
Review of Unsong