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About meArchives for February, 2004
Naeba Trip
We (a bunch of people from the company) went to Naeba over the weekend. Photos are available over here. It’s mid-February and we had late-April conditions. The temperature got up to about 15 degrees, and we were slushing through this heavy slurpee crap. My backpack filled up with everyone’s extra layers of fleece and gore-tex, and a couple liters of water, and chocolate, and on and on, and pretty soon I was getting in some good backcountry practice with maybe 10-12 kilos on my back . . .
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Translation sample
I have students who clamor for a look at “real translations.” They want to see how pros do it. So I put up a translation I did a few years back for a magazine that now lives only online. You can see the work right over here. Check it out if you’re interested in recent Japanese architecture.
DEAR SIR OR MADAM
DEAR SIR OR MADAM
THIS MISSIVE MAY SURPRISE YOU COMING AS IT DOES FROM A PERSON UNKNOWN TO YOU. MY NAME IS PETER DURFEE CURRENTLY IN TOKYO JAPAN, WHERE MY FATHER WAS IN CHARGE OF A FAMOUS AND EXCELLENT VOLLEYBALL PROGRAM IN THE PAST. WHILE MY FATHER WAS IN POWER HE RECEIVED THE CONSIDERABLE SUM OF NINE MILLION LITERS OF BEER (9,000,000.00) FOR SERVICES RENDERED TO HIS EXCELLENCY COMMANDER RAYMOND DOWNS. THIS BEER IS CURRENTLYUNAVAILABLE BEING HELD IN ESCROW IN A WAREHOUSE OF NORTH FUCHU REGION. I ASK YOUR HELP IN TRANSFERRING THIS BEER TO A SAFE THIRD NATION WHERE IT MAY BE DRUNK IN PEACE. IF YOU WILL BE SO KIND AS TO PROVIDE YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS AND FORWARD THE SUM OF FIVE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS ($500.00) TO BE USED AS DOWN PAYMENT ON A RENT-A-GARAGE TO STORE THIS BEER I WILL BE FOREVER IN YOUR DEBT KIND SIR OR MADAM AND YOU WILL BE ABLE TO RECEIVE SOME TWENTY PERCENT OF THIS BEER AS A FEE FOR SERVICES RENDERED, THE EQUIVALENT OF ONE MILLION EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND LITERS OF BEER (1,800,000.00) WILL BE TRANSFERRED TO YOUR PERSONAL POSSESSION TO DO WITH AS YOU PLEASE. I TRUST YOU WILL KEEP THIS MATTER IN UTMOST SECRECY AND I REMAIN YOUR MOST FAITHFUL CORRESPONDENT. MAY GOD BLESS YOU KIND SIR OR MADAM AND I LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR REPLY AT EARLIEST CONVENIENCE.
PETER THEODORE RUXPIN CUMMERBUND DURFEE III
TOKYO, JAPAN
Silly software firm
All right, so Panic is a company that makes some good stuff for OS X, in particular a program called Transmit, which I use for all my FTP adventures. But I was poking around the company site today and I found this silliness right here . . .
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Too late for this?
Well, just when I get this MT thing figured out and get ready to fix up the styles and start posting (yeah yeah, I’ll get around to it right after I finish doing this proofreading and correcting this homework and drinking this beer and taking my hardcore charged-bolt sorceress up against Nightmare Diablo) I learn that I have joined the league of “pretentious twats.” Doh. Read all about it if you want to.
In sort of connected news, I found that article because I am now playing with some software called NetNewsWire. It’s kind of handy; lets me grab headlines from a bunch of places and look at them in one little window. Adam let me know that Yahoo is rolling out this RSS feed viewing feature for my.yahoo.com, but if I can do the same in this program I probably won’t be changing my homepage address from google.co.jp to that . . . sorry Adam! Hope you don’t get fired because I show insufficient allegiance.
Here’s the software. Mac OS X only. It chokes hard on Japanese characters, which makes it halfway useful to me, but it is a nice little app.
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