On gunning them down, more often than usual.

So over the past few weeks (month?) I've sort of become a fixture at Time Crisis 3 in Timezone Trinoma. It's my new therapy game of preference, partly because the House of the Dead almost always has broken guns and I suck at that samurai sword game. (And I don't play Time Crisis 4 because I almost always die at the multi-screen... battle... whatdoyoucallit.) @_@ It's all fun except I might be developing an addiction, you know? Like there are those days... when I just HAVE to have a go at it. Like yesterday. And last Thursday. And... yeah. <_<;

Having said all this I have to admit that I still FAIL!!! T____T Can't even make it past Stage 2 (hey Stage 2, not Area 2).

So that, AND I've gotten hooked on Mafia Wars. Me and everyone else in the office. If you haven't heard about it, it's this strategy game on Facebook that's extremely easy to get hooked on. I guess it's kind of my replacement for Warbook xD except I was A LOT more hooked on Warbook back then.

The thing is, I'm sort of noticing a trend in my areas of interests.

...WHICH ISN'T TO SAY IT CONCERNS ME. X'D Ahahaha. I don't think I'll be switching to playing UFO Catcher anytime soon.

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As some of you guys may have heard by now, my mom came back from her vacation to Japan last Monday. She brought me two magazines filled with JE-boyband goodness (and she knows who Johnny Kitagawa is now, moohahaha xDDD), rice crackers (!), and a whole bunch of clothes from my sister. But special attention must be given to the two pairs of knee-high boots that my sister already sent me. xDDD After much consideration, I've decided that I LIKE THEM and I don't care if they are completely not appropriate for the climate, I am going to find a way to wear them. So hopefully it stays cold until February. xD

Pictures to follow. :D

Things to read, and stuff.

Friday was awesome. The company let us take half the day off for [company sponsored!] book shopping. We were given an allowance of 1,500 Php per employee/month, on the condition that we choose books that will help us with our writing. Sweet deal.

I'm not even halfway through my allowance yet. I only got this:

Nyaarrr. xDDD It's a parody book of the everyday written crap that we read (ads, missives, etc). It's hilarious. But wish me luck explaining the title when the big boss sees it. But hey, it's valid, I think I can get a lot of ideas from the books. Besides: 'The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector. " (Ernest Hemingway). Hah. xD

And on the subject of my writing, I wonder if I should be worried. My writing/creative process has been very... I don't know how to describe it, free-spirited(?) lately. xD It's a good thing company policy tolerates me going up to the office loft, and lying down to write. Sometimes even taking a nap. My concern is that I may be going a little too far with taking the path of least resistance? :P Ohoho.

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Meg just got a DSLR. And while just a month ago, I was all like, "Meh, I won't get one until I really know how to take pictures", now my SLR lust has come to the forefront. @___@ I hope I can stave it off until January. December is not a good month for taking a vow of poverty.

Besides, my need for a new computer is a lot more pressing. I figure the old clunker only has a few months of survival left in it. So... it's a matter of need vs. want. Let's see how well the (hard-earned! I worked hard~) resources flow in toward the end of the year. xD

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I didn't previously know there was an Advanced Photoshop magazine. I got one last Friday. It's pretty kickass, it even comes with a CD of brushes, shapes, and textures. And the tutorials are pretty wicked, I'll be glad to learn half of them.

Step away from the thesaurus.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

So now there's a study supporting something that I've believed in for a while: that unnecessarily using big words and complicated language just makes you sound dumb.

The researcher, Daniel Oppenheimer, gathered a selection of writing samples--some written in normal, simple language, and others modified to use overly complex language and bigger words. Then these were handed to students to a group of evaluators. Guess what: the more complex and flowery the language of the sample, the less intelligent the students perceived its author to be.

It's not really that surprising when you think about it. It's true, having a large vocabulary can indicate that a person is knowledgeable. But the unnecessary use of big words and difficult language--which, let's face it, a lot of people do for the sake of sounding important or intelligent--can sacrifice fluency and clarity. Basically, it doesn't matter how impressive you think your two-dollar words are--if you cram them in it to the point that the language becomes unnatural and unclear, then you're doing it wrong. (“The chief virtue that language can have is clarity.” – Hippocrates)

There's a lot more to be said about being able to express complex ideas in simple language, not the other way around.

And personally, really, I think using big words to sound impressive is just lame. It always just sounds like you're really, really trying. xD

Here's a blog entry that briefly explains Oppenheimer's study (which is titled "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly". LOL.); and here's the actual study in PDF.

Question? - My Way

Remember when I didn't have a stable job yet and I felt like crap and didn't know what I was gonna do next then I discovered Question's song "Head Banging Boogie" and the lyrics were exactly what I needed that time?

*breathe*

Yeah well they did it again. :D This time Yone wrote the song. Excerpts:

You can get the lyrics (Kanji, Romaji, English trans) here. But here, the parts that I really love:

kono yo wa fuan darake no sekai de
wakaranai koto demo wakari takumonai yo
oikake takumonai monow o
oikake saserareru no mo tsurai desho?
This world is a world full of anxiety
and the things I don't understand,
I don't even want to understand them.
Isn't it also painful how they can make you chase
after something that you don't even want to chase?

and this

nandaka warawareteru ki ga shiteru no
honto chiisana kono machi de mieru daro ?
Somehow I feel like I'm being laughed at
In this really small town. Doesn't it seem like that?

and this, my absolute favorite part

itsu datte jibun rashiku, yaritakute
yarubeki koto wo yaru dake dakara
Because whenever I'm myself, the things I want to do,
the things I should do, I just do them.

And, give it a listen:


[flail] I've said it before and I'll say it again. QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? QUESTION? I LOVE THIS BAND SO MUCH. x3 ♥ YONEMUU~!!! [/flail]

I know there are gonna be people out there who can't get past the Engrish, but... bah, your loss. xD Haha. Anyway... I'm probably reposting this everywhere. I have a loooong recap post to write about everything that happened in November (spoiler: NOVEMBER WAS BAD), but I'll save that for later.

Don't do it for the karma.

First things first: Plurk is awesome.

I know I've joined a lot of social networks* (both out of boredom and for my sideline writing gig), but of the ones that I actually use, Plurk is the one I've recently gotten hooked on. It's got a lot going for it--it's simple, it runs on interactivity, and it loads fast (no clutter). And it's just plain fun.

But of course, it has a dark side. Plurk runs on a karma system, which basically rewards activity--posting, responding to other people's plurks, and updating your profile. As your karma points go up, you get to go up certain levels (the stage of creation, enlightenment, nirvana, et cetera), unlock exclusive emoticons, et cetera. What makes this the dark side?

The people who do it for the karma.

See, it feels kinda nice to notice your karma points go up, but I guess some people are just really... driven. LOL. For these people, the desire to increase their karma points (and level up faster than you), is tremendous. Naturally, they resort to--well I don't know what it's really called--spam-bomb? Plurk-spam? Plurk...bomb? xDDD;

Whatever. They just post way too frigging often. And you can tell they're just doing it for the points. Why is this such a bad thing? Because it's just plain lame. Well, if these people are in your friends list, they will clutter up your timeline and bump back the plurks of your other friends. Ah, and every couple of minutes, you'll get an update on what they're thinking, or doing, or thinking of doing, looking at, sitting on, smelling. Even if it's not the least bit interesting anymore. (Because really, unless you're MacGyver, there's little chance that you're doing something interesting like, thirty times throughout a day.) It makes the whole thing just a little bit less fun. Also, it's lame.

The good news is that you can choose to un-follow these friends--you don't have to take them off your friends list, you just don't get their plurks on your timeline. That'll lower their karma a little. This is actually Plurk's way of discouraging people from over-posting. But it's hard to tell if this is effective (since a lot of people still do it). Besides, un-following people comes with a slight feeling of guilt, as though you're being mean. ;~; I myself have taken some people off my timeline. Because I just felt like being mean. :(

Some folks around the net have remarked that the karma system should be improved, so that the quality of the plurks matter too, not just the frequency. (I'm pretty sure the responses to your plurks are taken into account too. I guess that helps a little.) I'm too much of a right-brainer to try to figure out how it could be improved, but I'll welcome anything that would make the site even more fun.

By the way, I don't spam, so add me? xD

*A lot. Including sites you've probably never even heard of: sosauce, virb, meevee, the sixty one.

Update.

Two things:

Point #1 - My mom's in Japan. She'll be there till January. I'm glad she finally got to go, but... I miss her already. And timing, really--would've been nice to have her around considering all the crap that's been going on lately.

Which by the way brings us to Point #2 - A lot of crap has been going on lately. None of which I plan to explain here. This blog is not for drama.

Moving on--if you're not on my Multiply, you probably don't know that I've been doing Project 365. Basically, it's a commitment to take one photo a day for 365 days--to basically document your life for a year. It's a healthy exercise in forcing yourself to do something interesting (trans: photo op worthy xD) every single day. Or at least be creative with the usual things around you.

Here's a sampling of what I have so far. As you can see I am not that good a photographer nor that interesting a person xDDD but I'm having fun with it. Hopefully I fulfill the commitment for an entire year (LOLLLLL).

You can check out my Flickr photo set here.

On other matters of net-whoring, I'm on PLURK! Add me plskthxbai. :D

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

So the other day I was using Wikipedia's random article feature (to get topics for work), and I got this:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Naturally, my inital reaction was, what the fuck with all the buffaloes. But I read the rest of the wiki page, and it said that that long unintelligible string of buffalo is actually a grammatically correct sentence.

Needless to say, I was like "!?!??" My co-worker and I were like, no seriously, how the fuck is that a sentence? But after a while, I got it. It is a grammatically sound sentence, and it makes sense. First, you have to take note of the usages of the word buffalo: a modifier (Buffalo, New York), a noun (buffalo the animal), and a verb (to buffalo: to intimidate).

So in this sentence, "Buffalo buffalo" is a noun phrase that means "buffalo (the animals) from Buffalo (New York)". The next three words actually modify that phrase. We have:

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo..."

which means, the Buffalo from buffalo that are buffaloed by buffalo from Buffalo.

STILL WITH ME? Let's move on. Talking about those buffalo, we proceed with the rest of the sentence:

"...buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

So the aforementioned Buffalo buffalo, who are buffaloed by Buffalo buffalo, also buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

To make it clearer:

The Buffalo buffalo that Buffalo buffalo buffalo likewise buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

or

The Buffalo buffalo which are buffaloed by Buffalo buffalo also buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

This entry is lovingly dedicated to my grammar Nazi friends~. ♥ :3

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An announcement of sorts: I think I'll do Project 365. :D