Learning a new language

A co-worker of mine is recently learning how to write in hanja/kanji/Chinese however you might call it. And that gets me thinking.. how can I learn a new language without having to be in a different country where the language is spoken?

The obvious solution would be: go take a damn class. Yes! This is definitely the best way to start, however, it may not provide the degree of efficiency always. Internet becomes an essential source in this digital age for learning a new language. Yahoo is available in pretty much every languages and you can search and read many articles and blogs in any language.

Okay, now I got ways to learn how to read and write.. how about conversation? Luckily, California is the most diverse state in America (or is it New York?). You can make friends easily with a person to exchange your language learning experience.

To share my personal experience for a bit here.. English is my second language, I can speak English fluently (sort of) now all thanks to the help of my secret weapon...

POKEMON!!

I am not kidding you. I started learning English around the time when Pokemon first got popular here in U.S. It has been roughly 10 years ago.. Hard to imagine that Pokemon has been popular all this time. I attended E.S.L. courses in school during the day and after school it is pokemon all the way for me. At the time, it is a cartoon with interesting storyline. The series uses simple English since the targeted audience is mainly kids. Voice actors spoke at a decent speed which helped training my listening skill and throws me a few new vocabularies occasionally. I think real reason why pokemon works for me is just simply the fact that it is interesting to me. If you are learning a new language, finding something interesting that has association to the language you wish to learn would benefit your learning experience greatly.

So, I decide to pick a familiar face this time around.

Lean Dizon

She is a Eurasian model who started off as a racing model and became really popular over the years. Here is some more of her work.

[Once again, the photo is removed. Sorry Luke.]

Sony Ericsson FTW

YES! I got my Sony Ericsson K660 finally last Friday. The phone is shipped from Hong Kong and I got the phone within 2 days. I also went to Death Valley during the weekend to appreciate the wonder of mother nature and also live the weekend without any internet connection. (believe me, it's not easy.) Before I headed for Death Valley, many people asked me what is there to see in Death Valley? Isn't it just desert? Well, visiting the nation's largest national park, I would say yes, it is desert. However, desert has its own "spectacularity" as well.

Recently, I had to write a couple of short scripts in Perl having to do with single letter option. While doing doing some quick research, I found that there is a module that would make single letter option like cake... wait.. moar liek c0k3! It is called Getopt::Std. This module provides two subroutines getopt and getopts (to me, you can just one of the two.. they are pretty much the same.) This is how you use it:

for example, you are writing a program that takes in the 2 options: -v for verbose and -u for update. e.g. ./krazyScript.pl -uv. All you have to do is following.

getopt('vu'); #yes this is it.

This subroutine will create set $opt_v and $opt_u both to value 1 if the letter is specified. There are actually other usages for the getopt() and you can read more from here.

Speaking of which (I am not sure what this which refers to), after watching several Japanese drama a while ago, I decide to select this cute Japanese actress as my girl of the day. Her name is Maki Horikita. She played the role of main female character in many well known drama such as "Nobuta wo produce" (wild boar makeover would be like the Japanese translation) and "Kurosaki." (black crow). Both shows are wonderful, especially Nobuta! Definitely worth watching.

Billie Jean

I "am" purchasing a brand new Sony Ericsson K660 cellular phone since my old samsung D600's battery is about to reach its end. I have had the same samsung phone for more than 2 years now and I cannot say I am too happy with it because of its crappy battery life. It is certainly one of the first phone to offer a 2 megapixel camera and its function is definitely more than I asked for, however, I "resent" (yes! it is the word that I want to use) charging my phone everyday.

Recently I have been asked how often I change my phone. Some people change their phone every 6 months or so, some use the same phone for over 5-6 years. I have had 6 cellular phones in my life thus far since the nokia 3390 era. A simple math calculation everyone can do would derive the conclusion that cell phone is not an negligible environmental threat. I have done a number of research papers on technological gadgets waste in my bachelor social and computing course and there is still not a widely spread solution to remedy/reduce this issue in the U.S. I did a quick google news search and I found this. As part of my daily routine, I browed to dannychoo.com (one of my favorite otaku hobbie site. Not that I am into anime girl model and stuff :P) and it points me to this article. It is an article about these cellular phone recycle bin and how it is being distributed across 6 electronics chain stores. To me, that may not be an effective solution but I agree it is an important initiative that we may want to take (an actualized plan that is convenient). I may be biased on how far we have achieved in the U.S. since I have not been following this issue continuously but I just decide to write my P.O.V. on here.

Anywayz, just to get some eye candy in.

Her name is Rui Kiriyama and you can go to her blog here to read up more about her.

[photo removed for the sake of my life safety]

Perl $^I trickery

sample code below:

$^I = ".bak";
@ARGV = "sample";
while (<>)
{
s/pattern_to_be_changed/pattern_to_replace/;
print;
}

what this code would do is that it would create a file called sample.bak which is a backup copy of the file named sample in the current directory. Then, it will do a string replace to sample.

neat huh? (for those of you who didn't know this)

This is especially handy when manipulating some program configuration file.
That's my 2 cents of the day.

P.S.
kudos to OtakuPinoy for the help he has given me today. OtakuPinoy, if you are reading this, you know you da man.

Statement of Purpose

This blog will serve as a recording device of my daily/weekly find of interesting things I may encounter in life. However, what "things" do I deem interesting? I am a software engineer(i kno this sounds emo) and I am interested in video games(pc, consoles alike), Japanese anime, and most importantly, software development (cough cough..)

So there you have it. This blogs will be dedicated to cover topics which I mentioned above and beyond.

So what does code kumi mean? You may go look up kumi in google but the answer lies much much.. shallower.