I carved a pumpkin last night. Jodi will probably do hers tonight. Pictures forthcoming.

Knitting, digital photography, Iceland... (sorry Julie ☺) I predict the next hipster "thing" will be giving their kids Irish names. Check out this Gaelic sports team roster:

Paddy Clerkin, Seán Brady, Eoin Clerkin, Eanna O`Malley, Liam Burns, Ciaran Wilson, Conor Casselly, Colm Davis, Brian McGarry (capt), Podge Fluery, Colm Conlon, Joey Gormley, Eamon O`Connor, Ronan Brady, Seán Fox. Subs Cian McBride for O`Connor, Eoghan Maloney for Casselly,

And then maybe hurling ^(Youtube) to go with it (but that's a stretch).

Oh man, I had this big entry written up where I translated this BBS post appraising each kind of seat in Shanghai buses and then I clicked a link and Firefox's CPU usage shot up to 100% so I had to kill it. Blogger didn't save what I had written (Google really should bring GMail's auto-save functionality over to Blogger, but then sometimes Google can be retarded). Maybe I'll translate it later.

My morning routine:

1. Turn off the alarm and sleep another 20-30 minutes.
2. Roll out of bed and into the bathroom, wipe-and-shine sink and toilet.
3. Take a shower, brush my teeth, comb my hair.
4. Get dressed.
5. Organize textbooks, folders, other items in my backpack.
6. Put on shoes and coat, brush hair lightly.
7. Say goodbye to Jodi.
8. Grab keys and breakfast (milk and bun).
9. Walk to the metro station.

My nightly routine:

1. Cursorily clean up the living room and study.
2. Check and re-fill Poopy's chinchilla feed.
3. Feed the fish and check on Chris, our turtle.
4. Wash my hands, face, and brush my teeth.
5. Lay out tomorrow's clothes and organize things for next morning.
6. Go to bed with a book.

Jodi's mom has come to live with us for a few months. She's a super lady, and for once our house is relatively clean. We're pretty happy.

Doing translation work is so cool. Today I was doing some volunteer work for the upcoming CNBloggercon, and I noticed that the venue had changed because another conference was conflicting with the original site (which was waaaay out in the boonies anyway). The conference is now slated to be held at Zhejiang University, in the Xixi (West Creek) campus's 邵逸夫科技馆. At first I prepared to translate that as "Shao Yifu Science & Technology Center", but then I became curious as to whether the place had an English name already. So I started Googling around, and I was getting all sorts of hospitals, academic halls and other buildings names after a certain "Shaw Run Run". A quick trip to Wikipedia and lo and behold, it turns out Sir Shaw Run Run is a philanthropically inclined "Hong Kong media mogul", specifically one of the prodigious Shaw Brothers of Disciples of the 36th Chamber, Kid With The Golden Arm, Mad Monkey Kung Fu, Shaolin Vs Wu-Tang and Shaolin Executioner (Hi Dave!)-fame.

Crazy.

Yesterday I was inspired by Satorialist and a love for my wife to dress up for our date. I wore my vintage Second World War wool army pants (finally getting cool enough), a black T-shirt from UNIQLO, and a white cotton short-sleeved button-up pilot's shirt from the Salvation Army store in Fullerton, top two buttons and bottom button undone. The shoes weren't the best match (brown leather), but I still looked pretty sharp, I think.

We met in front of the Xujiahui 太平洋, went out for boiled chicken at a 振鼎鸡 clone, ate dessert at Häagen-Dazs, and saw a Japanese movie about dogs because the last showing of 好奇害死猫 had already finished.

Things I Want To Teach My Daughter Or Son.

An interesting, China related news bit: white-collar fashion-enthusiasts in Shanghai are upset that the spring-summer 2007 Louis-Vitton bags are exactly like those plaid red-blue-white bags you see farmers lugging around at Shanghai Railway Station as they head home from a visit to the city.

The Louis Vitton website is done in Flash and therefore not directly linkable, so look for the "Women's Spring-Summer 2007 Fashion Show" and click on it.

英译汉

Kitsch “刻意趣” p. 47 Beijing Grunge “北京滚乱取” p. 57 dandy “单屌” p.62 bloomsbury “不伦斯不里” p.62 (应为Bloomsbury)

Lately I've been so busy with school: teaching three different classes, coordinating with CY to run the Math Club, and arranging for Astronomy Club coursework and learning enough about the school telescope and telescopes in general to set up a observation sessions on certain Saturday nights.

One thing that helps me to stay sane is following the tips and tricks that come up on the AP Central website's AP Statistic teachers' mailing list. One hot topic right now is guessing when the US population total (whatever that means) will roll over to 300 million. You can track the population's progress at the US Census' website. Current guesses say sometime during the next 12 hours.

On Saturday night I stayed late after the observatory run to answer a student e-mail, and so I took some low ISO, long-exposure night pics of the school:

One the same night I also snapped a shot out of our apartment building.

A brutally honest and true-all-over-China bullet point from the latest school Adcom (the committee at the school with the most power-packed punch) meeting minutes:

Heat in the gym is not practical or possible because the walls are too thin to hold the heat.

Best John-Stewart imitation: The walls! They're too thin! It's not that "cold is good for you," folks! It's that the builders were too lazy/cheap to build you good walls! And then nobody is willing to admit it...

Speaking Shanghainese is hard. I ended up romanizing one character as "szaou" (in my own weird Spanish-English-Chinese romanization system).

If you (like a lot of people) are wondering why I haven't been posting much lately, it's because I've been busy doing stuff like this:

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and

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091456485669234603486104543266482133936072602491412737245870066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185480744623799627495673518857527248912279381830119491298336733624406566430860213949463952247371907021798609437027705392171762931767523846748184676694051320005681271452635608277857713427577896091736371787214684409012249534301465495853710507922796892589235420199561121290219608640344181598136297747713099605187072113499999983729780499510597317328160963185950244594553469083026425223082533446850352619311881710100031378387528865875332083814206171776691473035982534904287554687311595628638823537875937519577818577805321712268066130019278766111959092164201988

That's sixth grade math. (hooray for bc)

Too busy to go to Ikea? Let KEA do the work for you!

The newsgroup for Chinese Bloggercon organizers is hosting one discussion on whether the "yearbook" of the conference will need an official permit to be published, something being called a "准印证" or "内部刊号". I didn't realize that things as simple as glorified conference brochures need official government approval.

Good news! (Bad news.)

Maybe I'm feeling a little grumpy today from too much sleep, but here's a couple things I want to point out.

First off I applaud fighting injustice and all, but you should really know what your fighting against and make sure it's not a straw man of somebody else's creation before joining causes like boycotting the Beijing Olympics. Half of the claims in that e-mail I linked are equally applicable to any number of other developed and non-developed countries in the world today, and the other half are just ludicrous or false.

Second, saving Lucky is an equally silly cause. He's a *cat*. Next time you pass a beggar on the road or subway, think about how much money you're donating to a *cat*.

Has Bingfeng been blocked?