And therefore probably typed very slowly. I've worked through a few rows of letters, and although I'm still really pokey while I type, at least it's not all hunt-and-peck. Some keys are, but only the ones I've not worked with. What's curious is that my sudden loss of skill seems to be limiting my vocabulary somewhat.
I got up at a decent hour, but not much has been done today. I'm planning on editing a chapter of that stupid Fictionpress story, and maybe, maybe writing another chapter. Probably not today. I'll take one more day to learn this layout.
... aaaannnd, patience vanishes. Ta!
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
Nearly Forgot!
It's surprisingly hard to come up with thing to ramble about, when one's put under pressure. Could that sentence phrasing be more british-sounding, I wonder? At any rate, I think maybe I did something today... well, school, including Latin, what with declensions and all.
Latin has the most declensions I've seen in any language, what with nouns typically declining not only according to number but to five different cases -- though it should be noted that often in either plural or singular or both the Dative and Ablative cases are combined. It's a little scary when you first look at it, but when you think about it, English declines according to a lot of those cases too, but only with our pronouns.
A case and all of the fancy names for them (Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative and Ablative) is really just a fancy linguistics term for what a noun does in a sentence. A noun in the Nominative case is just a pretty way of saying the Subject of a sentence. Genitive is talking about possessives ("Joe's" is in the Genitive case), Dative speaks of an Indirect Object in a sentence, Accusative the Direct Object, and Ablative is Object of the Preposition. In English we decline some of our pronouns according to some of these cases. "I" is in the Nominative case, "mine" or "my" is for Genitive, and "me" is for the rest. Pretty much every English noun declines to Genitive case, and almost all decline according to number (words like "sheep" and "moose" and "fish" being the exceptions). At least Latin's regular about it.
There are three declensions in Latin, with five cases and singular and plural each. I suppose that makes a total of 30 individual endings to memorize, though that doesn't take into account the cases that get combined in one declension or another.
Um, what else did I do today? I got a piano lesson, and my British diction is likely from listening to quite a bit of Jane Austen lately. I got a little Python studied... Oh! I also just now started working on learning a Dvorak keyboard layout. I'm not typing this blog post in it, but they say that typing with Dvorak is much faster than with Qwerty. We'll see. It is learning a new layout, but my Neo supports it, and it's easy to change the layout on a computer, so... We'll see.
Latin has the most declensions I've seen in any language, what with nouns typically declining not only according to number but to five different cases -- though it should be noted that often in either plural or singular or both the Dative and Ablative cases are combined. It's a little scary when you first look at it, but when you think about it, English declines according to a lot of those cases too, but only with our pronouns.
A case and all of the fancy names for them (Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative and Ablative) is really just a fancy linguistics term for what a noun does in a sentence. A noun in the Nominative case is just a pretty way of saying the Subject of a sentence. Genitive is talking about possessives ("Joe's" is in the Genitive case), Dative speaks of an Indirect Object in a sentence, Accusative the Direct Object, and Ablative is Object of the Preposition. In English we decline some of our pronouns according to some of these cases. "I" is in the Nominative case, "mine" or "my" is for Genitive, and "me" is for the rest. Pretty much every English noun declines to Genitive case, and almost all decline according to number (words like "sheep" and "moose" and "fish" being the exceptions). At least Latin's regular about it.
There are three declensions in Latin, with five cases and singular and plural each. I suppose that makes a total of 30 individual endings to memorize, though that doesn't take into account the cases that get combined in one declension or another.
Um, what else did I do today? I got a piano lesson, and my British diction is likely from listening to quite a bit of Jane Austen lately. I got a little Python studied... Oh! I also just now started working on learning a Dvorak keyboard layout. I'm not typing this blog post in it, but they say that typing with Dvorak is much faster than with Qwerty. We'll see. It is learning a new layout, but my Neo supports it, and it's easy to change the layout on a computer, so... We'll see.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Um... Hm.
I had such a nice long post yesterday, I don't really know how I'll live up to it now. Maybe it'll help if I pause my audiobook. Ok, well... my desktop Ubuntu partition works properly now, now that I've reloaded the whole OS. At least nothing happened to Windows when I was making big changes. It's not that my stuff isn't backed up -- well, I'd lost a few weeks of work on Minecraft, but I suppose I'd get over that. Better than losing a story -- it's just that loading Windows takes FOR-EV-ER, and all in all I'd rather not have to do that again. First the OS itself. Then the drivers for every little thing. Plus all my applications and wallpapers and stuff again. Plus removing all the junkware that riddles those drivers and the OS. At least Ubuntu isn't quite so bad. I have a few apps to download, but pretty much everything I want is available from a single spot -- the Ubuntu Software Center, since I'm such a n00b.
Anyway, I feel I should spend some time on the specific torture of loading an OS. We'll skip the sinking feeling of finding out your computer is basically dead and needs to be wiped and re-installed with everything, the futile attempts to save your data, and move on the resignation and defeat as you put in that boot CD. You've probably put it in before for some attempts at system repair, but to no avail. So you go and boot from this CD, and with a tear perhaps finding its way down your cheek, you press the key telling it to format the drive and install Windows.
First you get to decide the partitioning of the drive. If you're like most people, you just let it take all the space it wants. You don't care much right now. It partitions and wipes the drive, and then moves on to asking you information about time zone and naming the computer and whatnot. Then it installs some stuff. Then another question will pop up, and it won't go anywhere until you answer it. Then it goes some more... and then more options to decide upon, so on and so forth, each of these steps taking somewhere from 10 to 45 minutes, but you can never remember which are quick and which aren't, so you have to stay by the computer, checking on it, ALL DAY until the dang thing is finally installed.
Then you look at your fresh new desktop wallpaper, and you promptly get assaulted by the update screen, particularly if we're talking about Windows. Ok, it's got a lot of updates to install, of course. Whatever. Security and whatnot first.
Speaking of... best to get rid of IE as fast as possible. You nearly retch as you open it, but only to download Firefox or Google Chrome or something else that's faster and more secure. After that's done you start downloading your favorite utilities and programs and whatnot, sure that you're never going to remember all of them. You need to download your anti-virus software again, hoping IE didn't already kill you without it. Drivers start going into drives, and you end up restarting the computer multiple times that day. If you managed to keep your files backed up, those have to go back on too.
All in all, it takes all stinking day to get a computer to at least a semblance of what it was before you wiped it. For weeks -- months even -- you'll be trying to find files and programs that you forgot to put back on there. For some reason your browser bookmarks never transfer over right, whatever you do. It's like moving into an almost-new house that looks exactly like your old one, except the paint's different. You paint the walls, get your lights back on. A few light switches got moved around, and when you're unpacking all of your stuff you'll never get it quite in the same place as before. You'll be looking for things for months until you finally get used to where things are again. By that time, you may have to move to another almost-new, empty house.
Computers fail. I love 'em.
Anyway, I feel I should spend some time on the specific torture of loading an OS. We'll skip the sinking feeling of finding out your computer is basically dead and needs to be wiped and re-installed with everything, the futile attempts to save your data, and move on the resignation and defeat as you put in that boot CD. You've probably put it in before for some attempts at system repair, but to no avail. So you go and boot from this CD, and with a tear perhaps finding its way down your cheek, you press the key telling it to format the drive and install Windows.
First you get to decide the partitioning of the drive. If you're like most people, you just let it take all the space it wants. You don't care much right now. It partitions and wipes the drive, and then moves on to asking you information about time zone and naming the computer and whatnot. Then it installs some stuff. Then another question will pop up, and it won't go anywhere until you answer it. Then it goes some more... and then more options to decide upon, so on and so forth, each of these steps taking somewhere from 10 to 45 minutes, but you can never remember which are quick and which aren't, so you have to stay by the computer, checking on it, ALL DAY until the dang thing is finally installed.
Then you look at your fresh new desktop wallpaper, and you promptly get assaulted by the update screen, particularly if we're talking about Windows. Ok, it's got a lot of updates to install, of course. Whatever. Security and whatnot first.
Speaking of... best to get rid of IE as fast as possible. You nearly retch as you open it, but only to download Firefox or Google Chrome or something else that's faster and more secure. After that's done you start downloading your favorite utilities and programs and whatnot, sure that you're never going to remember all of them. You need to download your anti-virus software again, hoping IE didn't already kill you without it. Drivers start going into drives, and you end up restarting the computer multiple times that day. If you managed to keep your files backed up, those have to go back on too.
All in all, it takes all stinking day to get a computer to at least a semblance of what it was before you wiped it. For weeks -- months even -- you'll be trying to find files and programs that you forgot to put back on there. For some reason your browser bookmarks never transfer over right, whatever you do. It's like moving into an almost-new house that looks exactly like your old one, except the paint's different. You paint the walls, get your lights back on. A few light switches got moved around, and when you're unpacking all of your stuff you'll never get it quite in the same place as before. You'll be looking for things for months until you finally get used to where things are again. By that time, you may have to move to another almost-new, empty house.
Computers fail. I love 'em.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Programming Languages
Uhm... I think I've decided to learn one. It might be fun, right? Wait, I tried this last year, for a little while. I don't think I blogged about it though. It was like a week before my Weekend of Insanity noveling bit, and I was working on learning Python. Everything was happy, until I wanted to download this program for programming called Pygame. Well, at the time (I haven't checked lately) it didn't have a good edition for the Windows I was using. It did for Ubuntu, though. Ok! I'd put Ubuntu Linux on a computer before, it was easy as pie. The thing was happy to do all the work for you. I did that, and my little netbook was on a dual-boot for a while. I started noticing, though, that the Linux portion didn't always start for me. I do a little research, and I think I find a solution. I end up accidentally wiping my hard drive, right before I had to write 30k in a weekend.
I was a little to distraught and busy to mess with Python for a while, and by the time my computer was working happily again (thanks to my awesome mother, who's now fixed at least two more computers than she's broken!), I'd totally forgotten about the thing. I only recently got reminded again, and I figure it's a good way to to get more familiar with Linux, so I'm learning to program there. Yay!
So far not much exciting stuff to report, just learning some of the basics again. Except I haven't logged on to Ubuntu in months, and now that I just updated it, it won't boot. Again. I think this is a different problem than before, though. Instead of giving me an interminable blank screen, this just boots me out to the BIOS again and again and again. Grar. I'll work on it later. Maybe. I really love the idea of Linux, it's just actually getting it to work for me isn't working out. When I do get it to work for me, I can't get it to talk to the other computers on the network, or even use a printer properly. Flash is always slow to update, so I can go forever without being able to access anything that runs with Flash. I'm probably just too much of an idiot to get it to work (anyone out there know what a "tarball" is? It seems like I need that explained to me every single time, and I still can't get one to unzip or unpack or whatever for me right).
Whatever. Latin goes fine, I wrote a little bit on my Fictionpress story yesterday, maybe I'll do some more today. I should at least upload a chapter. If I end up with 30 chapters (pretty reasonable, methinks), I need to be uploading two chapters a week to finish up on time. I'm still getting into the swing of school. Someday I'll get up early again. That'll be nice. Particularly on Mondays. Long post. Disconnected thoughts. Going away now.
I was a little to distraught and busy to mess with Python for a while, and by the time my computer was working happily again (thanks to my awesome mother, who's now fixed at least two more computers than she's broken!), I'd totally forgotten about the thing. I only recently got reminded again, and I figure it's a good way to to get more familiar with Linux, so I'm learning to program there. Yay!
So far not much exciting stuff to report, just learning some of the basics again. Except I haven't logged on to Ubuntu in months, and now that I just updated it, it won't boot. Again. I think this is a different problem than before, though. Instead of giving me an interminable blank screen, this just boots me out to the BIOS again and again and again. Grar. I'll work on it later. Maybe. I really love the idea of Linux, it's just actually getting it to work for me isn't working out. When I do get it to work for me, I can't get it to talk to the other computers on the network, or even use a printer properly. Flash is always slow to update, so I can go forever without being able to access anything that runs with Flash. I'm probably just too much of an idiot to get it to work (anyone out there know what a "tarball" is? It seems like I need that explained to me every single time, and I still can't get one to unzip or unpack or whatever for me right).
Whatever. Latin goes fine, I wrote a little bit on my Fictionpress story yesterday, maybe I'll do some more today. I should at least upload a chapter. If I end up with 30 chapters (pretty reasonable, methinks), I need to be uploading two chapters a week to finish up on time. I'm still getting into the swing of school. Someday I'll get up early again. That'll be nice. Particularly on Mondays. Long post. Disconnected thoughts. Going away now.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Tuesdays Aren't Busy
Not really, anyway. It's kind of nice. If I can still wrap up pretty much all of my school in the morning (like I did today, except for my reading assignment), then that leaves all afternoon for Minecraft and other such non-school related activities. My reading is covered too: for the next month I'm assigned Emma, by Jane Austen. She's a good writer, but I've found with most of my school books this year that good though they may be, I have a hard time reading large chunks of them at once, like I'm supposed to. I've not finished a lot of books this year just because I don't want to fall so behind. I'll just skip it, rather than read eight chapters a day. Anyway, this time I went on Librivox.org and downloaded Emma as an audiobook. I don't usually get audiobooks or podcasts listened to, since I'm usually doing something that requires though that distracts from what's going on in the story. If I'm going to have to just sit and listen, I may as well just read the book. That was before I was playing Minecraft xD now I'm listening to it while I play, since while the game can require some thought, it's not in words or anything like that, as if I was doing math or science or anything like that. I can kind of go on autopilot. If I get this book finished early, maybe I'll download one of the books I'd skipped before and see about listening to it. I gave up early on Gulliver's Travels, and although I enjoyed Three Men in a Boat, I didn't finish that one either. I mostly finished Frankenstein, and it was good, but I think I ended up skipping that last bit. I should find out how that ends, I suppose.
Unfortunately I can't play Minecraft while editing or blogging or writing. It's more a problem with not having enough fingers as my attention. Although editing and writing would be bad to do with only half my brain on them. Blogging, eh, who's gonna notice?
Unfortunately I can't play Minecraft while editing or blogging or writing. It's more a problem with not having enough fingers as my attention. Although editing and writing would be bad to do with only half my brain on them. Blogging, eh, who's gonna notice?
Monday, January 3, 2011
Mondays are Busy
I wish they weren't quite so. Oh well. I almost shouldn't be wasting time blogging, but since I did say I would blog every day but Sunday, I might as well. I've got to get my school done this morning, before a friend comes over at 1:30 for a piano lesson. She won't have anyone to pick her up until 5ish, and then at 6:30 I'm off to small group Bible study. No Minecraft, then, I imagine. Oh well. I managed to stay off it yesterday, I'll manage another day.
I just hope I don't have a hard time slipping back into my schoolwork. Taking time off never was very good for my brain when I came back. At least Latin should be at least a little fresh. I'll need to take some notes in there, probably nothing too work-intensive. Hopefully Physics is as little. I really don't want to spend a ton of time on it.
If I play my cards right, maybe I can play a little Minecraft...
I just hope I don't have a hard time slipping back into my schoolwork. Taking time off never was very good for my brain when I came back. At least Latin should be at least a little fresh. I'll need to take some notes in there, probably nothing too work-intensive. Hopefully Physics is as little. I really don't want to spend a ton of time on it.
If I play my cards right, maybe I can play a little Minecraft...
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Merry New Year!
Obligatory wishings of wealth and happiness go here.
Anyway, this month is NaBloPoMo, which means I post every day this month. Except Sundays. I'm going to try and keep Sundays as electronic-free as possible. Anyway, six days a week you should be hearing from me, and hopefully that's long enough to get me in the habit of writing something every day or so for a while.
What else do I have, BFS-wise? I should print of that calendar I put in my last post. Latin, right. I need to finish up that lesson today, so Monday I can get to work on the next. I was at a Christian youth conference Wednesday through Friday, so I'm not quite done with that piece of Latin. The conference was awesome, though, a lot of cool Bible study sessions and stuff like that. I'm still processing quite a bit of it.
Um... I also have that stupid story I'm putting on Fictionpress. It doesn't fit anywhere into the Yavn timeline now, what with the mission of the MC having already been fulfilled in another story, and because of the rewrite of Crystal Glare most of the facts in the story are inaccurate, and then when you add in the fact that I'm going to radically change Crystal Glare again, the whole thing becomes absolutely inaccurate. So I don't know what to call this dang thing. Fanfiction of an earlier setup? Maybe.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to enjoy my last day of Minecraft before school starts on Monday (don't forget, Sundays are as electronicless as possible. That means I might be able to finaggle some Minecraft time if someone directly asks me to help them out xD)
Anyway, this month is NaBloPoMo, which means I post every day this month. Except Sundays. I'm going to try and keep Sundays as electronic-free as possible. Anyway, six days a week you should be hearing from me, and hopefully that's long enough to get me in the habit of writing something every day or so for a while.
What else do I have, BFS-wise? I should print of that calendar I put in my last post. Latin, right. I need to finish up that lesson today, so Monday I can get to work on the next. I was at a Christian youth conference Wednesday through Friday, so I'm not quite done with that piece of Latin. The conference was awesome, though, a lot of cool Bible study sessions and stuff like that. I'm still processing quite a bit of it.
Um... I also have that stupid story I'm putting on Fictionpress. It doesn't fit anywhere into the Yavn timeline now, what with the mission of the MC having already been fulfilled in another story, and because of the rewrite of Crystal Glare most of the facts in the story are inaccurate, and then when you add in the fact that I'm going to radically change Crystal Glare again, the whole thing becomes absolutely inaccurate. So I don't know what to call this dang thing. Fanfiction of an earlier setup? Maybe.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to enjoy my last day of Minecraft before school starts on Monday (don't forget, Sundays are as electronicless as possible. That means I might be able to finaggle some Minecraft time if someone directly asks me to help them out xD)
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