Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Connections 

On Saturday a friend I haven't seen in I can't remember how long introduced me to his wife and their one-month-old baby boy. The next day I gathered with other friends and family of a couple I last saw mid-January to meet their one-month-old baby girl. Both babies are their parents' first and they were both born at the same hospital. I wonder if they'll ever meet?
// posted by Deanne @ 22:10
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Thursday, February 23, 2006

Psyched 

An online friend has asked for the time, date and place of my birth so that she can chart my stars. I obliged after a search for my first hospital bracelet yielded the time of my birth. My friend also told me to find out my Destiny Number, which is based on the letters in my name.

And my Destiny Number is (drum roll, please): Destiny Number 2. From the description:

You have the capacity to be inspirational, and the ability to lead merely by your own example. An inborn inner strength and awareness can make you an excellent teacher, social worker, philosopher, or advisor. No matter what area of work you pursue, you are very aware and sensitive to the highest sense of your environment. Your intuition is very strong; in fact, many psychic people and those involved in occult studies have the number 11/2 Destiny. Indeed, the 2 has a spiritual connection not found in other numbers.


For comparison, here's a snippet from the Keirsey Temperament Sorter result I received tonight:

Idealists are naturally drawn to working with people, and whether in education or counseling, in social services or personnel work, in journalism or the ministry, they are gifted at helping others find their way in life, often inspiring them to grow as individuals and to fulfill their potentials.


Tonight, as usual, I'm an Idealist, a sad romantic who wants everyone to be friends. This is probably why I say 'yeah, sure... do my birth chart' or 'yeah, you can read my Tarot' when people ask. I'm not looking for insight in all the wrong places, honest.
// posted by Deanne @ 22:01
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Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Su Doku Listening 

I played Sudo-San, an accessible Su Doku game, tonight. I was wrong about being able to do a sudoku sitting still. I need to move the mouse around.

As well as displaying the puzzle on screen, Sudo-San allows you to listen to the numbers and you have to play via the keyboard. My mind is boggling at the thought of listening to each row, column and square before working out where to place a number.

Leonhard Euler, a Swiss mathematician, devised an early version of Su Doku called Latin Squares. Euler lost his sight in his thirties and was blind when he invented the puzzle. I'm not feeling any smarter.
// posted by Deanne @ 23:53
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Monday, February 13, 2006

Self-Censored (or Valentine's Day Boycott of Google) 

Hey ho, I'm blogging tonight to let you know that I won't be blogging tomorrow. I'm sure you'll appreciate that if you visit occasionally and noticed that I haven't blogged for days now.

Is it because I'll be so busy sniffing big bunches of beautiful flowers or having soft-centred choccies explode in my mouth? Of course not, that's why I'm always in a snit on my birthday.

No, instead I'll be boycotting Google - which includes Blogger and (I don't know how I'll survive) Gmail. Internet users who search using Google from within China and Tibet receive censored results that do not include sites deemed politically-sensitive. Visit No Luv 4 Google for more details or read about in The Sydney Morning Herald's MashUp blog entry, 'Google facing Valentine's Day dump', which includes some interesting comments.
// posted by Deanne @ 22:51
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Saturday, February 04, 2006

Vivid Description Consummation 

A visitor translated Temporal Island into Chinese today. How cool is that? I translated bits back into English using AltaVista's Babel Fish. Turns out I don't express myself well in Chinese.

The 'Change of Scenery' post is a good example. 'Come chuck seagulls' became 'come [three Chinese characters] meat seagulls.' 'Picture perfect' re-translated as 'vivid description consummation' and 'blogger meet up' is now 'blogger assembly.'

One of the few words not to translate is the Japanese word 'sudoku' but maybe I should have written it as 'su doku.'

Like playing records backwards, it's kinda fun to read otherwise hidden messages into the text, especially when the translation reveals: "Sight Very quickly will come - the comparison not full analogy likely to see in any it with to be evasive the retina." The original read, "Coming soon - more inadequate analogies on what it's like to see with dodgy retinas." Fortune cookies of the future.

The best part is that the translations throw up new expressions. I may never use my thesaurus again.
// posted by Deanne @ 22:29
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Thursday, February 02, 2006

Inadequate 

Imagine you're putting a Lego toy together and you find that you only have three of the pieces. After a while, you find one of the missing pieces - a really useful piece - but then you realise you've misplaced a piece you already had. You find a piece, you lose a piece - but you never have more than three pieces.

So you have to be satisfied with the three most interesting pieces, or three pieces that go together, or maybe the three distinctive pieces that tell you whether you're building a tractor or an aeroplane. Maybe you run out of time and you never work out what it is you're building. Or maybe you have the time and you're keen, so you keep a memory of the missing pieces and fit them all together in your head.

That's sort of how it is for me to see. This is why I'm so glad for the sight I have but can't always hide my frustration. :-)

Coming soon - more inadequate analogies on what it's like to see with dodgy retinas.
// posted by Deanne @ 22:40
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