Paul's Journal

07/08/2007 19:26 #40008

Languages and Cases
Category: language

I was thinking about how I was getting bored with only computer languages and wanted to branch out back into human ones when I realized historical languages might be more fun.

Old English (WIKIPEDIA - old english) piqued my interest because of its tied to the germanic languages and because it is so interesting. I am over that desire now, but while I was researching the languages of yore, I found a site dedicated to linguistic that talk about cases.

I thought German having dative, accusative, nominative and genative was over the top but there are so many other cases out there

I think I am going to just go back to german and maybe just research a dialect.

metalpeter - 07/09/07 18:53
I'm bad at languages. But If I could learn them I would love to learn Chinesse. Of course with my luck I would learn the Manderian dialect and then try to speak to someone who only knew Cantonase. I did see part of a special that showed how Chinese has changed over the years. They showed how something used to be a picture of a tree and how that writing changed over time. Korean might be preaty cool to since from what I have been told they use the Chinese Characters for some things and then they have the own language for other things. If I was going to do it for fun I would learn Klingon or maybe some Elf Langauge but only if someone told me if there was really a way to right Moon leters light in the hobit. Those are letters that only appear when the papper is held up to the moon.

james - 07/08/07 20:19
There was an onion article, or an actual real article, I can't remember which, who's headline read "Now more speakers of Klingon than Cherokee."

I have a problem learning languages because I never need to use them. It has never been useful knowing German except one time when I was a waiter and had German tourists at a table. It was never useful learning Japanese except to decipher what idiotic characters people had tattooed on their ignorant bodies. With no need to use it, I have forgotten both.

So unless you really dig Beowulf.

jenks - 07/08/07 20:13
to book = the book

jenks - 07/08/07 20:08
ooh paul old english is cool. I took a 'history of the english language' class in school and we studied a lot of old english. way cool. Yes, very germanic. And a lot of latin too. And cases. I think I have to book somewhere if you want to see.

mrdeadlier - 07/08/07 20:00
The only thing better than historical languages is made-up ones. That said,I want to learn Elvish!

07/08/2007 19:20 #40007

Solid Grounds on Elmwood Sucks
Category: food

I will never eat at Solid Grounds on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, NY again. I used to love it. In fact it was one of my favorite restaurants but now in July of 2007 it has gone really downhill. The decor, service, and food have all gone seriously downhill while the prices remained the same.

Our long haired, medium height, red-headed waitress at
Solid Grounds on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, NY sucked so much. She never even refilled our free refill lemonade. When the people behind us, which arrived after us, got their food I was pissed. (e:terry) joked that maybe our waitress had left. haha, right?

About five minutes later at Solid Grounds on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, NY our waitress shows up from the kitchen with her purse on and left the restaurant. What the hell!?

Eventually, some other waitress brought us our food minus the usual salad and potato side (on the menu) that makes $7.50 for an omelette seem reasonable.

Compare this very plain meal from today

with the very same order (e:paul,32837) placed in December of 2006

The salad was under the bread. Both of these same order of the same meal cost $7.50

Solid Grounds on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo, NY also no longer have the slab style thick bacon, but have replaced it with ordinary thin bacon for the same price.

I heard some other guy complaining that he was charged for wheat toast that he asked for twice but never received. The girl at the counter actually asked him if he would like the side of wheat to go!

Totally unrelated, while sitting for 45 minutes waiting for my simple Apple Omelette at Solid Grounds on Elmwood in Buffalo, NY I read Artvoice and saw this ad. I can't believe there is a sale on VHS anything as we are in the era leaving normal DVD. Even weirder, is that it is for such a niche market.

jim - 09/21/07 20:45
We went by Solid Grounds today and it looked like they are out of business. Storefront is empty.

metalpeter - 07/09/07 18:46
I Personaly think DVDs may and should fail and everyone should go back to VHS. The reason is that you have four formats of DVDs that I know of. This doesn't include some other type of Disc that they used in I think Japan (some dvd's will playthem). This mess get started with sony. Sony makes Blue-Ray discs. Yes they hold more data but A blue ray player only plays blue ray. Then you have Hi-def Discs for people with Hi-def TV's. Then Sony decided that they wanted there PSP's to play DVD's well guess what they are two small to play normal DVD's so they came out with another form of disc. So now when ever a Movie comes out on DVD it has to come out in 4 formats including regular DVD. It is company irresponsibilty to have all these formats. I will admit that some HD DVD's do have non HD stuff on the other side. But what I'm waiting for is #5 and that would be HD Blue Ray who knows sony might even come out with there own TV's that you have to have that same type of player and discs for. The thing about Video Tapes is they are so much better for underground stuff like stuff shot in a basement or a wrestling tape from Japan. There is another DVD issue to. Some new players follow that right protected stuff so some shows they won't record but that isn't the case with VCR's. I won't lie it is really cool the way you can jump around on a DVD like on a CD but you could also do that on laser discs.

I don't know as I have ever ate at solid grounds sorry things where bad there. It sounds like they are disorganised. I have had a waitress go on break or leave and what she did was come right up and tell me that someone would be replacing her. Not to defend them but it sounds like they are cutting corner maybe it is because that part of elmwood is runed down. There are a few store fronts that have been empty for a long time now.

james - 07/08/07 20:24
One day, when I am unquestioned overlord over all of humanity and other sundry things, I will make it illegal for any coffee establishment to use the word 'grounds' in their name

Solid Grounds
Common Grounds
Grounds for dismissal

(e:Jim) and I went there about a year ago and I was overwhelmed at how underwhelming everything was about the place.

jenks - 07/08/07 20:10
hehe, way to make solid grounds on elmwood ave in buffalo ny so googly!

07/08/2007 11:12 #40001

Action Packed Weekend
Category: food

I did a lot, managed to really hurt my neck again and still didn't dance.

Got a letter from Germany that the university I attended is having a 450 year anniversary

and is inviting back all the Alumni. I would really like to go. I wonder if I can convince (e:matthew) . I should apply for italian citizenship first so that I can be all EU.

Taste of Buffalo was yummy. It is my favorite festival of all.

There were lots of people at The Taste Of Buffalo 07. I had fun with (e:terry) and (e:matthew) but no Taste of Buffalo is the same without (e:hodown) or (e:mike) , the biggest food enjoyers I know, neither of which I was with.

I ate craw dads, the main reason I like to go.

Everytime I see these cookies I think of (e:jim)

The polish sausage from the Polish Villa was tasty.

(e:terry) being attacked by a monster

Saw Matt Puchler - I was sad we didn't get to work together but it is really awesome working with (e:jim)

I finally painted the garage and the french doors on the back of the house. I am so happy as they really looked like crap before and it was stressing me out.

Then I attended Kenmore Days for the fireworks. Damn those people know how to put on a fireworks display. My cell phone can't manage fireworks pics like my real camera which is now totally missing in action.

I had my first taste of funnel cake, it was quite yummy.

I have been wanting to go dancing for so long but didn't notice Soma's chat post about the HEMF (music fest) on Grand Island

until today ;(

Which led me to

- I went to school with him in Kenmore. It is strange how our raver days never coincided. I think once when I was home and he was home we saw each other at a party. Now we are neighbors, he lives in the building behind us, but we haven't hung out - even though I saw him and said I would call. I am just not good at making friends or doing things other than computing / house repair.

brit - 07/08/07 14:41
guys, you never told me about the food festival, I would have come back and eaten myself to death. food in britain sucks, no chicken wings, no cheecheeburger, no casa, no cozumels, no anchor bar and worst of all no wendy's.....wtf?!

mrmike - 07/08/07 13:14
Ah, the funnel cake, the one true reason to look forward to canal fest

metalpeter - 07/08/07 11:59
Looks like you had a good time. I never thought a gecko could look scary but in that picture it does.

jenks - 07/08/07 11:18
ok paul the big questions is- did you suck the heads on the crawfish?

07/06/2007 02:28 #39942

Send via my cell phone with email
Category: mobile

Just testing out the system so that (e:jim) can send blogs from his iPhone.

I believe it works now. (e:jim) just make sure you have it setup in your mobile control panel and use the old instructions.

jenks - 07/06/07 14:02
oops. that was supposed to be a postit, not a comment.

jenks - 07/06/07 13:45
hey paul. for whatever reason posts i email from my computer will post, but posts from my phone, using the same email account/settings, won't. hmm. i'll keep playing.
but the other thing- I don't get text notifications of postits any more. I used to, but now I don't. i tried leaving the carrier as tmobile, but also tried ATT and cingular, but none of 'em worked. just fyi.

07/06/2007 21:37 #39974

Programming for the iphone
Category: programming

This is crazy. I revamped the old email based posting system because (e:jim) and (e:jenks) 's iphones cannot do file uploads in mobile safari. This just blows my mind, it reminds me of my sidekick 1. I used to have the email posting system expressly for that phone. Why no file upload? They could easily just spoof it and allow you to only upload from your photo gallery instead of browsing the file system.

So anyways it gets worse. Not only can you only email photos via email. You can email only one photo per email. Basically, this translated to one picture per mobile entry from the iphone. And to make it even more ridiculous every attachment is named photo.jpg so that when they arrive the new ones were replacing the old ones.

I ended up writing a script that would take the file name and add part of the title after talking with (e:jim) about it. But as he pointed out, although I was able to script around it - what about all the grandmothers saving pictures of there grandkids all named photo.jpg. They will end up just replacing all the old photos.

Who the fucks decision was this. I think they should be fired.

jenks - 07/07/07 10:40
oh yeah- and i still can't mobl-post, even when I fix the caps in the password.

jenks - 07/07/07 10:39
yeah it's a little retarded.
I just sent a message to the 'iphone feedback' page with like 16 things I want them to fix. Mostly minor stuff like that, that seems like a stupid oversight and I would think should be easily correctable in a quick little software update. (i hope).