nickchanger's blog - Category: "Hmmm"

It should not come as a surprise to most people that Japanese names all mean something literally. They consist of a family name and a call name. Each of these usually consist of two kanji's and all kanji characters have at least one literal meaning.

A good example of this is the name of one of my favourite actresses, Ueno Juri. Her name means the following:

• 上 (ue) - Above, high
• 野 (no) - Field
• 樹 (ju) - Trees, Wood
• 里 (ri) - Village

So a literal meaning of her name would be something like "highland forest village". That is actually quite an impressive name!

Western names usually do not have any literal meaning. But most of them descend in some way from a literal word, often Latin, Greek, Aramaic or Germanic. I can use my own name as an example.

My name, Peter, is deriving all the way from the Syrian or Aramaic word "cephas" which means "rock". In Greek that became "Πέτρος" or "petros", which turned in to "Petrus" in Latin. The Latin version have then been used for several names including "Peter" in English, Dutch and Danish.

Jesus said "On this rock I will build my church", referring to his stable disciple, Peter - or something like that. The real name of Peter were actually Simon which is why he is often referred to as Simon Peter. Simon is coincidently also the name of my little brother, but I highly doubt that was something our parents thought about though :P . Btw, "Simon" is hebrew and means "He (God) has heard". Some very religious names for two very atheistic people :) .

In Scandinavian countries the last name would actually just tell who you were the son or daughter of. The most common last name in Denmark is "Jensen" which derives from "Jens' søn", or son of Jens. Women would take their husbands last name when they got married which is why we do not see many, if any, last names on the form "Jensesdatter", daughter of Jens. Iceland seems to be the last of the Scandinavian countries to still use this practice.

Not only have the practice of having your last name come from your fathers first name stopped in Denmark, we are also more often using some very different names. Some good example of this are cities or professions. The most common last name in Denmark not having the "sen" is Møller which is the Danish word for the person working in a wind- or watermill grinding the wheat to flour etc.

My last name, Bøg, is, however, even more weird. It is literally the Danish word for the tree family beech. It is a very common tree in Denmark and is even featured prominently in our national anthem:

Of course you could put some other meaning into this name as the beech is a type of tree known as "deciduous" or "falling off at maturity" referring to its leaves and fruit falling of at fall. So when it reaches its prime of maturity it falls and it is all downhill from there... well, that would sound better if we continue the story until spring were it blooms again :P .

I also have a middle name, Heino. It is actually a Dutch version of a Germanic name "Haimric" which consist if two words: "haim" meaning home, and "ric" meaning ruler - so home ruler. The English form of this name is Henry - which several English kings have been named - and Harry. So anyone knows for sure if Harry Potter have this name for a reason? :)

Finally, a literal meaning of my name would be something like "stone home ruler beech". Sounds a bit off... More like "The home ruling stone tree" - yeah that sounds more like me.

In the last two weeks of March HLJ, where I have ordered all of my figures so far, had a campaign where they raised all of their prices by 2%. These 2% plus another 2% of the normal price where then given directly to Japanese Red Cross to help the victims of the earthquake.

I used that as an excuse to order yet another figure. My order were only ¥6,116, meaning I have indirectly donated ¥240 - which is around $2.86, so almost nothing :| . HLJ have now announced that they donated a total of ¥1,940,000! That's $23,100! There is a big step from my order up to that :) .

Doing a bit of calculations and guessing I can conclude that HLJ have a "normal" revenue over two weeks of about ¥48,500,000, or $577,500! Which might be from around 10,000 orders in total. That is quite a lot :o .

Even though HLJ shipped my figure over a week ago they have not actually captured the money from my bank account until today - so technically my money where not part of their donation :P .

I am still a noob when it comes to watching anime and reading manga, but I am getting there. According to AniDB I have 82 animes, but several of these are second seasons or OVA's and others are films. So a more correct unit would be episodes of which I have seen over 700. That is the same as 12 days and 20 hours! I currently have six series and one film waiting to be seen. According to MyAnimeList.net I have read 10 mangas or a total of 662 chapters which they estimate to have taken almost four days!

I should really get another hobby?

Anyway, I have compiled a small list of some of the stuff I have learned about the world from watching anime and reading manga. It must all be true, right?

• Girls gives you a nosebleed, one way or the other.
• All girls are embarrassed by their bust size, no matter the size.
• You cannot die from an epic fight - you just get really really tired.
• At least one of your female friends is a ghost.
• The first kiss is extremely important - so is the first touch.
• Kawaii!
• Eating food prepared by someone bad at cooking can often be fatal.
• Girls and women have much bigger eyes than boys and men.
• Parents are rarely ever home.
• All girls wear skirts and they are always to short.
• For some reason girls with cat-ears and a tail are really cute.
• There is a rabbit on the moon
• Tears are huge.
• Hair can sweat.
• If a girl gets sick, and it is not a cold, she is either pregnant or terminally ill.
• If you have a childhood friend you will eventually start dating her.
• All boys are being accused of being perverted no matter what they do.
• The Japanese word for panties is "pantsu"...
• "Saving" a girl from something even slightly dangerous will make her fall in love with you - even if you are a girl.
• Small children are often really smart while teenagers are stupid as hell.
• If you are afraid of getting robed, assaulted or raped on your way home it will happen!
• Magic exists but you need a card or some other device to use it.
• All guys who does not realize it, or look for it, have at least two girls who are in love with them.

March 2010 were the month where Microsoft released their Browser Choice Screen or whatever. This little weird thing were the result of the European Union. For some reason they did not like the fact that Microsoft creates applications that can be used in their own operating system. It has been like this for several years now and it started with Windows Media Player which were not allowed to be an integrated part of Windows any more. Now Internet Explorer is the big problem as to many people uses it because they are unaware of alternatives. What is next? My beloved Paint? Nah, they ruined it themself in Windows 7 so who cares any more.

EU calls what Microsoft is doing as anti-competitive, or something like that. There is however just one big problem with that - there is a reason why people are unaware of alternatives: They have no clue what the fork Internet Explorer really is!

Google send a guy (called Scott) to Times Square, New York, to ask passers questions like "What is a browser?". The result can be seen on youtube. It is quite funny hearing the answers when you are a computer geek like me, but also kind of disturbing. So many people have absolutely no clue what they are doing when they use a computer at all ... and I am going to get a carrier where I create software for these :/ . It will be a pain.

In response to the decision by EU, Microsoft them self said that most people do not even known what a browser is, obviously implying that this was a ridicules act by EU - and I can only agree. Do not get me wrong, Internet Explorer is, and has been for a long time, the absolutely worst browser among the major contenders. Even Apple Safari beats it by miles!

It is basically like this: Opera > Mozilla Firefox > Google Chrome > Apple Safari > no internet > Internet Explorer.

But even though I hate Internet Explorer so much I still find this whole case lame. If I created an operating system and gave other people the possibility to create their own applications, why should I then be punished and not be allowed to have my own applications as the default choices? It just does not make any sense. Makes you wonder why Apple have not been a target of something similar - well at least not to my knowledge.

One good thing have come of this, however. Apparently downloads of Opera in Europe have doubled since this Choice Screen were added, so hopefully more people are actually getting the best internet experience :P .

*UPDATE*
An Opera blog made me aware of a browser benchmarking site created by Futuremark (the people behind the famous 3Dmark tests) called Peacekeeper. On my system I got the following result:

I still do not understand why anyone would ever use Internet Explorer on purpose, and it is almost scary how bad Firefox performs (without any plugins at all).

I know the title for this blog entry is the literal translation of the title for one of the best Danish films ever made, but it is about something completely different: Bicycle lights (or headlamps).

First my background: I have used my bike to get around to football practice and other stuff since second grade or something like that. Later I would use it both for school, Billiards and Volleyball practice - all of which would sometimes require me to ride in the dark. That required some sort of artificial light source. The first I had where the big headlamps from Basta (asfaik a danish company manufacturing all kinds of accessories for the bike). They were huge - used two C batteries and a small light bulb. Even though the batteries were big they would become dry quite fast. Once I were even stopped by a policeman in front of my school for driving without lights because it had run dry during my trip (I use that as a proof that I had a long way to school :P). Now I have some much smaller headlamps which uses LED instead of a normal light bulb.

Now some definitions: There are two headlamps on a bike, one in the front (white) and one at the back (red).

The primary purpose of the front headlamps is to light up the area in front of you so you can see the road and avoid holes, dogs and whatever. The secondary purpose is to alert incoming traffic of your existence, thereby allowing them to switch to the low beam instead of the high beam. This however is in general only annoying and not vital.

The primary (and only) purpose of the back light is to alert traffic behind you of your existence so they can avoid you. Quite important IMO.

Back to the LED headlamps. Today these headlamps are quite fancy. They usually comes with a small chip that can make the light flash on several different ways. My headlamps switch between: All on, steady flash, fast flash, and rolling flash. This goes for both front and back headlamps.

So why is this possible? Some say that a flashing light is more noticeable than a steady one, thereby making it safer to use the bike. I believe the developers thought "because we can", as I do not see any point in it at all.

When I drive a car I find it easier to determine the distance to a light if it is steady. A flashing bicycle light is just annoying. Of course, flashing lights are used to make air plane pilots aware of high masts so there might be something about it. But then again that only explains the back light...

The front light is for you to see what the fork is going on, and not for someone else. Have you ever been in a discotheque when they turned on the strobe light - it is a cool effect but not good when you try to move from one point to another (which is basically the only thing I do in such a place - going from the chair to the toilet and back).

Most of the bicycle riders I meet when I am taking a walk in the dark uses flashing lights, and at least half of them also have a flashing front lights... and here is my point: That is just stupid!