nickchanger's blog - Category: "Me!"

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.

So much is happening atm that I have not found the time to write a blog about it or anything else, so what you are reading now is just your imagination.

Figures

I have of course received my "donation" figure, and I had ordered another one which I have also received. Here are some pictures:

Minami Shimada and her summoned creature from Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu

Yuri from Angel Beats!

I now have five figures which are all currently standing in my bedroom window as I have no where else to place them. I have free shelves but it cannot be too high up because of to much fanservice you know :P . I will not order any new figure for quite a long time as they are quite expensive, and I have no room for them.

Birthday

I had my birthday in all quietness and I'm now 27 years old...!

Company Summer Party

The company where I work had its anual summer party. We went to an outdoor go-cart track where we had a grandprix for two hours. Pretty damn nice to race with ~60km/h on a small track and at the same time beating my co-workers and bosses :D . Unfortunately I had gotten car sick before we even got there so my stomach was weird. Driving go-cart does not help and I had to go out of my last two races as I simply got too sick. I even puked a little which is not great when you are are wearing a helmet :P . After driving round-and-round we went to one of my co-workers house and ate some great food and had fun until late at night. I drew manga on the tablecloth.

Anime and Manga Presentation

Every Friday we have what we call Friday-15 at the company. One makes a short presentation about something they find interesting. We use this as knowledge sharing between the groups in the company, and it is specially good if one group have found a problem they have solved in a smart way. They can then explain what they did to the rest of the company and we can learn something new. On the Friday before our summer party we had a special Friday-15, where I made a presentation about something I find interesting. I called it "Otaku, a World of Anime and Manga" - so as you can guess it was not the usual kind of knowledge sharing. As I only had the night before to prepare, it did not become a perfect presentation. Some might even have become more confused about it, but whatever, I had a lot of fun explaining this stuff to my co-workers :) . I am thinking about making it into a blog post and this time do it properly :P .

Japanese TV-series

I have started to watch Japanese TV-series. The first I saw was the live-action version of Nodame Cantabile. It is Josei (for young women) but it was great fun and filled with great classical music. I can really recommend it. It ended with two special episodes (of two hours each) and two films (again of two hours each), and in the first of these films there was a scene that was so extreme that I just had to see it on YouTube... or more correctly, check to see if it was not already up there - but to my surprise it was no where to be found. So I uploaded it my self, my first YouTube video :P .

I recommend watching it in 720p and full screen! Currently it have reached 400 views in six weeks - uuhhh

Finding a new series to watch is, however, not easy. The only acceptable database I have found so far is the wiki on d-addicts. It does not have any neat search filtering on category or rating such as AniDB had when I started watching anime. This means I had to go alternative ways to find other shows, such as checking what some actors have also done. The actress behind the main character from Nodame Cantabile (Megumi "Nodame" Noda), Ueno Juri, was both cute and great so I checked out some of her series. I also found that her birthday is on the same day is mine :o - just two years later :P . The next series I saw was Last Friends which is completely different. It is hardcore drama with violence, gender confusion, childhood traumas, cheating wives, etc. Juri-chan, as she is often known on the web, played a boyish girl. A completely different character than Nodame, which just shows she has talents. So far I have seen four series and two films featuring Uenu Juri. Considering that I have seen 12 Japanese series so far I still cannot really be called a fanboy, but I am looking for more with her :P .

Brother's Hat

My brother have finished at his current school, HHX. That means he have finally received his hat! Although it is a lighter shade of blue than mine (as I went to HTX) I guess it is still OK :P . In his last three exams he got 12 (the highest grade possible). Congratulations to him ... now he just need to figure out what to do next!

Simon with his new hat

Bachelor Party

Since my friend, Ste, were going to get married we threw him a bachelor party. He thought he were going to chop chocolate for the wedding, but instead we caught him and he ended up running through the city of Odense drinking and giving candy to kids while wearing a bunny suit. Before grilling and drinking our asses off we played two hours of paintball which is great fun. I was lucky and only got hit by one hurtful ball. Guess our "protecting suit" took most of the power. On the other hand I was shot straight in the mask above my mouth. There is only a grid there which means a lot of paint flew straight into my mouth - man it tastes awful. At the end we let Ste run from one end to another while the rest of us fired the rest of our bullets at him. Lucky for him this was one week before the wedding so most of the pain should have gone away :) . We had great fun partying downtown with him in his bunny suit.

Ste in a bunny suit during his bachelor party

Wedding

So Ste got married, and it was a wedding with everything. A cute white dress, a black suit, lots of flowers, a church, two rings, a toastmaster, great food, great desert (!), speeches, songs, photographers, 70+ guests, wedding dance, cutting socks, rice, and me as the best man wearing a flower in my hair...!?

Ste is the first of my friends getting married and I were the best man. There is a high chance this will also be my last time in that role. I had made a speech for my friend and his bride AC (yeah, we are really lazy when it come to names). To do something different I went into one of the most girly shops I know and bought a hair band with a big flower and wore that while speaking. The clerk commented that "it looks like it is going to be a great Friday if it starts like this". In the same shop I also bought two simple and flowery ear pins (I think they are called). Before the wedding ceremony in the church I placed these in left pocket of the groom (that is above the heart). At the end of my speech I told him to take them up and give them to his wife. It was a reference to a Japanese tradition where at the last school day the boys would give their second button to the girl they like. The reason being that they have worn that uniform for the last three years and during that time, the second button have been close to their heart experiencing all of their emotions. So when they give it to a girl they are actually giving their emotions to her. Since I did not have a chance to mess up one of Ste's coats by ripping off its second button I decided to do it differently, hence the ear pins in his left pocket. Of course I messed up my speech so both the ear pins, the flower in the hair and other parts were confusing and I doubt even half of the guests got it :) . But, well, that is just like any other presentation I make :P .

The whole day, however, were really great, and a huge congratulation and wishes of best of luck or something like that goes to Stefan and Ann Cathrine.

Ste and AC in front of the church after their wedding ceremony

Europe Trip

In a week I will, again this year, go to a holiday house for a week getting drunk with my friends. A couple of weeks later I will go on large trip around Europe with my parents and brother. We will take our own car and spend two weeks in countries like Holland, France, Spain, Italy and Germany. At least those are some of the planned locations, as we still have not made any final thoughts on where to go. Therefore I would like to ask the Internet if they would recommend any places in mainland Europe south of the Danish border that we really should visit. Anything goes, even if it is just a small weird thing as it is no problem to visit it if we are driving by it anyway :) .

So far we have planned to see (just to name some):

• The Dutch Delta Works
• Pont d'Arc
• Rennes-le-Château
• Andorra
• Sagrada_Família in Barcelona
• Leaning tower of Pisa
• Venice
• Florence Cathedral
• San Marino

No doubt I well talk more about this - if not before then after the trip :P .

Been one-and-a-half month since my last entry...! Probably a good indication that I'm kind of busy :) . So here is an update of what I've done since then.

Last week I passed the 3 months limit at work, basically meaning they need a proper reason to fire me :) . It also means that they will pay for my internet and phone bills. The internet have been ordered but have not been set up yet. Together with the phone bill I could get a new smartphone real cheap so I did, and I have been playing with it for the last few days. It is an HTC Desire Z. This means two things: It has an unfoldable QWERTY keyboard which, of course makes it a bit thicker and heavier than most other phones, and it uses the Android OS. One of the first things I did was to login to Facebook using the HTC Sence app and bamm all of my Facebook friends where added to the phone with picture and everything o.0 . So far the phone is great, but still have a bit of trouble knowing exactly what I am going to use it for - and damn it sucks it battery dry in no time :( .

One cool thing about my new phone is that I can set it up as a Wi-Fi hotspot and then use the wireless network in my computer to connect to the internet through my phones 3G network. The stupid thing is that it is actually a hell of a lot faster than my crappy mobile internet I am currently using :o .

A few weeks ago my parents held a party with my family and friends to celebrate that I was done with school, have found an apartment and gotten a job. As a bit of surprise to me people brought gifts :o . Most of them had asked my mom what I needed which was a good choice as I have no clue what I need >_< . That meant several gift certificates for cloths and different more practical stuff. My friends got me a book on "How To Draw Manga", so now I have to draw more :P . Already have but have not setup my old computer with the scanner in the new apartment yet so cannot show you any :P .

Friday I was at my first non-family Christmas dinner with the people from work and their wifes/girlfriends (and one husband). It was quite fun, great food and lots to drink. We filled a restaurant for the whole evening and cleared their stock of Snaps - which is kind of scary as most of us hate it. I do not understand how several kinds of Snaps all can taste so awful and still be produced in such amounts. Sweet to see co-workers, project leaders and bosses getting wasted though!

In the last week amazon.co.uk have held a black Friday sale. I did not find any interesting stuff in the lightning deals (others from work did though), but I suddenly got inspired to search for anime DVD's and I found some. Two new in the Studio Ghibli collection: "Ocean Waves" and "Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea". I also found two other films of interest: "Little Norse Prince" and "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time". The last of which might be my favourite anime film so far (so I got the collector's edition :P ). Hopefully they will arrive in the upcoming week.

Back in October I did something kind of insane (for me at least). I pre-ordered an anime figurine from Japan. First time I order something from outside Europe and North America, first time I order something that is supposed to just stand there doing nothing, and only the second time I pre-order something :o . When I placed my order it was set as an October release. When the 1st of November came it was changed to a November release. Mid-november they changed it to a December release, so now I'm not sure I'm even getting it this year :( . I considered pre-ordering another figurine as well that would be released in January, but they have changed the pre-order date from November 2nd to December 2nd, and now I am not quite so sure any more. If only there was a bigger market for such figurines in Europe and North America :P . Oh and for the curious the figurine I have ordered is of Hitagi Senjougahara from Bakemonogatari and the one I am considering is of Mio Akiyama from K-On!

It has been six weeks since my last blog entry, and apparently J0k3 could not wait much longer. I had a pretty good reason though, which can basically be summed up to "no internet". As of today that is no longer true so here I am! :P

A lot of things have happened since then though and I will here tell almost everything - in a very short way?

Since I were done with the school life I had to move out of my apartment. So the last weekend there my family came by to help pack up all of my things. Since I did not have a job yet, and therefore had no idea where in the world I would be living, I moved back to my parents house. Well actually they took all of my stuff back there as I had to deliver the keys to the apartment the following Monday.

My school mate Tuan called me during the weekend and told me that where he was working were desperately looking for more people so I should give it a shot. I wrote an application Sunday evening, and the following morning I received an email response asking if I could come in for an interview at 1 o'clock. I delivered my apartment keys at 12 and went straight to the interview. After only about 10-15 minutes they said something like "If you want too we have a job for you". I had some other stuff to check out so I did not accept right away, and instead I took the train home to my parents. The following day I did accept the job and they wanted me to start the following Monday. One problem though: It was 300 km away from where I was currently living.

The next Monday I borrowed my dad's car (they went on a trip to Stockholm and Saint Petersburg that week) and drove up for my first real work day ever. After it was done I drove even further north to some family I have there where I had been promised a bed and dinner! Sweet deal! :) Now the hunt for an apartment started.

Four days later (that is Thursday :P), I went to see an apartment. As I do not have any specific requirements I called the next morning and said I wanted it - and I got it. The following Wednesday, September 1st, I got the keys and moved in. It is only about 700 meters from where I work, and with three shops within acceptable walking distance. It has a living room, bedroom, kitchen and a not-so-big bathroom. The kitchen is almost brand new (3 months old). So basically nothing wrong with it ... except that it is on the 3rd floor (which is more like the 4th floor because of the way the building is). But that was only a big deal when I moved all of my boxes up, and my parents came and helped me move all of the furniture up. Damn that shit is heavy when moving it to the 3rd floor :/ .

My apartment is still quite empty as I only had enough furniture to fill a 1-roomed apartment :P . So over the next weeks (or months probably :P) I will fill it up with new furniture. But who cares, I have my bed and computer all set up and ready.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been using Internet on neighbouring unencrypted wireless networks. Damn they were quite unreliable :P . So finally today a SIM card arrived for my mobile internet and I am finally online on my own internet line! Why mobile you might ask? Well in three months the company were I work will pay for my internet connection so I did not see any reason to setup a lot of stuff just to change everything in three months.

And maybe one last thing. My employers is a web development company located in Aalborg called Net Image. I have been assigned to their webshop department were I code in PHP for several web shops (so far all danish though), including Bianco Footwear which have just gone online a week ago.

Yesterday I put my signature on a contract with my employers and I am now officially an employee.

A lot is going on in these days. To much for my taste actually.

Since I am done at the university I pretty much have to get a job somewhere. That has meant making my CV and different job applications. It also meant joining what is known as an A-kasse. Not sure what it is called in English but it is something that will pay me as long as I do not have a job, pretty sweet deal. Of course they demand that I am actually searching for a job, but who would want to sit at home everyday doing nothing anyway.... wait a minute.

I am currently also in the process of moving out of my apartment in Aalborg (in just a couple of weeks). But since I do not know where in the world I will get a job yet I have no apartment to move into. So to begin with I will be moving back home to my parents. Hopefully I will have a job soon so I can move out again :P .

I have been in the process of creating a framework for websites, and have for months now been working on using that framework for this site. At the moment I only need some administration stuff and I should be ready to release it. I did, however, feel like it needed a new design as well so that might come too. Of course it has already taken longer than I expected but I just have not had the time :( .

Riot Games (the creators of League of Legends) released the "Season 1" ladder stuff, which meant the log file changed. The log file we parse to get all the data for LoLBase.net. Since my partner were visiting his family in Vietnam and rarely had any time, and the fact that it was me who originally created the parser, I was forced to fix it so we could continue the parsing of the thousands of log files we receive every day. Of course season 1 was released right in the middle of a holiday trip I was on, where me and 8 other young people (I was actually the oldest :P ) went to a summer house on the west coast (of Denmark) to get drunk for seven days straight. Yes I was drunk most of the time there and it was actually quite fun. Well, except for the fact that one of the two girls who were there got a concussion the 2nd night at could not participate in most of what we were doing the rest of the week. Pictures on Facebook :P . Anyway, I finished the parser a few days ago and the parser is currently crunching through the more than 120000 log files that was in the queue (would take around 85 hours), and it is still going :P .

Riot have, however, done something really awesome. With the release of season 1 they also released a new website both in North America and in Europe. At the bottom of the front page is a small box with the title "Community Spotlight". On both sites there is only one thing inside this box: the banner for LoLBase.net! Fork yeah! I have made something that is used and known intonationally by thousands of people! Not sure, but I do not think Sands of War reached the same amount of users?

I have also finally started to actually play some LoL again. Sucks and owns randomly atm :P . I have also bought Arcanum on gog.com. My brother bought that game years ago but I never finished it - now I will! Then there are several tv-series that are about to start or have started and finally some anime. I told you, lots of stuff to do :P .

Shit this was long... I end it with Lilim...