Peter's Musings

(This is more as a reminder to myself in the future, rather than a full-fledged posting.)

As I learn more about Git and how we use it in Fedora packaging, I keep discovering cool new things about it that I love. One particular aspect that I’m quickly growing to adore is the feature to cherry-pick between commits in related branches. Suppose I’m currently working on the master branch of a package which is kept in sync with f16 and f17 branches.

Now, a new version comes up or I make a patch to fix a bug. After committing the changes to master, I can easily copy those commits to the release branches with a simple cherry-pick operation:

$ fedpkg switch-branch f17
$ git cherry-pick master

This copies the most recent commit from the master branch into the current one. (See the Git documentation for more information on specifying commit IDs.) Compare this to CVS, where we had to manually diff the devel/ branch directory and apply that to each branch by hand…it’s so much nicer with Git. 🙂

Then it’s a simple matter to push the changes to the Fedora repository and run builds for them through Koji, by running fedpkg push and fedpkg build in each branch. Sweet!

Also, the fullscreen mode of WordPress’ new post editor is fantastic – I owe someone a beverage for that.

Now to get some sleep, so I can finish this Algorithm Analysis project tomorrow. Ta for now!

In an effort to organize my Fedora bug squashing, I’ve been going through all the bugs assigned or CC-ed to me on Fedora’s Bugzilla. The first thing I’ve done is to remove myself from the CC and Assignee of many bugs whose packages I no longer maintain or have interest in. Unfortunately, if you’re on these bugs CC-ed or otherwise, you’re about to get an influx of 200+ automated email notifications from bugzilla about these changes. My apologies! 😮

After over three years, CurvyLooks has an update! Yes, folks – this time it’s for GNOME 3 support….well, almost. It is based heavily on the Adwaita GNOME theme (in fact, simply copied verbatim in many parts). Unfortunately, I’ve not been able to adequately set the menu item and notebook-tag coloring, so those parts still look a little bit ugly. I’ve been trying to tweak the Adwaita theme on a trial-and-error basis to see how to do this, to no avail. Contributions welcomed! 😉
Also, I need to post more often on here…this I have decided.

It’s been a long long while (6+ months! Eep.); but to quote the great Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “I’m not dead yet!” – and neither is this blog.

So, what has this geek been up to recently? On the one hand, my search for a decent [part-time] job is…well, it’s still ongoing. On the other, I’ve been very busy with classwork, family obligations, and other real life duties.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on updates to several of my packages in addition to new goodies (such as the successor to the GNOME Music Applet, Panflute). I apologize for the rather lengthy delays in these! But, I should be able to get to all of them sometime within the next several days or so. (Git still puzzles me slightly, so please bare with me as I slowly resume my packaging duties.) And lastly, I would like to shout a huge THANK YOU to all those who have helped triage and maintain my packages during my brief hiatus. Now, to finish this Deluge update…

Having grown more than a little bit tired of how slow Evolution is at filtering emails, I decided to try the new Thunderbird. (I say “new” because I have not used it since it was version 1.5-ish.)

Unfortunately, I accidentally decided to have them both open at the same time – my understanding being that IMAP is okay with multiple simultaneous connections. Apparently this is not the case between Thunderbird and Evolution, as I quickly discovered. Something clashed with something else somewhere along the code, and now much to my dismay my Inbox is empty. (Oops.)

Long story short, if you sent me an email since Saturday morning (which was the last time I thuroughly checked my email) that you need me to read and/or respond to, please resend it.  Thanks.

Well, after receiving my ThinkPad T500, I set about tweaking the pre-installed Windows Vista, and spent most of the weekend attempting to get it dual-booting Vista and Fedora nicely. For better or worse, neither Fedora’s GRUB nor Windows’ BCD bootloader would accept booting the other OS properly. I came to realize that I hadn’t used or needed to use Windows in over 5 years (even the server at work is CentOS), so It’s highly unlikely that I will need it in the foreseeable future. Just in case though, I can always run it in a VM. So, after burning the Product Recovery Discs, I wiped it all and installed Fedora on this wonderful machine. 🙂

I configured it with 4 partitions:

1. /boot (about 500 MB)
2. Swap (about 5 GB)
3. / (FS root, about 35 GB)
4. /home (the remaining ~210 GB)

As far as the hardware goes, everything appears to work out of the (quite literal) box. The processor’s throttling is automatically handled by cpuspeed and ACPI. The LCD was automatically detected at the appropriate resolution (WSXGA+, 1680×1050) and DPI (129), and graphics (integrated Intel GMA X4500HD) work very well – 3D, Compiz, and everything. Virtualization extensions (so-called “VT”) were disabled in the BIOS by default for whatever reason, but enabling them took only a few seconds and KVM works wonderfully (running an Ubuntu 9.04 virtual machine for a Linux class).

The TrackPoint(tm) and TouchPad both work splendidly, although the TrackPoint does take a lot of practice to get comfortable with. I’m tempted to disable the touchpad in the BIOS, since I don’t actually use it for pointing (and I often erroneously swipe it with my palm while using the so-called “nipple mouse” of the TrackPoint); but I do use it for the scrolling, so I’ve not yet found a happy medium. Suggestions appreciated.

The hard disk (Western Digital WDC WD2500BEVS-0) and DVD burner drive (HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-U20N) are surprisingly speedy. I’ve already burned two copies of the Fedora 11 LiveCD and several data discs (backups) with no problems. The Bluetooth works well, and I can easily send and receive files to and from my phone through the included Bluetooth stack. The wifi  (Intel WiFi Link 5300 [AGN]) works beautifully with the included iwlagn driver, enabled by default. Also, NetworkManager makes connectivity trivial. (Thanks, devs!)

The firewire and PC Card slot also seem to work – they are autodetected and drivers loaded. However, as I have no firewire- or PC Card-based devices, I cannot verify their functionality.

I have come to quickly love the GNOME Power Manager stack. According to it, the battery on a full charge should last me about 5 hours. It keeps track of how much charge the battery has, how quickly I’m consuming or charging it depending on if I am plugged into AC power, etc. It even shows me a graph of my recent power history! Wonderful little tool. With the help of Intel’s fantastic PowerTOP utility, I’ve increased that computed estimate to nearly 6 hours. (!)

With regards to multimedia, things worked beautifully without me even trying. The built-in webcam works perfectly with Cheese, and the built-in sound works for both playback (surprisingly loud at maximum volume!) and recording (not fantastic quality, but it’s very good at eliminating surrounding static and other noises). I can’t wait to try video-calling someone with the recent Empathy enhancements!

All of the hotkeys – brightness-switching, volume control, playback/navigation, etc.) work as expected, and ACPI (with GNOME Power Manager) even automatically suspends when I close the lid – wonderful!

I’ve also noticed that the machine stays colder in Fedora than it ever did while running the preinstalled Windows. Maybe this is only subjective though, as I never checked the actual temperatures in Windows. Or perhaps Linux/Fedora is better at staying in deeper C-states for longer intervals. In either case, I can work with it directly on my lap quite comfortably.

One of the main reasons I decided upon the T-series instead of a similar R-series laptop was weight. Even with the battery installed, it is only about 5.5 pounds. (That’s about 2.5 kilograms for the rest of the world who use a less-insane system of measurements.) This is quite comfortable to carry with me around school and work without tiring my shoulder.

The only thing which I’ve been unable to test, aside from the firewire and PC card slots, is the dual-screen capability. According to the included manual, it should be capable of using the DisplayPort interface to attach a secondary screen (such as a projector) and automatically resize appropriately, with [Fn]+[Spacebar]. I suppose that if this does not yet already Just Work(tm), it will be fixed by the time I need to worry about actually using it though.

Overall, I love this laptop, and am extremely happy with my purchase decision. In fact, the only qualm I have with this wonderful computer is that it’s not yet decorated! Oh great lazyweb, doe anyone know where I can get stickers for GNOME, Fedora, Linux/Tux, et al., to adorn it with? 😀

Also: A huge THANK YOU to all of the developers who helped make my first Linux-on-a-laptop experience an absolutely wonderful one. I love it when things work so simply and effectively!

Those who have compiz (“Desktop Effects”) enabled on 965 GPUs should be very wary of today’s xorg-x11-server-1.6.3-4.fc11 (FEDORA-2009-8766) update. For some reason or another, it makes Compiz prone to crashing when starting up. The solution to this is to revert to 1.4.3-3, or to temporarily disable Compiz. The latter can be done by changing the GConf entry. Switch to a virtual terminal from the GDM login screen by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F2, then login and run the following command:

gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager --type string 'metacity'

Again, this does not actually fix the problem in the Xorg/Compiz stack. It instead  disables Compiz entirely (reverting to Metacity – the default GNOME window manager).

This will workaround the bug until it can be solved properly. Note that any attempt to re-enable Compiz once logged in will also recreate this crash. So, it’s best to just leave it off until this is fixed.

Another summer has passed me by, and I still haven’t learned how to ride a bike nor how to swim properly. Alas, I suppose I’ll get to these eventually. I have kept one of my resolutions though. I finally splurged and bought myself a ThinkPad (specifically, a T500). I decided upon the following specs:

• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8400 (2.26GHz 1066MHz 3MBL2) 25W
• Genuine Windows Vista Home Basic (Will be used only to verify hardware functionality. Fedora will replace it thereafter.)
• 15.4″ WSXGA+ TFT, w/ CCFL Backlight (137 DPI…sweet.)
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator x4500HD with vPro
• 4 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 SDRAM 1067MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
• UltraNav (TrackPoint and TouchPad)
• 250 GB Hard Disk Drive, 5400rpm
• DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer, Ultrabay Slim (Serial ATA)
• Integrated Bluetooth PAN
• Intel WiFi Link 5300 (AGN) with My WiFi Technology
• 9 cell Li-Ion Battery
• 4 Year On Site Upgrade with 4 Year ThinkPad Protection

Thankfully, I found an excellent discount through the CPP (Contractor Purchase Program) which cut the cost from nearly $2,200 to just $1,400 (including shipping and taxes, state fees, et al.) – a savings of 40%! The 4-year protection plan was about 30% of the final cost. Well worth it, though.

As it is, this will be a life-safer, as I’ve been having a lot of intermittent hardware issues on my desktop: I get seemingly-random WiFi disconnects; DVD-burning often fails for no discernible reason, and my hard drive is on its last legs, so to speak. (In fact, just today I saw another 12 sectors go bad and need to be reallocated…its count is now at 177. The manufacturer maximum is 188!) – I’m all anxious and impatient now!

So, in the span of one month, I’ve spent almost $4,000 (tuition/registration fees, books/supplies, and ThinkPad). I think that’s quite enough for a while. 😮

“Paying attention” is an English idiom which means “to focus one’s attention on” or “to be attentive to.” Like other idioms, it does not translate literally into other languages, especially Spanish. (That is to say, “pagar atención” – from pagar, “to pay,” and (la) atención, “attention,” is incorrect.)

However, there are two ways to say it depending on what it is to which is being paid attention. If paying attention to a person, the phrase is “prestar atención,” which in a literal word-for-word translation means “to lend (one’s) attention.” On the other hand, if paying attention to an idea or a thing, one would use “poner atención.” which if taken in a similar literal translation means “to put (or set) attention.”

• Correct: Presten atención al maestro cuando les habla. ✔
  (Pay attention to the teacher when he speaks to you.)
• Incorrect: Pongan atención al maestro cuando les habla. ✘

Note the different connotations in the following two similar requests made from a a speaker (in our example, a teacher):

• Ésto es muy importante. Pongan atención por favor.
  (“This is very important. Pay attention [to this concept/thing], please.”  The teacher is explaining something to his/her students and does not want distractions.)
• Ésto es muy importante. Presten atención por favor.
  (“This is very important. Pay attention [to me], please.”  The teacher is demonstrating something, and wants his/her students to watch closely.)

I suppose it’s similar, slightly, to how Japanese translate the verb “to have” (or “to be/to exist”) as 有る（ある, “aru”) for objects and concepts but as 居る（いる, “iru”）for living things. Peculiar…but very interesting. Is this difference in Spanish for similar separation of living and non-living things? I wonder…Thanks for the neat Spanish lesson, mom! 🙂

This is absolutely crazy. Someone just posted it to our Facebook group:

Lowering Enrollment: Budget Cuts Force California State University to Close 2010 Spring Admissions

As part of an overall strategy to address an unprecedented budget reduction of $584 million for 2009-10, California State University campuses will not accept student applications for the 2010 spring term – with very few exceptions.

In addition, quarter campuses that have been accepting admission applications for the 2010 winter term ceased accepting applications as of July 6.

“Only fully-eligible, first-time freshmen, upper-division undergraduate transfers or graduate and post-baccalaureate applicants who have applied for admission prior to July 6 may be offered admission to the 2010 winter term,” said Jeri Echeverria, CSU executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer.

In addition, no admission applications will be accepted for the 2010 spring term at either quarter or semester campuses, for any enrollment category. CSU has typically admitted more than 35,000 freshmen, undergraduate transfer and graduate students during the spring term.

This is just so unbelievably wrong. A strong education is the foundation of a prosperous workforce. I’m all for fixing the economy, but cutting off one of its roots is not the right way to do it! I’m stunned and quite speechless. 😮

With my primary hard drive (a three-year old WD Raptor WD740) having been on life support, so to speak, for the last 3 months, I’ve been a lot more diligent about keeping backup copies of my data. Every couple of days, I log out entirely and run a simple rsync script to copy my entire /home directory to a specialized partition on my secondary disk, which I keep at /mnt/backup for simplicity sake.

While its parameter handling can be a bit quirky, I find that it is extremely useful for two reasons: The first more or less negates its quirky parameter handling: Clear and thorough documentation, with lots of example program calls  The second is that it saves me a lot of time in copying the files. Similar to the DeltaRPM feature I raved about with Fedora 11, it copies over only the changed content instead of the entire directory tree. With my home directory at nearly 20 GB, incrementally updating my backup like this prevents a good 90+% of the data from needing to be copied again.

In this way, I know that I have at least two copies of my data at any given time. A major plus to copying the directory tree as-is is that, once the drive does die and I replace it, I merely need to copy it over, without changing anything or unpacking huge tarballs and applying diffs, et al.

The disadvantage to this is that I only have one consistent backup copy of my data at a given time, and that backup is on a hard drive in the same computer. So, should there be a massive system failure of some sort (knock on wood!), then I would lose my data for certain. I also intend to purchase CD-RWs for this purpose – that is, as an additional backup medium – in the near future. But for right now, the second on-disk copy suffices. I also want to setup a RAID system in my next computer build…but that’ll have to wait. 🙂

So this simple rsync method, as with any storage decision, has its benefits and downfalls:
Pros:

• Easy to configure;
• Can be automatically run (e.g., in a cron job);
• Updates occur via content deltas, not full copies;
• Backup data is “as-is”, and can be used immediately after copying.

Cons:

• Only one backup copy;
• Physical proximity to original data;
• Requires space for an entire duplicate of the directory tree.

For me, though, this method works out well. Do others have a similar system? Would you suggest any improvements/simplifications? I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter! Thanks.

With Fedora 11 (“Leonidas”) released earlier today and Rawhide looking to the future, I find myself instead looking back at what has made Leonidas such an excellent release.

With over 50 new features in this release (more than any previous release, I’ve been told!), it would seem logical that this staggering amount of new improvements would leave us with many majors bugs and issues yet to resolved – the more features we add, the less manpower/resources we can expend on each individually, right?

Wrong. With so many test days and an amazing Quality Assurance team, we’ve hammered, smashed, pounded, banged, and kicked this release into a uniquely rich and stable Fedora experience.

One of my favorite features of this release is Presto. Though not enabled by default, Presto allows users to use so-called DeltaRPMs to update the packages installed on their system. That is, instead of downloading the whole new updated packages, only the changes between the installed version and the update need be downloaded. Especially for large packages (such as some game data and OpenOffice.org) or those who are on a slower or pay-per-usage internet connection, this can be a very hefty savings both in time and cost. I used it immediately after installed Leonidas, and it saved me quite a bit on the initial updating:

Size of all updates downloaded from Presto-enabled repositories: 14M
Size of updates that would have been downloaded if Presto wasn't enabled: 128M
This is a savings of 89 percent

Win! The DRI2/KMS support has also been updated heavily and now works out of the proverbial box, at least for a large portion of Intel and AMD/ATi hardware. (This allows a proper composited desktop with 3-D and all. By default. VERY awesome.)

Another excellent feature is that the installation now defaults to using the Ext4 filesystem where applicable. I must admit, I was a bit afraid of actively using this when I was first reading about it, due to all of the reports of data corruption people have experienced; but it seems those issues are long-since fixed, as I’d been using Ext4 for my root partition since Fedora 10. With Leonidas, I took the plunge and upgraded my /home partition (via Anaconda) from Ext3 to Ext4, and have yet to notice a problem. (For those wishing to do similar – and even for those not – I would still highly recommend keeping proper backups Just In Case^TM)

Finally, while I could pinpoint each and every feature and how I feel it’s improved Fedora, suffice it to say that I don’t have adequate time to type out such a long rave. However, as much as these individual features improve Fedora on their own, it is their conglomeration which impacts us the most – the way things are so well-integrated and work properly “out of the box” (so to speak), the way that we as a community of many actively support all of this so well, the way we as a community so diverse handle bugs and packaging, the beautiful artwork and the amazing work of the Release Engineering team to distribute this blend of creativity so readily.

I’d like to rehash those last few points: It’s the wonderful combination of the efforts of you countless contributors and users which makes Fedora so great. Thank you all. Keep up the impressive work. I can’t wait for what’s to come in Fedora 12+!

I just noticed that a few hours ago, Matthias Clasen committed Epiphany 2.27.2 to Fedora’s CVS and in the process switched the build to using WebKitGTK+. instead of Gecko/XULrunner. This means that, once the switch is flipped for rawhide to start composing from the F-12 tree, Epiphany will be using WebKitGTK+ by default. Epic win. Many thanks, Matthias – you’re also added to my ever-growing “I owe drinks to these people” list. 🙂

Err. If you’ve tried to get in contact with me over the past week or so (email, bug report, IRC ping, et al.), please excuse my complete lack of response. Having just finished final exams, I’d been very unproductively relaxing – playing video games, watching lots of anime, taking a short trip with family, and just generally doing as little “work” as possible – which included Fedora hacking.

I really should have posted some sort of away message or “Offline for a while” email; but completely neglected to do so. Mea culpa. As I’m now officially on summer vacation (at least, until I can find a good job/internship), that will definitely change. 🙂

Right, so I just got back from seeing the premier showing of the recent Star Trek film at the GardenWalk IMAX with a bunch of friends, and I’m completely geeking out. Yes, there were some plot flaws in it (such as the way Kirk defeated the Klingons in the “Kobayashi Maru” exam) but it was meant to be a bit of an alternate history, and I was thoroughly impressed with the movie as a whole. The actors played their roles amazingly well, but I especially liked McCoy (Karl Urban), Scotty (Simon Pegg)  and Spock (Zachary Quinto).

I was also quite pleased in that, as the limelights dimmed for the movie to begin, at least two other people in the theater joined me in shouting Qapla’! (Klingonese: “success”). There were no Klingons in this film, but that made it no less fun!

On the other hand, I do apologize that schoolwork has taken up most of my free time recently, and will continue do so until the end of the semester (two more weeks), and because of this I’ve not been very active on the Fedora front. However, I hope to change that once classes let out for the summer. 🙂

(That’s slightly more rotations than there people on Earth! :o)

With Spring Break giving me some much-needed time off from classes, I had some time to install and test the recently-released Fedora 11 Beta. While I do think there are many minor issues (such as Urban Terror having no sound and not being able to quit), there are many awesome improvements over Fedora 10 already. Among these are such niceties as DRI2 & Kernel Mode-Setting support for Intel video (enabled by default!), DeviceKit, and the obvious benefits of GNOME 2.26.

However, one thing that I noticed over the past weekend (looking through the awesome new Palimpsest disk utility) is that my secondary hard drive (a Western Digital WD740 Raptor) has begun to show its age after nearly 4 years of trusty service. The automatic block-reallocation and CRC error counts were already listing as “Failing” and just about everything else in the SMART self-test results are listed as “Pre-Fail.” Thankfully, it persisted long enough to backup my entire home directory to the primary disk (a 40GB Maxtor something-or-other). However, this backup has made that primary disk – which I have partitioned with everything else) almost full, with only about a gigabyte free. (That was close!) So, until I can get that replaced, I’m going to be getting my work done on my parents’ computers and those in the school labs – which means I’m not going to be able do anything Fedora-related other than simple bug-triaging for a while. With schoolwork and other duties now, it’ll probably take me about a week or so to order the new drive from NewEgg, have it shipped, and properly install it in my PC.

I do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause; but as I’ve said on prior occasions, hardware and I seem to have a very love/hate relationship.  :-/

(I will try to make this more regular in the future, honestly!)

In our previous College Survival Guide entry, we took a very brief look at the stark difference between life as a high school student and life as a college student. However, there is one thing that needs to remain a constant thoughout one’s entire student life, and that is something very simple, but often not very easy.

Have fun. That’s it. That’s all there is to it. (Seriously!)

Now, I know some of you are thinking at this, Fun, as a student? This geek’s been drinking far too much coffee. However, this is one of the best things I think one can do – especially in college. College is almost by definition a gigantic learning experience, but this learning should not be restricted to academic-only material. One of the biggest pieces of advice I give classmates when discussing scheduling for the following term is this: Always take a fun class – or more, if other life constraints allow!

There will always be times when you’ll be very stressed out with little or no control over the cause – too much homework, a difficult test coming up, group projects, et al. and the best way to relieve the stress is to enjoy oneself in something else entirely. I’ve found that very often while doing homework for a class that I do not like, I end up being bored and the homework then becomes a slow and tedious process. However, taking one or more fun classes, I can take a brief pause from doing the homework for that boring class and do the assignment for the fun classwork; and after that return to other work which now does not seem nearly as dreary. Also, if you make time for a fun class or two throughout your schedule, then you will actually want to go to school, and that can sometimes make the difference in not being truant to classes.

Now, there are many classes – especially the upper-division or major-specific courses – that will definitely be inherently enjoyable. For the most part though, especially during one’s early collegiate terms, it’s mostly General Education and other necessities which may be opposite of those wants. When I speak of “fun classes” that you should take, I’m referring to the classes that probably aren’t even required. These classes are one’s you should just take because you want to and for no other reason. One other benefit of these classes is that, due to the nature of your reason for taking the class, you are certainly going to put a lot of effort into it and get a good grade in the class, which can help keep or boost your GPA a little bit.

So, remember: Take some fun classes! College should NOT be a sleep-class-homework cycle! Well, that’s about it for this edition. Join us next time for another rousing post in this College Survival Guide!

It has been nearly a year since the last release of my CurvyLooks theme. This isn’t from lack of ability or intent, but solely due to lack of necessity: Nothing has become broken or dysfunctional (to my knowledge) and I’ve not really had any further itches to scratch with it. I’ve not done anything with the theme recently simply because it still works as I want it to. However, I’m going to be just a little bit egotistical about it and assume that there are at least a few people out there who actually find it useful. In that case – and I’m definitely opening up a potentially large can of worms with this question – what do you want from the theme? Is there anything missing that would be cool to have added, perhaps? Something wrong with the color scheme somwhere that needs fixing? I need input!

“If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.” (Edsger W. Dijkstra)

After fixing the notification-daemon bubbles (thanks, Martin!), I spent some time perusing through some of the other GConf settings and found another rather interesting gem: /desktop/gnome/interface/show_input_method_menu which is set to off (False) by default. Now, for the longest time I’ve had trouble in Xchat-GNOME (my IRC client of choice) with getting Japanese input to work properly. There was no preedit text or conversion from Romaji to Kana/Kanji. SCIM/Anthy just wasn’t being used at all! But changing this one item, it’s easy now to get SCIM working as it should, but selecting the “SCIM Bridge Input Method” from the context menu.

Granted, it’s definitely not a correct or long-term fix by any means; but at least now I’m not given the inconvenience of opening up gedit or some other application to switch back and forth when I want to IRC in Japanese. Yay!

I should probably go package up that new Midori release now. 🙂

Apparently I’ve become really bad at this whole “regularly blogging’ thing. *sigh*
I posted, a few weeks ago, about the cool new notification bubbles, but after updating yesterday and rebooting my computer, the beauty has vanished, just as quickly as it came. It saddens me ever so slightly; but it alas was just not meant to be.

No more sexy-time notification bubbles!

On another note, we spent the entirety of tonight’s Kanji Study class doing calligraphy (called 書道, “shodou”) as a fun little break, with a visiting professor from UCLA. It was amazingly entertaining and we learned a lot about how much intricacy is often needed to draw the characters properly: angle and force of brush, amount of ink, proper stroke order etc., and how painstakingly detailed a seemingly simple character compound such as 先生¹ needs to be when drawn correctly. Near the end of our class session, he even went through several examples of how Hiragana and Katakana were derived from their respective 万葉仮名 (Man’yõgana), such as あ (Hiragana “a”, from 安 meaning “tranquil, quiet,” or in some contexts, “inexpensive”) and タ (Katakana “ta” from 多 meaning “much, many”). I found it quite intriguing; and our Sensei says that we’re going to go into this derivation in far more detail over the coming weeks. I can’t wait!

[1] Pronounced “sensei,” it is literally translated as “one who lived before” and used as an honorific title for teachers, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals.