Feb 1, 2011 by Sushi Bird
The Thomas Beale Cipher from Andrew S Allen on Vimeo.
Based on a true legend of the famous unsolved code. The film contains 16 hidden messages that hold clues to the characters’ secrets. Eight are fairly easy requiring only a close eye. Six are moderately difficult using various encryption methods. Two are extremely difficult requiring a genius mind to decrypt.
Jan 19, 2011 by Sushi Bird
One of my favorite artists as a kid was M. C. Escher. I discovered a book about him through a friend, and when you are an 8 year old girl and nobody else around you had heard about this magical thing you encountered, it was like finding a secret cave or a beautiful treasure. As I grew older, I realized that the entire world knew who he was and that his pictures were often used for various illustrations and publications, toys, decorative objects and prints. I still love his images though, especially the intricate details, the accuracy and the incredible amount of work that went into each piece.
I recently stumbled upon this documentary on youtube about him. It gave me a feeling of being back in junior high, when the art teacher would force the entire class to watch a strange documentary made about 30 years prior with funky music and good ol’ 70ies style animations and fancy pants on the men interviewed. I recall that my classmates rarely enjoyed the wacky old documentaries presented by the wacky old art teachers, but I always found them charming and I rather enjoyed being forced to watch videos I could not watch on my own. (There was no youtube back then kids!) Anyway, here is part 1 of the documentary, the other parts can be found at youtube. If you can withstand the cheesiness (or if you are like me, you kind of secretly like it), it is a really interesting documentary. I especially like the parts where they interview mathematicians.
Jan 18, 2011 by Sushi Bird
I made a salad this morning for breakfast with tobiko, mozzarella, avocado, tomato and green leafs. The combo of the avocado and the tobiko was really nice, it made the avocado taste almost like toro.
And then I went to my classes…
…and walked through the park.
アーユータィヨド？ 🙂
And I stopped by the pidgins again. It is the next best thing to having a bird of my own.
More mascots, this is a huge banner outside a new building with apartments.
Right now I am reading two books, one is called “Stuff” and it is about compulsive hording – a really interesting book. I am no horder, in fact, I am quite the opposite, but even though I do not keep things, I find the thoughts behind why we keep things very peculiar and interesting. The other book is a collection of mathematical and logical problems, which is always interesting to read just for fun. What are you reading?
What I should be reading is keigo, so I will try to get around to that now.
Jan 18, 2011 by Sushi Bird
I think my favorite TED conference was the one about happiness, so many amazing talks. In this talk Dan Gilbert explains how people synthesize happiness, while most people think that happiness is something to be found.
Jan 13, 2011 by Sushi Bird
I am not sure how famous Ken Tanaka is if you are not studying Japanese or have any interest in Japan, but basically, his story goes as follows: He was born in the US but was adopted away to Japanese parents when he was very little, and now he is trying to find his American birth parents. He says he taught himself English as an adult. Of course, this is merely a big spoof to get internet-famous, but his videos are entertaining and funny. I am not sure how funny this video is if you have no interest in Japan or Japanese what so ever, but I was laughing out loud through both of these videos.
How to speak fluent Japanese without saying a word – Part 1
How to speak fluent Japanese without saying a word – Part 2
(Sorry for the lack of actual photographs in the last 24 hours, I just have to get through the classes today, and new pictures will follow tonight.)
Jan 12, 2011 by Sushi Bird
学校が始まります。。。School is starting in 1.5 hours, I have forgotten half of what I am suppose to know by know, the kanji is mixing themselves together in my head and all I see are little squiggles on the paper, vocabulary I used to know seems foreign to me, like I see the words for the first time, and the grammar points seems more Greek than Japanese to me at the moment. Despite a half-assed effort over at renshuu.org and lang-8.com during the latest days, I can only conclude that I have to step it up quite a bit from today.
How do people learn? How do people push their brains to a greater capacity? I am trying to go back, trying to think how I learned English in the first place, how I learned HTML and CSS, how I learned to take pictures – but all of those things seems so internalized I can not remember my initial struggles with it.
I do remember asking my English teacher in 3rd grade – “In the name ‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ – what does the word ‘the’ mean?” My teacher answered me that the word “the” did not have any meaning on its own. Today I know that answer was wrong, that was my teacher not knowing how to answer that question to kid, who probably would not understand what she was trying to tell me anyway. Today there is Wikipedia, today I know that I can look up the word the on Wikipedia and get an explanation, but I am not sure sure my nine year old self would have understood it even with the help of Wikipedia. I don’t know. What is curious to me, is that the way I felt about the word the as a nine year old – this is the way I feel about Japanese today. I read about Japanese. I try to research various aspects about the language, I try to grasp the concept of it. I read and I research about how people learn, about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, about vocabulary acquisition, shadowing, about ways to memorize kanji efficiently… but despite reading about Japanese – I am not sure I can fully grasp the concepts and internalize them. Maybe I should spend more time practicing the actual language, and less time trying to grasp the concepts and trying to find the best way to learn.
Do you think you can learn if you don’t grasp the concept of what you are doing first?
Jan 11, 2011 by Sushi Bird
Haha, this is interesting + the illustrations makes it cute.
Jan 10, 2011 by Sushi Bird
I have thought a lot about intrinsic motivation vs extrinsic motivation lately, and his conclusion in this TED-talk seems very much like my own thoughts. I am wondering how to create more intrinsic motivation for the things I need to study now in the new year, so I am going on a wikipedia-binge starting now to see if I can find a way to rise intrinsic motivation, apart from the obvious of making what you are doing fun.
