Notes to Myself

What to do?

Winter seems to be a slower period for my mind and internet efforts. Lately I haven't written all that much on my website, but I think waves of writing motivation are quite natural.

One of the major pains of site maintenance over the last year has been increasing spam, where clever individuals abuse the comments system of MovableType. This seems to be becoming an increasing problem and have read of others with similar struggles against fighting spam. There do seem to be people developing anti-spam systems, though various upgrades would need to be performed.

Bit of a pain, really. I do not want to get into any non-operational type situations and risk having to ask my provider for more help before my contract with them expires. Why? Don't ask! Out of interest, can anyone recommend any good web hosts for movable type?

So, with the site coming closer and closer to it's 2 year birthday I am wondering whether it will also represent it's death. Surprisingly, my counter seems to have reached over 170,000 hits, which is more than I would ever have dreamed of. What do do, what to do?

Hearing Accents

A Japanese friend of mine met some of my foreign friends for the first time recently. The foreigners among the group, all native English speakers but from places with vastly different accents, tried a little Japanese here and there. After we had all parted my Japanese friend said that I sounded just like my other foreign friends when I speak Japanese - I was shocked. But, our accents our totally different, I pointed out. When we speak Japanese I can still hear an obviously American accent from my American friend, Australian accent from my Australian friend and so on.

So, then, does this mean that to many Japanese, we foreigners sound the same (if our native languages are the same)? Was it just her? My second question would be if we hear slightly different sets of sounds from the native speakers of the language we are trying to learn can we get closer to a native accent within a decent period of time? My thoughts move to language labs where I think you can see how well your voice patterns match recordings? I'd like to try something like that.

Boarding

"Let's Challenge!!" says the pamplet for a ski slope in Nagano called Kashimayari. "Ok," I said, as I tried snowboarding for the first time. I took a night bus from Tokyo with some friends and we arrived in Nagano at 5 a.m. the following morning.

Initially after hiring all the gear I was surprised that unlike skiing a snowboard doesn't come off automatically when you fall over at an awkward angle! Anyway, in our group of 4 there was another beginner besides me so we learnt some of the basics together.

Just when I thought I'd got a handle on the basics I seemed to get worse and was falling all over the place. At one point I fell forwards and my fist ended up in my ribs. My friend took me up to a very high 'easy' course but it was very challenging; though not too steep it was a thin winding slope with some sharp turns. For fear of slipping off into the trees and down the mountain I think I did far worse.

We only stayed for one night and the following day only provided enough time for a few hours more practice. It was warm and sunny so the snow became icy and dangerous looking. But, thankfully I had some good runs and managed some left and right turn combos - woohoo! For a beginner I found it long enough for the agony steadily increases much more than I found when trying skiing.

The Doctor says I have damaged the muscles between my ribs though the actual bones are OK. I have to use a cooling patch for the inflammation and also have a strap around my body to limit my chest movements - it stops laughing and sneezing from giving me pain! So, I am out of sporting action for yet another month. New year's resolutions? How about less injuries this year?