zen.org Communal Weblog

For what its worth, I’m on day 4 of attempt number 659 to kick the fags . So far so average: smoked half of two cigarettes last night. Well, could be worse. Somehow. I guess. What I love is that alt.support.stop-smoking is “there for me” and has become a crutch already.

I also love SilkQuit, a free Quit Counter, which tells me that at this very moment, i have not smoked for three days, 16 hours, 4 minutes and 43 seconds; I have not smoked 44 cigarettes; I have saved €13.76; and my “life saved” (bitty iffy about this one) is 3 hours, 40 minutes.

What can I buy for €13.76??

/. reports that Bill Gates thinks that `anyone who doesn’t support ever-increasing intellectual property laws as “communists”.’ United States Republican candidates often accuse Democrats of being liberal. There is an eerie relationship there I have not figured out yet.

Quick test post. Somehow I’d imagine all my posts will be logged under ‘accidental’, just the nature of the beast.

I saw the little pictogram pop up in the browser bar and scuttled off to my Kanji dictionary. It took a while to find as I thought it was a 12 stroke character, but it’s a 13-er - there seems to be a horizontal stroke missing from the square box on the right (it should be divided up into quarters according to the dict.).

Anyway, naturally enough, it’s the character representing ‘Zen’, which consists of the root element ‘god’ (the bit on the left), and a phonetic element ‘Sen/tan/dan’ (the bit on the right) which means ’single’ when it appears on its own, gets pronounced ‘tan’ and is supposed to be a picture of ‘a single weapon with a forked end’.

Interesting, but will not help you get a cab when you step out of the arrivals hall in Tokyo…

From Geek Break Up Lines

11. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? R
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? R
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? F
Relationship failed.
10. Now that Half Life 2 is out, I need to refocus my priorities.
9. You have been unsubscribed from my dating list. Please click this link to confirm.
8. I need a lover who understands that 20 hours a day on the Internet is normal.
7. I don’t think we should date any more, but we can still be on each other’s buddy lists.
6. I’d like a true beauty so I don’t have to spend so much time photoshopping your ugly face out of our photos.
5. It’s like in X-Men number 135, where Cyclops and Jean Grey (as The Phoenix)…
4. Let’s face it. You love Intel, and I’m an AMD man. It’s not going to work out.
3. What do you mean your EULA says that once I’ve removed the shrink wrap I can’t return it?
2. After you e-mailed me your full-body shot, I realized I was looking
for someone more feminine
1. So long and thanks for all the fish.

A very cool project, even though I am still on my Christmas holidays: in late January, apparently, we will be setting up video conferencing between five Dublin schools http://www.global-leap.com/ and through this we will be running peer-to-peer teaching in things like web design, desk top publishing and programming. Sounds purdy cool.

Also, next September, about half the kiddies and all the staff get iBooks (except me ; I get a PowerBook next week ‘cos I’m special) and some Apple dudes are coming in over the summer to set up wireless access points in all of the classrooms and public areas.