I tend to think that I have a better understanding of the British, or at least the differences between us (Americans) and the British, than your average American. However there were a few surprises for me on this list:

American English has further changed due to the influx of non-English speakers whose words sometimes enter American vernacular. Many words have entered American English from Spanish, Native American languages, and so on.

[ American English - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ]

that neck of the woods comes from a Native American tounge? Brits call squashes marrows? Savvy comes from Spanish? American English has borrowed from Tagalog?

We invented some words? Sure gerrrymander I knew, but belittle? Applesauce? Teenager? What on earth do Brits call applesauce and teenagers?

And surely, growning up in the midatlantic/north east I have a good grasp of vocabulary borrowed from Yiddish (which are always fun to say), but I didn't realize that maven and drek came from Yiddish, and I thought that skosh did (yet it came from Japanese).

This happened a week or two ago:

What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?

a. sunshower (34.29%)
b. the wolf is giving birth (0.04%)
c. the devil is beating his wife (6.43%)
d. monkey's wedding (0.16%)
e. fox's wedding (0.15%)
f. pineapple rain (0.03%)
g. liquid sun (0.74%)
h. I have no term or expression for this (55.15%)
i. other (3.02%) (10691 respondents)

[ Dialect Survey Results ]

Thanks to this survey I now call it something like "The monkey and devil got married and gave birth to the wolf", since I can never remember anything on this list...

My phone's camera leaves a bit to be desired, as you can tell from this super-crisp photo I took at the market:

Mocha Coffee Jelly? It says something about putting it on creme cheese on crackers or something. Seems they will put anything in Jelly these days. I wonder how much caffeine it has.

Those who read me regularly are likely aware that I GameFly. I find it is a great way to try out crap games without ever having to buy them. You know the titles, curious looking, you know they probably suck, but want to confirm it.

Today we confirm one real stinker, and another that just doesn't suit my taste. The first is Retro Atari Classics: 10 or so old Atari games that I don't remember liking much the first time around. They've had some "artists" spruce up the graphics, since computers are a bit better than they were back in the day. Centipede comes out psychedelic, but rather unplayable due to the odd stylus system where you don't touch where your guy goes, but close to where he goes. Missile command's new look is nice, but the touch screen is too sensitive so you run out of missiles rather quickly, leaving your cities defenseless. Gravitar, Sprint, and Lunar Lander always sucked, so who cares... Breakout and Pong get old so quickly, and Asteroids has never been my favorite (plus it's already on my sidekick). Warlords is OK, but it's just 4 player Pong mixed with Breakout, which still gets old quickly. And Tempest just looks and plays crappy on the DS.

The second is Zookeeper, a fancied up version of Bejeweled. I found it much more enjoyable than Bejeweled, but I find Bejeweled barely more fun than popping bubble plastic. (Though that is a mini-game in Warioware Touched, which I did love). If you like Bejeweled you will love Zookeeper, as it is a bit more challenging, and there are some nifty new rules to it. Perhaps there are super cool unlockables as well, I'm not patient enough to find them.

What I'm really looking forward to is the 3rd game sent my way, which somehow didn't make it with the other two, God of War. It looks to be a contender for PS2 Game of the Year, perhaps even Game of the Year, even if Resident Evil 4 should be a shoe in for that one.

It's addictive. Ever since playing Katamari Damacy I have been listening to tons of Japanese Pop Music, mostly the likes of:

• Puffy AmiYumi 
• Fantastic Plastic Machine 
• Pizzicato 5 
• Takako Minekawa 

Though among those I really appreciate the Bosa Nova influence in FPM, it's downright viral. And I think influenced the soundtrack to Feel the Magic XY/XX so much you could say it was stolen.

It's tax time. Taxes confuse me. I think my taxes should be very very simple, but the software (TaxCut this year) always asks me so many friggin' questions. Though planning for next year, I noted this:

Hobby Expenses

Enter the amount of any expenses you incurred in 2004 in the course of your not-for-profit activities, but only to the extent you reported income from those activities.

In counting "total expenses" for this purpose, you must include items such as interest that would be deductible in any event.

If you have expenses in excess of income from an activity, your tax benefit would be greater if you could deduct them. To deduct expenses in excess of income, you must prove that you had a profit motive in engaging in the activity.

You will be presumed to have the needed profit motive if the activity actually showed a profit in 3 of the past 5 years (including 2004). (If the activity consists of breeding, training, showing or racing of horses, the reference is 2 of the last 7 years.)

If you can show the needed profit motive, either using this presumption or otherwise, you should report all of your income and expenses for that activity on Schedule C, not here.

So I simply need to win a few video gaming events, enough to profit for 3 years, and then keep it up to an average of 3 out of each 5 years, and all video game purchases could be deductible?!?!?! Sounds good to me. (If near impossible with my schedule.) Though I expect anyone who blogs, and pulls in enough ad revenue to cover expenses with a bit left over, has some healthy deductions here.

But I don't think it's required to enjoy this excellent music video:

Frankly, I can not speak in English.(a friend of mine helped me to write this one) but it would be quite comfortable for you to watch movie which I had made, because there is quite few letter and words. Please make yourself at home while watching it

[ amalloc of SamBakZa ]

The story then continues with step 2. Perhaps even more on SamBakZa.net, but as I said I don't speak Korean.

Props to Ed (who has no web page).

OK, these guys have some questions:

Do you have a website or run even a web server and want to secure the traffic between your visitor's browser and the web site? Did you find out that, in order to make your site SSL aware, you'll need a SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate? Were you also surprised to find out that such a certificate can cost you hundreds of dollars, and that they are only valid for one year? For what, you might ask yourself?

[ StartCom Free SSL Certificate Project ]

And basically the answer is that if they don't check out people, anyone can get an SSL certificate, and the little lock will mean nothing but traffic is encrypted. Part of what that is supposed to provide is 3rd party confirmation about who you are dealing with. Clearly installation of their root certificate will make your machine somewhat more gullible, and you won't know for sure that when you see the wee lock that you are dealing with the company that says they are that company.

However, they also point out that few people fully understand all of that stuff, and CAs don't check too much to issue a certificate. Most importantly for web developers this means the availability of a true, valid, painless, SSL certificate for localhost for all of your development needs. Now that's something to get excited about.

Update: StartCom has asked me to "check out our project again", as then have increased their offerings and my above statement is no longer true.

Ever since Nintendo dropped Silicon Knights as a secondary developer, I've been worried that I wouldn't see any more games from them:

SEGA has announced an agreement "to acquire and publish next-generation game content" from Silicon Knights - perhaps putting to bed persistent rumours surrounding the Canadian developer's future work.

The companies will collaborate on a new franchise for next-generation consoles, they said this afternoon, although details have not been discussed. "Next-generation consoles" could include any of Xbox 2, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Revolution.

[ Eurogamer.net - SEGA signs Silicon Knights for next-gen ]

I still mean to go back and try to finish Eternal Darkness. The controls are a bit clunky, but since it was close to launch that's understandable. The sheer originality of the game makes it so enticing.

I think I should start planning now:

Kyoto is one of Japan's leading large cities, founded upon the Heian Capital, which was built in 794 AD. Its population of 1.47 million citizens lives in harmony with a natural and cultural environment which has developed over time immemorial. Kyoto City is a place where you can truly savor first-hand a rich depth of culture and art steeped in tradition, and set against the changing backdrop of the four seasons, with each one possessing its own charm.

[ Kyoto City Web / Message from Mayor / Welcome to Kyoto ]

The question is, will one week be enough? Or perhaps two would be better.

But he did name it. And I think it works:

Q. Why did you feel the need to give this a name?

A. I needed something shorter than “Asynchronous+JavaScript+CSS+DOM+XMLHttpRequest” to use when discussing this approach with clients.

[ adaptive path ajax: a new approach to web applications ]

Props to Gibson for pointing out the "new" name for this approach.

Here's what you should have done, if the taquitos.net guys hadn't already done it:

Taquitos.net is the most comprehensive snack food site on the Interweb, featuring independent reviews of more than 2000 snacks. In addition to snack reviews, Taquitos.net has information on Krispy Kreme doughnuts, chicken nuggets, grilled cheese sandwiches, chocolate milk, snack mascots and more.

[ FAQ about Taquitos.net ]

Mmmm yummy. And with RSS, do you hear that Nintendo? RSS!

Perhaps this is why:

[ Muffin Films ]

I love Rhapsody, however there are certainly many usability issues. One I've just stumbled across is the inability to mail a custom radio station. Therefore if you want to listen in on the sort of thing I'm listening to this morning, you'll have to create your own radio station as such:

Cool Jazz Artist List

1. Vince Guaraldi 2. Stan Getz 3. Miles Davis 4. Dave Brubeck 5. Chet Baker Similar artists you will also hear include: Tommy Flanagan, Ramsey Lewis, Oscar Peterson, Modern Jazz Quartet, Gil Evans, George Shearing, Gerry Mulligan, Duke Ellington, Clifford Brown, Charlie Byrd, Billy Taylor, Billie Holiday, Art Pepper, Wayne Shorter, Thelonious Monk…

And, I assume, you can use the above suggestions on a non-Rhapsody service, or even on iTunes.

They get you all excited about the depths of Irish cuisine:

Irish cuisine covers a lot more than basic meat and potatoes. It's hearty yet refined, and utilizes indigenous ingredients for a truly fresh taste.

[ Food Network: St. Patrick's Day ]

So how many ways can one cook bacon, potatoes, and cabbage? (And how many of those can be cooked without the bacon?)

Yet frustrating.

Windows SharePoint Services is a collection of services for Windows Server 2003 that you can use to share information, collaborate with other users on documents, and create lists and Web Part Pages.

[ Sharepoint Products and Technologies ]

Clearly a lot of time and effort has gone into WSS and SPS. Clearly it allows some great collaboration. And clearly there is much to learn.

I just want to know how to import and export from a Discussion Board. I'm sure I'll eventually want to know how to import and export from all sorts of Lists, Document Libraries, etc. And I'm sure this is one of the first things that everyone has to figure out, so why don't they make it a wee bit easier?

I have a PC that seems to have a horrible clock in it, and it's always running about 5 minutes slow. It's certainly possible that something on the box is messing with the date and time, I'm not sure. I do know that the Windows XP time sync that's built in just doesn't run frequently enough to fix the issue, so I went looking:

TimeSync is an NT service that keeps your system's clock in sync with an accurate network server.

[ TimeSync ]

I'm actually surprised I never found this one before. It's easy to install, works great, has tons of options, runs as a service, seems to be freeware, and seems to have correctly my clock issue for the short term.

I did disable the XP service that was syncing time, to ensure that this program was doing the work, which I think I'd recommend for anyone else.

This is Reggie Fils-Aime's response to an interviewers question about the upcoming E3:

We want them to leave feeling that “Wow, Zelda is going to be as huge hit and I want it now. And I’m going to go to my local retailer and put a deposit for the super premium edition of the game,” which we’ll make available. We want the fans to walk away saying, “Wow, look at all this great GBA product and I’m going to be a two-handheld consumer, having both my old-time GBA as well as my brand new DS.” I want the consumer walking away just totally blown away with all the great product coming out for DS, especially Mario Kart, Metroid Prime Hunters, and Animal Crossing. So, in total, I want our fan walking away saying, “Yes, I need to be a three-system household, SP, DS, and GCN.”

[ 4 color rebellion Gamespot Interviews Reggie ]

But who isn't like this already? Just let me know when reservations are taking place, I'm ready to plunk down a deposit on the new Zelda. And who doesn't already own a GameCube, GBA, and DS? Could I be in the minority there?

(As the fan boys already know, Reggie is Nintendo's Vice President of Sales and Marketing)

This looks like a ton of fun:

From the entry of the 800-pound o-daiko drum on a cart illuminated by Japanese lanterns to the extreme physicality of the playing positions, the Kodo Drummers are all about ritual performance. Two dozen Japanese musicians man their taiko drums, fues, and shamisens in a performance that includes choreography and vocals.

[ Washington Performing Arts Society ]

But all studies show you will eventually return to normalcy.

[ iloveegg ]

And interestingly the UK version seems to be less abstract, and the Korean version requires a software installation so I didn't go there.

Props to the Persian Dispersion.

My family has a mailing list. I believe it just may be my primary means of communication with most of my family. Is that wrong? Please don't judge, at least not yet:

Iwata announced that the Wi-Fi protocol for Nintendo DS will provide users with a link to other players across the country or around the world. Once the service begins later this year, Nintendo DS users will be able to connect to the service wirelessly at Wi-Fi hot spots, whether they’re at home, in a hotel or at a coffee shop. As one of several Wi-Fi games, Nintendo’s in-house development team is creating a new Animal Crossing game for global Wi-Fi play.

[ News : Article ]

Once Animal Crossing DS over WiFi becomes my primary means of communication with the entire world, then you can pity me. That is if you have Animal Crossing DS and can mail me your ridicule, or a fossil...

And I can't wait to tell the first client, instead of using a conference call, let's all just meet in my Animal Crossing DS town, mind the weeds!

If only Yaty was here, and I wasn't so sick, I'm sure I'd try and catch part of this:

Once again this year we at the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital have embarked on the exciting journey of presenting a diverse and engaging array of films from around the globe to challenge and broaden our audiences’ perception and understanding of the complex world that surrounds us.

[ DC Environmental Film Festival ]

Think I'll just go hug a tree instead.

Gmail claims "you'll never need to delete another message" but I'm 9 months in, and I've used 12% of my 1GB. A little math will tell you that I've only got 5.5 more years left, according to Google.

Unless Google has some nefarious plan to rid the world of email in 5.5 years, and I'll be stuck at 98% usage or so, forever...

Or possibly they just haven't thought that far yet, and will worry about it when the first person (with real usage) hits 75% or so, and then they can devise a plan to deal with it. (which will likely be to postpone that by increasing sizes to 2GB or 5GB or whatever, as I'm sure storage will be that much cheaper in 5.5 years).

Or, maybe that's just a marketing slogan, and when my space fills up they'll say "so, what did you expect for free?".

At least that's my guess. She was recently in Japan promoting her hand bags or something, and I think she convinced Nintendo to write this game for her to promote:

[ nintendogs ]

I'm sure she's just waiting for the new pink DS before using it in public.

I don't know why, but I always seem to like a cover, good or bad. Long story short I was in the mood for the Turkey Song this morning, and remembering how Elliot used to drive us crazy with that song I sent the Rhapsody link to Tom. Good call too, he clued me in to the most excellent cover CD ever, "Pigs Fly CD":

Dari has once again come through. Based on the recommendation that his father enjoyed the Philips Senseo, I picked one up for a coffee solution at work.

...the SENSEO® Coffee Machine brings great taste - in both design and coffee - to your kitchen. The patented system uses perfectly balanced proportions of coffee and water. Mild pressure and a special spray head produce an optimally balanced coffee filtering process.

The problem at work is the big industrial machine we have just doesn't make that good coffee. I'm not a big fan of drip, there is so much to clean up, and the coffee is decent, but frequently a bit weak for my taste.

Let us review some of Philips' claims about the product:

Each cup is perfectly brewed and topped with a rich, frothy coffee layer

Note here that Philips does not claim the "layer" is crema. It's not even really crema-like. However for the price, and what you can expect from this type of machine, it does meet their claims.

Quick and easy one touch brewing system brews a cup in 30 seconds.

Absolutly does this. It's not crazy loud like some would have you believe, although I did find the instructions a bit confusing, not mentioning anything about waiting for the power light to stop blinking before selecting 1 or 2 cups for the brew size.

Convenient, no worry auto shutoff after 1 hour

I guess it does this, I've never left it on that long. I'm not even sure why you'd want it to stay on, there is no hot plate or anything. Perhaps just a safety feature, which is always nice.

Clean up is simple with dishwasher safe removable parts

Clean up is simpled. Dead simple. Everything is neat and tidy, and for me that is a super big plus.

1450 watts of power

Well, yes, it does have that much power as far as I can tell.

All-in-all for an under $50 coffee solution (after rebates and if your shipping is free and there is no tax) it's possibly the best I've ever seen (all things considered).

The coffee selection is a bit limited, though, and although I've seen Kona pods, I've yet to see Maui pods (sorry Dad).