One Blog Isn’t Enough
March 21st, 2006 by MarkSomething about the regular practice of writing articles for my blog has been very enjoyable to me since I started a few months ago. It helps me organize my thoughts. It helps keep my English writing skills from degrading as quickly as they otherwise would, spending years living in Asia. Of course it’s nothing like churning out essays or poetry in college was, but it is still something.
To be honest, I can’t get enough of it! So, I’ve joined up with John P. and Matt to write a tech blog! It’s not fully fleshed out yet, and Matt’s been too busy writing the latest IEEE 1619.1 draft and honing his NCAA basketball gambling similation to post yet. If you’re curious, though, you can check it out at iDrone.net. This project doesn’t mean that I’ll stop writing geeky stuff here, but my postings to the “geekery” category may slow down a bit.
I’ve also been working on another blog to help a couple of advanced students keep in contact with me while doing extensive reading on their own. It’s very bare bones, but I’m adding assignments to it at a pretty good clip. That blog is called TaipeiTutor.com.
Being a personal site, Toshuo.com is very fragmented. Many readers who are really interested in foreign languages could care less about what I have to say about programming, and visa versa. Once again, I’ll suggest that readers who are only interested in one specific topic I blog on, such as investing, use feeds to view only what they want to, as I’ve described earlier.
:
March 21st, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Mark-san,
I started visiting English blogs this month. I selected several of them written by native English speakers who live in Taiwan, China and Japan. I’ve found it very enjoyable to read those interesting articles and sometimes post comments.
But some of my favorite blogs stopped posting just after I began to visit them. A blog has been in trouble with spam mails, Darin-san temporarily closed his blog due to a move, and a blogger have never posted articles for more than a week.
I seem to have no luck when it comes to blogs. And to make it a little worse, you said “my postings to the geekery category may slow down a bit” in today’s article. Anyway, I hope you’ll keep this blog even if you might slacken your pace.
March 21st, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Hey, I’ve been demoted to “John P”?
March 21st, 2006 at 11:18 pm
John-he-that-hails-from-Florida,
B-b-b-but, you introduced yourself on my blog as “John P” in several different places!
I’d call one of you “Shanghai John”, except that you both live there. If you guys were my students, I’d just make you “Big John” and the other one “Little John”, but that doesn’t seem too good. The only reasonable solution is a best 3 out of 5 Starcraft match (with random races) to decide which of you gets rights to your own name. Either that, or you could settle it the “Chinese way”.
March 21st, 2006 at 11:24 pm
Kanwa-kyudai-san,
Do you read the stuff I write in the geekery category anyway? I figured you were more into the posts about language. If you do like the geeky stuff, then iDrone may be right up your alley!
March 22nd, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Unless I’m remembering incorrectly, I’m pretty sure I can handily crush John B in Starcraft. (It might come close if he got the protoss every time while I got stuck with the zerg, though.) So you might as well just give me the rights.
March 22nd, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Mark-san,
I’m sorry I had misunderstood it. I thought the whole this blog was in the greekery category. I’ve just read some of your greekery articles now, and I must admit they aren’t my things. I don’t even know the meaning of the word “greekery” to begin with.
I couldn’t find the word in my dictionariies and on the Internet. Is it a slang word among the young or something relates to Mac? I’m not a computer whiz and only know a little about HTML/FORTLAN. Oh, old FORTLAN! Don’t laugh at me, please. I’m an old guy.
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:16 pm
“chinese way”是什麼?
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:38 am
@Kanwa-kyudai-san: A geek is a person who is very into computers, technology, math, or something like that. A geek is like an おたく, but geek has a more positive meaning than おたく. Geeky is an adjective; things that geeks like are geeky. Geekery is a slang word that means “geeky stuff”. The “-ery” on a word usually means “__ stuff”, like “trickery” is “tricky stuff”, or a “forgery” is a “forged thing”.
Some geeks like Macs, but Unix and Linux are geekier.
@Ivy: rock, paper, scissors
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:26 am
おだく, 漢字は”御宅族” There’s a very popular Japanese drama called “Densha Otoko(電車男, the train man)” which was extremely hilarious and it’s one of my favorite now!! It’s based on a chatroom, messageboard kind of writing style. If you know the show, you know what I’m talking about. Gee, I was afraid that if I ever the otaku myself haha.
Way to go, Mark-kun! You do LOVE to write and your writings and I enjoy reading them too.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Actually, John P and I both hail from Florida
And I’m pretty sure that I can beat John P in most games that are still played by people outside of China…
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Mark-san,
Thanks for your informative comment abou geekery. I remember I came across the site which title was “Mac Geekery” when I serched the word on the Internet. One of my best friends seems to deserve to be called a geek. He is a researcher at Matsushita and loves the Linux.
I don’t know exactly what the Japanese equivalent for “a geek” is. But I dare say the word “tatsujin(達人)” might be a bit better than Otaku. It also has a positive meaning, and everybody looks up to a tatsujin as a specialist/expert, whether he/she is a pro or not.
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:52 pm
John B,
It’s true that you’re better than me at most video games, but there’s no need to diss a timeless classic like Starcraft!
March 23rd, 2006 at 5:18 pm
You guys are even both from the same state!!? This is starting to feel like some scene out of a bad comedy routine…
Plenty of people outside China still play Starcraft, though!