BRAIN DRAIN

PC users, rejoice! Now there is a screensaver for you like a Mac’s, which can display your photos without making them look like a Powerpoint presentation.

Cellar Door Software’s Slickr is a PC screensaver that displays photos with the fading, zooming and panning effects that have made the Mac equivalent the envy of Windows-based users for years. As the name implies, the software probably works best with a Flickr account and an active internet connection, but it also displays photos stored locally on one’s hard drive in much the same fashion.

As a Mac user myself, I don’t know whether Windows Vista has this functionality already built-in, but it should be of interest to those of you who don’t plan to upgrade anytime soon. Best to download it now while it’s still free. Just remember: Macs had it first!

In an attempt to brush up on those Japanese classes I took back in college (and have mostly forgotten, for lack of practice), I found myself scouring iTunes for podcasts that might be of help. Then I stumbled upon JapanesePod101.com.

Podcasting from Akasaka in downtown Tokyo, the folks over at JapanesePod101.com have put together a very innovative, entertaining and - dare I say it - effective language-learning experience. Free daily podcasts cover survival phrases, vocabulary and grammar, as well as interesting nuances of Japanese culture within a format that gives the program the charm of a morning radio show instead of a stuffy classroom. Lessons are delivered in manageable increments that expose listeners to a variety of native speakers, making it easier to appreciate the different ways by which the language is spoken. And it’s hard not to be won over by the cast’s infectious enthusiasm and rapport.

Podcasts are free, on top of which the group also offers a premium service with added features (e.g.,detailed notes) on a pay-per-subscription basis. On their own, however, the podcasts already pack a lot of value for the busy commuter that wants to learn more of the Japanese language and the enchanting culture behind it. While there is no doubt that the service is ideal for the Japan-bound tourist intent on learning a little of the vernacular lest s/he be lost in translation, I am convinced that it is also a viable program in and of itself that will have listeners conversing in Japanese convincingly in no time.

Imagine: you pick up a book with eager anticipation, only to find you are unable to read beyond the first chapter. As the second chapter begins, you realize that it introduces not the continuation of the story you have begun but an entirely new one altogether. Imagine that this goes on for the remainder of the book. How would you feel? Intrigued? Confused? Frustrated? Amused? Imagine further that this is but merely a story within a story; that you are, in fact, reading a book about people as they read (and write) such a tale. How would you react then?

That, in sum, is precisely what Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler is like.

It is certainly a most inventive way of telling a story, stringing the reader along with the promise of telling one tale only to begin with a decidedly different one when things get interesting. Mind, this is no an anthology: the different directions that the book takes are but the beginnings of unrelated fictional novels as read by an unnamed protagonist. These are tied together by an overarching story involving that character’s pursuit of the conclusion to each tale. Yet more than that, If on a winter’s night a traveler may also be seen as a subtle treatise on the nature of storytelling itself, which Calvino, true to form, also injects into the very heart of the broader yarn that he spins.

As to be expected, this most unusual storytelling technique can be unsettling, and earlier chapters suffer considerably as the pieces to the overall puzzle are set in their place. In fact, the novel can be vexing at times, if not downright painful to read. But once you surrender to Calvino’s experiment it is hard not to be drawn in, to be taken for a ride, and to appreciate what a ride it is. The story comes together nicely towards the end, and when it concludes it is hard not to be charmed by If on a winter’s night a traveler.

I’ve been hearing a lot about Jumpcut lately, so I thought I’d share.

Jumpcut is an online service for creating movies or photo slideshows. Their web-based editor, which can also be linked to a Flickr or Facebook account, enables users to upload clips or digital photos, weave them together, add effects, and eventually publish and share the finished products over the internet. More, because it is as much a community as it is a service, the site also allows would-be film makers to “remix” movies published by other users in order to create something entirely new.

The whole thing is still in beta but promises to be one of the indispensable tools in this Youtube age we live in. In fact, it recently partnered with (or has been acquired by) Yahoo. I haven’t used it myself - I’d rather leave that to more capable hands - yet I must admit that it’s been giving me ideas as to how to put my meager camera phone to better use.

It’s funny how some things learned back in the day sort of stick with you. I’ve never quite forgotten the algebraic sequence below, which seems to demonstrate that math isn’t quite as exact as it is often made out to be.

With the exception of the difference of squares from the polynomial in the third line onwards, the algebra is pretty straightforward. If we let a = b:

a² = b²

a² = ab

a²−b²= a²−ab

(a+b)(a−b)= a(a−b)

[(a+b)(a−b)]/(a−b)= [a(a−b)]/(a−b)

a + b = a

a + a = a

2a = a

2 = 1

This cannot be the case, of course. The reason is simple but easy to miss, and it’s quite amusing how people can pore over this and be mystified (if the reactions of my friends and former students are anything to go by). If you know the explanation behind the “anomaly”, try not to spoil it! But do leave a comment either way.

How many ways can a ball serve to inspire still-life art? Apparently, many.

CGSphere.com is a website dedicated to digital art that focuses on sphere design. What’s interesting, however, is that their “sphere project” allows anyone to download a pre-set scene involving a sphere, modify it digitally, and submit it back to them in order to be featured online. The results, in the hands of the very creative and digitally adept artist, can be quite amazing if their gallery is any indication.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a game that starts slowly then never lets up. With an engrossing story that rivals that of The Wind Waker right until the very end, it is undoubtedly a welcome addition to one of the best video game franchises around.

The premise behind the game adds something new to the Zelda mythos. There is a kingdom of Twilight that exists sight unseen by those who live in daylight. When evil forces seek to conquer both darkness and light, the entire Kingdom of Hyrule is beseiged by monsters and is bathed in twilight, with its people suspended in time. Thus the hero of legend, who transforms into a wolf in twilight, must return to the Kingdom of Hyrule to set aright the balance between darkness and light once more.

On the Wii, the action-adventure game translates very well, though it does some things better than others. It is quite engaging to have to use both hands to manipulate Link’s sword and shield, and while the prospect of doing so may seem daunting at first it is actually quite easy to do: much of the motion required does not entail exaggerated swinging of one’s arms. However, controls do have a tendency to be imprecise, as when one would want to execute a shield attack (which requires a push of the nunchuck controller) but ends up unleashing a spin attack instead (which involves shaking the nunchuck). Still, other actions take to the Wii’s control scheme intuitively: never have shooting arrows, fishing, or using the clawshot been as much fun as they are on the Wii.

Much has been said of the game’s length, with some pointing out that it is one of the longer installments in the Zelda series (if not the longest). But this is only partly true: the game is only as long or as short as one wishes to make it. For instance, it is possible to finish the game in approximately 45 hours by intentionally moving the story along. But to complete the game, sidequests and all (and there are sidequests aplenty), will entail an effort in the neighborhood of 70+ hours. More than that, what contributes to the illusion of length the game has is the fact that the dungeons in Twilight Princess are some of the most challenging puzzlers in the series to date. It is not unheard of, for instance, to spend an average of five hours in each dungeon before beating it. Yet make no mistake: this is addictive and involving dungeon crawling at its best.

The Legend of Zelda is a series built around giving players enough of what is familiar to engender a sense of nostalgia while at the same time offering something new to look forward to that adds to the franchise’s storied history. Twilight Princess strikes that balance well. Indeed, enveloped in twilight, the sheer sense of adventure in the kingdom of Hyrule has never burned brighter.

Only recently have I gotten myself to read Haruki Murakami’s short stories, and it’s been quite a literary experience. I find that it’s not just the tales he has to tell that I appreciate (some more than others) but the subtleties that he injects into his storytelling that engross me.

For instance, in after the quake Murakami puts together six short stories inspired by the 1995 Kobe earthquake. The stories have nothing to do with one another apart from the fact that they all take place following the quake. But these are not tales about the calamity nor its aftermath per se. Rather, these are about different people whose lives are shaken in some way and thus search for something missing. It is an interesting allegorical device: an earthquake that shakes a nation, small events that unsettle people, and the need for both to pick up the pieces and seek out some greater meaning.

Then there is The Elephant Vanishes, a longer and much more varied anthology. Unlike after the quake, there is no unifying theme that strings this collection together. However, Murakami does employ common storytelling techniques that students of creative writing would do well to emulate. For instance, nearly all of them are stories of individuals telling stories. More, several of them actually involve the same elements: a character who works in a marketing agency, or is a short story writer, or goes by the name of Noboru Watanabe. Indeed, it is almost as if Murakami wrote these stories as an exercise to see how many he could write using components that were somewhat the same and somewhat different, if not to challenge himself then perhaps to get his readers to do a double take.

Literature has never been my strong suit, and it is entirely possible I am reading too much into nothing, if not missing the point completely. But the mere fact that these stories have prompted me to deconstruct them in this way goes to show that Murakami has done right at least by me.

Here’s the skinny (pun intended):

Somewhere in Florida, a 16-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy got thrown in jail for violating child pornography laws. The reason? The two took pictures of themselves that were apparently indiscreet (to say the least), which the girl thereafter emailed to the boy in question. When this was discovered (it is unclear how or why) they were arrested, booked and subsequently convicted for the inappropriate photos, given that the couple were both underaged.

The story is amusing in the sense of “how stupid could these kids be?” and fascinating from a legal perspective. I am compelled to wonder whether the kids pled insanity: raging hormones are arguably as good an insanity plea as any, notwithstanding the fact that practically any inane thing that teens do is borderline nuts anyway. Seriously, however, it does bring to the fore questions about what happens when otherwise questionable private conduct becomes public (rightly or wrongly), as well as whether litigation is even a meaningful solution to keep such things from happening.

In my opinion, it also goes to show that there is no better substitute for good parenting.

As a political economy major, I didn’t exactly get into economics “blindly”, but certainly at enough of a disadvantage to make graduate-level studies in the field challenging, to say the least. If I could have better prepared myself for this undertaking, it would have been in the following areas:

Of course, necessity is the master of invention; as such, I’m sure I’ll get over these sooner rather than later. I just don’t have a choice in the matter!