I am selling most of my manga collection. It's all in Japanese, except a few things that are in French (and are labeled as such). They've been read once and stored in my closet, so they're all in very good condition. Prices are $1/book, plus shipping.

One Piece volume 6 (FRENCH)
Naruto volume 13 (FRENCH)
Tsubasa, CLAMP, volumes 1-2 (FRENCH)
XXXHolic, CLAMP, volumes 1-2 (FRENCH)

HunterXHunter Characters Book (Magazine binding)
Double H (HunterXHunter yaoi doujinshi anthology) vol. 7-8
GOME Pirate Group (One Piece yaoi doujinshi anthology) vol. 1
One Piece volumes 2-28,
One Piece Red
One Piece Blue
Wanted! (Early works by Oda Eiichiro)
Naruto volume 1
Naruto official character book
Naruto official fan book
Hikaru no Go volumes 1-17 (Part one, up until when Sai leaves)
Hikaru no Go character guide
Slam Dunk volumes 1-5
Vagabond volumes 1, 15-22
GTO volumes 1-8
Sugoi yo!! Masaru-san volumes 1-2
Chikusaku Call 1 (Short stories by Usuta Kyousuke)
Detective Conan volumes 2-7
Shaman King volumes 1-4
Rocket Princess volumes 1-3 (by the author of Flame of Recca)
Infinite Ryvius guidebook
Infinite Ryvius - four 8 1/2x11" posters in a clear binder
Card Captor Sakura volumes 3, 7-12
Chobits volumes 2, 6-8
Niea_7 volume 1
Saiyuki volumes 1, 4-9
Saiyuki Reload volumes 1-2
Neon Genesis Evangelion volumes 1-9

"Good morning. Someone from your email address, maybe even you, had recently requested our vacancy list"

Oh yes, it must have been one of the other people from my email address who requested information about work-from-home jobs that seem like scams.

"You wish to get acquainted with beautiful and charming girl? It waits for you."

I love beautiful and charming genderless girls! Though, since this one is from someone offering to set me up with 22 year old Russian women, I wonder if it's not just a direct translation from Russian, like how Mädchen is grammatically neuter in German. Any thoughts, chiyo_no_saru?

Today I was procrastinating taking a break from studying Old Irish and finished my parody lyrics to "Suicide is Painless", which I wrote based on my fun, fun times working at a certain chain bookstore. Here. Enjoy. If I ever get my MC Hammer parody, "Grammar Time" written, I'll be pleased with myself. Also, if I ever manage to study productively, I'll be similarly pleased.

Retail Jobs are Painless

The early morning crowds are gone
I think I'll get some projects done.
That cart of books, it needs re-shelved.
It's not so bad and I can see... That

Refrain: Retail jobs are painless,
Even though they pay less,
and three of us here have our PhDs.

A customer comes up to me,
"I'm looking for this book you see.
I can't recall the name at all,
about a girl who's very tall."

[Refrain]

I'm on my way to break at ten,
that customer comes back again.
"This book you found me just won't do.
I think it's set in Timbuktu."

[Refrain]

This isn't what I dreamt I'd do,
when I went to homestate-U.
I learned to read poems critically.
What good is Shakespeare now to me?

[Refrain]

And you can join us one day, if you please...

I think that if I ever decide to learn a constructed language, it will be Lojban!

Also, I think I need to move away from the computer if I ever want to get my readings done. Though I think that if I read about the emergence of Brythonic orthography sitting on my bed, I will fall asleep.

This is a video about one of the African click languages, link courtesy of John Well's phonetic blog. It is super cool and I suggest everyone watch it and make noises at their computer. I think I can make/differentiate all four clicks, but I can't say them in words. It sounds neat when they do though.

Also, I wonder with what frequency the clicks show up in the language. I mean, they had that one sentence of four words, with each one having a different click, but I imagine that was just a handy example or something. Still, I seem to remember hearing quite a few clicks when we listened to it in linguistics classes.

Sadly, it's pronounced more like "brines" (I think) so you can't just go in and order a pint of brains without looking stupid. Might be worth it anyway though, except that I hear the beer is really watery and flat.

Yay! Brains all around!

I'm in the process of cleaning my closet/room while I am home in the US and getting rid of stuff. I've decided to get rid of the vast majority of my manga collection. I'm going to offer it to you fine people first, then try Craigslist, then eBay, then just give the rest to the library/GoodWill/some used bookstore (since they won't buy it from you). I'd like to get $1/book, but feel free to make an offer, especially if you're buying lots. I'm willing to ship these anywhere, as long as I don't lose money on it. Feel free to tell your friends, etc. These are all in Japanese, except for a few volumes in French. The asterisk means the manga is a one-shot.

( Manga List )

So, computer people:

I can't get gaim (or pidgin) to work with/around my school proxy. From what I can find online, it looks like it doesn't work. I get neat errors about how "http proxy server forbids port 5190 tunneling". Other ports also don't seem to work.

Are there any ways around this? Are there other programs that work better with proxies? I even tried AOL's Linux version of AIM, but it wouldn't install.

[edit:] Oh, yay, switching it to port 443 works fine...

I have a fully working computer again, for the first time since the SuSE laptop, Tuesday, broke in March, or whenever. I put Debian Etch on my desktop as a test, to see if that's what I want for my new laptop. It's fairly nice. Stuff works easily, apt-get is almost as nice as portage (fine, just as nice), and the swirly logo is pretty (though not as cool as the SuSE logo, but SuSE is evil and all now, so). I tried briefly putting Gentoo on the new laptop (named Rabbit), but IBM does stupid things and I'd have to go through a bunch of crap just to make it find my harddrive, and from my previous experiences with Gentoo, that would probably not be the last of my problems to solve. I do enjoy working on the problems, but I don't have that much time to mess around with it. The only problems I had with Debian were getting Japanese input and wireless internet to work.

For Japanese input, first I tried canna/winn, since that was what I had on Tuesday, but it's somewhat complicated, and it's not a very nice input system anyway. Scim-Anthy is the recommended Japanese input, it seems, but I couldn't get it to work, so I'm using Anthy with Uim, which is lovely. It's actually the best Japanese input system I've ever used, including on Japanese computers in Japan. It actually lets you specify input type (unlike canna, which made typing in katakana a bitch) and it is good at finding the right kanji, even in whole sentences.

I am less pleased with my wireless internet solution, however. I had all sorts of interesting errors from NDISwrapper, which some people don't approve of because it uses Windows drivers when there are none for Linux. I suppose some people would approve even less of Linuxant, which does the exact same thing, but charges you $20 for the privilege. It does have a 30 day free trial though, which I am using, and which will work until after I leave the country, so that is enough, but I may just pay anyway, to have it for good.

I also got bored and made a bootable USB drive of Knoppix, which is fairly useful and neat, but I can't find a computer that will allow booting from USB to test it and make a few final modifications.

What, 89% on Thinking? That seems low...

You Are Fish

You have a well formed palate and a daring appetite. If it's served to you, you'll at least try it. People are pretty scared of your exotic ways. But once they get a taste of you, they're addicted!

I think that may be the best idea for a stupid internet quiz ever!

Also, would it be an incredibly stupid waste of money to buy a dvorak keyboard? yes / no

Two updates in as many days (or in one day, since I haven't slept yet). It's not natural! But I was bored, and am considering updating my blog with stuff I made today, so I thought I'd take pictures and post them here. Plus one of Summer, 'cause she's pretty.
( Brioche )
( Pain au chocolat )
( Summer )

I bought some Limburger cheese a couple weeks ago. I've never had it, but always wanted to try it because it's supposed to be awful. It finally reached what the package says is the stage of ripeness enjoyed by most people (4-2 months from expiration date). It has a smell, but I've smelled Camemberts that were stronger. It has no strong flavour at all. I was expecting so much more. I mean, it was wrapped in two layers of wax paper and sealed in an aluminum foil wrapper. Maybe it'll be more interesting if it manages to survive two months in my fridge without my eating it and reaches the 'for Limburger enthusiasts' stage of under two months from the expiration date.

Someday, I want to make a meal composed entirely of foods people generally think are gross.

Also: Score! I got mod points on Slashdot again! (After not having them for the longest time because I didn't read it often enough due to working too much over the summer.)

Haha... well... at least I got one no one else has gotten, that I've seen.

Good idea:
Saving leftover tea from breakfast for iced tea.

Bad idea:
Drinking said tea after work when you plan on going to sleep in the next... ever.

Because I always need a knife at work, and my pocket knife is 15 years old, and was cheap when it was new and is now nigh unusable, I thought I would get myself a new one. I was considering just getting something cheap, but then decided I might as well get one that would be nice enough to last a long time, since pocket knives are always useful. I found a couple options and thought I would make another fun poll.

( Cut for pictures of knives )

Poll #699085 pocket knives
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What knife should Mink get?