This is a Livejournal meme, but I don’t use Livejournal, so I’m posting this here.
Premise:

1. Leave me a comment saying anything random, like your favorite lyric to your current favorite song. Or your favorite kind of sandwich. Something random. Whatever you like.
2. I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. You WILL update your LJ blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be asked, you will ask them five questions. Yeah, no.

Anyway. Questions by Taz, who I’m not convinced likes people linking to her Livejournal, so I won’t.

1. Do you have a favourite fruit?

Not particularly. I enjoy bananas and lychees, but I’m generally fine with any fruit except raspberries.
And figs are interesting because of fig wasps, but not so much as food.

2. Why Rosio Pavoris?

Because it sounds clever and I needed a name for my blog. It’s archaic Latin, so the words wouldn’t even be in most school dictionaries, so it’s nice and mysterious. The meaning is completely irrelevant, really, and I’ve forgotten it.
I think “pavoris” means “of fear”.

3. Have you ever read any Shakespeare?

I bought the collected works of Shakespeare four or five years ago but I’ve read less of it than I intended, mostly because most of it is seriously unreadable.
I’ve read Macbeth, Hamlet, and Much Ado About Nothing, but I think that’s it. I couldn’t even read Hamlet until after I’d seen it and had enough of a notion of the story to skip over the boring bits.

Plays aren’t meant to be read, anyway; I do enjoy seeing Shakespeare performed, though all I’ve ever seen live was a crap post-modern molestation of Romeo and Juliet.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is awesome. We watched the 1999 movie adaptation during Latin class when we were translating Ovid’s Pyramus et Thisbe, and that was probably the first time I really paid any attention to Shakespeare. Pity it was considered “too advanced” for our English classes.

4. How many languages do you have some ability in, and what are they?

“Some ability” is pretty relative. I speak English and Dutch fluently, French and Latin adequately, German and Japanese more-or-lessly, and I can generally understand, but not speak, Spanish and Italian. Given some time, I can probably make sense of most texts written in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish.
But really, four or five. I hesitate to even count Japanese.

I’ve been meaning to learn Yiddish, because I think it’s adorable. Well, what I actually want to do is learn Hebrew, because I don’t know any Semitic languages and Hebrew squiggles are pretty, but Yiddish is probably the most realistic way of building a basic vocabulary which I could then use to slowly edge my way into Hebrew, since Yiddish is a Germanic language and very similar to German anyway.
However, local bookstores suck at carrying Yiddish grammars and dictionaries, and after days of looking all I could find was a modern Hebrew dictionary and a Mishnaic Hebrew grammar, which is less than optimal. So yeah, probably not going to happen.

(In terms of programming languages, I’m fluent in PHP and Java, and know enough C/C++, Scheme, Common Lisp, COBOL, Perl, x86 Assembly, and Bash (which doesn’t count) to write a working application that does more than just print “Hello World”. And SQL, but that’s different.)

5. Do you want to always live in Belgium?

I was planning on moving to Canada at some point, but then that stopped happening.
I’ve considered moving to somewhere in Scandinavia if the political situation in Belgium keeps retardening (specifically, if Flanders secedes, but really also just if Vlaams Belang keeps growing), but I don’t think I have the energy anymore.

You have to love the significant overlap between people who talk too much and outright bigots. I finally got three people who have been getting on my nerves for months (the sort of people who also think I’m kidding when I call them worthless bottom feeders) to stop talking to me entirely, just by pointing out I am, in fact, bisexual.
I didn’t think that even worked in Belgium.

Random meme to fill space. I forgot where I found this. Output of history | awk '{a[$2]++} END {for (i in a) { print a[i] ” ” i } }’ | sort -rn | head:

104 vi
93 ls
76 cd
33 javac
27 apt-get
21 java
15 su
11 less
10 rm
8 tar

(This is essentially a list of the ten commands I use the most in bash. Only from the last two weeks or so, since that’s when I reinstalled Debian, but it wouldn’t be that different if it were a year’s worth.)

Based on three instances of “fucking”, two instances of “suck”, two of “sex”, two of “vagina, and one each of “bastard”, “pain”, “ass”, “torture”, and “kill”. I’m surprised it’s not worse than that. I guess I need to write about religion even more~

(Via people.)

No, not the Michael Moore movie, though I saw it yesterday and it’s pretty interesting, as Michael Moore goes. I’d link you to it, but Google Video keeps deleting it. Look for a torrent.

Instead, I’m talking about this thing: who has the worst sicko, when it comes to the search terms people use to find your blog.
(I wasn’t tagged, of course, but you know I can’t resist a bandwagon.)

Turns out it’s not as bad as all that. A sample from this month, in no particular order:

daniel radcliffe penis
rosio naked
rosio asian
fuck rosio
voyeur
vagina experiment
negerinnentieten
panda fun
dolly partons pussy
panty hamster
dwarf wijven
meat wallet
hueg panis
minor sex with another minor
schumer/mccain bill and state child sex offender databases
vagina tag
buttsecksu
pudendum feminum

And of course, quite possibly the worst of all:

pictures of rosio donald naked

Still, I’m disappointed. There are a lot of entertaining search terms (”what happens while dogs reproduce in biology?”, or my personal favorite, “need help with a bubblesort program that is suppose to prints out the mean the median the standard deviation and the mode in c++” [Edit: because I was bored]), but not really any sicko ones.

Skatje should have more luck with this. She attracts some interesting people from time to time.

I’m surprised how neatly the Republican candidates are clustered at the bottom. More proof a two-party system stifles political variety, especially if you consider the libertarian candidate is really just a Republican, and the Green candidate is a Democrat with a specific issue she feels more strongly about than the party at large.
I’ve mostly ignored Kucinich because they’re just no chance in hell he’s going to win the primary, so I wasn’t aware how solid he is on most important issues. Kudos to you, Kucinich.

(Via Larry Moran.)

You scored as atheism. You are… an atheist, though you probably already knew this. Also, you probably have several people praying daily for your soul. Instead of simply being “nonreligious,” atheists strongly believe in the lack of existence of a higher being, or God. atheism 79% Satanism 63% Buddhism 58% Paganism 46% Islam 38% Christianity 25% agnosticism 13% Hinduism 0% Judaism 0%

Which religion is the right one for you? (new version)
created with QuizFarm.com

Why do these things always produce filthy HTML?
Anyway. Whoever made that quiz fails at phrasing questions for that kind of sliding scale, and has some odd ideas about certain religions.
It annoys me when people refer to evolution as “random processes”. It just seems to demonstrate a lack of understanding of it.

Apparently my mom joined the KAV (Catholic Working Class Women’s Movement; it’s a social thing, not a political or religious club). Vaguely odd thing for an upper middle class atheist to do.
I’m sure she has her reasons.

Random meme thing.

I disagree with the first R.

I don’t remember where I found this.

Ten years ago, I: was in 6th grade, wondering how various mergers of high schools in Tienen would affect me personally. I was also not sure if I’d rather have Latin or a technical education. I’m glad I picked Latin.
Five years ago, I: was in 10th grade, for the second time. That wasn’t much fun. I guess it worked out in the end.
One year ago, I: had just dropped out of Japanology; was happy.
So far this year, I: have blogged far too much, and have been annoyed far too often; attempted suicide twice~
Today, I: got up an hour earlier than I expected to; did more research on posse comitatus than I intended to, just because the Revolutionary Communist Party is five months behind the news; helped my mom engage in piracy. Gasp.
Tomorrow, I: will have to explain why I didn’t do my Webdesign homework, while also pointing out that in another sense, I’m two months ahead of schedule. Or, more likely, not.
In one year, I: will be a Computer Science student at the KUL, or dead.
In five years, I: will be a Biology student somewhere, possibly.

That wasn’t very interesting. Polar bear!

You’ll die in your Sleep.

You will die peacefully in your sleep after having a really awesome life.

‘How will you die?’ at QuizGalaxy.com

(Via Pharyngula, obviously.)

In unrelated news, this is an excellent post compiling the various “basic concepts in science” posts. I already linked to Good Math, Bad Math’s contributions a while ago, but I’m guessing the non-mathematics ones will interest most people more.

In more unrelated news, the Magnetic Fields are pretty good. Granted, I’ve only heard two songs so far.

Dude reinvents radix sort, news at 11. How did Slashdot ever get to its current level of popularity?
I still prefer the ID sort.

Anyway, too diseased slash depressed for real content, so here’s memery.

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

Edit to add:

You Are a Chocolate Cake

Fun, comforting, and friendly. You are a true classic, and while you’re not super cutting edge, you’re high quality. People love your company - and have even been known to get addicted to you.

(Stolen from Terras.)

Stolen from echomikeromeo, because I can~
Put your MP3 player on shuffle, write down the first lines of the first twenty-five songs that come up, and then have people guess which songs they are.
I also went through and made sure there’s only one song per artist, and no songs that aren’t in English, because my music library is odd that way.

Read the rest of this entry »

I did this blog worth meme thing before, but I didn’t expect that big a jump in value in that little time.
That’s $7,903.56 in a month and a half. According to Global Rich List, that kind of income would put me in the top .69% richest segment of the world. (You are the 41,617,434 richest person in the world!)

In unrelated news, I’ve decided I love flash memory. I think I’ll get another USB stick and fill it with software and MP3s, so the KHL (actually quite decent) computer hardware isn’t going to waste on their poorly configured, heavily crippled set-up.

In even more unrelated news, I’m watching this terrible documentary on historic Western Islam. Apparently I’m notoriously anti-Christian, but that woman’s attempts to blame all evil in the world on Catholicism (and all good in the world on Islam) annoy even me.
She mostly seems to be doing the thing many New Age movements are doing with their revisionist elevating of pre-Christian cultures (be they European paganism or Eastern mysticism), only she’s doing it with her own private version of Islam. It’s pathetic and disgusting.
I’m not sure why I’m linking that, since I wouldn’t advise watching it. I guess I’ll take apart her more obnoxious mistakes at some point in the future, perhaps.

Not quite tagged by Skatje.

1. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Not a good start. Skipping question.

2. Where would you like to live?
In no particular order: Leuven, Oxford, Cambridge (either one), NYC, or Florence. Or somewhere quiet. Regardless, where I’d like to live isn’t nearly as important as who I’d live with.

Read the rest of this entry »

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

You are 100% atheist!

 

Hooray you are an atheist with respect to most or all gods. Good work. Hope you aren’t disbelieving in the wrong one…

Am I An Atheist
Create a Quiz

You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom 73% Lex Luthor 65% Apocalypse 63% Mr. Freeze 62% The Joker 58% Venom 56% Dark Phoenix 56% Magneto 56% Green Goblin 54% Mystique 50% Juggernaut 46% Two-Face 46% Poison Ivy 46% Kingpin 45% Riddler 40% Catwoman 40%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

Especially that second one, I think, came as a surprise~

Because it’s been a while. However, since I also can’t be bothered to answer questions, all you get is two quiz results.

I am: a stack of blank CD-R discs The most cost-effective way to store and deliver large amounts of data.

My IQ is actually higher than that~

I am: Kurt Vonnegut For years, this unique creator of absurd and haunting tales denied that he had anything to do with science fiction.

Gah, I say.
(Via this guy.)

In unrelated news, I’m moving my old bookshelves around in my room in an attempt at finding a configuration that doesn’t just make the whole thing look cluttery. Tomorrow, I’ll actually start putting together the new shelves.
I know people were dying for a bookshelves update.

Have some ducklings to wash the Vonnegut away.

Apparently Maia tagged me with memery. It’s been too long since I did a meme anyway.

Rules: Each player of this game starts off with 10 weird things/habits/little known facts about yourself. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 10 weird habits/things/little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you need to choose 10 (5) people to be tagged and list their names. No tagbacks.

1. I’m not nearly as lazy as I pretend, but I maintain the image of laziness so I more easily pretend mediocre work I do is just a result of not trying very hard.
2. Often it still is, but not nearly as often as before. It’s important to me that people don’t know when.
3. I often carry a clipboard with blank paper around, because I don’t trust my memory. This is also probably why my memory is so untrustworthy now.
4. I usually get along well with animals, but only if they’re mammals. Children, too, which is odd, because older people tend to describe me as intimidating.
5. I hate your kids, though. Keep them away from me. If they drool on my stuff, I will make them cry.
6. Probably not, actually. I’m mostly non-confrontational around strangers, because I want to go home. This is also why I hate it when people slow down to look at accidents or try to kill themselves by throwing themselves in front of my train. This has happened twice now.
7. I hate wearing shoes. If I could get away with it, I never would, even outside. This is because I like stretching my toes and picking stuff up with them. For similar reasons, I hate mittens.
8. I like classical music, but if it has lyrics, I will always judge a work by them before caring about the music.
9. I loathe most “classic” works of literature, and I suspect everyone else does too. James Joyce is a terrible writer. If a work has “human condition” in its description, it’s not worth reading.
10. One of these statements was a lie~

Mmhm. Tagging Coren, Skatje, Terru, Codu, and Sparky, because ten is indeed too many. That leaves, like… three other people to tag, I guess.
We need more bloggers. Though probably not if all they’re going to do is memes.

And I do mean everyone. Seriously. Everyone. Not exaggerating at all.

(Make your own here. I apologise for the lack of more interesting content today. Can’t be fascinating all of the time, and we mustn’t let memery pile up unpropagated.)

Beginselen van Programmeren exam today. On a fucking Saturday~
Two questions, both Java, first being to debug a simple little script dealing with one-dimensional arrays, second being to write a program processing some type of running competition, capable of dealing with varying numbers of teams, players on each team, and laps run. Pretty open-ended, but even the most complex solution I could find was pretty straightforward. I probably shouldn’t be making a game of trying to confuse my teachers on exams.

Next exam is on Monday. Maatschappelijke en Ethische Vorming.

Also, apparently I’ve been tagged with book meme.

The nearest English-language book to me is… ugh, The Emperor’s New Mind, by Roger Penrose.
Three sentences off of page 123, starting with the fifth sentence:

The computer would systematically run through possible choices of the complex number c, where for each choice of c it would work out the sequence 0, c, c² + c, … and decide, according to some appropriate criterion, whether the sequence is remaining bounded or not. If it is bounded, then the computer would arrange that a black spot appear on the screen at the point corresponding to c. If it is unbounded, then the computer would arrange for a white spot.

Yes, he’s talking about the Mandelbrot set. His digressions are much more interesting than the actual main argument of the book, as I’m sure I’ve said before.

The nearest book to me in any language is Goethe’s Faust, translated into Dutch. It doesn’t actually have 123 pages, I’m afraid.
Second-nearest in any language is Jules Verne’s Voyage au centre de la Terre.

Mes cheveux se hérissèrent. Le sentiment du vide s’empara de mon être. Je sentis le centre de gravité se déplacer en moi et le vertige monter à ma tête comme une ivresse.

Possibly I’m just showing off now.

I would tag Coren, because his taste in literature is bound to suck; Barbara, because she needs to post moar; and Nafan, because I don’t think he can read.

Also, kitties.