For time to time, I've been working on the transition of my "Ippei's Blog" and the diary entries on Mixi (Facebook is already set to RSS feed). I'm pleased to announce that the new blog is mostly ready. I've still got older entries written in 2004 manually adjusted, but the newer entries are all up and running. (Can't believe more than half the entries in past 3 years plus were back in 2004.)

I regret I do not have any effective way to move the old comments and trackbacks over to the new system. Sincere apologies to anyone who has left comment/trackback on the old blog. I'd like to thank you all for reading my blog.


暇を見て「ペーの日誌」とMixiの日記を移動すべく作業してきましたが、新しいブログの準備がほぼ完了したので移転したいと思います。２００４年に書いた記事はまだ整理が済んでいませんが、２００５年以降の記事は移動してあります。（過去３年以上の記事の半分以上が２００４年なんですね。）

残念ながら古いコメントとトラックバックの移行が出来ません。今までコメントを残してくださった皆さん、本当に申し訳ないです。これからも「ペーの日誌」をよろしくお願いします。

New "Ippei's Blog" URL:
http://ippei.wordpress.com/

I've found this through a mixi.jp community:
Ajax IME: Web-based Japanese Input Method

I'm simply surprised by its quality, especially considering its underlying libraries etc.

The idea was around for ages. Even myself written something like this before leaving to Canada back in 2002 (I was 17):
Romaji-Kana Converter on the Web

Well, about this my program, me and my friend (Sakuma, the guy running BitCoffee Inc.) have talked about the possibility of going further enabling it to handle Kanji just like the one above. We concluded it would be either Java or Flash client's job to interact with the server. That was a few years ago.

Now, look at this wondrous IME implementation: it's Javascript, the AJAX! I can't believe how quickly things change. And anyway, I hope the above program will be stay online as long as possible and become popular without disappointing neither the author and the users.

Added:
The author of the above AjaxIME mentioned Sumibi's web interface. This one works alright too. So cool! The technology behind those seem open-sourced NLP engines: probably ones from MeCab, Chasen, Juman etc. This is actually one of the subject areas I'm interested in.

I take this as no need of waking up early tomorrow....
Well, I'll be late for the semester though.

See you on, er, probably Monday.

Something looks different yeah?



(http://homepage.mac.com/ippei_ukai/Photos/PhotoAlbum73.html)

It's already half gone, isn't it? Just can't believe how quick it's passed.
Anyways, as usual here is the summary of this academic year:



All passed. That's the most important thing in the second year. I did surprisingly well in Linguistics. Apparently got 85% for Transcription Project (wow!). I was exempted from its final exam by the way, so it's not that I can do written exams in Linguistics.

I travelled through the Highlands last week.

On Tuesday, I woke up at 6 and went up to Thurso, which is the most Northern place in Britain where you can get with railways. The journey was wonderful withvery beautiful Scottish scenery, except that Thurso is 7 and a half hours away from Edinburgh. Thurso itself is a small town that has nothing special except the Northern end of the British Railways. I went for a walk and saw James' friend at his brother's Internet Café. I left there at 7 next morning.

A half way from Edinburgh to Thurso is the city Inverness. "Inver-" means mouth of river, and Ness is the name of river which flows out of the famous lake, or loch, with the same name. Loch Ness is the biggest lake in Britain, which is rumoured to be the home of a large unknown creature for centuries.

The tour bus from Inverness took me to a thirty minute cruise to the ruin of a castle and the exhibition centre. The weather was perfect in a sense; typical Scottish rain-spattering cloudiness certainly was making the atmosphere which tourists would be expecting from the Loch. Cruising the surface of the loch with boat reminded me of the evolution of science in a last couple of centuries; without science taught in the schools, I would have easily believed the existence of scary green monster living under the black water of Ness, which has nowadays ended up with friendly smiling in every souvenir shop in Scotland.

The boat took us to the ruin of the unpronounceable castle of Urquhart. The castle that once had been one of the most important castles in Scotland seemed to have gone through the most tragic part of the history of Highlands. The castle that had been experienced number of battles was destroyed in 17th century by the Government force who did not want the Jacobites take over the castle.

Jacobites are the "rebellions" from the Highlands who fought against the government. After centuries of wars against each other, England finally became a "friend" of Scotland when the King of Scotland succeeded that of England as well in early 1600s. However, a century later, the Glorious Revolution in England lead the Highlanders who did not agree with this decision of English Parliament to the war against England and the Southern part of Scotland. This "Jacobites'" war ended with the battle of Culloden near Inverness.

Since I had a time on Wednesday in Inverness, I visited the Culloden Battlefield. The exhibition that explains the incident was very interesting, but the battlefield was, as usual for old battlefields to be, nothing but just a field with some flags and tombs.

After getting back to the Inverness station, I went to see Caledonian Canal using the time till the next train. Caledonian Canal connects North Sea and Atlantic Ocean using several lakes including Loch Ness. It wasn't as big as I thought, but still this is one of the finest old Scottish engineering projects like Forth Rail Bridge.

This is what my friends made for the Make Poverty History day...

(Click for the back)

I think they watched Doctor Who too much and started to believe in Daleks.
(BTW, I thought it's like Darlex-Darlci, but it was apparently as simple as Dalek-Daleks)

Quicktime VR Panorama Movie of the Make Poverty History event

Quotes from the email I have just received from Amazon.co.uk:


... We are, therefore, delighted to confirm that we have reduced the price of Harry Potter 6 to just £8.99 (47% off) and that all our customers, muggles and wizards alike, will benefit from this reduction.

... and the new price will be magically changed in Your Account.

... Please note that the book will not fit through a standard letter box, so keep an eye out for our delivery owls.

... Thank you for shopping at Amazon.co.uk, and stay alert for You-Know-Who.


The mail looks just like usual Amazon notification simply informing me that the price reduction will affect the previously placed order. This kind of humour must be of British culture indeed.

Last Friday, I went to the room I'm living from September. 'Cause my friend is living there now, I can change the colour of the wall during the summer.

The thing is that
the room is in bright yellow right now.

I think earlier I paint it, the better even for the person who's living there during the summer.


Now:


Plan 1 :

I've just got all the exam results.
Very regrettable B in Informatics 1B; should have studied more, especially of Data and Analysis.



Update (2005-06-19): Got all the results including total score for Linguistics 1.
After all avg. Linguistics: 62 (with Exemption), Informatics: 83, H.Maths (outside): 85