So, I don't know if that has been mentioned in this thread yet, and I'm far too lazy to look right now, but I need to recommend this book I am currently reading. I picked it up at Book Off in NYC because it had an interesting cover, and as it turns out the book is not only incredibly interesting and compelling, but it is a very very very EASY read.

The book is called "オール" by 山田 悠介 so you can google it for some info on it, but according to some reviews I read it isn't even by far the author's best work.

Check it out if you want something amusing and easy to read. I'm on page 80 or so right now after an afternoon of reading and only needed to look up two words.

any chance you can give us a quick preview of what this book is about in those 80 pages you've read?

If you want something easy and intriguing, I highly recommend 星新一.
His writings are very easy and short but still not crappy, and the story lines are
usually pretty interesting and satirical.

masaman Wrote:If you want something easy and intriguing, I highly recommend 星新一.
His writings are very easy and short but still not crappy, and the story lines are
usually pretty interesting and satirical.

Hmm. I have his 午後の恐竜 short story collection, but I've never got round to finishing it, because I found the title story kind of depressing... So a bit of a 'meh' vote from me.
OTOH I've just read and liked 野尻抱介's 太陽の簒奪者, which is a hard SF novel somewhat in the dry 'concepts not characters' style of Rendevous with Rama. Not the easiest read in the world because of all the technical terminology, though.

Here's a useful url for those who are still having trouble reading difficult things. It's the Mainichi kids' section. I've shortened it for you:

http://snipurl.com/a00CJC

If you used this code with an url-shortening service that rhymed with "hit me," I'm not sure what you'd find.

rich_f Wrote:Here's a useful url for those who are still having trouble reading difficult things. It's the Mainichi kids' section. I've shortened it for you:

http://snipurl.com/a00CJC

If you used this code with an url-shortening service that rhymed with "hit me," I'm not sure what you'd find.

lol Don't you think that one was a -bit- too hard to figure out?

Thanks for the head's up!

Of course it was hard to figure out.
We can only understand Japanese around here..... :-)

Glad to see this entirely innocent thread remaining alive. Sharing is caring.

books by 森絵都. I only read a couple of books by her and they were all interesting.
when I looked her up on amazonco.jp she seems to have written a lot of books all with high reviews so I'm looking forward to reading the rest. I like her writing style since it makes me appreciate literature but at the same time it's not too much... I hate it when certain authors use difficult expressions like crazy (they express it in a way that it becomes time-consuming to follow/read)... cause then it just makes it harder to understand+I don't feel any literature appreciation or when it is just really simple/boring sentences+limited vocab (lol) which is attributed to the fact that the author is not good at writing/Japanese.

and Recently.... not that recent her book colorful became an anime movie. oh and her name is easy to read too. 'nother plus. lol

not that it has anything to do with this thread but... say one were to stumble upon a zip file (when mistyping a url of course) and that file contained some text files with filenames in some foreign script... say, japanese (not that one has found such a file, of course, this is merely hypothetical).
rumor has is that the filenames would render like garbage in some computers with OS;s not in to japanese, or whatever language the hypothetical files may be in. and it is likely 7zip may have a similarly hard time trying to decipher the filenames.
how would a person go about getting the file to decompress with the right names (just to make sure I accidentally don't do that if i were ever to find myself in such a hypothetical situation?)
(... writing like this is exhausting... a lot of fun, but exhausting nonetheless)

dbh2ppa Wrote:not that it has anything to do with this thread but... say one were to stumble upon a zip file (when mistyping a url of course) and that file contained some text files with filenames in some foreign script... say, japanese (not that one has found such a file, of course, this is merely hypothetical).
rumor has is that the filenames would render like garbage in some computers with OS;s not in to japanese, or whatever language the hypothetical files may be in. and it is likely 7zip may have a similarly hard time trying to decipher the filenames.
how would a person go about getting the file to decompress with the right names (just to make sure I accidentally don't do that if i were ever to find myself in such a hypothetical situation?)
(... writing like this is exhausting... a lot of fun, but exhausting nonetheless)

For some, the .txt file names might not display, but the .zip files are fine, so a body perhaps should just leave the .txt files in those containers (which saves space also), unless one wished to rename them all.

Optionally there might be a way to extract names intact w/ a newer version of Winrar or a plugin, but that is an uncertainty and of no real necessity.

dbh2ppa Wrote:not that it has anything to do with this thread but... say one were to stumble upon a zip file (when mistyping a url of course) and that file contained some text files with filenames in some foreign script... say, japanese

If he/she is a Linux user, it's quite possible he/she will find this script useful: http://is.gd/fuyPI

iSoron Wrote:

dbh2ppa Wrote:not that it has anything to do with this thread but... say one were to stumble upon a zip file (when mistyping a url of course) and that file contained some text files with filenames in some foreign script... say, japanese

If he/she is a Linux user, it's quite possible he/she will find this script useful: http://is.gd/fuyPI

I am possibly very grateful for this script and the ability to use it for various literature I may or may not have downloaded!

if one were ever to need such a thing, one would be very thankful for the above posts.
one may also say, in case some other person may be in need of such a thing (to avoid accidentally doing it of course), that using 7zip, or perhaps other programs, with applocale set to japanese on windows machines is definitely a thing to avoid, for it would allow one to have access to information that should never be freely share on the internet.

dbh2ppa Wrote:if one were ever to need such a thing, one would be very thankful for the above posts.
one may also say, in case some other person may be in need of such a thing (to avoid accidentally doing it of course), that using 7zip, or perhaps other programs, with applocale set to japanese on windows machines is definitely a thing to avoid, for it would allow one to have access to information that should never be freely share on the internet.

That's a hypothetical option, though I could never get applocale to work--theoretically speaking.

Also, for the nonexistent record, as I didn't say already, one was already able to view the hypothetical files; it was only the filenames within the archives that were perhaps, rhetorically speaking, gibberish. The actual imaginary files and archive filenames would not be gibberish, so any information--file name or file content--was in fact already accessible. Everything I have written has no basis in real persons or digital objects. Any resemblance is purely incidental and unintentional.

The solution to this hypothetical problem is to never use windows and applocale. Macs don't have this problem with gibberish filenames unless the files are copied from a fat32 or ntfs drive with gibberish filenames. Hypothetically, sending me a pm with info pertaining to said files would hypothetically make me happy. But of course, the story is purely hypothetical........ :-)

Hey, I'm enjoying those books you recommended.

For .txt files, I don't have ms office, and when I tried to use the macro to turn the <<>>'s into ruby text it didn't work in OpenOffice . Is there another way to do that? Or does anyone happen to have a macro for openoffice?

rich_f Wrote:Here's a useful url for those who are still having trouble reading difficult things. It's the Mainichi kids' section. I've shortened it for you:

http://snipurl.com/a00CJC

If you used this code with an url-shortening service that rhymed with "hit me," I'm not sure what you'd find.

Ok, so somebody "hit me" real hard cause right now it just doesn't ring the bell... and I did try the usual full-of-all-sorts-of-junk 'sega pup toad' link, but that code just doesn't seem to work. And the 'sega...' DOES work for the rest of really odd links that rain on you all sorts of amazing little gifts that remind you of Christmas all over again

Please...

shamanana Wrote:

rich_f Wrote:If you used this code with an url-shortening service that rhymed with "hit me," I'm not sure what you'd find.

Ok, so somebody "hit me" real hard cause right now it just doesn't ring the bell... and I did try the usual full-of-all-sorts-of-junk 'sega pup toad' link, but that code just doesn't seem to work. And the 'sega...' DOES work for the rest of really odd links that rain on you all sorts of amazing little gifts that remind you of Christmas all over again

Please...

Right, this one is just a -bit- different, Lee. You just have to use the right 'url shortener'.

I thought I was really dense, but it seems I was "just" ignorant? I must say I totally gave up on it until I went to check some tweets yesterday (and I haven't done that in ages, otherwise...). Tweets about SRS-ing And then I noticed the "damn" url shortener...

@wccrawford... Thank you for trying
@rich_f Thank you for the "tiny" collection!

shamanana Wrote:I thought I was really dense, but it seems I was "just" ignorant? I must say I totally gave up on it until I went to check some tweets yesterday (and I haven't done that in ages, otherwise...). Tweets about SRS-ing And then I noticed the "damn" url shortener...

@wccrawford... Thank you for trying
@rich_f Thank you for the "tiny" collection!

Heh, yeah, if you haven't heard of it before, all the hints in the world wouldn't have helped.

Ignorance is bliss

Have I ever told you about the amazing book Japanese the Manga Way? Using this book was fun and enabled me to breeze through the smart.fm sentences--it really provides you with all the tools you need for a wide array of grammar, informal and formal, keeping it close to native media by using real manga as examples, and has a great structure to teach you how to break down sentences--you can apply this structure to any sentences you encounter.

I think it's the best book introducing Japanese grammar, far preferable to something like Tae Kim. All learners should use it.

Here is a link to the book on Google, which you can search for information. I am shortening the Google link for no apparent reason at all: http://sn.im/27km5po

'Sn.im' is a weird word. If you prefer a URL like tinyurl.com, I guess you could plug that in and see what happens.

nest0r Wrote:Japanese the Manga Way?

That was an amazing book. It was worth every penny.

nest0r Wrote:Have I ever told you about the amazing book Japanese the Manga Way? Using this book was fun and enabled me to breeze through the smart.fm sentences--it really provides you with all the tools you need for a wide array of grammar, informal and formal, keeping it close to native media by using real manga as examples, and has a great structure to teach you how to break down sentences--you can apply this structure to any sentences you encounter.

I think it's the best book introducing Japanese grammar, far preferable to something like Tae Kim. All learners should use it.

Here is a link to the book on Google, which you can search for information. I am shortening the Google link for no apparent reason at all: http://sn.im/27km5po

'Sn.im' is a weird word. If you prefer a URL like tinyurl.com, I guess you could plug that in and see what happens.

I haven't come across this book at any bookstore yet. If I were hypothetically to acquire such a book, I think I'd go through it just to solidify what I learned from Tae Kim. If one were to obtain this book in another possible world in the form of a collection of .jpg images, could those .jpg files be converted to a .pdf for that hypothetical individual in that possible world who may hold a possibly strong inkling for convenience? With so many possibilities involved, it seems like the odds are against such a thing happening. However, I have an odd feeling that such a thing could exist in the possible world just described.