A Few Tips for Writing Useful Libraries in PHP

pie echo not-echo necho atom pie Feedcast??!?!?!

Whatever it’s called, there’s a new version, and just for fun, I have a feed.

鏡 - Jing4 - Mirror

鏡 by itself doesn’t really mean anything. But, 鏡子 - Jing4 Zi5 - Mirror

This always confuses me: 眼睛 - Yan3 Jing1 - Eye, however 眼鏡 - Yan3 Jing4 - Eyeglasses. To me, they’re pronounced almost exactly the same.

Also 望遠鏡 - Wang4 Yuan3 Jing4 - Gaze Distant Mirror — Telescope and 顯微鏡 - Xian3 Wei1 Jing4 - Prominent Micro Mirror — Microscope.

I overheard Jenny, Susan and Yvonne talking about how the 鏡子 in the restaurant we were at tonight made the room seem much bigger. I figured out what it meant from the context, and was quite proud of myself. Let’s see if I can remember it longer than one day.

訪 - Fang3 - Visit

拜訪 - Bai4 Fang3 - Pray Visit — Pay A Visit

回訪 - Hui2 Fang3 - Return Visit — Pay A Return Visit

油 - You2 - Oil

While climbing this mountain in Taiwan…

…a group of people was coming down the other way, and as they passed me they chanted 加油! 加油! - Jia1 You2! Jia1 You2! This literally means “Add oil!” but is an expression you use to cheer somebody on. It’s also what Jenny tells me to do when the car is almost out of gas, even though the full word for gasoline is 汽油 - Qi4 You2 - Vapor Oil. Qi4 You2 is gasoline, but You2 Qi1 - 油漆 - Oil Lacquer is paint. Which is what we are going to start doing to our new house on Monday!

Now if I were James Burke I’d be able to connect paint back to that mountain somehow. But I’m not.

禮 - Li3 - Ceremony, Decorum

Here’s a surprising word. To me, anyway.

禮拜 - Li3 Bai4 - Ceremony Pray — Week

禮貌 - Li3 Mao4 - Ceremony Face — Manners

禮物 - Li3 Wu4 - Ceremony Object — Gift

I gave Jenny her birthday 禮物 early today, Mario Golf. She unwrapped it, and stared at it for what seemed like a solid minute. “Do I want this?” she said.

I don’t get these people who complain that Google works really really really really well. “My site has the best discussion of Matrix Reloaded on the internet, and an exhaustive Tom Hanks filmography, and a pointers to all the September 11th photography I can find. Yet when people search on these terms, Google directs them to me. Why?”

Then there’s this guy: “I made a site all about hacking PVRs, and within just a few days of posting it, it is coming up first when you search for information about…. hacking PVRs! Google is broken!”