progress

portable gaming technology, 1991 vs 2005.

the turboexpress may have a deficit in speed (7.6mhz vs 222mhz) and overall capabilities, but it has an accessory not available to psp owners- the 'turbovision' tv tuner. one can tune into a selection of 3 or 4 channels while trying not to poke out a bystander's eye with the 'rabbit ears' antenna.

i wonder what these gadgets will look like in 2019.

episode iii, the backstroke of the west

since my blog is down and i have ample jetlag hours on my hands, here are some more goodies from episode iii, the backstroke of the west:

*** cast ***
anakin - (allah gold; great hopeless situation warrier)
obi wan - (ratio the tile)
padme - (the plum of)
the emporer - (west leader)
darth vader - (reaching the west of reaches; south host)
chancellor palpatine - (speaker d)
general grevious - (space general)
yoda - (the master of)
mace windu - (text how big teacher)
the jedi - (the hopeless situation elder; the presybyterian church)
the clones - (the gram)

*** opening scroll ***


"a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."
("long time ago in the faraway galaxy")

"star wars"
("star war")

episode iii
("the third gathers")

revenge of the sith
("the backstroke of the west")

war! the republic is crumbling under atacks by the ruthless sith lord, count dooku. there are heroes on both sides. evil is everywhere.
("the war came! the republic encountered.")

in a stunning move, the fiendish droid leader, general grevious, has swept into the republic capital and kidnapped chancellor palpatine, leader of the galactic senate.
("two squares fight the vehemence. the improbity fills the world")

as the separatist droid army attempts to flee the besieged capital with their valuable hostage, two jedi knights lead a deparate mission to rescue the captive chancellor....
("the space general of the alliance is skillful kidnap the d the speaker the conduct. the proper abruption alliance troops tries ratio prosperous drive with the.")

*** first meeting between anakin and padme ***

padme: "oh anakin"
("hi, gold")

anakin: "i've missed you, padme"
("dear, how are you")

padme: "there were whispers you've been killed"
("heard of you is killed")

anakin: "i'm alright. feels like we've been apart for a lifetime. it might have been if the chancellor hadn't been kidnapped they'd have never brought us back from the outer rim"
("i did not die, is not. apparently we will separate the lifetime similar. while hearing of the speaker were kidnap, i thought of that i want to attend the salvation activity)

padme: "wait, not here"
("etc., here not line")

anakin: "yes, here. i'm tired of all this deception, i don't care if they know we're married"
("i had enough of these politicseses. i think only of to get married with you")

padme: "anakin don't say things like that"
("do not say these")

anakin: "are you alright? you're trembling. what's going on?"
("are you o.k. you is shivering. how")

padme: "something wonderful has happened. annie, i'm pregnant"
("waiting for the happy event condescends to come. dear, i was pregnant")

anakin: "that's... that's wonderful"
("this... this is really too stick")

padme: "what are we gonna do?"
("we should how do")

anakin: "we're not going to worry about anything right now, alright? this is a happy moment, the happiest moment of my life"
("i no longer worried the other thing now. good. this is a happy time, the most happy time of inside of whole life")

*** two scenes later, in padme's penthouse ***

padme: "annie, i want to have our baby back home on naboo. we could go to the lake country where no one would know . . . where we would be safe. i could go early-and fix up the baby's room. i know the perfect spot, right by the gardens."
("i living the child's time you must at home. make the home a little bit more safe. i can breakfast for the new house that baby tidy up it. it has a great father. a great hopeless situation warrior")

anakin: "you are so beautiful!"
("the beauty that you are like this")

padme: "it's only because i'm so in love . . . "
("i let me become the beauty to your love")

anakin: "no, it's because i'm so in love with you."
("not, i love you love deeper")

padme: "so love has blinded you?"
("your meaning is a love to tie up you")

anakin: "that's not exactly what i meant"
("that is not my meaning")

padme: "that's probably true"
("at least i say to half")

blown away

looks like my star wars post was a bit too successful. it was picked up by a number of sites and on friday a surge of 19,500 visitors in 6 hours used almost 80% of my monthly bandwidth allocation, putting me over the limit for the month. according to alexa, this site shot all the way up to around the 175,000th most popular site on the internet. ooooooohhhhh!




fortunately my bandwidth limiter kicked in so the damage wasn't too severe. unfortunately, there won't be any more blogs until next month. see you then!

edit- according to technorati about 80 people linked to my site in the hours before it died. ejohnlove takes a deeper look at the meaning of the captions- could the translation of 'sith' to 'the west' be editorial commentary on the state of our foreign policy?

michael bates discusses the parallels between the jedi council and the presbyterian church.

sorry, blogspotters- i can't read your links as blogspot is banned in china.

beijing vs death valley

later this week my sister and my brother-in-law are heading to beijing. i checked the weather forecast and was amazed to see the temperature forecasted for tuesday and wednesday. it's a hotter forecast than for death valley, below. i've got to think this is a mistake. if not then it's going to be quite a memorable (and sweaty) trip!

jet lagging

if you're wondering why there's such a flurry of blogging activity it's because i can't sleep. i arrived in america on sunday evening, slept about 2 hours that night, went to bed at 6pm yesterday and have been wide awake since 1:30am.

my suitcase is unpacked, emails done and reorganized, notes read, presentation slides rejiggled, and hard disk defragmented.

the flight itself was fairly uneventful. i started talking with my seat-mate but quickly stopped when an unholy smell hit my nostrils. my seat-mate was sick with the flu and had breath rank enough to stop a charging rhino from 100 meters away. i finally got some relief by turning on my air vent slightly and pointing it in his direction, creating enough of a breeze to waft the odor into the aisle. hope i didn't catch whatever he had.

the movie was million dollar baby. after that it was eat, sleep, wake, eat, land, and depart after 12 hours in the air.

at one point i woke up in the middle of the night and looked outside- after my eyes adjusted i could see countless stars through the pitted window and my shortsighted eyeballs. i saw a shooting star and stared off into space for a while trying to find another one. was an amazing sight- something i haven't seen for a long time after having been in the city so long.

the sun is coming up- time to join the waking world.

noise noise noise

i've learned a valuable lesson about apartments- when looking to rent one, especially in shanghai, check very carefully if there is any construction going on. failure to do this could result in a lot of sleepless nights.

my apartment is located near people's square, a very nice green view. when i first checked out my apartment and looked out the window at the view i unfortunately didn't look down- if i had i would have seen the following...



that's a tunnel going in, right under my apartment complex. when i first moved in things weren't so bad as the construction would take place during the day when i'm working. now, however, they have received a apecial permit to work 24 hours and boy, do they use it. then there's the apartment renovation below me which was another story that has fortunately concluded.

if there's a constant noise, like the drone of car horns typically heard here, it's not so bad. unfortunately there are periods of quiet, usually just long enough to drift into light sleep, punctuated by a variety of sharp noises like cutting pieces of metal (sample video here) with saws and dropping large objects onto hard surfaces from great heights.

at night the noises usually are the backhoes moving objects and accidently striking things, the sound of the pump moving the cement into the tunnel, or some sort of strange pneumatic drilling noise (sample video here).

fortunately, one of our customers took pity on me and donated a set of foam airline ear plugs. those things work great- much better than the wadded up balls of tissue paper i had been using before. between those and the aircon unit most of the noise gets filtered out.

i thought about launching some fireworks down into the construction site but as i could get in a little bit of trouble for that i decided perhaps just grinning and bearing it is the best course of action. as bad as it is, it's definitely no worse than living on the third floor of a frat house during college.

episode iii, the backstroke of the west

* edit - an updated version of backstroke of the west is here- you can comment there too, as the comments seem to be broken here.

i saw revenge of the sith last weekend at a local theater with my friend joe who was in town on business. it was much better than the first two movies and a fitting end (err.. middle) to the star wars saga.

the next day i was walking past my friendly dvd salesperson and decided to check out revenge of the sith. i was assured the quality was good and for 7rmb why not give it a shot.

aside from the counters on the top of the screen and a distorted perspective it was ok- not high quality but watchable. the captions were a hilarious surprise- a direct english translation of the chinese interpretation of what the script was saying. it varied from being somewhat close to the script to being 'far far away'....


amazingly enough, the beginning scroll is mistranslated even though the words are right there on the screen.


star war (just one)


'the backstroke of the west' is the english translation of the chinese title.


anakin: "this is where the fun begins"


obi wan: "let them pass between us"


anonymous doomed fighter pilot: "they're all over me"


obi wan, space battle strategist.


obi wan grows impatient with r2.


the chancellor warns anakin and obi wan that count dooku is... big.


obi wan assures the chancellor that it's no problem.


count dooku talks tough.


that's chancellor palpatine speaking, talking about obi wan.


general grevious gets some bad news.


the general considers punishing his troops.


anakin taunts general grevious.


the general fires off a snappy comeback


ummm... ????


we gonna rock down to... lemon avenue.


padme the homemaker


anakin tells padme about his dream.


on the hoof - idiom, 'not yet butchered; alive. used especially of cattle'


hallelujah!


yoda: "premonitions? premonitions?"


sounds like something yoda might actually say... maybe.


anakin is haunted by dreamses.


troopseses!


anakin gets frustrated with the jedi council.


the chancellor tells anakin the story of darth plagueis the wise, aka the dintmeister.


plagueis learned how to become... strong and big.


but he lost his power and died...


...then was killed by his land, so he could sleep. a tragic story indeed.


this seemed completely random until i figured out that 'jedi council' was being translated into chinese then back to english as 'the presbyterian church'.


anakin: "obi wan, may the force be with you"


tion medon: "on the tenth level, thousands of battledroids"


obi wan: "hello there"


the general tells his troops to back off, he'll take care of obi wan.


...but is it big?


the chancellor delivers anakin some bad news.


mace windu reads the chancellor his rights.


anakin bargains for the life of his cuckoldry. cuckoldry?


anakin gets a new name.


the emporer: "rise!"


the emporer tells anakin... umm... something.


anakin: "i agree."


the emperor: "do what must be done, lord vader."


yoda: "goodbye chewbacca."


c3po tells the amorous couple to get a room.


padme: "no thank you, c3po."


obi wan: "who could have done this?"


obi wan can't face what he must do.


yoda insists...


...and explains that the person he once knew noed longer is.


how about a snickers?


anakin tells padme about his new virtues, now being both strong and big.


padme doesn't want strong and big- she also doesn't want to walk on a road meant for running about.


lier!!!


obi wan has heard enough.


meanwhile, the emperor reveals his true ambitions.


anakin taunts, but...


...obi wan stands on higher ground...


...and proclaims his love.


this translation is classic. darth vader is actually shouting, "nooooooooooooo..."

* edit - an updated version of backstroke of the west is here.

due to popular request i've (finally) figured out how to use subrip to pull the complete english subtitle file off the dvd- here they are in all their glory. check out this awesome backstroke anime art!

captions

the dvd vendors in thailand might seem inexpensive at 100 baht (us$2.50) per disc but the vendors in china blow them away with pricing at 7rmb (about US$0.90) per disc. at that price one can't expect the discs to be perfect, and i find that around 25% of the discs either don't work at all or (worse) flake out towards the end of the movie.

the captions, especially for new movies, are done in china- often translated directly from the chinese that was translated by a chinese person watching the movie and trying to scribble down the script. just like the 'chinese whispers' game (i wonder how it got that name?) the results can often be quite different from the original dialogue.

in some cases the captions are completely off- either they started out ok and the captionist got bored and decided to write whatever he felt like, or they are from the wrong movie.

fahrenheit 9/11 was the first dvd i watched in china. the captions are obviously from another movie with a very very different subject matter...

bird's eye

a couple of months back i flew to canada. was my first time there aside from a quick trip to the canadian side of the niagara falls almost 20 years ago.


the trip didn't get off to the best start. we needed to take a bus to the plane as it wasn't parked at a gate. our little bus left, went out between two planes, turned around, went out in a different area then turned around and went back. we headed out to another area, turned around, and came back to the area where we boarded the bus. the doors opened and we were told to get out but the airport folks wouldn't let us back in the building. so we were left standing there in the wind wondering what was going on.

finally the airport doors opened and they began letting us back into the terminal. three or four of us got inside, myself included, when suddenly everyone was turned around and asked to go back on the bus. this time we went to a different area- when we saw our plane everyone cheered.


the flight itself was fairly uneventful. as we flew over canada there was some beautiful scenery, like the above photo of vancouver during our final approach.


on the return flight to shanghai we flew south over kyushu past nagasaki and into the ocean. we passed lots of small uninhabited islands when i noticed one that appeared to have some settlement on it.


here's a pic i took at full zoom (3x) of the island. after enlarging the image and passing it through color filters the features of the island become more distinct. one can see a settlement on the left side of the island- perhaps 30 or 40 buildings. there's a small road leading to the right side and some sort of construction on the top of the hill.

while not as remote as a place like pitcairn, i always wonder about places like these- how people live their lives in such relative isolation. what they do there and how they came to live there.

i'm not sure i could live in such isolation- i suppose there's satellite tv, dvds and the internet to keep people entertained.

speed change

so today i decided to get a haircut before i head off to america tomorrow. being a creature of habit i decided to go back to the only place i've had my hair cut here in shanghai, at the ramada hotel.

i took the escalator up to the third floor where i thought i remembered the gym and salon were, only to find a couple of restaurants. Another floor up and I was in the center of another new restaurant. The hostess came over and I asked her where the gym and salon were. They were closed, she said, and would reopen on another floor in august.

walking back outside i noticed more changes. the small shops where bought a travel bag a couple of months ago had been knocked down. a further row of shops nearby had been vacated and looked to be next on the chopping block. an area next to the howard johnson that was under heavy construction six months ago is now a large outdoor auditorium.

looking to buy a television antenna i entered a department store on nanjing road. i took the elevator up to the electronics floor only to find a clothing floor. the electronics floor had been moved since the last time i went there, about two months ago.

its amazing how fast things change here- it certainly makes settling into a routine a bit difficult!

on a related note, i'm beginning to suspect there's more to the pink-colored barber shop near my apartment than meets the eye.