Holizz versus the Web

• I fixed my comments feed today. Turns out there was already a patch for it in the bugreport. Although the attachment there has a bug, for which I have a patch.
• Yahoo has a Geek Statue, because apparently they beat Gmail/Google Mail. I’ve tried to log into Yahoo mail several times; each time it tells me my session has expired (on the UK version it puts me into an infinate redirect loop). And yes, I’m accepting cookies indescriminately. So no, Yahoo haven’t beaten Google in mail for the simple fact that Google Mail works and Yahoo Mail doesn’t. (Attempting to reregister = fill out the form, submit, arrive at the same form emptied of all values with no explanation). The help system doesn’t seem to be of any help, either.
• I haven’t been swimming for a week now. It’s working out well. I have more energy to spend on other exercise and learning Japanese because I don’t start my day by exercising before I eat. Lately I’ve been exercising my legs. Mostly stretching and kicking. I’ve touched each of my big toes with each leg stretched, but I’m yet to touch them at the same time. That’s taken me much closer to my goal in just a few days. I can also kick at about head height.
• I got some kanji flashcards from eBay the other day. They’re quite good. Already I’m understanding the relation between the いち、に、さん counting system and the ひとつ、ふたつ、みっつ counting system. The days of the week seem a little less arbitrary in kanji too.

Which religion is the right one for you? (via Neil).

I don’t think it’s particularly valid. How can you answer a question like Women and men are equal in the eyes of God. on a Likert scale when you don’t believe God exists? As an extra complication, one end of the scale is Disagree or N/A and the other is Agree. The creator of the questionnaire needs some lessons in research methods.

There’s a competition to develop Firefox extensions (via Asa). It could lead to many new and exciting things taking advantage of the new features of the latest Firefox release.

I have a bone of contention with the restriction on who can enter.

Contest is open to residents of the US, Canada (excluding Quebec), and the European Union. Void where prohibited.

Firefox is available in, how many languages and localisations? Yet only parts of two continents are eligible for the contest. That’s really quite ridiculous. I find it offensive that if I weren’t living in a particular country they wouldn’t even consider my entry.

あれ？日本はダメなの？

Source: Mozilla Kicks Off “Extend Firefox” Competition

Translates roughly to What? So Japan’s useless, huh?, which is pretty much what I thought.

Only the US, Canada (excluding Quebec) and the EU contain productive human beings; the rest of the world is full of savages who wouldn’t know how to write an extension if they were given a comprehensive HOWTO on the subject.

Update: Slashdot seems to think the geographical restriction was due to laws related to competitions and prizes. Which doesn’t make it suck any less.

Update: According to Asa in the comments of the article linked to above, it is due to laws restricting competitions and such.

Today we had a little test in 日本語のじゅぎょう (Japanese class). For introduce yourself, I wrote something similar to this:

私はトム・アダムスです。イギリスじんです。Bradford からです。たんじょうびはにがつじゅうくにちすいようびです。

Never one to miss an opportunity to show off I also gave 私のけいたいばんご (my phone number) in kanji.

そして、露蓮さんのウェブログすきだ！