認定書ゲット！

Meaning "Got my diploma!". Well, it sounds like out of a video game anyway, like when you "Got 50 experience points", but hey. I remember about this silly thing a teacher of us talked about, having a sort of classification on mastery of a programming language (from n00b to guru) based on an exponentially increasing number of hours.

How silly is that, really? Some people are just more proficient at learning some languages than others, or maybe they're more fluent naturally with a particular design or programming paradigm. Also, an imperative programmer like me would have LOTS of problems at the beginning when switching to another paradigm, like a functional or declarative one.

It looked more like some sort of Pokémon leveling guide. Keh. And "hours" really don't mean anything: surely anyone with access to good books can get to guru level much more quickly.

Back to topic: so I got my 3-kyuu Noken certificate. Yup.
93/100 - Reading
78/100 - Listening
197/200 - Vocab/Grammar
368/400 - Total

Not bad, but it shows my listening skills are not that up to par. I guess I'll have to work on them before going for the 2-kyuu next year (too soon to do it this year).

Still, I'm quite happy to have some sort of certification showing my progress.

Google TechTalks

Wow. That's got to be the most instructive news article I've ever read. Well, I can't quite remember whether it was from Ars Technica, The Inquirer or Slashdot. Hmm.

Still, anyway, I found about Google TechTalks through it. They're a couple of videos containing very interesting conferences about a myriad of topics. Full transcripts, too. Here's one about the Archimedes Palimpsest:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8211813884612792878&q=techtalks

You can find the rest just by going to Google Video and then looking for the TechTalks. There's some amazing stuff there too. Well, I'll check it again tomorrow.

And I thought Google Video could only be accessed through the Coral cache. =|

Wasps can drive too!

Yes they can.

Especially cockroaches. Ugh. It's amazing what evolution can do, anyway. Sucks to be the roach though.

http://loom.corante.com/archives/2006/02/02/the_wisdom_of_parasites.php