I just came across something interesting, and I can’t help but wonder why this hasn’t been mentioned in our Korean language classes.
Apparently, the word “Korea” was originally spelled “Corea”. Additionally, just about every language other than English seems to still spell it this way. There seems to be a great deal of history wrapped around this spelling, but most data (apparently) points to the spelling being changed during the Japanese occupation.
Is it just not that important? It seems to me like it should be. I will have to ask a friend of mine when we meet on Friday.
Primarily, I wonder if it would be more respectful to spell the country’s name as “Corea”?
This is a “short-short” that I wrote for my General Literature class. It’s a story that I did not plan, plot, or otherwise put significant thought into before I began to write. Maybe it shows and maybe it doesn’t, but I post it here as the introductory post to my Writing category.
Have fun folks. The story begins beneath this line…
Carly Fleischmann has severe autism and is unable to speak a word. But thanks to years of expensive and intensive therapy, this 13-year-old has made a remarkable breakthrough.
Stop reading my drivel and go read that news article. Also watch the video. This is just amazing! What an incredible way to top the night. Just wow. I love seeing this.
Good night! o/
Technorati Tags: autism, psychology, autistic
I finally got the results from my X-Rays. As the subject says, the rib is cracked.
The doctor has issued a note saying that (to paraphrase), I “shouldn’t receive blows to the ribs for two weeks”. Heck, at this point I’m not sure that I even care. Do I want to go back? Do I want to spend lots of money on protective gear simply take part in kumite practice? The answer to that last question is definitely, “No, no I don’t.”
At this point I’m beginning to lose track of the time that I’ve been away because I’ve been away for so long.
On the bright side, it’s not completely broken, it “just” came close to breaking. It’s also healing. There’s not much that can be done about it other than to wait and to protect it while it’s mending. Obviously I won’t be rejoining karate class any time soon!
Later folks.
Technorati Tags: health, injury, injuries, karate, self-defense, martial arts
For those of you who haven’t been keeping up, I’ve missed about four or five karate classes so far.
It’s an interesting situation. The last class that I was in ended with kumite, which is fine. It’s not something that I’m particularly good at, but it helps you learn how to use the stuff that you’re learning, right? What’s most frustrating about it for me is that I can’t wear my glasses because it poses a risk: They could get knocked off, broken, or cause an eye injury if the sparring partner should lose control of their attacks or some other mistake happens.
So it’s rather ironic that I got nailed so hard partially because of the fact that I can’t wear my glasses during a match. Heh. Of course, my sparring partner is definitely to blame as well.
Read the rest of this entry »
Frankly I’m amazed. My passport was delivered today; processed and delivered at the incredible speed of just under one month! I didn’t even pay for expedited processing, but here it is nonetheless.
This, after all of the warnings I received about how long it would take to obtain the passport. Everyone was suggesting months, but this is a pleasant surprise. My parents and I joked that our last names must, “sound very American”, and apparently I’m not on a terrorist watch list yet. How else would I have received it so quickly?
This shows how far behind the times am I. The bottom rectangular shape means that the passport is electronic. Who knew? *grin* I wonder how that works. I couldn’t find an RFID, so I’m assuming that the photo page can be read electronically to verify its information.
Don’t mind the finger nail clipper in the top right of the image. It’s just being helpful by keeping the thing closed. I may be a little silly, but I’m not crazy enough to go spreading around images of the inside of my passport. ;) I will say, though, that it’s mighty fancy.
Three more months and I’m in South Korea - WOOT! 
Technorati Tags: passport, travel, international travel, South Korea, Korea
The air is crisp, but not cold, and the morning just feels like it has life to it. Is this because I was able to sleep in today, or is it for other reasons?
I don’t know, but it feels like a beautiful morning; like one of those days that you just want nothing more than to run outside in your t-shirt and stay outside all day.
Unfortunately it’s too cold for that, but nonetheless, that’s how it feels. Like a beautiful Spring morning. I guess I’m just going crazy. 
Yaarrg!
~Steph
(yes ladies & gents, this is why I have a Ramblings category 
)
In our class The Craft of Fiction we were tasked with writing about an emotion. Through this assignment, the instructor hoped to show us (rather than tell us) how difficult it can be to put an emotion into words and story.
Being that it’s close to Valentine’s Day I of course chose the emotion of Unease, or perhaps Uncertainty. Either would have been appropriate within the context of what I was writing.
Unfortunately I didn’t get to finish it. I had a scene in mind that I was going to describe, but there wasn’t enough time for me to do much with it. We were originally given 5 minutes, but in actuality ended up with perhaps three. Much of that time was spent fussing over the best way to express what I wanted my character to feel.
It was an impromptu writing; there was no planning put into it and there was to be no (serious) editing. Nor was the instructor going to read what the students had written, though we did pass the paper to the person next to us.
I have done an impromptu writing before, so I decided to use the same basic idea that I had used in that story.
This is a good idea, me thinks, and a good way to exercise my writing. I’m going to attempt to write spur-of-the-moment short-shorts. It should be fun. I’m not saying that they’re going to make much sense, but if nothing else they will work well as exercise for my real writing.
Any short-shorts that I feel are good enough will also be placed on my “main” blog.
…but for now I’m going to go watch Supernatural. Later folks.
~Steph
Technorati Tags: writing, fiction, creative writing
I had yet another dream about spiders last night. I wonder why I have so many dreams with these critters in them? True, I saw a small spider much earlier in the day yesterday, but I don’t have arachnophobia.
On one hand it’s cool, on the other? Not so much.
Until today I was using Methylblue’s Simple Captcha. It had worked very well for a long time, but over the past couple of weeks I have began to receive comment spam again. The spam was somehow getting past both the captcha, and despite being obvious spam, it was also getting past Akismet.
Thankfully, I have a third level of defense in that comments go into moderation. I never disabled that option despite having both a captcha and Akismet running on this blog.
Here are some ideas about how the spam was getting through..
- Spam bots are exploiting a weakness in Wordpress v2.2.2 (I’ll finally upgrade after this post)
- Someone has discovered a way around certain kinds of captchas
- They could have simply found a way around this one specific captcha due to its popularity
In any case, I have switched to an image captcha.
Please note that the Flock browser has a minor issue with this new image captcha, and I do not know if this problem is also present in Firefox. When you click on the box to enter the data from the captcha, the text box immediately above it instantly gains focus. This prevents you from typing into the captcha box.
An easy work around for this issue is to use the Tab key on your keyboard to cycle through the text fields instead of manually clicking to move from name, to URL, and so forth.
Hopefully this will fix the spam issue.. if not, then I suppose that there are other steps that I can take.
~Steph
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About Moi
Steph is a college student at Pittsburg State University, majoring in psychology. Read my about page for more information.
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