You thought grammar nazis were bad? Try typography nazis.

The main issue I have with that article is that it’s near impossible to follow those rules and have it display correctly for each and every person. No two internet users are the same. Different browsers, operating systems, and language packs installed means different machine interpretations of the same code. These rules are pretty important for serious print media, but not really practical for online use.

Still, it’s good to know. Even if I do have a raging hate-on for sixty-six and ninety-nine quotes in heavy text.

The university has a cultural fair going on all week. What that actually means is that a large group of college kids are hanging around near the event center and having an outdoor karaoke fest. Chinese college students love emo, for some reason. They sing it off key and in really bad Engrish, but it still isn’t funny due to the fact that they don’t stop singing until two in the morning. It was funny for the first three hours, sure, but I’m trying to sleep, guys. =( Can’t you sing in battered English tomorrow morning or something?

Oh, right! Lost my voice again. I’m not really even sick; I just can’t talk. I’ve never lost my voice quite this early in the year. Let’s hope that it’s not a sign that I’m going to be mute two times a year instead of one.

English to Chinese name converter.

Next time someone asks me what their name would be in Chinese, I’m pointing them to that website. I just hope they won’t ask me what their name means in Chinese, because I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t able to give an answer without laughing in their face, and that’s just plain rude. Seriously, “Chinese Grandmother” for Hannah? “Grams In the Ripped Tower” for Christa? What, couldn’t find anything a bit, I don’t know, poetic? You’d think with all the different possible combinations that sound the same, people would find something a little bit better.

Then again, Chinese and English aren’t the most similar of languages, and this is a generator, meaning that they can’t exactly program it to choose the most poetic sounding combinations. Also, most Chinese are aware that English names just don’t translate/convert well at all.

But, dang. That is still some funny stuff. If I didn’t have a Chinese name already, I’d translate my name like that and insist that everyone call by that. (The closest name I found was LuLu, and that name was translated into DewDew. Not so bad, but I prefer the translation of my actual name - orchid.)