No News

... is good news?
Well, it looks like we won't have a Möbius Strip News issue out today.
Hopefully, we can start posting weekly "news" updates again next week.

Translate? Once again...

Remember what I said in my previous post? Oh wait, you probably didn't read it. Anyway, I said that Google+ identifies text not in your language and gives the options to translate it for you. I'm reconsidering that now.
Why? Take a look at this post, please...

No, I'm not sure why there's a blue do at the top in the white space... Probably an accident.

That's not English, really. It's written with the Greek alphabet, I think. Yet, when it's "translated"...

It gets translated to... Greek again. (I think. Correct me if that's incorrect.)

This makes me wonder what Google+'s translate is really supposed to do. Maybe it's just a temporary glitch. They might have been changing things across Google and done something to the translate on accident (or on purpose, possibly). By the way, today I noticed that the profile picture at the top right of the page when you log into Gmail has become circular, so it's possible that they've been changing stuff on Google+ as well... 

Either way, the translate option seems to have suddenly "broken", so to speak, since the last time I posted about it.

What I Didn't Do During Winter Break

Whenever there's any sort of break from school, I like to consider the many things I'd like to accomplish. Somehow, I always think that not being in school will give me a lot of time and energy to do things. That is not the case. Here's a tiny sample of stuff I wanted to do but didn't do.

1. Program a Python game. -- Honestly, I've wanted to do this since the summer, but I never quite learned enough Python to make a game. I could just get all the code online, but that obviously would not be me programming. It's not that I don't have the resources to learn. There are online resources, and I have an introduction to Python programming book (with a target audience of 10 year old children, which does not include me).

2. Read 1984 by George Orwell. -- Having recently studied Orwell's Animal Farm at school, I figure that it would be a good idea to read another book of his. I bought the book last year with the intention of reading it, but I never did. I still have not read past chapter 3.

 3. Write a rant for The Incredible Present. -- My friend added me as an author on his new rant blog, and I've been meaning to write a rant for it. It makes me feel a little better that as of now, he hasn't posted a rant either. I'll post the link to the blog once there's some actual content on it.

4. Clean my desks. -- There's one upstairs that I mostly use as a storage space, and one downstairs on which I have my laptop and several stacks of stuff. As a result of piling random things on it, I can no longer use the upstairs desk as a writing surface or a place to rest a book as I read it. That's become somewhat problematic, but obviously not problematic enough for me to do something about it! As for the downstairs desk, I'm being inspired by the architecture in big cities. I'm building up! Basically, I combined some stacks, and look, more desk space! But it's not exactly cleaner...

5. Remember the Latin I learned last semester. -- I took home my textbook thinking, Yeah, I'll definitely have lots of time to review! Ha, nope. I'm currently figuratively digging through my brain to remember how to decline the pronouns is, ea, and id.

And there's definitely more... So much more...

Translate? --Technology These Days

Google+ has a feature that is supposed to recognize things that are not in your language and provide the option of translating them. In theory, it's a good idea, but I don't think the language recognition is superb.
For example, I was on the Google+ page of Connor (author of There's Always a Catch) when I saw this:

In my opinion, that's obviously in English. I decided to see what Google+ thought the post meant, so I clicked on "Translate." Lo and behold...

I'm wondering why the program might have thought Connor's English to be something in another language. Occasionally, I come across a horribly misspelled comment or a post with the "Translate" option, but that is somewhat understandable. Here, however, there are no misspellings or symbols not used in the English language. What other language could "Tickle Me Elmo deserved to die" possibly be anyway?

Oh, for context, here's the GIF that was in Connor's post:




(Since we haven't had a Technology These Days post all year, I decided to write one. I mean, it's not like N is going to show up and start writing them again... Yeah, the format is a little different, but let's just call it a Technology These Days post anyway.)