![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[The original version of this entry is lost because I am stoopid.]
Around 7:30PM tonight, I finished the translation of a song by Ali Project and, in the warm glow of satisfaction at having demystified another set of lyrics, I again pondered the idea of opening a site for my posting my translations. The last time I seriously considered the idea and took steps towards its execution was back when I first got into Globe, in summer 2002. I don't remember why I thought about it, as later on I was content with submitting to AnimeLyrics.com the few translations with which I was completely satisfied. Now I revisit the idea because the aforementioned site has been effectively closed to submissions for ages and doesn't seem like it will ever set up the testing system by which I will again be able to contribute more than English lyrics.
My first step was to copy into a working directory all the translations I had completed, disccovering in the process that I have more than I thought -- and also more unfinished ones than I thought. Then I took thought to the annoying task of converting these text files into HTML. Obviously I figured that it would be best if I could automate the process, and made a note to myself to look into it.
At 8:10PM, I left to participate in other activities.
I got back to my room around 1AM, having briefly consulted with James about the idea of creating a script to convert my lyrics for me. He being given to turn small projects into grander schemes, and I being susceptible to such inspiration at the time, we arrived at the ideas that I should store my lyrics in XML and that I should learn and code the script in PHP.
I immediately began reading about XML and PHP, as in my head formed an outline of how to implement the conversion, much complicated by inconsistencies in my format -- when I'm translating, I can't be bothered to worry about such things as when I use square brackets or parentheses. Somewhere in the midst of it, I decided that I should write the script to convert the lyrics into XML instead of directly into HTML, which introduced a new set of problems, since I need to figure out how to store certain information rather than just convey it to the viewer, such as repeated choruses. (Now I'm thinking the XML idea might not be the best, as, do blocks in XML really have order? Or maybe they do if they're of the same type.)
Too lazy to actually start writing pseudocode, I just made some notes about things I had thought about and questions I need to consider. Then I got ready to work on ChemE. In a moment of distraction, I remembered that I should change the quoted lyric in my AIM profile to something from the translation I had just finished. In the process of looking it over, I fixed a small mistake, and somehow that just recalled all my thoughts about how my translations are usually rough and awkward in the reading, and how many of them had that one line I couldn't figure out, and in general how, in my perfectionist mindset, they just aren't very presentable. (This was fueled by earlier perusals of older translations that are so nice but for the aforementioned last mysterious line and by my getting stuck with the next song I want to translate because the romanization of a kanji doesn't exist and the scanned lyrics are too low in resolution for me to figure out what it is without.) I promptly lost confidence in the project, and, by association, in learning PHP and XML just now.
That was around 3:30, so I spent just about 3 hours playing around with this idea, and it is already burning low.
I guess I still do kind of want to do it -- at the very least, I realized how long it's been since I did any programming, and I feel like exercising again that part of my brain that breaks things down into coded commands. But there are a lot of other things that take priority.
Around 7:30PM tonight, I finished the translation of a song by Ali Project and, in the warm glow of satisfaction at having demystified another set of lyrics, I again pondered the idea of opening a site for my posting my translations. The last time I seriously considered the idea and took steps towards its execution was back when I first got into Globe, in summer 2002. I don't remember why I thought about it, as later on I was content with submitting to AnimeLyrics.com the few translations with which I was completely satisfied. Now I revisit the idea because the aforementioned site has been effectively closed to submissions for ages and doesn't seem like it will ever set up the testing system by which I will again be able to contribute more than English lyrics.
My first step was to copy into a working directory all the translations I had completed, disccovering in the process that I have more than I thought -- and also more unfinished ones than I thought. Then I took thought to the annoying task of converting these text files into HTML. Obviously I figured that it would be best if I could automate the process, and made a note to myself to look into it.
At 8:10PM, I left to participate in other activities.
I got back to my room around 1AM, having briefly consulted with James about the idea of creating a script to convert my lyrics for me. He being given to turn small projects into grander schemes, and I being susceptible to such inspiration at the time, we arrived at the ideas that I should store my lyrics in XML and that I should learn and code the script in PHP.
I immediately began reading about XML and PHP, as in my head formed an outline of how to implement the conversion, much complicated by inconsistencies in my format -- when I'm translating, I can't be bothered to worry about such things as when I use square brackets or parentheses. Somewhere in the midst of it, I decided that I should write the script to convert the lyrics into XML instead of directly into HTML, which introduced a new set of problems, since I need to figure out how to store certain information rather than just convey it to the viewer, such as repeated choruses. (Now I'm thinking the XML idea might not be the best, as, do blocks in XML really have order? Or maybe they do if they're of the same type.)
Too lazy to actually start writing pseudocode, I just made some notes about things I had thought about and questions I need to consider. Then I got ready to work on ChemE. In a moment of distraction, I remembered that I should change the quoted lyric in my AIM profile to something from the translation I had just finished. In the process of looking it over, I fixed a small mistake, and somehow that just recalled all my thoughts about how my translations are usually rough and awkward in the reading, and how many of them had that one line I couldn't figure out, and in general how, in my perfectionist mindset, they just aren't very presentable. (This was fueled by earlier perusals of older translations that are so nice but for the aforementioned last mysterious line and by my getting stuck with the next song I want to translate because the romanization of a kanji doesn't exist and the scanned lyrics are too low in resolution for me to figure out what it is without.) I promptly lost confidence in the project, and, by association, in learning PHP and XML just now.
That was around 3:30, so I spent just about 3 hours playing around with this idea, and it is already burning low.
I guess I still do kind of want to do it -- at the very least, I realized how long it's been since I did any programming, and I feel like exercising again that part of my brain that breaks things down into coded commands. But there are a lot of other things that take priority.
