why do i keep seeing little boxes or gibberish in the place of some words?

when i use a japanese word i usually use a japanese font. after each occurrence, i put the english transliteration in square brackets. after the first occurrence in each entry, i also give an explanation or translation unless it is a word used in english. this has now changed: in newer entries, the same information can be found by hovering your mouse over the japanese, rather than in square brackets after the japanese.

to see the japanese properly, you need to set your browser to use "unicode (utf-8)" encoding. with microsoft internet explorer you can set this from the 'encoding' sub-menu on the view menu.. you also need to have japanese fonts installed. a useful guide to getting japanese fonts (and input ability) for windows users can be found here.

if either of these things aren't set up correctly, you will probably see boxes, or something otherwise unhelpful.

example (old): 福岡 [fukuoka - a big city in japan].

example (new): 福岡.

what does "shoot the breeze" mean?

'shoot the breeze': old american slang meaning "to engage in idle conversation".

clicking on one of the 'shoot the breeze' links takes you to a page where you can make a comment on the item above that link. you do not have to have a livejournal account to comment.

what is a "zephyr"?

'zephyr':-
1. the greek god of the west wind.
2. a soft warm breeze from the west.
click on the '# zephyrs' link to read comments by other people on the item above the link.. in other words, click to read the breezes, or zephyrs, that those others have shot. ^_^

# is the number of comments so far. on the linked page, you can also comment on those other comments and/or you can add a comment directly to the entry.

can i search your diary?

as yet there is no simple way to do this. livejournal - the website and technology that use to publish my diary - is apparently working on this, but there is no timetable as yet. i also have my own plans to archive at least some entries to the main aoiko site; when this happens, you will be able to search those entries.

if you are impatient, one possibility is to use google and restrict the search to "http://www.livejournal.com/" and add "tithonus" to your search terms. however this is not ideal as google is so far not very consistent in crawling livejournal archives.

what is livejournal?

livejournal is a website and a technology used for publishing diaries online. it has far and away the most users of any of the competing technologies in this field - well over a million and growing exponentially. this, along with sophisticated methods to keep track of "friends"' diaries and methods for searching for new "friends", makes it probably to best such place for social diaries.

you can get an account at livejournal free of charge - some 90% of active users have free accounts - or for twenty five dollars a year you can get a paid account with many extra features. extra features include faster access and the ability to embed your diary in an external website such as i have done at aoiko.net.