Ask post: Cat Power?

More on the Lucky Cat.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bwg at 6:04 PM on March 28, 2008

Ask post: Lost

Yep, that's definitely a plumeria tree, one of my favourite flowers to photograph.

More pics of them in my O699;ahu album.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bwg at 6:47 AM on March 26, 2008

Frangipani:

1. any of various tropical American deciduous shrubs or trees of the genus Plumeria, having milky sap and showy, fragrant, funnel-shaped, variously colored flowers. Also called temple tree.

2. a perfume prepared from or imitating the odor of the flower of a tropical American tree or shrub, Plumeria rubra, of the dogbane family.

FYI
posted to Ask Metafilter by bwg at 5:25 AM on March 27, 2008

Ask post: What's my best language strategy for a quarter in Shanghai?

Here, try this: http://www.clavisinica.com/index.html

And yes, Mandarin is the way to go.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bwg at 2:24 AM on March 23, 2008

Ask post: Which codecs can I remove?

I'm running XP Pro with a few media players.

I have WMP 11, iTunes (w/Quicktime) for my iPod, Nero Media Player (part of Nero suite). I've found the odd video that won't play on WMP but will under Nero. I also have Media Player Classic that was part of a codec bundle.

But I installed xVid and DivX long ago. From your description, I could uninstall those now that I have ffdshow?
posted to Ask Metafilter by bwg at 5:15 PM on March 20, 2008

Cool. Thanks for all the help!

I just figured it was time to clean out detritus on the system.

I don't mind having QT so I'll leave that be, and I won't mess with WMP11. The other stuff will be yanked.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bwg at 7:38 PM on March 20, 2008

By the way, I got warnings from AVG Anti-Spyware about pest files found in the Sourceforge link, so I went with the Defiler Pack after I uninstalled DivX, xVid and the XP Codec Pack.

Not sure if the warnings were false positives or not but I wasn't going to take any chances.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bwg at 7:54 PM on March 20, 2008

Ask post: How to speak with someone who stutters

I recall an experience with someone who stuttered; when it began I got a strong sense that he was nervous and distressed, so after he completed his first sentence, I just told him as friendly as possible to take his time.

I tend to be empathetic and could relate with his feelings of embarrassment, humiliation and/or being self-conscious. So I tried to take all that out of the equation.

After that his stutter mostly went away.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bwg at 6:42 AM on March 20, 2008