just a quick note to say that while the blog itself is still on hiatus, the tools will be receiving an upgrade and a facelift. They've not been forgotten.

i'm in the early stages of a new project that is going to incorporate the widgets, plus provide AIR versions of the majority of them. In addition to this the ULY/UEY uyghur transliteration widgets are done and a gwoyeu romatzh one is to follow shortly.

maybe i'll see the return of the blog in a month or two as well. maybe beijing will chill out a bit on the blocks and free up blogger again.

as has probably become apparent, i've not done well at keeping things updated here while the great crackdown of '09 is in effect. my plans for relocation have been redirected and merged into another couple projects on which i'm working. that means that the majority of things otherwise available here, be it glossaries, widgets, cynicism etc would be available on other sites in which i'll be involved.

so regarding this blog, i'm officially putting it on hold until either the block comes up, the new projects make it obsolete or i move to a country that doesn't see blogger as a threat. probably the second one is most likely.

until then.

it's occurred to me that the reason the things i want to be available aren't available for the very problems that i'm now up against. to call the scale of this undertaking grand would be a rather severe understatement.

just how am i supposed to organise this? i have four characters. one is simplified and one is the standard traditional character. then i have two more that are z-variants of the traditional form. z-variants, if you don't know, are different forms of the same character aside from the simplified/traditional forms. a simple example of this might be 户 hù, which can be 戶 or 戸 in traditional form.

i'd include them all in one entry in the database but then i worry about creating duplicates of which i may be unaware. if i keep them separate then they may end up seeming totally unrelated. if i can find an easy way to link them but as separate entries i'll go with that. otherwise i'll put them all in one entry so long as i can easily search to include all variations.

but then i have to ask: are 伍 and 五 the same name? what of two others that look rather different but have the same meaning and pronunciation and are not a s/t issue? i don't have an example handy but i've seen it more than once.

i sometimes worry i'll become one of those guys who is known for starting but never finishing any of his projects. i've got more than a couple in the works at the moment, one of which is a comprehensive collection of chinese family names. more on that in a minute.

other projects include the usual language study, though somewhat reduced from an earlier post. my desire for even the most basic understanding of manchu has been set aside, though it will undoubtedly be picked up at a later date. presently my study is limited to mandarin and wu, the focus of the latter being slowly shifted east from changzhou to shanghai. i'm still passively accepting any uyghur that may creep in and i'm maintaining my plan to pick up enough to do the restaurant thing without needing mandarin. in a couple weeks i'll be retrieving my copy of the medina books on arabic so that i can make a running leap back into that.

outside of language i've recently taken up seal carving. it's more portable and affordable than my guqin endeavours. i also have a couple internet-based projects in the works which i hope to have running in a couple weeks.

back to the family name deal, i'm still in the early stages of reviewing how big of an undertaking it really is. at this point i'm also setting down my own ground rules to keep it from going out of control, since i'd imagine that ultimately any character could qualify as a family name. i've decided i need the names to be typeable using unicode. that covers a great deal of characters, but there's always the chance that someone is named something not otherwise covered. in that case, if it can be easily done by adding ⺅ or some other radical, i'll include it. anything more complex than that and it's not likely to appear. further, i'm encountering a huge number of z-variants (e.g. 莊 = 荘) which i'm also including.

as to what really qualifies as a family name, i'm only requiring that the word is listed in any reputable dictionary as existing as a surname or, alternatively, that it's actually being used as one in an official capacity. someone saying "no really. my family name is ㇀." doesn't work unless it's on paper/plastic in some official capacity. however archaic names will be included, e.g. 軒.

in another week or two i'll really sit down and start logging all the information in some systematic manner and getting it online for corrections.