11.17.06
Posted in advertisement, geek, good things, links at 9:16 am by Hanne Blank
I have been having an idiotic amount of fun, lately, playing with the free “lite” version of Transparent Language’s Before You Know It language learning software. They offer the software as a free download, and then you can go nuts downloading content files in as many different languages as your little heart desires.
The language learning content files are limited for any given language, in the free download version. I think most of the packages I’ve downloaded so far have 17 files, which translates into 17 “units” of instruction, essentially. But if you go through the limited materials and want to buy the full version, you can upgrade to the full version (75+ files, lots of additional interactivity, etc.) for a really reasonable $40.
What’s weirdly wonderful about BYKI, as opposed to other language learning softwares I’ve encountered in the past, is that it manages — somehow — to make the interminable drilling of basic vocabulary acquisition enjoyable. Last night I spent about two hours drilling two sets of introductory vocabulary in the three languages I’m currently working with and was having a ball. It feels like a game.
I am currently working with Czech, Italian, and Mandarin Chinese. I’ve studied Italian in the past, and read it pretty well (speaking/writing are less good but passable), so working through the Italian is just review and reinforcement of remembering gendered pronouns correctly, which has always been a pitfall for me. I’ve never studied Czech before, but have sufficient background in variegated Slavic languages that a lot of it is familiar enough that I can trust the backbrain to grab cognates correctly.
Mandarin? Whole different kettle of fish! But like any language, it has its patterns and internal logic. Particularly when I work with the Mandarin files, I can see how BYKI is a successful teaching tool: the combination of rote drilling and repeated exposure to the written and spoken language (the Mandarin files use both written ideographic Chinese and a transliterated/Romanized version to help you deal with the gap between phonetics and written language) helps the pattern recognition kick in.
I think that I would like it if I had someone on hand to explain ideographs to me a bit, because having to figure them out as I go is kind of hard and I’m not sure if I’m doing it right. I know some of them are right — the one for “wine” is pretty distinctive, for instance — but then again, the “wine” ideograph is also part of the way you write the word for “beer,” so I suspect that the ideograph may in fact be more related to alcohol, or fermentation. This is something I will be able to deduce, of course, if I keep noticing the ideograph in places where that interpretation would make sense (say if it were part of the word for “vinegar” and other fermenty things, which it might be, but I don’t know that yet). But I would find it satisfying to be able to find out now. Because I am impatient like that.
Anyhow, I’m having a good time refreshing my Italian, getting a bit of Czech, and wrestling with Chinese. I’m pondering adding modern Hebrew and Spanish to the list, just for fun. If you like playing with languages, you should try it out. Also, if you think you’re crap at languages, you should try it out — my strong suspicion is that it would work well and be fun for people who don’t have a knack for them, too. It’s geek-friendly language learning, and there ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.
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11.14.06
Posted in Belovedary, geek at 8:34 am by Hanne Blank
This morning, my Belovedary read to me a snippet of this news story, in which the process of teaching some dolphins to “sing” a bit of the theme song from Batman was described.
Now, I must confess that the idea of dolphins singing the Batman theme fills me with joy. Because, really, what’s not to like? Dolphins plus cartoony TV theme songs equals a guaranteed good time in my book. Personally I think they should teach the dolphins the theme song from The Simpsons.
But I have to wonder just what the humans think they’re teaching the dolphins, really.
The dolphins, as I mentioned to the Belovedary, are probably just playing with the humans. They’re swimming around their tank in the dolphinarium, going “Yeah, yeah, I know, but look, they give us fish, and it’s always warm here, and there are no sharks… yes, I know we wrote it. And the B-Minor Mass, and all those symphonies, and Don Giovanni, and The White Album. Yes, of course I remember that Bob Dolphin wrote Purple Rain. What, you think I’d forget a thing like that? No, Ethel and Skippy did all the early Stravinsky, not Ted. Ted was busy. Anyway, shut up and look cute, they’re coming back with the fish bucket! Look, I told you we should’ve evolved opposable thumbs. Secret to everything, opposable thumbs…na na na na na na na na BAT MAAAAAN!”
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10.17.06
Posted in domesticity, geek, housekeeping, how to at 10:22 am by Hanne Blank
Someone emailed me and asked if I would explain how to wash the dishes properly. It seems that this person and hir housemate have been having some differences of opinion about how this task should be done. Me, I don’t pretend to have the One True Method for washing dishes properly. I feel that any old way you do it is fine as long as they get genuinely clean. But if you want your dishes to get genuinely clean when you wash them, I suppose you could do worse than to do it the way I generally do it, which I shall now outline for the sake of the general amusement and possible edification of the reader.
Read the rest of this entry »
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10.08.06
Posted in culture, domesticity, geek at 9:28 pm by Hanne Blank
Looking further into the theme of my domestic leanings, I think it high time that I say a few words about routine.
It’s an awful word. That much you know already, probably because your eyes have already begun to glaze over and you haven’t even finished reading the third sentence of this post yet. Oh Goddess, you’re thinking, she’s going to go on and on about how everyone should keep some sort of insane calendar and everything should be done on a schedule and I’m tired and frustrated just thinking about it, I don’t need her help to feel guilty about my crap housekeeping.
I know the feeling. Of all the people I know I am perhaps one of the least inclined to behave according to habit, and definitely one of the least likely to be hidebound about my day-to-day. In fact, when I have had office jobs, I have dealt poorly indeed with the expectations that I would show up at certain times, work at certain things now and not then, and be available and interested in having meetings every Tuesday afternoon. You know you’re just not a person who thrives on having a preordained regime when you go to work for one of the most laid-back hippie granola publications that ever hit print and you just feel kind of… itchy knowing that production happens when it happens, in the order that it happens, and that you can’t just yank bits of it around and do them in some other time frame because that’s what you want to be working on right now and the other stuff isn’t.
So trust me, this isn’t about the kind of routine where Sundays are always Laundry Day and Mondays are always Sweep Your Floors Day and Tuesdays are always Make Your Shopping List Day and so on. I am just as allergic as you are to that kind of routine. Possibly considerably more.
What I’m talking about when I talk about routine is perhaps better described as things you do regularly, sometimes even more than once daily, because doing them that way helps maintain the household and keep it running in such a way that things rarely get to the point of looming (or actual) catastrophe. I had to find my way to this kind of routine, more or less by feeling my way through a darkness full of land mines. Defusing the mines — or cleaning up after them when something had gone dramatically tits-up — made me feel so stressed out and occupied so much time when things got critical that eventually I got really exasperated with dealing with my household on a crisis-to-crisis basis and started learning how to do enough, on a regular basis, that the crises simply never had the chance to happen. Read the rest of this entry »
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10.07.06
Posted in cooking, culture, domesticity, geek at 9:41 pm by Hanne Blank
I have been thinking a great deal about domestic issues of late, and by “domestic” I do not mean it in the sense in which it can be opposed to “international” but rather in the sense of meaning “household.” This has included a great quantity of pulling out and dipping into various of my household books: housekeeping manuals, cookbooks, home repair guides, sewing manuals, and so on. It has also included some bouts of sitting down and writing, although not much if it is in any shape to be seen.
I am a deeply and unrepentantly domestic person, although not at all in the Martha Stewartesque mold. Rather I am someone who takes a lot of comfort, and not insignificant pleasure, in having a household that runs well, mostly pleasantly and efficiently, and that is a welcoming and inviting space to be in.
Because I work at home, this is even more important than it would be otherwise, although I think that it’s something that really is, deep down, important to virtually everybody. I think this is true even if one has the kind of lifestyle where one is “never at home” and one uses one’s living space essentially as one does a hotel room, a place to stop briefly between bouts of running around in the world, get a little sleep and a shower, and change one’s clothes. Even then, one generally wants that space — that intimate, personal, close-in space, the place where you get naked, where you let all your shields down, where you do all the weird embarrassing things that you’d never do in public, where you belch and fart with impunity, where you endure the aftermath of nightmares and whimper your way through stomach flus, where you go to close the door on the rest of the world and exist even for the briefest while in blessed privacy — to be predictable and comfortable and functional.
I hasten to add that this is for whatever values of “predictable” and “comfortable” and “functional” are relevant to the individual, and one man’s comfortable bed is another’s unendurable. But nevertheless, one generally wants as few surprises, particularly nasty surprises, in one’s home as possible, and the greatest possible degree of consistency and ease. No one enjoys a floor that is crunchy (or worse yet sticky) under bare feet. No one feels at ease getting into a slimy bathtub or drying off after a shower with towels that smell of mildew. Few people actively cultivate the acquaintance of cockroaches or ants. A faucet that doesn’t stop dripping, a carpet-nail that regularly savages the bottom of your foot, a drain that won’t, dustiness that makes you feel like someone has sandpapered your eyes — these are all of them unpleasant, and no amount of lying will convince me that you really don’t mind them. There are a million and one gradations of neatfreakier-than-thou, and you should feel free to indulge yourself as you require. But at root, having a comfortable and pleasant household is about maintaining a baseline, a modicum of cleanliness and functionality so that you can exist in that place without feeling beset by physical dangers, incessant annoyances, or Just Plain Ick.
This requires diligence. Read the rest of this entry »
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