Not that I’m particularly sad today, but I was recently thinking about the music I play over and over again on less happy days. For some reason, it’s still the same songs I play as 10-15 years ago. So now that we have Youtube:
I play out my role
Why I’ve even been out walking
They tell me that it helps
But I know when I’m beaten
All those lonely films
And all those lonely parties
But now the feeling is off-screen
An the tears for real not acted, anymore
“Long Hot Summer” (1983) – Style Council (with Paul Weller on Bass)
Continue reading ‘Music for sad days’
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Barcamp Brussels #4 is coming closer: Saturday Dec 1st is 10 days away. Our main sponsor is MSN/Windows Live.
If you’re not already on the attendee list (we’re around 70 now), please hurry, we have to close that list on Monday to fix the right quantities for catering.
Some last remarks:
- As usual, we start at 9AM, we stop at 6PM.
- Parking is no problem, we can use the mVillage parking that’s empty anyway, since it’s a Saturday.
- Who wants to record videos? Out of experience I can only say I cannot do it myself, nor can I make them ready afterwards for Youtube/GVideo. So I need 3-5 people taking care of that.
- Anyone doing anything with photography, like the previous time?
I get the question a lot, so I thought I might write a post about it as a ready-made answer to the next few.
“I’m gonna buy a new (LCD) TV, should I go for HD Ready or for Full HD?”
1. What’s the difference?
Full HD is (at least) a 1920 x 1080 pixels (also called 1080i or 1080p, depending on whether the signal is interlaced/not as good or progressive/better) resolution. An HD Ready TV will typically only have a 1366 x 768 (WXGA) resolution, but it will still accept 1920×1080 input (that’s why it is ‘ready’).
2. What’s your budget?
You will have a hard time finding a TV that is “Full HD” under the 1000€ mark (Pixmania now has 1 Hitachi of 975€). If you want to spend more like 600€, that solves a lot of difficult choices!
Continue reading ‘Buying an HD-Ready TV’
Just read an interesting post: How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in 1 Hour. Let’s see how that works out with Bulgarian.
Introduction
Bulgarian is a slavic language written in a cyrillic alphabet of 30 letters:
For easier reading for us used to roman alphabets, and for Bulgarians with a US keyboard, there is a way to rewrite cyrillic words called “transliteration” or more specific “romanization”. I have -obviously- created one: Bulgarian romanization: cyrillic <> latin.
Difficulty
First estimating the difficulty of learning this language:
- Are there new grammatical structures that will postpone fluency? (look at SOV vs. SVO, as well as noun cases)
Bulgarian seems to be a SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) language, just like Dutch & English.
- Are there new sounds that will double or quadruple time to fluency? (especially vowels)
Not really, you pronounce it like you read it, but there are some peculiar letters like the “ъ” ( “schwa” or “ə” (phonetic) or palatalization).
- How similar is it to languages I already understand? What will help and what will interfere? (Will acquisition erase a previous language? Can I borrow structures without fatal interference like Portuguese after Spanish?)
While Bulgarian adopts new words from English easily (e.g. businessman become “бизнесмен” which is transcribed as “biznеsmеn“), it is at the base a Slavic language with an abundance of words that have nothing to do with the words in Dutch/French/English.
Let’s take the days of the week: понеделник вторник сряда четвъртък петък съботата неделята – which is transcribed into “pоnеdеlnik vtоrnik sryada chеtvartak pеtak sabоtata nеdеlyata“. Not that obvious, is it?
- All of which answer: How difficult will it be, and how long would it take to become functionally fluent?
God, if I knew the answer to that question.
Published on
November 5, 2007 in
Society.
One person dying per second, two being born. Not sure all the stats are accurate, but a fascinating view on the world’s day-to-day evolution.
via celsias.com
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