friends

[May. 22nd, 2008|02:37 pm]

linguaphiles
[ms_cucumber]

How do you pronounce Heimlich (as in maneuver)?

18 comments|post comment

was it my breath?

[May. 22nd, 2008|10:51 am]

Dozens sickened in Japan after suicide

[	Tags	\|	doomed	]
[	music	\|	The Kills -- U.R.A. Fever	]

A Japanese farmer who committed suicide by drinking pesticide vomited the poison at a hospital before he died, releasing toxic fumes that sickened more than 50 people, the hospital said Thursday.
The incident came amid a string of suicides in Japan by people mixing household chemicals to create lethal fumes. Many bystanders in recent months have been sickened by fumes that escaped into adjoining rooms, apartments or homes.

4 comments|post comment

Online Resources: Children learning Danish

[May. 22nd, 2008|04:24 pm]

linguaphiles
[eee_eph]

[

Current Location

London, England

]

Hello. I have just received word of a possible tutoring opportunity - a six-year-old child, whose native language is English, needs to be taught a bit of Danish as he is moving to Denmark. Does anyone have any links to online resources I can use for one-on-one tuition? Does anyone have any ideas for how I, as a non-native Danish speaker, can best introduce a child to Danish? Any help much appreciated!

[crossposted]

3 comments|post comment

Can't have + past participle vs couldn't have + past participle

[May. 22nd, 2008|06:23 pm]

linguaphiles
[maddie_hayes]

Is there a significant difference between
She can't have done it.
She couldn't have done it.

Thank you in advance.

http://blog.simon-cozens.org/post/view/1351

12 comments|post comment

iPhone development made easy

[May. 22nd, 2008|12:35 pm]

simon_cozens

Cor, seems like ages since I wrote a technical article. I mean a proper one, not like the one on Drupal. A decent tutorial. Anyway, here's a new one, all about how to program for the iPhone (and iPod) using Javascript and Jiggy. Enjoy!

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/surveillance_in.html

Surveillance in China

[May. 22nd, 2008|06:35 am]

bruce_schneier

Great article from Rolling Stone.

little gits

[May. 22nd, 2008|10:06 am]

mrkgnao

[

mood

amused

]

Geographers Trash Geography Department!

Sigh – thankfully I am amused rather than miffed. Although it’s a bit harsh to whinge in the direction of the department when this is basically one of the natural consequences of belonging to a collegiate university.

It also strikes me as fundamentally point missy to simultaneously whinge about lack of funding and the fact the fieldtrip wasn’t particularly academically rigorous. This being so, they can hardly expect the department to pay for a massive piss up for its undergraduates.

8 comments|post comment

HOURS OF FUN!!!!

[May. 22nd, 2008|01:15 am]

linguaphiles
[annamaryse]

[

mood

amused

]

Super fun for the whole family:

Multi-lingual free animated e-card generator here:

http://www.acapela-group.com/Greetings/bunny.html

Send greetings around the world in many languages including Canadian French (as a separate selection from Continental French!)

8 comments|post comment

[May. 22nd, 2008|02:30 am]

_dilbert_strip
[brianbot]

realtime nanoreview

[May. 22nd, 2008|12:22 am]

[

Tags

music, photography, reviews

]

The Presets: awesome. The sound: deplorable.

Update: Text messages sent during this show:

Drunk haiku:
continued drinking
oh god what was I thinking
oh! a vocoder!

(Techinically senyru
unless there is a season for vocoder
and I would argue
that season is now)

http://darkgate.net/comic/#boondocks

3 comments|post comment

The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder - 22 May 2008

[May. 22nd, 2008|07:08 am]

boondocks__feed

It's a game! Guess where I am from?

[May. 22nd, 2008|07:02 am]

linguaphiles
[germaniac_z]

[

Tags

accents, croatian, dialects, english, french, games, german, japanese, spanish

]

I just wanted to know how the accents stack up, where I have one, and how bad they are.
Can you tell, or rather hear, where I am really from?

Accents

Edit! I've recorded a single sentence in french, spanish, german, english, japanese, and croatian.

I am most interested in the Spanish response: what the accent sounds like, because I don't actually speak Spanish, and I know I have one. I wouldn't be surprised if I even have weird grammar or something. I just wonder if it's a really placable accent, the kind where you say, oh she is definately italian, no doubt about it, or the kind you can't recognize; it's just weird. Are busco and viven even correct? I don't know.

I wanted to do a Belrin and Bavarian accent too, but the tree sentence should be in real dialect like it was for Swabian, and I don't really speak any other dialect, I can only immitate the pronounciation of the words we have in common.

And I tried scottish and let me tell you, it was terrible. I love the scottish accent, and I would not have done it any jusitce.

So what about accents in general? If there are speech therapists for native speakers with impediments, couldn't a foreigner be trained to speak perfectly? I met a girl from Denmark who learned English in school and could speak with a perfect standard american accent. It was amazing.

I want to know if that is a taltent or something you can train like a sport.

Oh and because all of my languageness was so weird, here is the follow up for the german speakers: I called an Immobilienagentur (Real Estate Agency?) and asked for a tree...

57 comments|post comment

Photos of TV

[May. 21st, 2008|07:03 pm]

I approve of Photos of TV.
Very much.

[	Tags	\|	tv	]
[	music	\|	Sissy Wish -- Yayaya	]

http://www.megatokyo.com/rant/911

12 comments|post comment

Rant [911] "A Penny for the Comic Guy"

[May. 22nd, 2008|02:02 am]

megatokyocomic

A couple days ago, I was told that Rory Root, the owner of Comic Relief in Berkeley, had died. Under normal circumstances, the death of a bookstore owner would pass without too much notice, but Rory was special, and partially responsible for turning me into who I am today. Let me explain. In my first couple of weeks at the dorms in Berkeley, I ran into a classic college freshman problem: I had no idea what I should do with all this free time. In m...

[permalink]

words that annoy me, a continuing series

[May. 21st, 2008|06:50 pm]

[	Tags	\|	banned words, spam	]
[	music	\|	Shellshag -- Shut Up	]

Dear Web Two Point Doh New Media Douchebag Marketeer Wannabes,

Please stop using the phrase "email blast".

The word you are looking for is one of the following:

"email" -or-
"spam".

Thank you for your prompt compliance.

17 comments|post comment

Curta

[May. 21st, 2008|06:36 pm]

[	Tags	\|	computers, photography, retrocomputing, toys	]
[	music	\|	Ladytron -- True Mathematics	]

I bought a Curta Mark I Mechanical Calculator.
Behold, the Arithmetical Peppermill.

This machine is amazingly cool.
It makes the most wonderful noises.

I have so far resisted the urge to take it apart.

Here's a nice emulator in Flash.
I've seen links to a PalmOS version, but those are all 404.

More info at curta.org.

http://www.megatokyo.com/strip/1123

32 comments|post comment

Comic [1123] "bye bye"

[May. 22nd, 2008|01:22 am]

megatokyocomic

Chapter 9: "overlo4d" comic 1123
[read...]
[permalink]

Design revamp for '$100 laptop'

[May. 21st, 2008|10:29 pm]

whodo_voodoo

I wants.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/05/blackberry_givi.html

1 comment|post comment

BlackBerry Giving Encryption Keys to Indian Government

[May. 21st, 2008|02:09 pm]

bruce_schneier

RIM encrypts e-mail between BlackBerry devices and the server the server with 256-bit AES encryption. The Indian government doesn't like this at all; they want to snoop on the data. RIM's response was basically: That's not possible. The Indian government's counter was: Then we'll ban BlackBerries. After months of threats, it looks like RIM is giving in to Indian demands and handing over the encryption keys.