Topic: Re: Blog Thread IIIb : Look Who's Blogging Now (Read 248490 times)

Jace · « **Reply #1650 on:** 18 Dec 2011, 05:04 »

I lost a Magic: The Gathering tournament last night because I was dumb and didn't look at the cards I had on the field, the cards I'd been using for at least 3 turns prior.

pwhodges · « **Reply #1651 on:** 18 Dec 2011, 08:10 »

I'd pronounce those the same...

But I can do umlauts, anyway.

Skewbrow · « **Reply #1652 on:** 18 Dec 2011, 09:48 »

I think that you are very close. Carl-E and Paul know German, and Tuathal knows Flämisch, so....

As Akima pointed out, even if over 1 billion people speak your language, it doesn't mean that you name would be universally pronounced correctly. It's a colorful world.

BTW. Are Dutch and Flämisch the same language, or is one a dialect of the other or something?

LTK · « **Reply #1653 on:** 18 Dec 2011, 11:18 »

There used to be a game show on tv that pitted a Dutch and a Flemish team against each other in various language-related tasks. Remember that one?

A Flemish accent really gets on my sister's nerves, but I find them endlessly charming.

Skewbrow · « **Reply #1654 on:** 18 Dec 2011, 11:42 »

To make sure: the language spoken in Northern half of Belgium is called Vlaams/Flemish/whatever, and is understood by all the speakers of Dutch? And they get along just fine - unless they are drunk and on the same soccer stadium?

pwhodges · « **Reply #1655 on:** 18 Dec 2011, 11:56 »

In 1975 I flew to Leuven with a salesman to visit a hospital whose French-supplied Nuclear Medicine imaging computer system didn't work - I had a tape with a fix which the UK sales office had commissioned me to program (it ended up as a new product).

We waited an hour or so for the consultant to arrive; but when he saw the salesman, he swore at us in Flemish and went away, and we flew back to England. Just as well, really, because if we had gone any further with it, we would have had the embarrassment of explaining that I had a 9-tape tape, and he had a 7-track tape deck...

BeoPuppy · « **Reply #1656 on:** 18 Dec 2011, 13:59 »

10 voor taal.

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tien_voor_Taal

Akima · « **Reply #1657 on:** 18 Dec 2011, 15:25 »

Quote from: Skewbrow on 18 Dec 2011, 09:48

I think that you are very close. Carl-E and Paul know German, and Tuathal knows Flämisch, so....

The ü sound exists in Chinese too. It is not a common sound in terms of the number of words that include it, but it does appear in some very commonly used words. Probably the most common is 女 (girl, female, woman) which is pronounced nü in the third (dip-rise) tone. By contrast 汝 (exert, strive) is also third-tone, but pronounced nu. How far that maps with the German/Flemish/Dutch sound I do not know, because I don't speak any of those languages.

DrPhibes · « **Reply #1658 on:** 18 Dec 2011, 23:27 »

stop the input of dutch things. Even I don't like it... whilst im dutch myself

anyway, yes, 10 voor taal is a fun programme. still have to write 2500 words about castles. Fuuu

BeoPuppy · « **Reply #1659 on:** 19 Dec 2011, 03:54 »

Quote from: DrPhibes on 18 Dec 2011, 23:27

stop the input of dutch things. [...]

That's what she said.

DrPhibes · « **Reply #1660 on:** 19 Dec 2011, 04:10 »

Quote from: BeoPuppy on 19 Dec 2011, 03:54

Quote from: DrPhibes on 18 Dec 2011, 23:27
stop the input of dutch things. [...]
That's what she said.

Jimmy the Squid · « **Reply #1661 on:** 19 Dec 2011, 05:36 »

Quote from: Akima on 18 Dec 2011, 15:25

Quote from: Skewbrow on 18 Dec 2011, 09:48
I think that you are very close. Carl-E and Paul know German, and Tuathal knows Flämisch, so....
The ü sound exists in Chinese too. It is not a common sound in terms of the number of words that include it, but it does appear in some very commonly used words. Probably the most common is 女 (girl, female, woman) which is pronounced nü in the third (dip-rise) tone. By contrast 汝 (exert, strive) is also third-tone, but pronounced nu. How far that maps with the German/Flemish/Dutch sound I do not know, because I don't speak any of those languages.

God I miss learning Mandarin. Hell of fun language to speak, even if reading is mind bendingly difficult for me.

Skewbrow · « **Reply #1662 on:** 19 Dec 2011, 05:59 »

Learning Mandarin? I've been thinking of trying to learn another language, because my brain could really use that kind of an exercise. I was considering Italian, but may be...? Getting started with Mandarin would be very difficult for me - with no background on a language with common roots. Feels like a tall order.

Edit: Looked for more information. The university I work for actually offers courses in Chinese (would that default to Mandarin?). Meaning that I could at least find material and some support. The first course sets a goal of learning about 100 characters, and somewhere else I saw that 1500 is considered the limit of "basic literacy". A long project anyway...

DrPhibes · « **Reply #1663 on:** 19 Dec 2011, 06:06 »

Try Korean. A classmate of mine is learning to read and write that and he says it's easy :X

Dazed · « **Reply #1664 on:** 19 Dec 2011, 06:19 »

Plus I hear the North has a great job opening right now

Carl-E · « **Reply #1665 on:** 19 Dec 2011, 08:18 »

Nah, it's taken.

Zingoleb · « **Reply #1666 on:** 19 Dec 2011, 11:56 »

Don't be so sure.

DrPhibes · « **Reply #1667 on:** 19 Dec 2011, 17:52 »

this is better for this topic than a bump in the singing topic. I just sang for about 20 minutes straight cycling after DJing from 00:30 - 02:30.
I mostly sang in jolly christmas tunes but the lyrics were of death, fucking up shit, santa being the devil (makes you fat and needy) and some bits about the snow and the trip home.

It's the best thing EVER to do whilst cycling home and it brought me in a jolly good mood

Zingoleb · « **Reply #1668 on:** 19 Dec 2011, 19:18 »

I got headphones today, oh my goodness. I have been so miserable listening to music on my laptop speakers, and these things have some hella good bass response for cheapies.

ummmkay · « **Reply #1669 on:** 22 Dec 2011, 12:57 »

argh i am incredibly hungover

cold pizza, gatorade, and HIMYM. i'm never getting out of bed again.

Akima · « **Reply #1670 on:** 22 Dec 2011, 15:36 »

Quote from: Skewbrow on 19 Dec 2011, 05:59

The university I work for actually offers courses in Chinese (would that default to Mandarin?).

CSL courses in Western countries, unless they specifically say otherwise (the alternative is usually Cantonese), invariably offer Standard Chinese, often called Standard Mandarin*, and use Simplified Characters. Generally nowadays, the "PRC way" is treated as the standard, but obviously if you were intending to go and study or live in Taiwan, you would need to learn some Traditional Characters.

Knowing 1000 characters would be regarded as very basic literacy in China; it was the standard set in 1950 when the People's Republic launched its famous 扫除文盲 (sǎochúwénmáng: sweep away illiteracy) campaign. The minimum standard for rural schools is now 1500. Urban schools regard 2000 as the bare minimum. Compare that with the standardised HSK test levels for non-native speakers. Note too the distinction between the number of characters known and the number of words known, because this is often muddled up in discussions of Chinese literacy. At higher levels, the number of words known is more important.

*Technically, Standard Chinese (普通话 Pǔtōnghuà meaning "Common Language" in the PRC, or 國語 Guóyǔ meaning "National Language" in Taiwan, or 华语 Huáyǔ meaning Chinese Language in Singapore) is a standardised form of the Northern Chinese dialects collectively known as Mandarin. Or to put it another way, all Standard Chinese is Mandarin, but not all Mandarin is Standard Chinese. To CSL students, these subtleties are probably irrelevant; they should be aiming to sound like the news-anchors on CCTV (to get a job in broadcasting in China, you have to pass a test in standard pronunciation)!

Jimmy the Squid · « **Reply #1671 on:** 22 Dec 2011, 17:32 »

From what I remember, and this was a few years ago mind, if you did first year Mandarin (both semesters) you would know about 1500 characters, second year (both semesters) you'd know 3000, third year 9000. We learnt to read both simplified and traditional characters but we only bothered learning to write simplified. I think in third year classes you'd do traditional writing and conversational language. I only ever did first year because the second year classes clashed with every single Psychology elective.

FIXDIX · « **Reply #1672 on:** 25 Dec 2011, 18:16 »

Fuck you blog thread it's Boxing Day and I'm alone getting drunk listening to Otis Redding.

Fuuuuuuck yeah life!

Carl-E · « **Reply #1673 on:** 26 Dec 2011, 02:19 »

One of my friends gave me a flourescent green safety vest with reflective stripes so that when I walk the dog, I won't get hit by a car...again.

She meant it as a joke, but I used it tonight.

Jace · « **Reply #1674 on:** 26 Dec 2011, 08:15 »

ugh tinnitus is bullshit with a clicking in my left ear. Extremely annoying

Carl-E · « **Reply #1675 on:** 26 Dec 2011, 13:57 »

I got a call this afternoon from my brother. My mother (73) had an aneurism burst while in the pool at the Y this morning. My father pulled her out, they stabilized her at the local hospital (Cape Cod), then put her into a medical coma and flew her to Mass General in Boston. They've put in a drain, and the CT showed three (!!) aneurisms. They still need to find out which one's leaking and then figure out how to seal it and what to do about the others.

She's gonna be there a while. My brother happened to have taken this week off, so he's at the hospital with my dad (78). Thank gos he lives close, I'm 500 miles away.

They've been married 54 years. They were high school sweethearts (my dad joined the marines at 17 and served 4 years in Korea, then finished high school - hence the age difference).

Right now, no news is good news. We talked last night, with merry christmases.

It's been a heluva month.

Carl-E · « **Reply #1676 on:** 26 Dec 2011, 22:07 »

Still in surgery.

So far, so good.

Jimor · « **Reply #1677 on:** 27 Dec 2011, 00:06 »

Best of wishes to her, Carl.

Carl-E · « **Reply #1678 on:** 27 Dec 2011, 00:21 »

Thanks. She's out of surgery, the bleeder was found and clamped, the others have been stabilised, and now only time will tell...

Barmymoo · « **Reply #1679 on:** 27 Dec 2011, 05:36 »

I'm glad they were able to catch the others as well. Best wishes.

Akima · « **Reply #1680 on:** 27 Dec 2011, 15:48 »

Best wishes to your mother, and to you Carl.

DrPhibes · « **Reply #1681 on:** 27 Dec 2011, 16:41 »

Im gone. MW3.

Carl-E · « **Reply #1682 on:** 27 Dec 2011, 17:56 »

Thanks, everyone. All signs are encouraging. She wiggled her toes today when asked. Still can't open her eyes, but she's also still heavily sedated. My brother just texted, they'll be removing the breathing tube and reducing the drugs tomorrow. It'll be a big day.

I gotta get some of this out. Hey, it's the blog thread, after all...

She's one of the strongest, toughest people I know. Raised four boys nearly singlehanded (my dad worked away from home), and put up with my father (a major accomplishment). Held two different local elected offices, started her own shop which morphed into a service business that she still runs.

And has one of the sharpest tongues combined with one of the quickest wits I've ever met. I know that, even if there's some damage, she'll recover and fight every step of the way.

She and my father met in High school, but they had a common hobby, too - racing. They were early members of SCUDERIA-X and the SCCA, racing MG's (TC's, TD's and TF's). My dad raced on tracks, but he and ma did road rallys together, trading off as driver/navigator. They organized and ran a rally on thanksgiving weekend in 1957, not expecting a lot of entrants since it was a holiday weekend, maybe 30 or 40. But because it was a holiday weekend, and there were no other races going on, they had nearly 200 entrants. They ran the whole thing, recruiting volunteers and relatives to man the rally stations. At the end of the race, after tabulating the results and announcing the winners, they were wed by a justice of the peace who had run the race with his wife in their Jaguar.

When they quit racing a few years later, and were selling off the MG's (there were over 13 of them in various states of damage and repair, most were parts cars for the couple that they raced), my father proposed keeping one of them (the best one in the bunch) and putting it up on blocks for their future children.

My mother's attitude was "Why? They're cheap cars, and they're barely worth anything anymore!"

That's ma. Always practical, and about a sentimental as a rock.

Lines · « **Reply #1683 on:** 27 Dec 2011, 19:24 »

Glad to know she's recovering! Hope she continues to do so.

DrPhibes · « **Reply #1684 on:** 28 Dec 2011, 02:13 »

I didn't read that earlier post Carl-E. Best wishes for her recovery

And keep that text somewhere, it's awesome as a speech for any good time!

Carl-E · « **Reply #1685 on:** 28 Dec 2011, 09:08 »

Thanks again, everyone. Sorry for hijacking the thread, but I have to share this one...

When my brother and father went in this morning, she opened her eyes and gave them a thumbs-up. They hadn't even begun to dial back the meds yet!

I promise not to give every little detail of her progress, and I now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging thread.

valley_parade · « **Reply #1686 on:** 28 Dec 2011, 11:33 »

Hey man, we're a community here. It's good to hear that yr mom seems to be fairing pretty well.

schimmy · « **Reply #1687 on:** 29 Dec 2011, 15:25 »

Holy shit, guys!

The night before last, my step-brother called his mum, my step-mum, into the room. She walked in, and saw that he was violently stabbing his chair with a knife. He said he was doing so because voices were screaming at him to do it. Whilst she was talking to him, he said "Mum, I think you need to leave the room. They're telling me to stab you now."
My dad called the police and an ambulance, and before they both arrived, my step-brother had voluntarily given up the knife. The police - armed police* - then took him, against his will, to A&E, where he got sectioned.

This is really fucking weird! The guy's had a history of mental health problems, including aggression, suicidal tendencies, and alcoholism, but fuck, I never realised his problems were this bad.

*In case foreigners aren't aware, British police are very rarely armed. The only times I've ever seen armed police in the UK, so far as I can remember, is at airports, outside Parliament, and this one time a house in my area got raided for drugs.

pwhodges · « **Reply #1688 on:** 29 Dec 2011, 15:41 »

That's awful - I hope things can be brought under control in a sufficiently satisfactory manner.

Discouraging story:

(click to show/hide)

Jimmy the Squid · « **Reply #1689 on:** 29 Dec 2011, 17:05 »

My cousin has schizophrenia. For the longest time she was doing very very well except for a few hiccups during stressful situations (when our grandfather died she thought that the family were conspiring against her and that we had staged the whole thing, similar situation when our grandmother died as well). For the most part as long as she took her medication and saw her psychiatrist she was ok though. She used to baby sit me when I was little and I'll always remember her as my favourite cousin and one of the loveliest people I'll ever know.

(click to show/hide)

I'm not saying that will happen. I hope it doesn't.

The Seldom Killer · « **Reply #1690 on:** 30 Dec 2011, 00:57 »

schimmy,

There is hope in what you're written in as much as your step-brother was able to identify and communicate that things were not happening as he felt they should be.

An armed police response for someone threatening others with a knife sounds like standard operating procedure.

Zingoleb · « **Reply #1691 on:** 01 Jan 2012, 03:20 »

I hope things work out for your step-brother schimmy. Best of luck to you and yours.

Blog thread,

Tonight, people kept trying to give me hits of nitrous, but every time it would come to me someone would say something hilarious and I would end up laughing the hit straight out of my nostrils. Example:

"My mother stepped on my parrot."
"What, out of anger?"

Jimor · « **Reply #1692 on:** 01 Jan 2012, 05:57 »

I spent New Year's Eve at home, but this is one case where I have no complaints at all. Because I spent the night editing the first ever real music video I've directed. I've done class project music videos, and online contest music videos for Royksopp (finalist) and Duran Duran (rejected), but this is the first time I've worked directly with the artist on a collaborative vision for the song.

It was one of my primary goals for 2011, and we did most of the shoot Friday in and around her home. Now we just need one quick location shoot, and for me to edit it all to final form. Even though this is "just" for a local artist and we did on absolutely no budget with my sem-pro camcorder, this is the kind of thing where I don't accept that this will be in any way inferior to bigger productions. She's an amazingly talented singer/songwriter, and we got exactly the kinds of shots we needed to let both the song and her personality shine through.

I'm babbling like this not just because it's a really cool project, but because of all the things I've done or tried to do, this is my true calling. I've been obsessed with music videos ever since I first saw them during the earlier days of MTv (when they actually played videos for most of the day!) But as much as I watched them, enjoyed them, studied them, it never occurred to me that it was something I could expect to actually do.

But with my recent career shift into the TV/video world, and with the availability of quality tools that anybody can get and use, it became not just a dream, but something that was inevitable as I followed my many friends in the music world, taking live videos and working on a couple of different TV productions centered around music.

And as I sit here and carefully shape the raw footage on the editing software timeline into the final essence of that initial idea, I now understand exactly how my musician friends feel when they're on stage and they just know that it's where they belong.

Carl-E · « **Reply #1693 on:** 01 Jan 2012, 14:18 »

Don't forget to post it in the MAKE thread whe it's done, if that would be allowed.

I'd love to see it...

Lupercal · « **Reply #1694 on:** 05 Jan 2012, 03:23 »

I got a Kindle for Christmas, which is really cool, if a little frustrating to find free version of certain books on. Shouldn't complain about that, but, you know, student and stuff.

I just feel like I have a lot to read before I go back. Ulysses is about 1000 pages, yay. Plus some Virginia Woolf and travel lit. that I'm supposed to be looking at.

In other news, someone backed into my car when I went down with my girlfriend to go visit her relatives, and at the time was fuming and swearing my head off because I thought someone had just crunched it and sped off. Apparently it was an older lady who didn't want to get out, in the dark, and start enquiring as to whose car it was. Fair enough, faith in humanity restored!

Except the insurance guys have given us this freaking HUGE Mercedes in place of my little Fiesta for a courtesy car.

Exchanging this

with this

They are worlds apart. Although now I do get to say I've driven a Merc, which is pretty cool, but I prefer my sporty little hatchback...

Carl-E · « **Reply #1695 on:** 05 Jan 2012, 07:54 »

So the water valve cover from the street was spewing water. I called the water department.

They turned off the valve, and the leaking stopped. Which means it's on my side of the valve, so I'm responsible for the repair.

40 inches under the sidewalk. And, since it was leaking up onto the sidewalk and forming ice, which is a safety hazard, they left the water off.

I'm waiting on estimates from all the ridiculously busy plumbers. Doesn't matter, we're broke. I found out that I can either hire a plumber, or do the repair myself, so now I'm looking into renting a jackhammer. One day so far with no water... been using the toilet at the bar across the street.

LTK · « **Reply #1696 on:** 05 Jan 2012, 07:58 »

Why on earth are you responsible for the plumbing under the street? The street is municipal property! Right?

pwhodges · « **Reply #1697 on:** 05 Jan 2012, 09:14 »

In the UK you used to be responsible from the stopcock, wherever that was. That was changed last year so that you are now only responsible from your boundary.

Barmymoo · « **Reply #1698 on:** 05 Jan 2012, 09:26 »

I can't see anything wrong with a policy which allows members of the public to take a jackhammer to the pavement. No siree. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that plan.

pwhodges · « **Reply #1699 on:** 05 Jan 2012, 09:33 »

No, it allows, maybe requires, them to pay a company that has the appropriate permission!

THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)

Author Topic: Re: Blog Thread IIIb : Look Who's Blogging Now (Read 248490 times)

Zingoleb

Zingoleb

Zingoleb