Monthly Archives: February 2011
Secret Life in Lavender (Currently Uploaded Video)
This one shows, to the background of a couple of Thai songs which are highly unlikely to get me done for using music the way that western music is prone to do, some beautiful insects using the lavendar bush next to our holiday cottage. There were bees and hummingbird moths in this film, there were also cabbage white butterflies, hoverflies and other insects on that bush during our week, but nothing as impressive as the hummingbird moth Macroglossa.
Underneath it one evening I also found a toad, which I allowed to remain there undisturbed.
It’s amazing how much life can exist around one bush of lavender.
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- Registered nurse Norberto Molina Jr., chairman of JMH gay lavender caucus, named a Jackson Hero (miamiherald.typepad.com)
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Airport shocker
OK, this one’s hot off the press, as I am writing about something that happened about ten minutes ago, and I’m writing this from one of the machines in the lounge at Prague airport.
A few days ago I gave a lecture about cross-cultural management to students of Susquehanna University in Prague. At the end of the lecture I was given a bottle of fine Moravian wine.
I forgot that I had this bottle in my briefcase, but naturally the detectors as I passed from streetside to airside at Prague found it.
Now clearly they all recognise me as having been through there eighty or so times before, so there’s no terrorism alarm bells ringing, and you can see how they’re in two minds about whether or not just to let me get on with it. But in the end the three of them say no, they have to do things by the book, which mean that the wine is thrown away.
I’m there saying to them, just take it and drink it yourselves, it’s a sin to throw it away. And of course as they know that I’m a regular, they also know that there’s no risk I’m trying to poison them, give them an exploding oesophagus, or anything like that.
It’s not the loss I’m bothered about. I could make that up just by drinking the free wine that’s flowing like milk and honey (there’s milk and honey too, in the fridge) here in the Lounge. It’s a bit early in the day for me, though, and I’m actually not a big fan of alcohol despite what readers of my blogs and viewers of my vlogs may think.
It is a bit sad that it happened to a present. But most of all it’s pity to see something like that just thrown into a bin and not enjoyed by anybody. When anyone can see there’s no real risk there. It’s just the over-zealous application of a rule book.
That’s the real shock. That’s what’s really saddened me and sent me running to the production corridors of WordPress to get it off my chest.
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- Going Home from the Plane (huliganov.tv)
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- City Hotel Moran review – Prague, Czech Republic (travelpod.com)
Atheist chats with theist. (Some Skype chat from this evening – experimental piece)
In my search for new blogging and media techniques, tonight, while chatting to a radio friend Fat Steve and noticing that the chat had become a nice cameo piece, I got his permission as you will see to try the following:
[22:44:09] Fat Steve: Davey, I was reading a thread on Amazon and this guy on there reminded me of you
[22:44:54] David J. James: In what way? Read the rest of this entry
Would you like to get a new inexpensive email software plug-in that tells you who messages sent to you have been BCC’d to?
Call me paranoid if you like, but from time to time I wonder whether emails that have been sent to me might have also been sent to other people using the BCC or “blind carbon copy” function. Maybe it’s just a harmless informing of someone else as to what’s going on, or maybe someone has made a wisecrack that I didn’t notice about me in the text, some private joke about me which has gone whoosh over my head, and he and his mates are all creased up in paroxysms of LOLs and ROFLs and maybe even one or two ROTOFLMFAOs about it. One can never be too sure.
There are various ways of determining whether an e-mail sent to you has also been surreptitiously sent to another person, but none of them until now involve smart software embedded as a plug in on your e-mail client which “decodes” the headers in a shadow copy of the sender’s .msg file which it calls down from the server.
Until now, one has had to resort to needing a court order and taking it to the sender’s administrator (best done with a lawyer) threatening the sender at gun or knifepoint to tell you or show you (best done without a lawyer) or just to check the sender’s screen when they forget to lock their machine while going to the toilet (best done with a lookout on the corridor). Until now, you haven’t been able to just install a plug-in to a normal e-mail client which enables this function at the click of a button marked “disclose BCC recipients”. Read the rest of this entry
Pool Concert (CUV)
We’re continuing the footage from our 2010 summer holiday, which is only now, six months later, appearing on YouTube – such being the effects of the new “hundred rule” I’ve implemented. At least we have a bit of summer in winter time.
In this video my aunty and uncle appeared from several hours drive further south in France where they live and stayed a few days. Sophie decided to give a bit of a concert in the pool and some feats of swimming.
And here’s the result.
OK, Poll time. You heard some Abba on this, and you could see how it bridges three generations. Now the question:
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Kafkaesque! (CUV)
Here we have, in nice HD coding, a walk around in Prague, showing some of the flavour of the experience of being in the Czech Republic – including this very strange thing that happened to me last Spring.
Here, in the city of Kafka, I was seriously summoned to court without being informed why. Just like Joseph K in ‘Der Prozess‘ or ‘The Trial’ by Kafka. You really couldn’t make it up.
I don’t want to talk about the facts of what the case turned out to be, (especially as one party of it graces some films of mine on YT, which will also be shown here) but to my relief I only actually needed to be a witness. I have no wrongdoing as such on my conscience, but I have been known to sack people, and they get given more rights than I do when it comes to court, even if there’s no earthly justice in it. But this wasn’t even someone I had sacked. Because I didn’t know that, I had to go to the expense of a decent lawyer who naturally deserved to be paid for his appearance despite not in the end having a decisive role. But in the end I didn’t get annoyed about it, as it was something truly Kafkaesque in the city of Kafka which I’ll be able to remember and joke about for the rest of my life.
I also talk a little bit about learning Japanese and the kitsch for sale to tourists in Prague.
I thought I’d spice things up with a poll! Remember this is not the number of cases you’ve seen – you may have been more than once. Count is as number of days you’ve ever had to turn up. Don’t count it if you went along just for entertainment.
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We’ve got tonight
Playout date: | 26 September 2006 |
Location: | Home |
Other people featured: | None |
Music used: | Karaoke track of Bob Seger’s “We got tonight” |
Languages used: | English |
Animals featured: | None |
This has not been liked much by viewers, with the result of 5 likes and 26 dislikes after 4200 views. It is certainly far from perfect but I didn’t and don’t have time to make really polished pieces.
One of the problems always in producing versions of songs that some people really like – and I really like the original of this song too, don’t get me wrong – is that you’ll find that people looking for the original on YT will come up against your cover and of course if they get that one before they get the one they remember, they’ll be frustrated and press the dislike button.
On top of that they might write some disparaging comments such as the few I got here. Some were positive because one or two liked the way I made a comedy ending.
Who is this mystery customer?
The following review can still be read for Derek Offord’s “Using Russian – A Guide to Contemporary Usage” on Amazon.co.uk (not the American Amazon and I really don’t understand why they don’t carry these reviews over, when I want to write for only the UK or only the US I shall forget about the internet altogether!) As it was way back in 2001 I seem to have lost the accreditation for the review along the way. At first it was under my name, but at some stage they must have had a technical blip and the older reviews became “A Customer”. but it’s mine, well enough. I don’t know if my style has changed much in ten years.
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is essential reading for those doing a Russian degree.
28 Sep 2001
By A CustomerThis review is from: Using Russian: A Guide to Contemporary Usage (Paperback)
I bought Using Russian when I was browsing in a bookshop for another language, as I already speak Russian, but when I looked at a few pages it immediately appealed as an excellent update to the way the language has developed since I did my degree. Sections in the book refer to different problems that face the English speaker in particular, such as faux amis. There are also sections on homonyms and other confusing aspects and they act rather like a checklist of what you need to have got right in your head in order not to make too many ‘howlers’ in translations or in conversation.
One particular plus in this book and as I found out in the whole series of ‘Using’ books that this is part of is the focus on register. If there is one thing that separates the wheat from the chaff among language students. it is the understanding and application of the idea of register, and this applies to Russian perhaps more than most European languages, as this is a language in which not only the vocabulary, but also the syntax, grammar and phonetics are all subject to complex nuances. This book was not available when I needed it. Now that it is I urge you to make use of it. It is the book about Russian that I would have liked to have written myself. If I thought there was demand for it, I’d offer to do a sister volume for Polish.
In any event it made me go out and by the sister volumes already in existence for French, German and Spanish. They are of a similar quality to this volume, the weakest is probably the German one, the Spanish one I would put as second favorite. It can be read cover to cover, or simply dipped into as a work of reference.
It is not material for learning the language from scratch, but would be a very useful second step after completing any of the standard self-instruction books such as the Colloquial series, the Teach yourself series or the Linguaphone course.
Either A-level or degree level students of the Language will profit from it and find it enjoyable because of its good presentation and readable style.
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- You: Russians told to mind their English (guardian.co.uk)