I thought I would just round off the year’s blogging personally, rather than just with the machine generated summary in the previous post which is very interesting, maybe more so for me than for the readers, just to give you all my warmest wishes for 2013 and to hope that I may continue to be part of what you look at online in the coming year. Your ratings and comments and hits, both here and on Quoracy.com blog and also on the YouTube channel, on Linked-In and Facebook and several other places are all very highly appreciated and at times of crisis I do derive a certain strength from knowing that I’ve still got my readers, at least I got my friends:
In the deliciously ironic video to this interesting recent hit, the girl’s friend is a robot, but in my case behind the robot face of the internet and it’s various interfaces are real people who have been willing to share a bit in my life by watching the videos, listening to the voice droning on, reading the posts and the comments. That means a lot to me, and some of you I’ve got to know as well as people I’ve spent time with in the same room, or better.
I didn’t manage to do as much as I wanted to in 2012, partly because I always set my plans too high anyway, but also because I had a bad round of pneumonia in the summer which wiped out July and August.
Just to show that, here are the results of the pedometer I have been using since May 2011:
First the 2011 graph, and below it the 2012 one, giving 20 months in total:
This shows pretty clearly what an effect this pneumonia had on my ability to do anything. Not only physically, but also mentally I was on a very low ebb. After this, however, I felt much better and weighed less and was able to break walking records of mine in October. November and then December started to become lower only because of the outside temperature.
On the mental plane I didn’t get enough done also because work has been very busy. The projects of writing a goldlist book, a course book for the Huliganov video Russian course and with that more lessons on video too have all been placed on the back burner as my work in three countries, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, has needed to take more and more of what a less dedicated fellow might consider his leisure time, but I will say at least that the work is interesting.
I think that it really means that these other projects aren’t cancelled just pushed back until the time comes when I can do them. Doing face-to-camera video isn’t easy because my kids are these days too big and too rowdy. As regular viewers will know two of my children are autistic and my wife has multiple sclerosis, and all of this puts a growing strain on the nerves, on time and on finances. Given the recession, which in this particular dip is affecting Poland more than before, earnings are under pressure but the disorders of my family cost more and more money. In order to make sure they don’t have to go without therapies they need during this squeeze, I finally made up my mind to take the advice and urgings of friends and break my pride and finally accept donations for the purpose of my family’s needs and in order to do this I set up a sub-account on Fundusz Avalon, which will enable Elena, Tatiana and George respectively to benefit from the 1% tax redirection scheme we have in Poland.
If anyone is a Polish taxpayer and doesn’t already have a favorite charity to give to, and if you feel that you have received something from any of my online work and would like to give something to my family without it costing you one single extra penny, please let me know before you finalise your 2012 tax return for Poland and I’ll explain how it works and how you could help us. For people in other countries of the EU donations given to these three funds should in most cases also be tax-deductible, but it would involve you in making some form of cash donation and my first aim is to ask for help to those who are paying tax in Poland, because it will cost these friends no cash at all to help us. There’ll be more details of this coming up in the near future.
As far as plans for 2013 go, I have now bought a membership to a gym club and will be going 2-3 times a week for a work-out. The aim here is to keep going as long as possible and to at least double the strength I have at this point at the end of the year. When I have doubled the weight I can do 3 sets and 18 reps on from what that weight is now for each of the machines I am using, then I will have another examination to see what my fat% is, metabolic age, etc etc.
I also intend to remain on a diet, and to be closer to the Montignac diet. I bought a few books about it and they are waiting for me in the UK, where I hope to be going at the end of January. I take metformin for my metabolic syndrome and also two blood pressure medications, which I’ve been on for most of the second half year.
I intend to keep using pedometers – the one which uploads and gives the above graphs is on its last legs and I have a new Omicron one, but unfortunately that one doesn’t upload and make pretty graphs, so I will have to note the results myself on paper, do the graphs myself and scan them or make them in Excel. Silvaconnect gave a notice somewhere that they were discontinuing the website that gives the above, which would be sad, but if they do I will work around it. As it is they have not got for sale the ex-connect model that connects to a computer. What a pity. The aim anyway is to do 6km per day over the course of the year. You’ll see from the above that I only managed this in October of last year. But I will be including the fat-burning on the treadmill at the gym – I will have the pedometers on for that. Right now I am wearing both to make sure that by and large they do corroborate each other and I can go on with the Omicron alone if need be in confidence.
I weigh in at 128.8 kgs at the close of the year, about the same as I was at the start of it, although during the year I got up to about 133 kgs and down to about 118 kgs during the bout of pneumonia.
I also have a bicycle which I plan to use more in 2013 once Spring is here. I used it a bit last Spring but got out of the habit while laid up with pneumonia.
I have been doing some Japanese, Chinese, Czech, Thai and Romanian this year. I didn’t take the JLPT 4 exam but plan to take it next December which will mean more intensive learning of Japanese in 2013 – intending to use several materials all of which have their individual goldlists and also http://www.readthekanji.com, a fine resource. I will probably allow the Mandarin to rest for 2013 and return to it only when I know Japanese Kanjies much better, but I will be doing more Czech – hopefully getting closer to the end of that project which has already been going for over three years and is about 2/3 of the way through. I will be attempting to decipher the Thai writing scheme and getting a vocabulary of about a thousand words of Thai and maybe the same in Indonesian. I am refreshing and advancing two old goldlists from the 1990s because of scheduled travel in 2013, namely Romanian (where I am going for a few days in January) and after I do that one, then Danish (Copenhagen is scheduled for June). Other travel I have in mind is to the places I usually go anyway, namely UK and the three countries I’m responsible for, namely Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia, plus a short visit to Amsterdam. I hope also, although this is far from definite, to get into the former Yugoslav countries. We will see in the end how all of those plans pan out.
I’m also intending to read some nice history books and some more literature in the original languages in 2013.
So what can subscribers to Huliganov.TV expect in 2013? Well, in addition to articles on languages many of which will have arisen out of answers to readers’ questions, there will be new ones with polls and images as well as rich images for the header. Now I have purged the images that are changed in the headers and all the images you’ll see up there, a growing number, are either of me or made by me. Of course on top of that I ought to continue with the plan of uploading the things I had before on other parts of the internet up here, and no doubt some process will be made on that. I should also progress the original plan I had for this place of having links to all the YouTube work only properly categorised. Less than 10% of that channel is on here so far, and I should try to increase that to 20%, but at the same time the channel itself, http://www.youtube,com/usenetposts , is growing all the time.
I close the year with 1480 videos there and as can be seen by the last video of the year, which is the previous year’s New Year celebrations, I have a big backlog of films to upload. And that will take priority, actually getting the old filmed material up onto YT. So I will be changing the algorithm for uploading in the new year meaning that the new films should be appearing more frequently. That’s the only way I can catch up – the aim is not to be more than about three months behind, which was the way it used to be for years and years.
And there are going to be some exciting series coming up, even though I didn’t have time or peace and quiet to make any face-t0-cam video that people have wanted. The thing is when I go places I want to capture the experience and share it. When I am walking around I cannot do anything but talk, but when I am at a desk I need to be at work, hence that sort of film hasn’t been done while the walking and talking kind has been. The exciting places the loyal viewers are going to be taken to in 2013 include Malta, Beijing, Hemel Hempstead, Sofia Bulgaria, Kiev in the Ukraine and more Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia. Stay tuned!
For those who haven’t linked to me in all the places please use the buttons on the top of the blog to find me on places like Facebook, Twitter, Flicker, and who knows whatelser. On Linked-in you can find me by searching David James Poland and please link up. Your feedback to the whole experience here or on YT is always very valuable and please go ahead and tell me or ask whatever you see fit.
Once again, all the very best for 2013!
David: I’ve seen over the past few years how chaotic your home life can be. One thought that keeps coming to me is that the Lord put Elena, George and Tanya in your care because He has given you the spiritual strength, love and commitment to be the husband and father of such a challenged household. Your devotion to your God and your family has been an inspiration to me. Keep fighting the good fight of faith, knowing that I keep you and your family in prayer. May this new year be a blessed year indeed for you and your family! John longlat39
John, many thanks. I believe this too, and this thought strengthens me on that mission. Please keep up your praying for us and your participation in our on-line life, which is also an inspiration to me. I also hope one day that you and I will play and sing together, whether in Europe, in America, or in the new place.
I can’t help you financially but I can wish you a happy and healthy new year. May God continue to give you the strength and wherewithal to provide for your wonderful (and challenging) family. I am so sorry to hear that your wife is unwell and my prayer for you is that God send her a speedy and complete recovery. May this year indeed be a blessed one for you and yours.
That’s fine. The only ones I want to help me are those for whom it will cost nothing as they are in the Polish tax system. Unless any of my fans is so loaded that they are happy sending cash and don’t feel the difference but I’m not really holding out any hope for that! There may well be more deserving cases than mine, as even though I have an interesting set of challenges at least I do have a good job. It just gets tougher to give them all what they need from one set of earnings, that’s all. If people know a more deserving case personally they ought to help that one and forget about my case, that’s fine. Anyway, God will lay on the hearts of any that he wants to help my family, and if nothing comes then that’s also fine. I always disliked what is called “e-begging” and the only reason I’m even swallowing my pride and allowing donations is because some good friends have been asking me to set something like this up for years.
I also believe that your blessings and good wishes and prayers for us are worth more than money can even buy. No amount of money can buy back the health of my wife and family, but the prayers of Hashem’s people can do this, I am sure. So your remembrance of us is greatly appreciated.
David…….very best wishes and hopes to you and your family for this new year. I do not think you should feel in the least abashed in suggesting donations for the work you have put into the web submissions. Your Russian course alone should, in my opinion, have an option for those who wish to donate to do so. I am by no means wealthy but would have no objection to donating according to my means. Given the number of viewers you have, just a very small donation from those who are able and willing to do so would help you with both HTV projects and go some way to giving your family the extra therapies they would benefit from. By all means let people offer their prayers if they feel that will help but surely more tangible support would definitely help. For many years my attitude when the question of money arose in circumstances like this was “don’t be vulgar !” (filthy lucre rearing its head again). However, I have become more of a realist in later years and realise that there is a cost for everything. In effort, in time, in knowledge and so on. One has to make the distinction between the gross and sordid monetary profits sought by many large enterprises and the reasonable and warranted (and voluntary) donations requested by individual providers of (in your case) life, learning song and education. You have resisted this for long enough and I believe your friends are right to urge you to set up a donation scheme. I’m sure you would not be thought any the less of by your viewers / readers for adopting that stance.
I feel the same way about software. If for example Microsoft wish to charge vastly overpriced sums for their products I will not pay for it or use it. Further, I think they cannot complain when they find it is being pirated. On the other hand if a small software house (or individual programmer) offers useful applications at a sensible and reasonable price I will cheerfully support them, whilst condemning the pirating of same.
When greed is not the motive, support from all reasonable and caring members of a community will usually follow. That support in my view, should include moral, intellectual and if warranted, fiscal components.
Looking forward to the 2013 Huliganov T.V. season. Long may it continue.
Alan.
Alan, many thanks for this thoughtful comment. I greatly benefited from reading this.