Pushkin on Pushkin

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Pushkin sitting on a copy of his complete works.

First ever blog post by me from a mobile. (DND#0)

You may laugh. Ok, I’m old-fashioned. But in my defence I have to say that until I got this Samsung Galaxy every phone I had would not have made this anywhere near as easy. Not only was I able to download the free Android app for WordPress, but also this phone has an input method called swype which is much faster than the input methods I’ve seen on phones until now. It’s roughly half as fast as writing on a computer keyboard, which means about three times as fast as your usual phone keyboard. Effectively that means that it’s much easier to take a spare moment and keep a diary of what’s going on while I’m out and about.

This brings me nicely into announcing formally something that I only hinted at in an earlier post, namely that in the new year, the start of a new decade in a maybe not strictly mathematical sense, I will be starting a new series of posts on this blog called ‘Diary of the Next Decade’, or DND for short. This will be mainly a series done from the mobile, though probably not exclusively.

Additionally in the new year, I’ll be uploading the new videos added to youtube as they appear on youtube and that will continue to follow the 100 rule, which I’ve already been following for some months, since my thousandth video, which means I only upload the next video when the one previously has either reached a hundred views or else is well on its way there. In between current videos I’ll be uploading the earlier ones, usually in the order they first appeared four years or so previously.

In a few days, I’ll be setting my targets for writing and film making in 2011.

And all this was fairly comfortable to write on my new phone – technology just gets better and better.

Otherwise Engaged (Short story by me for Daily Telegraph Creative Writing Competition in 2008)

The "confusion of tongues" by Gustav...
Old Peleg, preaching

 The Lonely Terrorist sat on a riverside bench in a suburb of New York where he had been commanded to undertake the Engagement, nursing the ancient flask containing the next step for human history, which God had given him.

Dr Samuel Otherwise was near the end of a distinguished career in the sort of science journalists don’t get to tell the half of and most they write is wrong.

Samuel had long since given up expecting anyone else to have any understanding of his work such of it that wasn’t classified anyway – or his wider ideas and beliefs. At best anyone would take it as a joke, but having totally alienated his university friends, he became overwhelmed by ennui early in life as to explaining the Plan of God with rational arguments; everyone’s false premises were so deeply engrained he could do nothing. He could not enable them to see things as God sees them, so insistent were they in seeing things as men do, applying human value judgements to everything, even the brightest and best could not place themselves outside the space-time continuum and perceive the mind of God. Continue reading “Otherwise Engaged (Short story by me for Daily Telegraph Creative Writing Competition in 2008)” →

A Mediterranean Morning of Misunderstanding (short story in the style of P.G.Wodehouse)

This was another of my entries to the Daily Telegraph Short Story Competition that made it to the Top Six, but didn’t win – I never did. It seems to have been removed maybe on suspicions that P.G. Wodehouse‘s estate might have something to say about me borrowing his characters and putting them to work again 80 years later. But I expect that it will be safe in a readership as small as this blog now is to share it with you, and I’ve been saving it up a bit. As ever there was a limit to the number of words and certain words like Diplodocus and Ginger Beer Plant had to be used in it – there were about five of these words that had to feature somewhere, I can’t remember them all now and My.Telegraph has been through too much of a transformation for me to be able to access that one now. Here goes, enjoy…

I awoke from dreams of performing “Burlington Bertie from Bow” to a packed music hall populated entirely by an audience of Bow Street magistrates of the Sir Watkyn Bassett ilk and kidney – you know, the sort that would fain and gladly hand yours truly down a short sharp sentence of fourteen days inside of one of Her Majesty’s decreed stately pleasure domes, as the fellow said, without the option, to the voice of what at first seemed to be a distant harpy eagle shrieking after its hapless prey, “Bertie! Bertie! Wake up, you cowperian sluggard! It’s already half past ten, you lazy, glassy-eyed nephew of mine, come and get your breakfast before it all goes cold!” Continue reading “A Mediterranean Morning of Misunderstanding (short story in the style of P.G.Wodehouse)” →

Buy “The Polyglot Project” on Amazon via my aStore, or download e-book

If you have decided to buy one or more paper copies of this book – the ideal Christmas gift for the linguist in your life – it costs you the same – and makes a small commission for me which will offset the costs of this site a little bit.

The Polyglot Project - 42 contributors, 534 pages

http://astore.amazon.com/wwwusenetposc-20/detail/1453898247

If you would like to read this book, which was collaborated on free by all the contributors and will always be freely available to those who need it in electronic form, then the free version of this is on Docstocs and you can find the link to that on on the channel of the Editor which is http://www.youtube.com/syzygycc

The book is unique, there has never been as much practical linguist-to-linguist help in a single bound volume, and the volunteer nature of the writing has kept the cost of the book far below the price tag it would have if it had been produced commercially.

One of the contributors I am proud to say is myself, and you can find in the very last section how it came about that I was in a position to discover the Goldlist Method – the story has quite a few unexpected aspects in it, and many a linguist will find their experience reflected in it and in the stories of other polyglots featuring in the volume.

It should help the budding linguist to get and stay motivated, as well as to avoid ineffective study methods and save time and money. In these days where thousands of pounds are spent by many people on expensive courses and schools where they often are doomed to fail, it makes sense to read this book first – whether the free e-book or the cheap-as-possible paper form – and then decide on your strategy before committing your cash.