Plans for 2013

Please link to me

This channel on YT

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. Continue reading “Plans for 2013”

A conversation with a Russian learner about aspects of verbs.

English: Native language in Ukraine. Legend: U...
English: Native language in Ukraine. Legend: Ukrainian language dominates as the native language Russian language dominates as the native language. Bi-lingual, with a slight Ukrainian language lead (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the followers of the video content on YouTube, Dennis, wrote asking about the question of aspects. I answered as I could and also as you will see got his permission to share the conversation so that more language learners would be able to take advantage of the topic.

  • Conversation started Thursday

  • 11:18

     
     

    Dennis Meurders

     

    Dear David,

    Thank you so much of the add. I’m honored! 
    I’m a very big fan of your youtube videos concerning the Russian language. I use them in addition of my Russian language course and I ust say that they give me a headstart of the rest. So they really help!
    I was wondering however if you could tell me which video talks about the time aspect ( поличать vs поличить) if you know what I mean with that. We talked about it yesterday in class and most people (including myself) find it very difficult.

    I hope you can help me out with this one.

    Thank you so much in advance!

    Dennis Meurders Continue reading “A conversation with a Russian learner about aspects of verbs.”

Announcing the Huliganov TV Summer contributors’ competition!

volume
Volume also helps, but is less important than quality

As announced in today’s video uploaded on YouTube, I have produced some Huliganov.TV pens, five of which will be given to the five best contributors over the next 30 days (ie to the 7th August).

Winners will be announced the day after the contest, and if you’re one of the winners, to receive your prize you only need to provide their address and I’ll send the pen there.

The best contributors will be judged on the basis of quality, thought-provoking responses and comments on either the previously existing or the fresh articles that will be appearing daily over the competition period.  Volume also helps, but is less important than quality so spamming or simple repetitive commenting or “me too” style comments won’t earn much by way of points. Especially helpful points like feedback that can help make this whole thing better, collaborations or even referrals of your friends here will count in addition to the comment contributions.

Discussion can be on any of the topics in the articles here.

I am hoping to get some interaction going on here between my group of friends on YT. You never know when YT can simple pull the plug on your account for no apparent reason, and from one day to the next people have been known to lose contact with all the friends they made on YT. Copyright strikes or other strikes are easy to acquire and notoriously hard to work off… This way, if people get used to coming here from time to time, the party goes on even if that happens. Also the ability to have properly threaded discussions without the character limit could enable people do to a lot more than they can when trying to discuss in YT. That’s why it’ll be particularly good if discussions kick off here between contributors, not always just between individual visitors and me, like I was the middle of some exotic flower and you all the petals…

Hope to see a real “summer flowering”  of this blog, and hope we all have fun and learn something.

On the Waterfront at Cape Town (South Africa Series 2/10)

Playout date: 12 November 2006
Camera: Fuji Finepix
Post Production: Windows Movie Maker – slight use
Location: Cape Town, South Africa, Victoria and Albert Waterfront
Other people featured: Performers on the waterfront
Genre: Walking with camera
Music used: “This could be heaven for everyone” by Queen – Karaoke version
Languages used: English with some singing in a Bantu language
Animals featured: Red wing starlings Onychognathus morio

This series, possibly beginning with this one, even though it is the 102nd video uploaded to YouTube, marks a certain development in the way I presented the video material. The cutting in of background music, the use of a common intro for series, the gallery shots with background music. This is an early prototype of about 2 or 3 hundred similarly style films from travel to different places. It’s not exactly the mode I settled into, but it’s well on the way there.

One thing I quite like about this one looking back is the attempt to use music in the backing track together with the ambient noises, like the drums of the waterfront performers here on the Victoria and Albert Waterfront in Cape Town. I have great memories of this place and would be happy to go to Cape Town again if ever I get the chance.

 

Apart from anything else, there were friendships made there which gave me a lot of value in my life. Just that alone, even if it had been nothing like the paradise it was, would have been well worth the trip.

Huliganov rants at Borat

Playout date: 26 October 2006
Camera: Logitech Webcam
Post Production: Windows Movie Maker – medium use
Location: Office Jazdow 8a
Other people featured: None
Genre: Hulirant
Music used: Yesterday once more” by the Carpenters – karaoke track
Languages used: English
Animals featured: Fish behind, mainly Ameca splendens

How dare this Sacha Baron Cohen person pretend to be a Kazakhstanian when he is really an English person all along? It is shocking.  Such was the basic idea of this little film, and of course my regular viewers immediately got the irony.  But spare a thought for the casual commentator, who took it all on face value and some of the resulting comments are hilarious! Click on the video box to see them back in YouTube land…