daveydave

Ok, some time ago I mentioned that I was absolutely going to learn German. I mentioned how past language learning efforts had failed and how I proposed to succeed this time around. So how am I doing? Well, the title of this post probably gives you a rough idea. I'm at the very annoyed with myself  stage and have come to the conclusion that I can either get on with it, or stop pretending. I'm going former. One of the main problems I'm having is setting aside time. Solution: the car journey to work gives me at least 45 minutes a day to work with. But: some language courses aren't ideal for use in this situation because you really need to refer to the book. And so I introduce Michel Thomas. I say introduce, his courses have been around for decades but I've never used them before because they are 100% audio and I always want to be able to read a write too. However, they are 100% audio, so they should suit car-based study. I bought the Start German taster to try ou...

I'm sure that I'm not alone in my first taste of a foreign language being at school, when I started being taught French around the age of 10. And I mean being taught  French rather than learning the thing. Classrooms full of teenagers are not great places to build a working relationship with a language, but at least they force you to do it. This has been an ongoing problem for me in my post-school attempts to learn languages. I have dabbled in a few: Japanese, Turkish and Spanish - but I haven't really got anywhere near fluent. I could hold a basic conversation in Japanese, even read and write a bit - night classes helped there. I could order food and drink in Turkish, again night classes were a big help. Spanish I struggled with - no night class. But, despite mixed results, I'm keen - really keen - to avoid being one of those English speakers who relies on the fact that "everyone speaks English". I really want to be able to converse in another language and ...

Around fifteen years ago, a 28" television rattled off the Philips production line - in an era where the UK just about had 5 terrestrial channels. Tonight, it showed me video from the internet. Here's how: The internet arrives from the outside world through a filter and into an ADSL router. Out of the router via a short length of network cable, it enters a powerline network adapter and through the domestic 240v power system at 130Mbps. At the other end it comes out the socket, into a 4-port adapter and through more Cat5 to the FreeSat box. There, it travels the short distance to the TV through a SCART lead and lo... BBC iPlayer arrives on the screen. It may not be a holiday on the moon, but it's a little bit of future.

This is exactly how legal downloads should work. I was looking around to see if Yasmin Levy had a new album out and Amazon, as it does, suggested a few alternatives it thought I may like. I previewed The Beauty and the Sea by Mor Karbasi and liked the sound of it, so I coughed up my seven quid and downloaded it using the little Amazon download gadget. Now for the best bit. Having bought and downloaded the album at work, I copied the MP3s on to my USB key and transferred them over to my system at home. Within a few minutes I was listening to the album on the telly (via the wireless media streamer) - no hassle, no error messages telling me I wasn't allowed even though I'd paid good money for it or any of that caper. Absolutely spot on and exactly the sort of thing I couldn't do, thanks to the damn DRM infection, the first (and last) time I downloaded music. Music and video producers/sellers take note: make legal downloading as nice and easy as this and people will buy. Conti...

Had to be done eventually I suppose. I'm on Twitter . To be fair, posts to this blog can be few and far between, so perhaps I can do better when I'm confined to just 140 characters. I have added the little widget thing to this blog so you don't even have to navigate to the Twitter site. But if you feel the need to follow me or whatever, you can find me here . Oh yeah.... and I'm also available on FriendFeed .