Category: Life


First London Swine Flu Death. Is the tube safe?

Filed Under: Life by — 1 Comment
3 July 2009

The BBC is reporting that a 19 year old has become the first fatal victim in London of the deadly swine flu. This has got me thinking. Is the tube safe?

While living in Tokyo a couple of years ago I would always be astounded by how many people wore masks. At first I thought it was so they could avoid catching illness and to help with hey fever, but one time I asked my sick friend, why she was wearing hers when she was already ill. To my horror she replied “so that I don’t make anyone ill!” I suddenly realised, people were actually that caring about other’s they would suffer the inconvenience to wear a mask. It all suddenly became common sense to me. Why had I been so selfish all my life? I guess it was just a cultural norm I’d come to accept. In London you look after yourself before others. Sad, but true. In Japan and many other Asian countries, wearing face masks in public is normal and to a degree expected as a courtesy to others.

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So it has recently dawned on me… the only way we’re really going to stop this thing spreading in London is if people start thinking of others and wearing masks when they become ill. Once enough people do, it will become socially acceptable and maybe even looked down upon if you don’t. Think about it, who likes the person sneezing out open on a crowded train. Would you like them to wear a mask. Hell yes!

So I think I’m gonna start a trend. For my sake and yours. Get a pack of 10 for £13.50 here. Better still, get a pack of 50 for £3.95 here. Go out and buy a face mask now. The more people who start using them, the safer we will all be. Also, you might avoid being the second person in London to die of swine flu. Surely that’s worth more than £3.95.

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Effective ways to learn languages

Filed Under: Japanese, Life by — Leave a comment
27 June 2009

On Learning

One thing that I first want to point out is that the most effective way of learning new vocabulary is not from a list at all, but from putting yourself in real life situations where the word comes into context and has a distinct situational meaning to you. This will allow it to stick in your mind and also provide examples of its usage so that you know how to string it into a sentence.

But

However, we are not all lucky enough to be surrounded by such a real life environment and also this system takes a considerable amount of time. Most language students are required to learn large lists of vocab, especially for tests. Subsequently, a different method must be applied (though ideally in parallel to the above).

Most effective way?

So based on the fact that a list must be learned, we then come to the question, what is the most effective way. First look at the goal. How will this list need to reproduced from memory. If the answer is sequentially in order, then go away and read the list 100 times. Usually though, we will need to be able to translate the word in one or both directions on the fly. To achieve this, we will need to create hooks in our mind that bind the two (or 3 in case of Kanji and pronunciation) words together. This can be done by simple looking at them continuously, but normally the greatest problem to overcome is knowing what needs to be learned and concentrating on the the ones that we are least comfortable. To efficiently manage our time, we should target learning specifically to what we need to learn. A Computer Program Can Help!

This is where a computer program such as Tango Blaster can REALLY HELP. I spent hours with paper lists and yes I did manage to learn a lot, but I ended up wasting valuable time reading down words on the list that I already knew and this caused me to get bored and skip ones I didn’t. Also, after a while I began learning the order which was really dangerous as taken out of this order, I found it much harder to produce the answers.

The solution

The solution is to have a program that can dynamically create lists, filter out what you know, leaving a core list of subject to be studied and then to be able to shuffle the data in order to test your ‘on the spot’ knowledge. Also, the other benefit is that it allows you to quickly select which part of the the data you want to be prompted with and which part to reproduce. I have found through bitter experience that simple knowing a word from Japanese > English, does not mean you can then reproduce it back the other way in a real life situation. it is VERY important to learn words both ways round in order to be able to use them.

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More top dists splitting

Filed Under: Life, Linux by — 5 Comments
26 June 2009

Was sad to read today on TechPress that PCLinuxOS is going to split. I really feel that right now the linux community doesn’t need more fragmentation. Of course it’s great that there are so many distributions out there catering for a wide variety of tastes and demands, but what Linux badly needs right now is a core of large dists that are stable, updated reliably and with a community large enough to create the critical mass needed to really challenge the other OS players (specifically Windows and MacOS). PCLinuxOS does fall into this category and so I feel it’s sad that the community is likely to split.

There are already 101 smaller options and to be quite honest there are arguable only 5 or so mainstream popular titles to chose from. In my opinion, the PCLinuxOS community needs to rally and sort out their infighting. Having a founder / ‘owner’ who disappears for a year is clearly not acceptable, but is that really a reason to break up the project? People must accept in any community there will always be those who don’t agree. If a democratic system is set up with clear guidelines over who is in control and a mechanism to ensure decent project leadership this really shouldn’t be an issue. I think what people need to realise is that the project is bigger than they are and that sometimes we need to put our differences aside for the greater good.

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New Site Up

Filed Under: Life by — 1 Comment
23 June 2009

OK, so everyone who has been to the old site knows it badly needed updating. I wrote the old CMS as a project to learn PHP and while it was useful, the site didn’t look great. Also it took ages to write new stuff and was clunky to use. I’ve decided to migrate to wordpress now and have to admit it feels really nice to use. I’ll be transferring old content over when I get time.

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