Author: Harry

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Me Other

hable despacio por favor

I’ve been trying to learn a little Spanish before going on holiday. I have no illusions that a few weeks of cramming will enable me to walk alongside the Rio Guadalquivir reading Lorca in the original – or even make small talk about the weather – but at least it might give me a starting point when reading menus and trying to find the right bus. My vestigial French and Latin seem to be even less useful than I expected, although trying to learn the verb forms in the present tense did give me flashbacks of doing my amo amas amat, amamus amatis amant.

I’ve been using an excellent open-source javascript flashcard program called jMemorize. You gotta love the open-source people.

EDIT: I just realised I that I even got the title of this post wrong. That doesn’t bode well for me developing mad skillz in conversational Spanish.

Categories
Culture Other

MAKE, folk art, and postpoems.com

I love MAKE: Blog. Not because I actually want to make my own automated cocktail dispenser or LED tank-top that plays Conway’s Game of Life, or even an iPod Nano arcade cabinet. But I love the fact that there are people who do these things. A while ago, I went to the Folk Archive exhibition at the Barbican, and said:

It was an exhibition of contemporary British folk art, but that term was interpreted extremely broadly; the exhibition includes (some of these are photos rather than the actual object): trade union banners, graffiti, prison art, modified cars, costumes from traditional festivals, prostitute calling cards, sectarian murals, shop signs, painted false nails, football fanzines, protest placards, crop circles, sand castles, flower arrangements…

The sheer range of objects makes it hard to know what to say. Many of them were complete tat – unremarkable examples of mundane objects – but seeing them all together one did get a sense of a huge wealth of amateur, unofficial creativity. I enjoyed it and found it curiously cheering.

Whatever you think of ‘folk art’ as a category, and whether or not you think an iPod Nano MAME cabinet fits that category, what does apply to the stuff at MAKE is “a huge wealth of amateur, unofficial creativity”. People making stuff, in their spare time, because they want to. Love it.

I admit I find it harder to be so cheerfully enthusiastic about the reams and reams of bad poetry on the internet; but even if I don’t want to read the stuff, I’m glad it exists.

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Other

Sir Shigeru

Shigeru Miyamoto has been made Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Damn straight. If the man who invented Mario and Zelda doesn’t deserve a knighthood, who does?

That doesn’t make it any less annoying that the release date of The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess has now been pushed back by a year since its original projected release last November, but I don’t begrudge Miyamoto-san a bit of non-industry recognition.

via wmmna

Categories
Culture Nature Other

Hummingbird names

Roddy has a list of some interesting names of birds found in India over at Vitamin Q. I can’t resist adding some of the species of hummingbird found in Venezuela:

Glowing Puffleg
Mountain Velvetbreast
Lazuline Sabrewing
Golden-bellied Starfrontlet
Spangled Coquette
Gorgetted Woodstar
Forktailed Woodnymph
White-necked Jacobin
Fiery Topaz
White-vented Plumeleteer
Black-eared Fairy
White-bearded Hermit
Pale-tailed Barbthroat
Booted Racket-tail
Sapphire-spangled Emerald
Merida Sunangel
Green-breated Mango

And that’s without even getting into all the non-hummingbird names, like the Oleaginous Hemispingus, the Red-ruffed Fruitcrow and the Striped Woodhaunter.

Categories
Nature

Spring is sprung

I can tell that spring is here because my eyes have started itching like crazy. These are the culprits, hazel catkins:

picture from Flickr, © ‘Nunns’

It always seems unfair when my hay-fever gets going and the weather is still cold and miserable. Spring is definitely coming, though. It may still be cold and grey, but there are little bits of green appearing on the trees, the birds are singing, and there’s frogspawn in the pond. Today’s treat was a goldfinch displaying in the garden. This is a goldfinch (if it looks unfamiliar, you may be thinking of the American species):

picture from Flickr, © HOPires

The sexes look the same, but presumably it was a male displaying to a female. He was perched near her on the feeder pole, chirping and doing a little dance. He was standing on one spot and turning his body left and right in little abrupt movements – rather Chubby Checkerish – all the time with his wings slightly spread to show off the wingbars. She seemed more interested in the niger seed, but perhaps she was just playing hard to get. When they flew off, I noticed another goldfinch joined them and also started displaying.

I didn’t know they did that, so I was pleased to see it.

Categories
Culture

Well done Rob

The reason I was up at City Hall on Friday was to see Rob Mackenzie pick up his cheque for being commended in the National Poetry Competition. I believe the winners are due to be announced today in the Independent, but I can’t find them on the website. The Poetry Society are putting them up on their website tomorrow, though.

Anyway, *applause* to Rob.