Tag: Me

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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.

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Me

Search terms for February

Some faves:

blogs about sir henry raeburn
very sex
transfigured joke
pictures of singing mice
pictures of the ancient pulse of germ and birth
naughty schoolboy poems
top ten animals that rule
what would bentham think of cannabis
difference between dinosaurs and reptiles
coughing and racism
building a fire in the wildness

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Culture Me

holiday reading suggestions, please

When I go on holiday, I like to take reading matter which is appropriate to the place I’m going. The theory is that both the book and the place are enhanced by each other. A couple of years ago, I went to Tivoli and greatly enjoyed Howard‘s recommendation – Benvenuto Cellini’s Autobiography. Really, read it, if you haven’t.

This time I’m going to Andalucía, and I’m looking for suggestions again. So, something related to Andalucía, or Spain more generally; could be biography, fiction, history, poetry or whatever. Any ideas?

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Me Nature

The cruellest month. Not.

Three days ago I started planning a holiday with nothing more specific than a vague thought that I wanted to go to Seville last time I was in Spain (8 or 9 years ago) and never made it.

Now I’ve pretty much organised a trip this April that starts in a hotel with a view of the marshes where I should, *fingers crossed* be able to watch flamingos from my bedroom; Seville during the festivities at Holy Week; then down to Tarifa, where Europe is closest to Africa and spring migration should be in full flow, with eagles, storks and loads of other stuff flying in for the summer.

This should *fingers crossed* be a fabulous holiday.

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Culture Me Other

web design stuff

The more time I spend thinking about web design, the more easily irritated I am. Take Spork. Look at that lovely, stylish, front cover: it manages to have something of a print aesthetic without being heavy-handed, and it’s clear, simple and eye-catching. Classy.

But then you click on the names, and the links open as new windows. Like I don’t have enough windows cluttering up my screen all the time as it is. Look, I never, ever want any link I click to open as a new screen unless I specifically tell it to.

And you just know that they’re only done it that way because someone didn’t want navigation buttons cluttering up his nice neat page layouts. Humph.

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Me

Pope’s ‘An Essay on Criticism’

All Fools have still an Itching to deride,
And fain wou’d be upon the Laughing Side;
Whatever Nature has in Worth deny’d,
She gives in large Recruits of needful Pride;
Be not the first by whom the New are try’d,
Nor yet the last to lay the Old aside.
(Thus Wit, like Faith by each Man is apply’d
To one small Sect, and All are damn’d beside.)
While their weak Heads, like Towns unfortify’d,
‘Twixt Sense and Nonsense daily change their Side.
And never shock’d, and never turn’d aside,
Bursts out, resistless, with a thundering Tide!
Gen’rous Converse; a Sound exempt from Pride;
And Love to Praise, with Reason on his Side?