So, we all know that Lefty’s is closing down:

At least we can still go to Music Zone:

Oh yeah. I forgot, that shut down a few months ago.

Well… in that case, it’ll have to be one of the small shops which have been there for ever, and were fine just last week when I walked past… that’s Castle Records:

Or, for second-hand stuff, That Music Shop:

Oh bugger… it’s worse than I thought.

Love it…

…but with the likes of find-cd.co.uk and play.com, I’m afraid I’m as much to blame as the next man.

Of course, you will still be able to visit http://www.left-legged.com/.

While learning my Japanese, I’m putting all the sentences from my course book into Mnemosyne and learning the meanings as I go along. Looking up is required, because the book is a native Japanese one, so has no English translations, so I use a combination of my Kanji dictionaries, google translate, and if something looks like a simple noun, I use google image search (there is danger involved there, as an Iranian colleague found out when he image-searched to find out what a ‘twat’ was and why he was being called one).

Anyway… I searched for akachan (or 赤ちゃん for those with Japanese characters turned on), and found…

A BABY IN A BUCKET! (or is it a tub?)

So that’s CLEARLY what akachan means. That should only require a small amount of work to get to yagino akachan meaning baby goat in a bucket.

Whee! Music made by the sparks of a tesla coil. Full details here. Thanks to Simon’s Tall for the link.

Mnemosyne is not only the Greek Goddess of Memory, but also a fantastic little computer program for anyone trying to learn anything.

You set your own questions and answers, flashcard stylee, and you don’t just get a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for your answer, but you make a judgement call for yourself on your success. A grade of zero means “I have absolutely no idea”, one means “I don’t know, but I might kick myself when I see the answer” all the way up to five, meaning “Easy peasy lemon squeezy”.

The program then uses a calculated repetition period for each question to aid the learning curve. If you mark a question with a zero, you may well have it repeated immediately, or in a few questions’ time. Anything above a two will go away for a bit - maybe a couple of days for a two, possibly weeks for a five.

The added bonus is that the session has a natural end - the questions run out, it doesn’t just test you on everything. You then have the option to ‘learn ahead of schedule’, which is tempting but does tend to lead to brain overheating.

So… just a nice little proggy you might like to play with. I’m tempted to make a datafile with the Japanese T-shirt tutorials I was doing, and to pick them up again… we’ll see…

He’s right. I was reading over at Plume’s blog that the MTV 2007 Movie Awards had a category for Best Summer Movie You Haven’t Seen Yet, won by Transformers. I didn’t quite believe it, so went to check out the MTV site.

Yes… there it is.

I thought films had to be, well, you know… released and seen by people and critically acclaimed before winning awards. Not any more, it seems.

I wonder how many used tenners they slipped the producers under the table for that one. As Public Enemy said… “Don’t believe the hype!”

A nice little bit of video editing…

I caught a bit of Look and Read at lunch time. It’s good to see that it’s still running, and while I didn’t see if they still run a serial story like Geordie Racer, or Badger Girl, or Dark Tower, it seems that it’s still an excellent bit of production.

Many kids programmes these days seem to have degenerated into eye candy with little content - but Look and Read still has masses of useful information, presented in a modern, non-patronising way… there was a rap about word families:

everybody in the park today, everything is hot in the park today, people playing games everywhere, everyone having fun etc…

nobody in the park today, nothing… do dee do…

does anybody want to go to the park today… somebody… etc. etc.

There was also a little humorous sketch about some kids who wanted some choclit and thought that vegtables are horrable, and probly this and did you swallow a libry book… and Mrs. Plum and Mr. Toffeenose pointing out that if you pronounce words precisely you will know how to spell them.

Kid: Urg… vegtables are horrable.
Mrs. Plum: Vegetables are horrible.
Mr. Toffeenose: Are they?
Mrs. Plum: No, they’re nice.
Mr. Toffeenose: But you just said…

Had to be there, I guess.

But anyway… top marks to the Look and Read producers.