Greek
January 23rd 2003 -
Greek
I haven’t started the iPod Greek transcription yet, and have almost finished absorbing the Pimsleur audio tapes. So, I was quite surprised and pleased, when browsing through Borders at lunchtime (I hate ‘em, but they have the only good computer-book selection in the Macquarie centre) to see a big fat Greek language course. It claims to be comprehensive, and the one used by the U.S. foreign service when learning Greek. I had heard of it from the Pimsleur site, I think, in which it said that although it doesn’t have a “Greek 2″ course, you can go over to this one. I rejoiced and bought it, then shoved tape 1 into the car on the way back to work.
Well, um. I have been rather spoiled by the Pimsleur course. This lot – produced by “Barron’s” – may be the most comprehensive, but it’s pretty poor otherwise. An old man with a 1960′s era microphone shouts out words and phrases, repeating each word or phrase twice, then moves onto the next one without an audio translation (you have to have the book open for that). He sounds tetchy and mildly confused, as if he doesn’t exactly understand why he’s being made to say these things over and over again. Useless for driving, and there’s no breakdown of the words as there is in the Pimsleur course. I’ve been had.
I guess I’ll persist with it, though the fact that I can’t learn while driving is a bit of a bummer. I may use it as the basis for the iPod transcription, for words that aren’t covered in the Pimsleur course. What a pain.
Final Fantasy X
I’ve been playing this rather odd role-playing game for the last couple of days, since Andrea lent it to me. It’s pretty good, and will no doubt occupy me to the end. I just hope I can hold off from doing too many late-nights.
Redhat Linux 8
I’ve got a second computer on the desk at work, with Redhat 8 installed on it. This is for a port of a server that I’ve written. It looks pretty good – very much a copy of the Windows layout, to get people familiar with the look-and-feel, no doubt – and I’ve not had the slightest problem doing anything yet. Not that I’ve had it long enough to try much.