Posts from — January 2010

This newscaster misses a very important pause in his opening:

Pacing is important

I enjoyed this interview with John Oliver from The Daily Show. If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll definitely enjoy it. Oliver may be my second favorite current comedian (after Louie CK). I had a chance to see him perform in San Francisco a year and a half ago; he’s definitely worth seeing if you get a chance.

I’ve never been a fan of new year’s resolutions, but there are things I hope to do in the new year, so here’s a list in no particular order:

• Run in a longer race than I’ve ever run before ( > 7 mi).
• Learn some new piano pieces.
• Brew beer successfully.
• Learn new recipes.
• Visit at least 1 country I haven’t been to before.
• Visit at least 2 U.S. cities I haven’t been to before (Portland? Santa Monica? LA?)
• Read 20 books, including some fiction.
• Learn a new programming language.
• Learn a new spoken language.
• Write something fun with HTML5 or other new web stuff.

Some of these are intentionally vague and not ambitious, but I think that’s fine.

I’m trying to learn some Italian, in hopes of visiting Italy this year or soon after. I’m well aware that I could visit Italy without knowing much of any, but I’ve found travel to be far more enjoyable when I can at least attempt the language. Italian is rather close to Spanish, so I’m hoping it won’t be as difficult as learning most other languages would be, However, I stumbled upon this sentence in a phrasebook:

If you speak Spanish or even Portuguese, be careful as there are a lot of words that look and sound almost the same in these languages, but convey very different meanings. I.E: Spanish guardar (“to store, shelve”) vs It. guardare (“to see, watch”) and salir (“to get out”) vs salire (“to go up”); Spanish caldo (“soup”) vs It. caldo (“warm”)

I’ve heard this from others, too. I still think Spanish will help more than it hurts, especially since it gives me a better chance at guessing the meaning of an unknown word.

Arrivederci!

I haven’t been paying much attention, but this did seem quite shocking coming from a news anchor:

This musical remix of Up is really enjoyable. I liked it even more the second time I listened to it.

(via daily dish)