This may be old news for some, but I found the website Duolingo.com that seems like it’ll be really helpful for learning Spanish. It’s as effective anything I’ve used to date and it’s free! They also have French, Italian, German, and I think they’re working on others. I’m not affiliated with them in any way, I just wanted to put this resource out there for people.
The Ten of Swords
Thoughts of an aspiring polymath, resources on trying to master a variety of interests.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
How to do NaNoWriMo
"By giving you no choice but to press on, NaNoWriMo heads off most of your excuses and forces you to see what you're capable of writing."
How I did it: I was talked into it by a friend who had done it the previous year. I had an idea that I'd been toying with for some time so I dove in and worked hard at it. It ended up taking 1-2 hours a day to hit my word count quotas, but I made room (while going to grad school, no less!) Unless you're in a very serious crunch time in your life, I think this is doable.
Lessons & tips:
- Signing up on the website, while not essential, is extremely helpful. There are lots of resources there and connecting with other writers can be motivating. In my case, I found that watching my numbers go higher on the bar graph kept me wanting to do more.
- Have a decent plan but don't be afraid to deviate from it. There are books and websites (that one's for the snowflake method, one approach that could help you get started) to refer to.
- I found that the scrivener software made organizing my novel much easier. There are even promotions for it so that you can use it for free during nanowrimo and then buy it later at a discount if you complete your 50,000 words
- Be realistic - This is a good first step, but you probably won't be able to ship off the end product of your nanowrimo to get professionally published. If you want to go all the way, you'll need to do a fair amount of editing and beefing up of your manuscript before it's ready for prime time.
- It's ok to suck - I had to give myself permission to write without worrying if it was good or bad. At the pace of NaNoWriMo, this is pretty essential. You will have all the time you want to take to make it better later.
Resources:
- Scrivener Writing Software
- Nanowrimo.org website
- Various Books and Blogs
It took me 30 days.
It made me Excited
How to learn a language using the internet (Link to Lifehackninja)
Lifehack Ninja
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Writing: 5 Tips for Writing Kick-Ass Characters
I thought this was an interesting read, thought I'd reblog it here. Enjoy!
AFI Top 100 Movie: The Gold Rush
The Gold Rush is a 1924 film featuring Charlie Chaplin in his famous “Little Tramp” role. In brief, he travels to the Yukon to participate in the titular Gold Rush, but is quickly caught up in the sort of zany antics you might expect from an old timey slapstick comedy.
I caught this on Netflix Streaming before it expired on the 15th. I’ve never watched a silent film before but it wasn’t as painful as I might’ve imagined. A few things struck me. First, it’s clearly impossible to experience this movie the way it would have been experienced in 1924. For one thing, many of its jokes felt really cliche, but I suspect that many of them were more original at the time and have since been reused to exhaustion. Second, whether the film was always of poorer quality or whether it’s the result of degradation by the time the film was transfered to its present form, the graininess and seizing pace of the film speed made many of the scenes unintentionally creepy. I found this fairly distracting particularly during the scenes in the isolated cabin. Third, the social standards have shifted so much in the last 90 or so years that it’s hard to understand whether the villain is seriously out of line or just mildly dislikable by 1920’s values. That last point has been kind of a recurring theme as I’ve gone through some of these older movies.
In all, I thought it was a satisfying film, and it’s impressive what Chaplin can do without dialog. For the cultural experience alone, I recommend giving this a shot at some point.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
AFI Top 100 Movie: The Maltese Falcon
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
My Progress on the AFI Top 100
I’ve been poking at this list for a while so I thought it’d be worth putting my progress here. I’ll update as I see more.
- MOVIE YEAR
1 CITIZEN KANE 1941
2- -THE GODFATHER1972
3- -CASABLANCA1942
4 RAGING BULL 1980
5- -SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN1952
6- -GONE WITH THE WIND1939
7 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA 1962
8- -SCHINDLER’S LIST1993
9 VERTIGO 1958
10THE WIZARD OF OZ1939
11 CITY LIGHTS 1931
12THE SEARCHERS1956
13STAR WARS1977
14 PSYCHO 1960
15 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY 1968
16 SUNSET BLVD. 1950
17THE GRADUATE1967
18 THE GENERAL 1927
19 ON THE WATERFRONT 1954
20 IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE 1946
21CHINATOWN1974
22 SOME LIKE IT HOT 1959
23 THE GRAPES OF WRATH 1940
24E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL1982
25 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD 1962
26 MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON 1939
27 HIGH NOON 1952
28 ALL ABOUT EVE 1950
29 DOUBLE INDEMNITY 1944
30 APOCALYPSE NOW 1979
31 THE MALTESE FALCON 1941
32 THE GODFATHER PART II 1974
33 ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST 1975
34 SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS 1937
35 ANNIE HALL 1977
36 THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI 1957
37 THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES 1946
38 THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE 1948
39DR. STRANGELOVE1964
40THE SOUND OF MUSIC1965
41 KING KONG 1933
42 BONNIE AND CLYDE 1967
43MIDNIGHT COWBOY1969
44 THE PHILADELPHIA STORY 1940
45SHANE1953
46 IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT 1934
47 A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE 1951
48 REAR WINDOW 1954
49 INTOLERANCE 1916
50THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING2001
51 WEST SIDE STORY 1961
52TAXI DRIVER1976
53 THE DEER HUNTER 1978
54MA*SH1970
55 NORTH BY NORTHWEST 1959
56 JAWS 1975
57ROCKY1976
58 THE GOLD RUSH 1925
59 NASHVILLE 1975
60 DUCK SOUP 1933
61 SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS 1941
62AMERICAN GRAFFITI1973
63 CABARET 1972
64 NETWORK 1976
65 THE AFRICAN QUEEN 1951
66RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK1981
67 WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? 1966
68UNFORGIVEN1992
69 TOOTSIE 1982
70 A CLOCKWORK ORANGE 1971
71SAVING PRIVATE RYAN1998
72 THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION 1994
73 BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID 1969
74THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS1991
75 IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT 1967
76FORREST GUMP1994
77 ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN 1976
78 MODERN TIMES 1936
79 THE WILD BUNCH 1969
80 THE APARTMENT 1960
81 SPARTACUS 1960
82 SUNRISE 1927
83TITANIC1997
84 EASY RIDER 1969
85 A NIGHT AT THE OPERA 1935
86 PLATOON 1986
87 12 ANGRY MEN 1957
88 BRINGING UP BABY 1938
89 THE SIXTH SENSE 1999
90 SWING TIME 1936
91 SOPHIE’S CHOICE 1982
92GOODFELLAS1990
93 THE FRENCH CONNECTION 1971
94PULP FICTION1994
95 THE LAST PICTURE SHOW 1971
96DO THE RIGHT THING1989
97BLADE RUNNER1982
98 YANKEE DOODLE DANDY 1942
99TOY STORY1995
100 BEN-HUR 1959