Month: August 2020

Watched The Irish Language and Beauty by Dónall Ó Héalaí from TEDxBerkeley | YouTube
Language represents an essential component of humanity, revealing so much about culture, heritage, literature, and nearly every human endeavor. In his TEDxBerkeley 2018 talk titled “The Irish Language and Beauty,” Dónall Ó Héalaí shares his personal relationship with the endangered Gaelic language. Recounting ancient legends, singing a traditional Gaelic song and discussing the colonial induced displacement of indigenous culture and practices, Dónall ultimately encourages the audience to consider our own inner selves--aspects of ourselves that we fail to celebrate and hide from the rest of the world. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Dónall Ó Héalaí is an Irish actor and the founder of Celtic Consciousness, an initiative that aims to share the insights and beauty of the Gaelic language with a wider audience and use ancient Irish stories and songs as a medium for self-reflection.
Another mention of language connecting it’s speakers to the land here.
Watched Deconstructing Myths about the Irish Language by Colm Ó Broin from TEDxBallyroanLibrary | YouTube
Colm Ó Broin is an Irish speaker from Clondalkin, Dublin, and a member of Conradh na Gaeilge. He has been involved with Áras Chrónáin in Clondalkin and Cainteoirí Chill Mhantáin in Wicklow Town organising social events for Irish speakers for several years. He worked as a journalist for the Irish language newspapers Gaelscéal and Lá and has spoken and written widely about the many myths that surround the Irish language, including articles in The Irish Times, The Journal and Broadsheet.ie Colm Ó Broin is an Irish speaker from Clondalkin, Dublin, and a member of Conradh na Gaeilge. He has been involved with Áras Chrónáin in Clondalkin and Cainteoirí Chill Mhantáin in Wicklow Town organising social events for Irish speakers for several years. He worked as a journalist for the Irish language newspapers Gaelscéal and Lá and has spoken and written widely about the many myths that surround the Irish language, including articles in The Irish Times, The Journal and Broadsheet.ie This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
Watched Gaelscoilis -- error-laden pidgin or creative creole by Breandan mac Ardghail from TEDxFulbrightDublin | YouTube
Breandán Mac Ardghail's talk is entitled Gaelscoilis: An error-laden pidgin or a deviously creative creole? By exploring the weird and wonderful linguistic features of the language spoken in Irish immersion schools, he offers an alternative perspective on the non-native schoolyard Irish of Gaelscoil pupils. In 2012, Breandán was a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the University of Montana.
Watched How to learn any language in six months by Chris Lonsdale from TEDxLingnanUniversity | YouTube
Chris Lonsdale is Managing Director of Chris Lonsdale & Associates, a company established to catalyse breakthrough performance for individuals and senior teams. In addition, he has also developed a unique and integrated approach to learning that gives people the means to acquire language or complex technical knowledge in short periods of time.
Attention, meaning, relevance and memory

Five Principles

  1. Focus on language content that is relevant to you (We learn tools fastest when they are relevant to us)
  2. Use your language as a tool to communicate from day 1
  3. When you first understand the message you will unconsciously acquire the language (Krashen ,2013)
  4. physiological training
  5. Psycho-physiological state matters, learn when happy and don’t get frustrated

7 actions for rapid language acquisition

  1.  Listen a lot (brain soaking)
  2. Focus on getting the meaning first (use body language)
  3. Start mixing and be creative
  4.  focus on the core
    1. Week 1: The Tool box (learn to say the following all in the target language)
      * What is this
      * How do you say?
      * I don’t understand
    2. Week 2-3 pronouns, common adverbs, adjectives
    3. Week 4 glue words, but and, though
  5. Get a language parent to help you understand
    1. works to understand what you are saying
    2. does not correct mistakes
    3. confirms understanding by using correct language
    4. uses words the learner knows
  6. Copy the face
    1. Work on the muscles and look at native speakers
  7. Direct connect to mental image (visual association)
Read The Plain Text Project (plaintextproject.online)

Do you need big, feature-packed, and sometimes complex tool for your work, to stay organized, or keep track of your tasks?

Maybe not.

Maybe all you need is plain text. Yes, simple, old fashioned, unadorned, boring text. It sounds scary or alien, but it's not.

Plain text isn't just for the geek or the techie. Plain text isn't just for the academic or hardcore productivity hacker. Plain text is for anyone.

Replied to Structured data for book reviews by Jeremy CherfasJeremy Cherfas (jeremycherfas.net)
Almost a week ago, I noted a blog post by Ana Ulin: Adding Structured Book Data to My Blog Posts. Ana added a section to the front matter of her book posts that contains information about the book in question, including her rating. She was kind enough to share ...
This is exactly the sort of thing that makes me happy about the IndieWeb!

One person tinkers around with an idea and posts about how they did it. Someone else sees it and thinks it’s cool and wants it for themselves. They then modify it for their system, maybe with some changes or even improvements, and post the details on their site.

They’ve both syndicated copies to IndieWeb news or to the IndieWeb wiki, so that in the future, others looking for that sort of UI research or examples can find them and potentially modify them for their own personal use.

And the cycle begins anew…

RSVPed Attending microformats2 issues resolution session
September 12, 2020
Sat 9:30am - 12:00pm (America/Los_Angeles)

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.
Let's discuss how we can close out some outstanding microformats2 issues. See: https://indieweb.org/2020/Pop-ups/Microformats#Agenda for links to sets of issues to consider, optionally add your own issues to those sets as well. This is an intermediate session, with a prerequisite of basic knowledge of HTML and microformats. Experience with publishing and/or parsing is a plus. All are welcome.
Watched Divergent (2014) from Amazon Prime
Directed by Neil Burger. With Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Kate Winslet, Jai Courtney. In a world divided by factions based on virtues, Tris learns she's Divergent and won't fit in. When she discovers a plot to destroy Divergents, Tris and the mysterious Four must find out what makes Divergents dangerous before it's too late.

Rating: ★★★½

I remember watching this sometime after it came out. Interesting and frustrating. There’s an oddity to watching it now in 2020 with the current political factions.

Making IndieWeb Friendly WordPress Themes: An IndieWebCamp Popup Session

The IndieWeb WordPress community could use some more theme options.

Let’s get together as a community and host a theme raising (a play on the idea of the old barn raising). We can all work/hack together to make some of the popular WordPress themes more IndieWeb friendly. We’ll discuss methods for adding the necessary Microformats and best ways to indieweb-ify a WordPress theme.

Either bring your own favorite theme or work from one on a list.

All levels are welcome!

Beginners and those without coding experience are welcome/encouraged to attend. We’ll try to help newcomers learn to begin tinkering with some WordPress theme code. If you don’t have a GitHub account yet, you might create one beforehand and we’ll show you how to use it for development, but even without it you can still do a lot with just a text editor.

Details

When: 2020-09-26 9:30 – 11:30 AM (Pacific) / 12:30 – 2:30 PM (Eastern)
Event page: https://events.indieweb.org/2020/09/making-indieweb-friendly-wordpress-themes-8fs9gAVX3OkV
hashtag: for social media and used to create an Etherpad for the session:
Etherpad: https://etherpad.indieweb.org/WPandMicroformats for note taking during the session
Streaming video/audio platform: Zoom (link to come)
Demos: Yes – when we’re done, show off how well your new hacked theme works on your site.

RSVP

Newcomers can post a comment on this post below or reply yes via Twitter to https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1300562134699393024. Or you can feel free to just show up on the morning of the event.

If you feel able, RSVP at Meetable or post an indie RSVP on your own website.

Prerequisites

Bring your own theme or a theme you’d like to make more IndieWeb friendly by adding Microformats v2 support. Ideas for possible themes can be found at https://indieweb.org/WordPress/Development#Themes

(Optional) Create a GitHub account which you can use/learn during the process. Those who don’t want a GitHub account can simply use their text editor of choice to modify the relevant theme files.

Volunteers

We’re always happy to have additional help! If you’d like to volunteer or help organize and run the session, please touch base with Chris Aldrich or David Shanske in the IndieWeb Meta chat room.

I look forward to seeing everyone there!