I once tried to take basic Spanish and French classes in the same year — I was in third grade. That act alone showed me an appreciation for people who have command of more than one language, because that year showed me how hard it is to learn a language solely by hearing it OR seeing it.

While checking my email accounts (goodness, I have many of them), I stumbled across a link where one can, for Free: Learn English with audio.
Given that English is my native language, I was inclined to toy around with the site, to see just how well it was done.

The home page is essentially bare, save for one Google AdWords box, and the flash object containing the flash cards (no pun intended), which I find to be a very good idea. Nothing says “Learn English” better than a gigantic flash ad for Verizon High Speed FiOS, right?

The Flash box on the page has five labels. Four languages are supported on a path to learn English: Spanish, French, Russian, and Hebrew. There is a standalone label that gives only the English, with no transliterations or translations of words to English, as well as the aforementioned language labels, whose contents come complete with a transliteration of the way the word sounds, as well as the audible enunciation of the words.

For example, I chose French.
For appliances, I see what we call a Stereo in English:
Stereo, sti’(r)io, chaîne stéréo
The first is the English spelling. The second is a transliteration of how we say it in English, and the last is the (familiar) French way of saying the same object. If I clicked on it, I’d hear the “sti’(r)io” as the enunciation.

It’s a pretty healthy way to teach the basics of words, though I admit, I don’t miss conjugating verbs with these cards (simply because I hated conjugating être in my French classes).

I can see how having a free resource to begin learning English as a Second Language from would be so useful.

[tags]ESL, English as a Second Language, Polyglot, Linguistics, Learn English, Contributors[/tags]

Since I don’t have an alarm clock, save for my phone, I needed something that would be effective when I need a one-time, or a recurring alarm, and it had to be something to make me wake up enough.

I found out about a service called Snoozester, which basically does this for me.

I can be at work, and find out that I need to be at an appointment on a certain day. This is easily handled by simply logging in to Snoozester (since I’m online at work all day), setting up a reminder call with the time and date, and a short message that is read back to me when I do receive the call from the service.
This is all easily achieved, too, since the interface is very light, and very to the point, while making sense.

I can be anywhere, as long as I have my phone, and get this alert, because my phone will start ringing and vibrating, until I answer it.

I’ll get this casual notice from Snoozester, which will read back to me what I left as the short message. This helps out, since an alarm clock is generally tethered to home, and digging through 5 menus just to set up one alarm is not all that fun.

Now, there is a price for this kind of progress, but the price is staggeringly inexpensive.
If you’re like me, and just want a wake up call for each work day, you can easily get by on buying 30 call credits for $5.
If you’re a traveler, and need something a little more elaborate, such as support for a few phone numbers, and more call credits per month, then there are very, very inexpensive monthly plans starting at about $4.

The only problem is, for me to call Canada on my cellphone, I’d pay 35 cents per minute if I dialed him directly! This is where the guys at Pingo enter the picture.
They offer low calling rates all over the world (including cheap phone calling cards for Vietnam and other countries in Asia, which is important for a lot of people I’ve met recently) with an easy to use service. In fact, Canada’s only 1.8 cents per minute.

Right now, it only costs me my regular airtime to call Canada, thanks to my Pingo calling card.
That’s a huge savings for me!
Now, if only I could time it better to actually stay on the phone with my friend for more than a couple of minutes…

[tags]Pingo, International Calling Card[/tags]

Certainly, one could go from website to website for each carrier, dig their way through the navigation, and search hard just to find out the rates for each carrier, but why bother? I like the convenience of going to one spot to check rates, just like I like having one application to check for instant messages, and one spot to go to check my email. Sites like Wirefly make this much easier on users, by giving them this convenience.

On Wirefly, one can check for individual plans for the various carriers, compare the differences (for example, Cingular may offer the ability to roll over unused minutes, but Sprint does not), be made aware of special offers, and even sign up, all from one convenient location.

Check it out.

I had heard mention of an email marketing tool called Zookoda, which is a free tool that hails from the Great Down Under (that being, Australia). It’s an interesting tool that allows one to set up a mail list that can mail daily, weekly, or monthly updates of your weblog’s content in a fairly easy manner.

You’ll notice that on my sidebar, I now hold a subscribe box, as well as a chicklet to show how many subscriptions there are to my content on Zookoda. My feeding it will be slow for the next few weeks, as I start work, but it was remarkably easy to set up.

There are a few things that drive me a bit nuts, including the prolific usage of stuff we don’t really use in XHTML (<b> for example), and some code missing things that are important (alt attribute on images ), but other than that, it’s really not bad at all. In a month’s time with Zookoda, I hope to be satisfied with the way it works, get many people interested in subscribing to my list there, and have everything the way I’d like it.

When I was very young, one of my older aunts (now deceased, sadly) had, instead of photos or paintings on her walls, wrought iron wall art. I would sit in a chair in her living room, just eying these pieces, letting my eyes follow the intricate shapes that the bent metal bore, because they were just interesting in their own right.

Wrought Iron goes very well on solid colored walls, to break up the monotony of that wall’s appearance. It also stands to be a conversation piece of its own right, as people — family, friends, and guests alike — might ask you where you found such beautiful craftsmanship.

I hope to have something like the Salinas Wrought Iron Candle Holder, once I get an apartment of my own. It would go great with my habit of using aromatic candles, thus bringing a little functionality into an otherwise purely artistic wall hanging.

[tags]Wrought Iron, Wall Art, Metal Crafting, Home Decoration[/tags]

I was a little frustrated with the system just a couple of months ago, because there was such a heavy flood of payday loan and mortgage assistance opportunities, which I have no experience that applies to either one. They just wouldn’t fit in with this blog, and thus, I couldn’t take them.

Now that posties (that is, we, the bloggers of the PayPerPost system) are required to disclose their relationships (something they should’ve been doing a long time ago, like I have been doing ), and now that there are more businesses with opportunities that I (and perhaps many others) can feel comfortable with, there are more rewards in the system that we do not have to fight with our conscience over. I can feel clean in taking opportunities once more.

I just can’t seem to write about things I’m not happy with, or have no knowledge about, so why should I waste someone’s time in glossing over a possible entry?

[tags]PayPerPost, Big Money, Quality Posts[/tags]

The essence of it is, you simply build towers, and upgrade them to do more and more damage to your enemies as they come running through what I can describe easiest as a ‘gauntlet’ of sorts. While you’re haranguing your enemy with volley after volley of pain, they’re trying to capture your base.

There’s someone working on another variant of this genre, currently named Flash Circle TD. I’d like to give this one a try when I get a spare moment, since I’ve become enamored of the type of game. It’s short enough, plays fast, and I can easily start and finish with it in a single session.

The last time they did something like this, they got $3,000,000 in venture capital.

They’ve tried to, or have done things like acquire part of Performancing… Get one of the MySpace staff members onto their team… got sweet cameras from Hewlett Packard (which they didn’t give me a single one !)…

They’ve also done some things that have upset some of the people who write entries for them, such as segmentation (though it’s partly understandable; it’s just that the mechanism responsible for making this work isn’t being completely enforced on the side of the advertisers, which penalizes the rest of us), and rolled out a few… bumpy releases, which is bound to happen, of course.

I think this time, the surprise is either going to be that they’re going to make advertisers not only rate us before they can run any other ad campaigns, but show us why we’ve fetched bans from certain advertisers, to help us improve on our work (it’d help, and it’d make sure we weren’t being banned because we’re furry, or whatever, haha)…
Or, it’s going to be that they’re going to send me a pony.

Everyone needs a pony (though I’d rather a full grown horse, so I can ride him to and from work each day in a nice white suit, with perfectly straight, unnaturally white teeth, and a white cowboy hat. Oh, and a white briefcase to finish the look. *hint-hint*) on any beta project.

This is just another way that that PayPerPost has offered for me to promote my blog.
All you have to do to start is… read my blog (which I wish you would do, regardless of whether you wish to respond to my posts or not ). If I’m talking about something you find interesting, or maybe you disagree with my view on it, and you think you’d like to talk about it (for example: my post earlier today expressing my views about Giveaway of the Day) as a response to my post, then you click on the button, get yourself signed up with PayPerPost, and just write about my entry. You make money, and I also make money.

What happens is, when you click on that link, a special opportunity is made for you, and you alone to take. You simply write about the post that interests you in your own blog, submit to PayPerPost, and in thirty days, they pay you for your post. I get a little out of it for having referred you, and you’ve got a little cash for replying to content from my weblog.

This does not seem too bad now, does it?

[tags]PayPerPost, Review My Post, Make Money Blogging, Promote My Blog[/tags]