blogging is not dead
I'm taking a crash course on German. I've never done any in my life and here I am in a class surrounded by people who've studied this language for 7 years.
It's not easy, but fortunately Memrise is here and I successfully learned all my irregular verbs in a day thanks to it. Here's the course I made on it, thought I'd share.
Derrière ce titre un peu prétentieux se cache mon désarroi face à la manière dont la seule université scientifique de Lyon est gérée. Mon expérience universitaire en France a été bien loin de ce que j'aurais pu imaginer, et c'est une expérience qui aurait pu grandement être simplifié par une meilleure administration. Voici la liste des changements que devrait, selon moi, considérer l'université :
EDIT : Faire remplir anonymement un questionnaire de satisfaction des professeurs à la fin de chaque semestres. Le gros problème de l'université ce sont les professeurs, sans aucun doutes.
I listen to music a lot. I listen to it on my iPod Touch that I bring with me everywhere I go (I use it a lot to write during transit). I listen to music on my desktop PC. I listen to it on my Asus laptop. I listen to it at other friends places...
iTunes is awesome, I don't know any other good alternative (I tried EVERYTHING out there, don't tell me to try foobar2000 or songbird, it just doesn't top iTunes). But it has its default and since I use it to manage my library I've lived through 3 crashes :
The first time my computer broke, I lost all my songs that were on my iTunes.
The second time, another iPod synced with my library erasing all its music (I believe this is no longer possible). Hopefully I had my music backed on my iPod. I had to find a third party software to back it all up on my computer (which is not free)... Apple does not provide this option.
The third time, my computer broke again. I tried getting a backup from my iPod but I mistakenly synced it with my new empty library... I had all my music backed on Google music and this saved me.
So many problems.
Fortunately the industry is trying to tackle the issue and, as we're still waiting for Megabox to come around, solutions are already there.
This one was already problematic and I had to find a workaround to make it work since I was living in France and Google Music was only available in North America. I found a proxy, signed up, and voila.
You have to download a small software that goes hidden in the taskbar and downloads your entire library from iTunes. It keeps your playlist! But not the tags (lyrics, ranks, playcount...). One bad point.
It also allows you to discover new music through their free music. So I checked some genres and here it was in my playlist, indistinguishable from the rest. So when I had to back up all my music, I had to download all this music that I didn't really want in my library.
Also the player is buggy, it shows duplicates. I had like 500 duplicates of my song, this is the main reason I stopped using it.
I still use it to back up my music (instead everything else falls down). And sometimes to play my music on someone else computer.
Since I was really scared from my 3rd crash, I looked over Dropbox and figured it was too expensive for me. I tried sparkleshare, some other Dropbox alternatives and even tried setting up a SVN. Too much trouble, not really working etc... I ended up paying a 100$ for a dropbox membership. Which is great since I now use it for my pictures, videos, websites, writings...
But I never really dared to use it too much for music since I heard it breaks your library if you use it on two computers at the same time. And when I eventually tried to use this solution, it didn't work. I didn't want to mess too much with it and saw an ad for iTunes Match. It was all I wanted and cheap, why not try it?
Itunes Match is 25$/year. It's nothing. It's fast, which Dropbox and Google Music are not. It allows you to keep tags, playlist, and to sync all your iDevices.
I just started using it and don't really want to write too much about it for now.
Unfortunately, I'm already having problems:
Some playlists don't sync.
Some music just plays for 3 seconds.
Some music can't be uploaded on the cloud. I have like 50 songs that are said to be "ineligible".
I have to manually update the cloud.
When I modify the name of a song, it creates a different song in the cloud. Some song I delete stay on the cloud (so stay synced with other computers).
I can't match some songs that are obviously in the store.
I can't add a song to a playlist if the song is not on the cloud yet.
EDIT : I finally found a fix to the playlist not uploading. The solution : I enabled back the sidebar that iTunes 11 decided to hide (poor decision) and there it was : your playlist can't be uploaded on the cloud because it contains medias that are not music. There was ONE fucking video over a hundred of mp3s. Problem solved.
EDIT2: To upload ineligible musics you have to find a mp3 with a better bitrate. It's actually cool since I had a lot of low quality music, iTunes is MAKING me find better versions of them.
At the moment I'm using the 3. I use Google Music for a backup emergency. I use Dropbox as a real backup. I use iTunes Match to sync my music to all my computers (10 max). Using iTunes Match to do this job implies that I won't have all my music and some playlists might just not sync as well. It still better than nothing until they get it fixed or someone comes up with a better solution.
I have no idea what I was expecting when I bought this book.
I told her, "I'd like to rip that fringe off your jacket-we could begin there!" Lydia walked off. It hadn't worked. I never knew what to say to the ladies.
The POEMS were stapled together, mimeographed and called HERRRR. I read some of them. They were interesting, full of humor and sexuality, but badly written. They were by Lydia and her three sisters-all so jolly and brave and sexy together. I threw the sheets away and I opened my pint of whiskey. It was dark outside. The radio played mostly Mozart and Brahms and the Bee [end of chapter].
I put on a shirt and some pants and opened the door. Then I ran to the bathroom and vomited. I tried to brush my teeth but only vomited again-the sweetness of the toothpaste turned my stomach. I came out. "You're sick," Lydia said. "Do you want me to leave?" "Oh no, I'm all right. I always wake up like this." "Look," I said, "I know your tragedy." "What?" "I know your tragedy." "What do you mean?" "Listen," I said, "just forget it." "I want to know." "I don't want to hurt your feelings." "I want to know what the hell you're talking about." "O.K., if you give me another drink I'll tell you." "All right." Lydia took my empty glass and gave me half-whiskey, half-water. I drank it down again. "Well?" she asked. "Hell, you know." "Know what?" "You've got a big pussy." "What?"
"I can't stand those people either. [...]. We just drink beer and talk. It doesn't mean anything."
When I see a man with a tidy place I know there's something wrong with him. And if it's too tidy, he's a fag.
"I grew up in a ranch. My father was a drunk. He's dead now. Maybe that's why I'm with him...." She jerked a thumb at me.
Randy Evans was sitting next to me. i could see he was watching Lydia too. He began talking. He talked and he talked. Thankfully I couldn't hear him, the stereo was too loud.
“Few beautiful women were willing to indicate in public that they belonged to someone. I had known enough women to realize this. I accepted them for what they were and love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons. One simply became tired of holding back love and let it go because it needed some place to go. Then, usually, there was trouble.”
When I came I felt it was in the face of everything decent, white sperm dripping down over the heads and souls of my dead parents. If I had been born a woman I would certainly have been a prostitute. Since I had been born a man, I craved women constantly, the lower the better. And yet women--good women-- frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price. Either way I was lost. A strong man would give up both. I wasn't strong. So I continued to struggle with women, with the idea of women.
Human relationships were strange. I mean, you were with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stopped. Then there was a short period when you weren't with anybody, then another woman arrived, and you ate with her and fucked her, and it all seemed so normal, as if you had been waiting just for her and she had been waiting for you. I never felt right being alone; sometimes it felt good but it never felt right
I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn't have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. It didn't make for an interesting person. I didn't want to be interesting, it was too hard.
"Goodnight, Cecelia," I said. I pulled her to me. She was naked. Jesus, I thought. We kissed. She kissed very well. It was a long, hot one. We finished. "Cecelia?" "Yes?" "I'll fuck you some other time." I rolled over and went to sleep.
Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.
"It's 5 AM. What are you doing? ""I want to watch the sun come up. I love sunrises!" "No wonder you don't drink." "I'll be back. We can have breakfast together." "I haven't been able to eat breakfast for 40 years."
"Do you have a girlfriend?" asked Hilda. "No. Not now." "We'll stay," said Gertrude. "There is only one bed." "That's all right." "Just one other thing ..." "What?" "I must sleep in the middle." "That's all right."
"I think you fuck women just in order to write about fucking them." "I don't know." "I think you do." "O.K., O.K., forget it. Drink up." [...] Suddenly Tessie grabbed me.
I walked around naked and noticed that I could be seen from the street through the front window. So I had a glass of grapefruit juice and dressed.
I walked up and bing-bonged Debra's bell. She opened the door and seemed glad to see me. That was all right, but it was things like that which kept a writer from getting his work done.
juste quelques passages sans contexte
Chaque jour emporte avec lui l'espoir qu'il avait amené
Mais nos parents ne songent à rien ; et, moi j'ai beau songer à tout, je ne fais que m'apercevoir que je suis gauche, sans pouvoir y remédier.
Pour un homme jeune, honnête et amoureux, le plus grand prix des faveurs est d'être la preuve de l'amour ; et que par conséquent, plus il serait sûr d'être aimé, moins il serait entreprenant.
Les sots y croiront, les méchants auront l'air d'y croire.
[Elles] ne craignent pas de confier ces preuves de leur faiblesse à l'objet qui les cause.
[Mes principes] sont le fruit de mes profondes réflexions ; je les ai créés, et je puis dire que je suis mon ouvrage.
Dès ce moment, ma façon de penser fut pour moi seule, et je ne montrai plus que celle qu'il m'était utile de laisser voir.[...]Je m'assurai ainsi de ce qu'on pouvait faire, de ce qu'on devait penser et de ce qu'il fallait paraître. [...] Je fus donc obligée [...] d'employer à nuire à ma réputation le soin que je comptais mettre à la conserver.
Que surtout je pusse redouter un homme au point de ne plus voir mon salut que dans la fuite ? Non, Vicomte ; jamais. Il faut vaincre ou périr.
J'ai remarqué depuis longtemps, que si ce moyen n'est pas toujours nécessaire à employer pour séduire une jeune fille, il est indispensable, et souvent même le plus efficace, quand on veut la dépraver ; car celle qui ne respecte pas sa mère ne se respectera pas elle-même.
Je n'ai fait qu'une fois, dans ma vie, l'amour par procédé [...] et vingt fois, entre ses bras, j'ai été tenté de lui dire : "Madame, je renonce à la place que je sollicite, et permettez-moi de quitter celle que j'occupe."
J'ai le projet qu'elle garde de moi toute sa vie une idée supérieure à celle de tous les autres hommes.
Je lui ai demandé, après, de voir sa lettre ; et comme je l'ai trouvé froide et contrainte [...] je l'ai décidée à en écrire une autre sous ma dictée. [...]. Que n'aurais-je pas fait pour .... ? j'aurais été à la fois son ami, son confident, son rival et sa maîtresse !
Ce n'est donc pas, comme dans mes autres aventures, une simple capitulation plus ou moins avantageuse, et dont il est plus facile de profiter que de s’enorgueillir ; c'est une victoire complète, achetée par une campagne pénible, et décidée par de savantes manœuvres. Il n'est donc pas surprenant que ce succès dû à moi seul, m'en devienne plus précieux ; et le surcroît de plaisir que j'ai éprouvé dans mon triomphe, et que je ressens encore, n'est que la douce impression du sentiment de la gloire. Je chéris cette façon de voir, qui me sauve l'humiliation de penser que je puisse dépendre en quelque manière de l'esclave même que je me serais asservie ; que je n'aie pas en moi seul la plénitude de mon bonheur ; et que la faculté de m'en faire jouir dans toute son énergie soit réservée à telle ou telle femme, exclusivement à toute autre.
Le ridicule qu'on a augmente toujours en proportion qu'on s'en défend.
Où nous conduit pourtant la vanité ! Le sage a bien raison, quand il dit qu'elle est l'ennemie du bonheur.
Ou vous avez un rival, ou vous n'en avez pas. Si vous en avez un, il faut plaire pour lui être préféré si vous n'en avez pas, il faut encore plaire pour éviter d'en avoir.
Hé bien ! la guerre.
Je n'aime pas qu'on ajoute de mauvaises plaisanteries à de mauvais procédés ; ce n'est pas plus ma manière que mon goût. Quand j'ai à me plaindre de quelqu'un, je ne le persifle pas ; je fais mieux : je me venge.
On regrette de vivre encore, quand on apprend de pareilles horreurs.
Celui qui le premier tente de séduire un cœur encore honnête et simple se rend par là même le premier fauteur de sa corruption, et doit être à jamais comptable des excès et des égarements qui la suivent