More on Publications, Language Advances, Various Social Events
Much of this work week has been spent working on the planned publications which are pretty much on target, although not as much as I would like with a variety of operational tasks still coming in. The company CEO and acting CEO have both given the project a strong endorsement and I hope to have them all completed by the end of January. Six of the ten the publications are primarily technical in nature covering linux, parallel programming, clusters and clouds, technical infrastructure, eresearcher tools, whilst four refer are various aspects of project management, quality assurance, adult education, and organisational history. I am making quite extensive mileage from the various notes I've included over the years on my main website and am also finding some of the material very relevant to a upcoming HPC/cloud hybrid that I'm involved in building.
Last Wednesday was our final beginner's German class at the CAE, and something which I'm not particularly going to miss. The teaching quality and materials are not quite up to the same standard as one finds on Duolingo, although both could do well with a stronger combination of grammatical and conversational approaches. On the latter I am continuing my significant levels of activity. I have been making estimations based on level B2 of intermediate fluency and the fluency percentages. With the necessary caveats stated, I'm at 43% fluency in French (prior exposure), 29% in German (yes, even though I'm at the same 'level'), an estimated 55% in Esperanto, Portuguese 22%, Spanish 19%, Italian 16%, Dutch an estimated 15%, Russian (harder) at an estimated 10%. It may not sound like much at this stage, but given I have only been using the application for a month or so, I would be surprised if I don't have a working level of fluency in all eight languages by the end of next year.
As is often the case, gaming constitues one of my major social activities; I've only just posted the final session of 7th Sea Freiburg, which was followed up last Sunday with the Eclipse Phase Ego Hunter scenario, which is one the best introductions to the setting - one day someone will make a fortune turning that into a film. Regrettably I've had two other gaming sessions cancelled this week; Cats Against Cthulhu and Eclipse Phase. Nevertheless did manage to get a game in last Saturday with our irregular Cheesequest in Dandenong; played Munchkin Nightmare Before Christmas which I must say some notable "instant kill" features. Also watched the New Zealand vampire comedy, What We Do in the Shadows. Mention must also be made of visiting Brendan E., a couple of weeks back who introduced me to the superb comedy series Black Jesus - hallelujah!
Last Wednesday was our final beginner's German class at the CAE, and something which I'm not particularly going to miss. The teaching quality and materials are not quite up to the same standard as one finds on Duolingo, although both could do well with a stronger combination of grammatical and conversational approaches. On the latter I am continuing my significant levels of activity. I have been making estimations based on level B2 of intermediate fluency and the fluency percentages. With the necessary caveats stated, I'm at 43% fluency in French (prior exposure), 29% in German (yes, even though I'm at the same 'level'), an estimated 55% in Esperanto, Portuguese 22%, Spanish 19%, Italian 16%, Dutch an estimated 15%, Russian (harder) at an estimated 10%. It may not sound like much at this stage, but given I have only been using the application for a month or so, I would be surprised if I don't have a working level of fluency in all eight languages by the end of next year.
As is often the case, gaming constitues one of my major social activities; I've only just posted the final session of 7th Sea Freiburg, which was followed up last Sunday with the Eclipse Phase Ego Hunter scenario, which is one the best introductions to the setting - one day someone will make a fortune turning that into a film. Regrettably I've had two other gaming sessions cancelled this week; Cats Against Cthulhu and Eclipse Phase. Nevertheless did manage to get a game in last Saturday with our irregular Cheesequest in Dandenong; played Munchkin Nightmare Before Christmas which I must say some notable "instant kill" features. Also watched the New Zealand vampire comedy, What We Do in the Shadows. Mention must also be made of visiting Brendan E., a couple of weeks back who introduced me to the superb comedy series Black Jesus - hallelujah!