I was pretty disappointed with the iPod Mini, too. There’s only $60 difference between the iPod Mini and the smallest (HD space-wise) iPod, but the former has only 25% of the HD space. But GarageBand sounds way cool. I have Soundtrack and it is pretty slick as well, but adding audio recording and editing at that price is incredible. I’ll definitely be picking it up. If Apple would only do this kind of pricing on their hardware.
I never realized that Irish was not one of the EU’s recognized languages.
There a bunch of new countries joining the EU this year, along with their languages. Since the EU Presidency is in Ireland for the next six months, maybe this will get fixed. Did you know that Hawai’i is the only state in the US that officially recognizes two languages, English and Hawaiian?
My son Palani is one of 600 Hawai’i-based reservists who were called up and preparing for duty in Iraq.
We talked extensively about the possibility of this happening before he enlisted, so we have no complaints, but it doesn’t make it any less stressful. The house is quieter, and its a different quiet than there was when he was off at basic training. God willing we’ll see him again in 18 months.
Irish drink culture faces clampdown.
It’s interesting that a drink that used to proclaim that it’s “good for you” might have a health warning slapped on it.
quickSub is a Javascript function that adds intelligence to the feed button on your web page.
It looks interesting and I wouldn’t mind using on Radio Keola and NahenaheNet, but on Safari the popup menu doesn’t go away when you move the cursor off of the XML icon. Will contact the developer. Update: there is a little “x” in the upper right hand corner of the popup, and dragging the cursor over that makes the popup window go away. Pretty cool little script. I might give it a try here.
According to the Ranchero site NetNewsWire can subscribe to channels via a link on the webpage.
Just testing. If you have NetNewsWire or another aggregator that uses the feed: link, Click here to subscribe to the Radio Keola RSS feed. I just checked and it works.
Another interesting Irish language discussion on Slugger O’Toole.
This one involves a proposal to make instruction in Irish language mandatory in all Northern Ireland schools. Some interesting perspectives, but none of the participants seem to support the idea nor believe it will happen. I don’t think I would even support such a proposal for Hawaiian language, at least at this point it time. To make it available to every student who wanted it – absolutely. The opportunity to learn it must be there, but forcing upon those who don’t want it, I don’t think so. It would generate more bad will than it would positive results.
This website has a nice breakdown of the Irish Gaelic dialects.
I won’t vouch for its accuracy but it looks impressive.
The current Irish course I’m using is Pimsleur’s Irish I audio CD set.
The current Irish course I’m using is Pimsleur’s Irish I audio CD set. It contains 4 audio CDs and no textbook at all. This method also discourages the student from writing down notes as you learn. I’m up to lesson 4 (there are 8 lessons on the 4 CDs). It’s convenient as you can listen and learn while driving, as I tend to do each morning and afternoon. There is a narrator that provides introduction and instructions, you listen to a native speaker, mimic their pronuciation, and later participate in mock conversations with them. So far so good. The first…
‘Learning Irish’ by Michael O’Siadhail was one of the first Irish language texts I picked up before my wife and I travelled to Ireland
, and I have to admit I didn’t get very far with it. It comes with a number of cassette tapes that I recorded on my computer for easier listening. It includes a decent amount of information on the grammatical structure of the language, which I like, but I found the recorded examples incredibly difficult to follow. After three weeks at Oideas Gael, it made much more sense, but because of the different dialects used at OG and in ‘Learning Irish,’ it was still a bit of a challenge. Fortunately the spelling seems to be fairly well standardized (so far).…