On holiday?

Hello all,


Just another short one (ahem) - bit of a weird week. I've finished my uni work, just the summer project to go.


That doesn't mean I'm on holiday (honest) - I've just registered this morning as self-employed! This is the first step to gettin my business started up, it's all a little scary really. I'm sure I'll end up badgering my friend Katie (her new business, Live The Lingo has just gone online). Watch this space.

Aside from that, the flat is an absolute tip, we're packing for our move this weekend to our new house (the palace of glittering delights, henceforth tpogd), see the above photo. I'm sure we'll get it all sorted, just looking forward to getting in there (and getting out of here). One problem is that we're likely to have no internet for a while in tpogd while Orange get their arses together to switch it over. Our phone number's changing too, get in touch to get the new one. I'll send out the address for tpogd at some point too!

Gmap Pedometer

This is great. Period.

If you're interested in running, cycling, walking etc, and want to know how far you've been (or how many calories you've burnt etc), you can use this to map out your route.
If you're a techie loser like myself, this can be exported as .gpx to be uploaded to your gps unit so you can have a route to follow.
Everyone else might just like to see how far it is to the shops....

Various news items

Hello again,


Just thought I'd post a little update on here:

New house!

Yes, it's that time of year again! We've just signed for a new place just down the road from where we are now (contact me for address details) - it's an absolute palace (basement, living room, bathrooms, master bedroom, plus office/spare room), just on the edge of Meanwood. We're really looking forward to moving in on the 17th June, and we're looking at having a house cooling party (for moving out of our old flat, which'll be reasonably empty) before we hand the keys back on the 30th of June.

Tattoo (again)

My tattoo is now nearly finished, I went back to Physical Poetry on Tuesday to get all the little stars filled in. Just a few more swirls to go on before it's complete - I'll get photos up when it's done!

End of Uni

We're all stressing out in uni once again (that's why I'm wasting yet more time by posting on here, rather than completing my essays), as we've got our last deadline before the summer project to hand in on Friday. I'm sure we'll all feel a lot more chilled out this time next week (deadline is at 12 on the 9th), and we'll probably already be in the pub by then! From then on, just the 10,000 words of translation plus the accompanying commentary (boo..)...

And finally...

Last thing is that our summer holiday is booked! We're off to Brittany to stay at my parents' place (between Dinan, Dinard and St. Brieuc) for a few days, then of to stay with Babeth and David in Fécamp in Normandy (where I spent my gap year teaching before coming to Leeds). I'm all very excited, and impressed at the money that can be saved by taking the Megabus rather than catching the train down to London!

More news soon...

Geography

This is going to be a shameless plug, really. My sister's boyfriend has just put a new album out, I've heard it, and it's brilliant! It's a kind of Jack Johnson/Bob Dylan/Paul Simon/Barenaked Ladies kinda thang, though it's hard to label. The best thing to do is to go to his myspace profile: www.myspace.com/loganwilson and have a listen there. He's also got a website up and running at www.loganwilson.com which is worth having a look at. The album will soon be available from iTunes and other music stores, but in the mean time you can email him on info@loganwilson.com for any further info... Happy listening!

MySpace stole my life

A place for friends, alright. Or for having no friends (unless you're this guy called Tom, in which case you have 78,165,521 friends - and counting), as, this week, MySpace has stolen my life. I'm not the only one, either. In the last couple of days another of my friends has fallen victim to the myspace curse. One of her friends contacted her on MySpace to tell her that she had a funny email about being addicted to MySpace - I told her to message me on MySpace so I could put this funny text up on my MySpace profile (www.myspace.com/gontofe, since you ask). This thing is taking over my life - I'm logged in all day long, fixing my profile rather than actually getting on with my uni work! It's the kind of obsession that has to stop, but it's truly addictive.
For the non-initiated, MySpace allows you to put up details of your interests (music, films etc), photos, movies, links to other sites, blogs etc, and share them with your friends (who have done the same on MySpace). You can also set up groups, forums and send each other messages. The problem is, it becomes very quickly addictive, and it becomes hard to find time to get on with work/studying/fulfilling bodily functions, such as drinking water/etc. In fact, some of you may have come here from seeing my post on MySpace. It really is hard to break the chain.
At any rate, it's time to go and cook some dinner. In the mean time, take care, and I'll see y'all on MySpace!

Tattoo

Now that it's settled down a little bit, here is a picture of my new tattoo. Granted, it's not actually finished yet, it needs filling in with all the little stars and a little tidying up. I've already booked the appointment for the 30th of the month at Physical Poetry just up the road with Dave, who did the original centre bit. The last bit (just the five stars) took around 3 hours, I can probably expect the same again for the filling in. Luckily, it wasn't too painful, just felt a little bruised afterwards. Even the bit on the shoulder wasn't too bad!

In the meanwhile, John's waiting to be told when he can start getting his back tattoo started, not sure as yet how long it's gonna be, how much it'll cost, or how big it will be!

I'll post photos on here when it's done.

Buy my T-shirts!

Hello all,

Having seen an endless stream of lame-ass T-shirts on the internet, I've decided to make my own lame-ass T-shirts.

Please buy them from http://www.spreadshirt.net/shop.php?sid=143241. There are a varying array of men's and women's t-shirts, some more offensive and funny than others, all extremely stylish.

Go on, buy one! You know you want to!

Douce France - ou comment se faire envoyer chier

Just got back from a week in France, visiting friends, eating so much food, walking and getting sunburnt.

There's no doubt that spring has sprung down there, although given that I spent the week in the south, I'm not surprised. One of my friends didn't seem to think that it would be that hot, although it was regularly over 20 degrees with blazing sunshine.

And France's wonderful administrative processes reared their ugly head, too. People don't seem to hesistate in telling you where to go over there, which can prove amusing sometimes, depending on whether you are on the receiving end or not. Two examples from my bank:

1) I went to pay money into a branch in Paris and query a charge. The lady at the counter seemed happy to give me information about the charge, but when I tried to pay money into my account without proof of ID, I was shocked to hear her tell me, "in that case, we don't want your money". I was tempted to suggest that with an attitude like that maybe they didn't want my business at all!

2) Slightly more amusing (not on the receiving end): In another branch there was an old hag at the front of the queue who had a long query. Just before she left, the charming young lady behind the counter told her that she "didn't want to get annoyed with her any more", which raised a few smiles.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the end of it all, seems there was something in the air. Earlier that day, I unfortunately had to go back to Paul Valéry University to collect my degree certificate. I had taken care to bring the papers I needed, and we set off. Upon arriving at the university, I was shocked to see security guards grouped around the entrances with dogs. Seems that they were expecting trouble after the demonstrations against the CPE that had been taking place in the last few weeks. We managed to get in (using my friend Marion's teacher card, my student card long having been lost), and eventually found our way to the office we needed, only to see that it was closed. Considering that it's only open three days a week anyway and even then only for three hours in the morning, this was a little rich. We eventually managed to find someone who was willing to ask the people inside (yes, this is Paul Valéry, they make no attempt to hide the fact that they are there) to help us, considering I had come from England to collect the document. In short, we were told that they could not help us, they were closed, and I would have to pay to send them the documents I was holding in my hand and for them to issue the document that was sitting in a drawer behind the door. I had to resist the temptation to throw a chair through the window of the office, as I didn't fancy seeing those dogs any more close up.

On my way back to Paris at the end of the week, I found myself on a new concept TGV, the IDTGV. The idea is that the train has two mood zones, one called Zen and the other Zap. In IDZap, it would appear the idea is that you turn your walkman up as loud as you can to drown out the music blaring out from the bar, or the screaming kids around you. In Zen, I believe, you have to stay silent, trying to slow your heart rate so as to not irritate your neighbour. The ironic thing is that I'm sure that posh people book into Zen on the bottom deck, so as not to be irritated by the other passengers, yet it turns out that the Zap bit is in first class on the upper deck, and has larger seats, and a trolley service etc. All quite amusing really.

One final thought - we had a few discussions about young people, jobs, immigration and integration with various people while in France. Just as I was on the RER (another different kind of train, not to be confused with the Métro, the TGV, the TER etc) going back to the airport, a young second generation north african man came walking down the train, and started playing playing old French songs on an accordeon as we reached Le Blanc Mesnil station. He was busking (and being thoroughly ignored by most people, especially the Italian family who where filming him, except when he turned 'round, when the father pretended to film his children and out of the window). I think this says more about integration than most of the other conversations that we had.

The Projects

This is my friend Jen being a rock chick. She's in a band called The Projects. This band is the reason she's been travelling to York several times per week and working bloody hard. Forget the fact she's doing research for her MA at Leeds Uni in something phonetic, the music is where it's at.

The band have been refining their sound over the past year, and have created some good soulful, funky, trip-hop wonderment. You can listen to their stuff on their isound page. They will be even more happy if you listen to their stuff on isound between April 17th to May 15th, as they have entered a battle of the bands competition, and you can help them win by listening to their songs (no need to vote). They'll love you, as they'll get a whole host of wonderful things (and you'll get a warm fuzzy glow inside for knowing that you've helped them.

Faulty train isn't making journey (2,7)

Just a little snapshot of my journey on Monday - what must be the steepest escalator in London at least, heading down to the Northern Line at London Bridge station.

I was making my way back up the country after a weekend (well, just Sunday, really) spent at home. This was pretty much the mid-way point of a horrible journey - we had crawled into London Bridge after being forced to change trains (actual announcement, "Ladies and gentlemen, we would like to apologise for the delay to this service due to the adverse weather conditions, unfortunately there will be a further delay due to the train in front hitting another tree...") at Sevenoaks. I managed to arrive in King's Cross less than 10 minutes late, which was surprising given the delays incurred, though missed my train to Leeds. GNER replaced my ticket, but some jobsworth inspector made me pay a supplement to my fare, as I'd forgotten to bring my railcard. All in all, very frustrating, but worth it for the lovely day we had on Sunday for mother's day (roast dinner - the full works - at my sister's house).

Can't really complain though, seems mum, Paul and Lucy had a near-death experience as a tree came crashing down in front of them on the way into Hastings - they managed to stop in time. Not so lucky was the man from the Highways Agency coming the other way in his truck, though I'm sure it helped in getting the road clear as quickly as possible!

(Un)Fortunately I am now on holiday, and (but) am struggling to motivate myself to get some work done - the Independent crosswords and Sudoku are much more interesting.

Spring is springing

Well, seems the snow has left us alone for a while, I noticed yesterday the crocuses had started to open on my way across the park, and today I saw the first open daffodil outside the university. Also (something worth catching the bus for, you can only really see from the top deck), the leaves on the trees are just budding. Funny, last year I sent a photo to my mum of a huge patch of daffodils - I've just checked and this was on the 1st of March! Seems spring is running late this year, something that is perhaps confirmed on the Springwatch site. You can see, for example, that the spread of frog spawn is slower this year than last - some scientific data to back up my somewhat unscientific impression of a long winter!

The presence of dead leaves on the ground (just discernible on the above photo) confirms that this winter has been quite dry - they haven't yet rotted away from Autumn... Get ready for the hosepipe ban.

Translators fear not!

Looking at the above text, seems us translators don't have to worry too much about there not being any work for us, or that computers are going to replace us just yet (although I'm told in my machine translation classes that that's not what the goal is!) if this is the quality of texts that commercial software produces.

Just for the sake of it, I've put the above text back into babelfish for this translation:

Software English writing

Advanced Tool for drafting To write text easily -
To obtain!

Interestingly, their program (according to their website) allows you to "Fix all Grammar Errors Immediately" - maybe only in English!

Strangely, no French language version of their site is available.

Google Mars

Something someone might be interested in - Google have started a service similar to that used for their mapping service, called Google Mars. It seems that only a small section is available to view, but I assume they're going to expand this and integrate it into Google Earth, where the lovely picture of my house at the top of this page comes from (note to self: copyright the term Google Solar System immediately!). There are links to features on the planet's surface, and links to cool stuff like flythrough videos of parts of Mars.
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added 17/03/06
You can also view the moon on the imaginatively-titled Google Moon. For fun, zoom all the way in to see what the moon is made of!

An alternative to XP!

At last! I've been using this for a few months now, and am pleased to report it's all going quite well.

Ubuntu is a serious alternative operating system to Windows. It's a distribution of Linux designed to work on your Windows or Mac machine in place of (or in my case alongside) your usual operating system. Best of all, it's free (and means that you can gain back all those karma points lost by using evil Microsoft products) and easy to download, or you can even order copies on cd or dvd. It includes as standard loads of useful programs (Firefox, Open Office - a worthy replacement for and fully compatible with MS Office, Gimp - like Adobe Photoshop, but free, games, multimedia players), and anything you don't have (like Skype and Realplayer) you can easily download and install. It does involve a little getting used to, and you may have to look up how to do things you take for granted under Windows or MacOS on th'interweb, but at least the answers are there, as there is a large (and still growing) community online.

If things carry on the way they are, I'll be switching to Ubuntu full time very soon (although I need someone to convert the WordFast macros to OpenOffice format to allow me to work on translations in Linux)...

Seems winter is the new spring!

I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but Anne-Charlotte was just saying yesterday how it never snows here in Leeds. When I pointed out that it does happen (once even in June), she said, "well, I'm sure it never lays." So the weather set out to prove her wrong today. We were sitting in Opposite, being blasted by the freezing cold air from the door (were all these students born in barns?!) when we looked out to see a veritable blizzard. Well, for March...

Disable Orange Home Screen (finally!)

Images courtesy of http://uk.geocities.com/ras1968uk/orange.htm

This probably won't mean a lot to most of you, but for anyone who's got a Nokia 6680 on Orange:

It is possible to get rid of the hideous Orange Home Screen by downloading a little application called HSkiller. You can download this from http://gegelambert.free.fr/ (it's in French, but just click on the link at the top and install the .sis file on your phone). This changes your

Orange have confirmed that they are going to put an option on new phones to allow you to disable the home screen (thank god), thus returning the Symbian phones to their initial glory (and hopefully a) getting rid of the Orange screen and b) reenabling active standby!).

Christmas and New Year

Hello again!

Made it back from the south after a crazy tequila-filled Christmas!

Found out on the Monday before Christmas that the bank can no longer keep me on as a temp, so they've had to let me go. They packed me off with 3 bottles of wine, 4 bottles of beer and a box of choccies, which is quite nice considering I was only a temp!

So it's back to uni, and we're in the exams period which runs until the 20th. I've already had the only exam I've got, but I still have two projects to finish before then.

Apart from that, I am looking forward to the arrival of Claire in Leeds on the 3rd of February (which is really not all that long away), and then I've already booked tickets to go back to Montpellier in April (dis-moi si vous pensez être là, Karine, Dimitri, Yves, Mohammed, Fantine etc, ça va être vers le weekend du 15 avril).

But until then it's on with the work, and after next week more lectures at uni (it's about time really, haven't had any for well over a month now!).

Hope to hear from you soon!

First one for a while

Hello all,

Just preparing for Christmas, will be finished at uni at the end of the week, looking forward to getting Christmas shopping over and done with and then back down south for Christmas!

In the mean time, we've all got essays to be getting on with for this week (boo!)

Fresh Air (or a fight for ethical translation)

Climbing Ingleborough

Went for a little walk today with people from the Centre for Translation Studies, ended up walking up Ingleborough, the 10th highest mountain (at 724m or 2375ft) in England. It is one of the Yorkshire Dales' Three Peaks along with Pen-y-ghent and Whernside.

After a shaky start (heading in completely the wrong direction), we managed to get to the top, and decided to descend the opposite side before changing our minds again! We climbed back up to the top for soup, Wensleydale sandwiches, apples and shortbread (amongst other things) before heading off to Gaping Gill (110m deep, large enough to house York Minster) to look at what is essentially a giant hole in the ground (I realise I'm not selling this very well, although it really was very interesting!) before heading back to Horton in Ribblesdale to The Crown Hotel over six hours after setting out for Mars Bars, hot chocolate, coffee, Bailey's and Guinness (though not all at once!). A good day out for all!















Maps showing route (more than 12 miles)

Profile of the walk

Back to the grind...

New term at uni, start of my MA course in Applied Translation Studies (MAATS). Nothing much to report here for the moment, really, as lectures only started today. First lecture was corpus linguistics, which I was pleased to note covered some of the stuff I did in France. Just goes to show that despite appearances, Paul Valéry University in Montpellier is useful for something, even if it is only assuring that I understand some of the content in this lecture!

Too soon to really judge the content of the rest of the course, it seems that they vaguely have their heads screwed on here, so I don't expect too much confusion. If nothing else, it seems that the facilities they have here are quite good (computers/software etc), even if they don't quite stretch to air conditioning (apparently it's not so bad in mid-winter). I'm glad to have got the hard bit out of the way (registration), thanks to Kim who stood with me in the 25 minute queue (which is really really short compared to the usual 2.5 hours!).

Apart from that I will be at work one day a week from now on (Tuesdays), which means that I still have most of the time free to learn how to use the millions of pieces of software we have to get t0 grips with! Other piece of good news is that I have booked flights to Paris for the 9th - 12th, so if anyone's gonna be there let me know and we'll meet up :)