random bits

[cellio]

This book could have been written just for me. It explains basic grammatical concepts, first explaining how they work in English (a refresher for some, news for others) and then explains how the same concept works in biblical Hebrew -- well, from what I've seen so far. Score! Of course, some Hebrew concepts don't exist in English (or are very limited), but they seem to do a good job of explaining those too. (Haven't finished reading it yet.)

Comprehension definitely helps with learning torah portions. I'm learning my longest portion so far, for the bar mitzvah I'll be conducting next month (the student only has to read the last few verses), and I'm reading rather than chanting, which I thought would make it harder. The cantillation is extra stuff to learn, but it also helps me learn the text and, in particular, the phrasing. Well guess what? I understand enough of what I'm reading that I get most of the phrasing right anyway, and I understand enough that I'm filling in the vowels correctly almost all of the time (and for names, you just memorize). I can't read straight from the unpointed text yet, but I can read the pointed text just two or three times and then read the unpointed text correctly. Wow! Now I start to understand how people can prepare entire parshiyot every week even if they don't take the extra time on the cantillation. I had thought it would take years of study to get to this point. (Some passages are easier than others to comprehend, and I don't know where the third and fourth aliyot of Pinchas fall in that continuum. But it's still encouraging -- especially when I feared that my current vision problems could threaten the bar mitzvah.)

Does anyone reading this know how to export a Windows color scheme? Having developed one on one machine, is there a faster path than recreating it to get it onto a second machine? (Source is Win2k, target is XP.) Oh, and a raspberry to Microsoft, which both offers color schemes in its window manager and then selectively ignores them in one of its major applications (Outlook). (No, I don't use Outlook by choice.)

My niece came back from a semester in Italy asking questions about my (Italian) grandfather's citizenship status. Apparently if he got his US citizenship late enough, my niece thinks she can claim Italian citizenship. Sounds odd to me; I thought these things tended to go back, at most, to grandparents, and this would be her great-grandfather. But a quick look at Wikipedia confirms. Ok, the question is whether he became a US citizen before my father was born. Well, I presume that my niece is smart enough to figure out (with internet aid) how to get the relevant records, since no one in the immediate family seems to know.

Y'know, I never would have made a trip to a library for something I was merely curious about, and probably wouldn't have rememebered the curiosity the next time I was in a library anyway. (Dozens or hundreds more would have come and gone.) But less than a minute immediately spent with Google and Wikipedia got me a reasonably authoritative answer to, in this case, a question of Italian citizenship laws. I find this ability to satisfy my curiosity really handy. Currently I have to be sitting at my desk to do it, and many idle curiosities fall by the wayside because we were at the dinner table or out with friends or walking down the street or whatever. But someday that won't be a limitation; it already isn't for many people. Now, if we can just keep governments and ISPs from messing up the free and open network that makes all this possible. (Mind, this trick doesn't always work, or I wouldn't have asked the question about Windows color schemes. But it works often enough.)

Thanks to xiphias for pointing out this post about planned changes to the LJ profile page. Blech. How very...juvenile.

A while ago cahwyguy posted a cute link to the 3rd annual Nigerian email conference.

Comments

[geekosaur]

Google eventually led me to \HKCU\Control Panel\Appearance\Schemes as the place to find color schemes, you can export to a .REG file from RegEdit and copy that file, double-click it to import.

[tashabear.livejournal.com]

Thanks to [info]xiphias for pointing out this post about planned changes to the LJ profile page. Blech. How very...juvenile.

I like it. All the important info is at the top of the page, and the links bar across the top streamlines the effort to view aspects of the user's journal. The two columns under the info box alleviate the need for scrolling way, way down to see info about a user's friends or community memberships. All in all, I think it's a much more efficient use of space than the old userinfo layout.

[cellio]

I feel that it de-emphasizes the journal author and over-emphasizes the networking. You have a relatively short bio; take a look at what it does to mine. The bio is the first thing I look at when viewing a profile for someone I don't know, and I want to encourage, not discourage, information there.