James told me about More Words, which is mostly for word games but also has nice random words on the bottom of the page.
Monthly Archives: June 2007
A really interesting blog about Edinburgh’s dark side across the centuries.
More free language downloads
More on free language resources on the moneysavingexpert site:
There’s a great US website called Open Culture which lists mostly free language courses that are available as podcasts (in other words digital files you can download onto an MP3 player to listen to).
If only there was a site where I could download some free time to listen to these free lessons!
You can make your own luck
From the BBC: guide to getting lucky:
Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.
My research eventually revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles.
They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.
…
Here are Professor Wiseman’s four top tips for becoming lucky:
- Listen to your gut instincts – they are normally right
- Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine
- Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well
- Visualise yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call. Luck is very often a self-fulfilling prophecy
Rough Guide have updated their phrasebooks, and now they’ve each got a free audio download so you can practise with words and phrases recorded by native speakers. Hooray!
The audio files work best when you’ve got a phrasebook in front of you, so Rough Guide probably aren’t losing much business by giving away the audio files.
If I was still flying short-haul, I would have liked to have gone to Latvia to support their Pride march: Latvia: Celebrating rights — fighting prejudice.
So the biggest issues in the news this week are the new London 2012 Olympic logo (which has also been blamed for triggering epileptic seizures; and ‘is gingerism as bad as racism?’.
Aussies knocked off as world’s most friendly
“”Although Australia still has a strong reputation as an aspirational destination, we must focus more on our cultural heritage, national parks and alternative, more accessible holiday options to encourage a broader tourism appeal,” Mr Harcourt said.”
Or maybe we should just stop being arseholds in immigrants and refugees. Why spin it when you can just be nicer?
Haw flakes – the mystery finally solved
Ok, so the mystery of what on earth haw flakes are made from hasn’t been that mysterious for a while now, but now that I’ve got a photo showing the ingredients of haw flakes as ‘hawthorn’, I just have to do this.
It’s worth noting that this brand are a very pale colour and possibly not as addictive as the brand with the red, green and yellow packaging. I also found fancy triangular layered haw the other day – red layered with a darker, jammier layer of haw. Mmm, hot haw action.
The glbtq (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer) encyclopedia looks like a really good resource (and a good random read).