Hergest Ridge

I should be working, but ” Ich habe keine Lust … “. I’ll pay for it at 04:00 when all I want to do is sleep, but there is work left to be done. Then I’ll get up tomorrow, and having finished work just before bed will “want a break” for a while. End result: start working late again, repeat cycle next day. Don’t they have some sort of pill I can pop for that? Read More…

Two cute gerbils have been sharing a home with me for the past week and a half. Yup, on September 15th I brought home two new mates. Had I had kids, I’m sure I’d be “the bestest dad” for that day, maybe two. Read More…

Heute hab ich ein zweites Teil von “Menschen bei Maischberger” angeschaut. Die Sendung ist spitze, und so kann ich es ein paar mal ansehen und vielleicht verstehen dinge die am ersten mal unverstanden gegangen sind. Read More…

5 years ago – give or take an hour – I crossed the border back into Canada from the USA. Yup, woke up on September 11th morning in a hotel just outside Chicago, one of the Twin Towers on fire. Read More…

So I’m thinking that this blog will need a better name. Usually that ain’t a big problem. I’m full of useless info that lends itself to some creative titles. The problem I am running into is the direction of this blog, or to be more exact whether I want to keep the personal and professional sides of my life all in one place.

If I was a fully balanced individual, I’d say keeping both aspects of my life in one place is an acceptable proposition… Let me explain: There are some people out there who are bored to tears with anything to do with Internet Marketing and Web Design. Then there is the group of people boggled by reasons why’d anyone want to broadcast to the world anything about their bowl of cereal.

If my entries alternated regularly between the professional and private, both sides would be entertained enough to stick around. Instead, with the huge imbalance of entries I sense coming on, some of you may forget why you came to this place in the first place.

Right now I’m getting around the issue by simply abstaining from posting certain thoughts so the balance remains fairly decent, but that’s a waste of thought if you ask me. I’ve set this place up to share my thoughts and experiences, but as things stand there are a lot of filters in place that prevent me from doing just that.

What are your thoughts? Do the post subject categories I created enough of a filter for you, the reader? Or, is the home page of the blog as far as you ever get? I know habits can change and such, but I figured I’ll get your lowdown first so I can accommodate the majority. Let me know what you think, and which side of the blog (personal or professional) interests you the most.

Ich bin noch nicht ganz sicher das mein Deutsch ist schon gutt genug für Deutsche Einträge, aber finde ich es aus am besten wenn ich es versuche. Stimmts, oder nicht? Read More…

Trying to keep a foreign language alive can be a tough proposition when those that surround you are not familiar with it. It’s been 15 years since I moved out of Germany, and my comfort with the language suffered significantly during that time.

About a year ago I wanted to take on French as my next language, but decided to put it off until I can reclaim my old comfort level with German. Immersion is my main tool, and I achieve it most days by listening to SWR’s cont.ra radio and by paying attention to newscasts at Ard.de.

Today I’ve discovered a new method of further adding to my German immersion efforts.

For a while now I tried finding German programs and movies on the many torrent networks, but sometimes I come out empty handed. After downloading a movie with Dutch subtitles, I noticed that the subtitles are simply an external text file.

My video player checks the directory for a .srt subtitle file, and if present, subtitles show up during the playback. So now all I have to do is try to find a German .srt file, and I can do some learning while kicking it back. During my search I found an excellent site with over 238,000 subtitles free for download. The site is opensubtitles.org and as the name suggests it’s free to use and download from. Check it out next time you want or need subtitles for a goodie snagged somewhere on the net.