About the smallest slavic nation

As I am interested in linguistics (especially ethnolinguistics), every dead or dying language is a huge tragedy for me. As you know I’m Polish, and Poles are proud of our resistance to save our nation, language and culture. But most of them even don’t know that somewhere in east Germany there’s a nation which really should be proud of its resistance, the smallest slavic nation - Sorbs.

Another football post

Lech defeated Groclin in derby of Wielkopolska (Greater Poland). This was a match for a second place (because Wisła has already 1st place). It’s last difficult match for Kolejorz this season, so it has big chances to succeed. It’s very possible that Lech will get next 12 points. Groclin is in worse position - it has to play with Wisła and Korona (I bet failure in Kraków and draw in Kielce). Legia - third player in this battle - has only one hard match (also with Wisła). Now both teams have the same number of points but Lech won both matches with Warsaw team, so even if both Legia and Lech won the same number of matches - Lech is still higher!!

That’s a wonderful news. If nothing unexpected happens, Lech is going to be vice-leader at the end of season!!

By the way - today a derby of Kraków will take place. I’m supporting Cracovia (because of traditional friendship between this team and Lech), but I realise they don’t have much chance I hope there won’t be any street-fights - the ones of Kraków are the worst (sometimes fans die).

Devices of the world, unite!

Most of us have TV set, DVD player, digital TV decoder, PC, laptop, HiFi, cell and land line phone in our home. We normally use them independently (or individually connected e.g. TV-DVD).

But have you ever tried to connect HiFi to PC, Cell phone to HiFi, or TV to PC? I you have, you know it’s either impossible or needs a lot of transitions, wires etc. and even then devices might be incompatible. Horror! That’s why it’s often seen on parties that somebody has very good HiFi, but uses PC instead (because has more music there and it doesn’t require changing disks). But there’s a hope! For years multiple devices have been changing and now, when they’re very PC-like, it’s really close to unite them all!

[PL] jak powstała ludzkość

This post is written in polish, because it’s really hard to translate this exact thought saving its sense.

Wymyśliłem ostateczną teorię na stworzenie rodzaju ludzkiego. Teorię kończącą ostatecznie spór ewolucjonistów i kreacjonistów. Teorię, która zmieni nasze spojrzenie na świat i samych siebie.

„Szóstego dnia Bóg się naćpał i zaczął wygadywać bzdury, a słowo ciałem się stało i zamieszkało wśród bardziej przemyślanych istot. Spojrzał na nie i zwątpił, czy jest dobre. ″

Legła Warszawa!*

Lech Poznań has broken its bad patch (13 years without a victory with Legia away) and won 1:0 today in Warsaw. It’s a historical moment for the team which breaks one barier after other (e.g four won matches in a row) and with today’s victory, still matters in the fight for 2nd place in polish league (1st one is practically unavailable - Wisła Kraków has a big advantage).

Derby of Poland - Lech vs. Legia

Today is a big day! The day of great chance!

The day of

LECH POZNAŃ vs lEGIA WARSZAWA match

For it’s importance it’s called ‘the derby of Poland’. Lech hasn’t won in Warsaw for 13 years (but has won several times home since that time). This match triggers a lot of emotions and is always very important - both teams are always well-prepared even if the distance between them is 20 points. Today’s match is even more important, because both teams try to get 2nd place in league. Lech is willing to win as always, but this season it’s the closest to he victory like never since 1995!

How to learn vocabulary fast and well

I want to share with you how I memorise vocabulary. (It’m not paid for writing it - it really works :P).

Firstly, there’s great computer programme which organises your repetitions to maximally save your time. Its name’s SuperMemo and its old version is now freeware so you can try it for free: http://supermemo.com/english/down.htm

You probably now think ‘oh, next easy-learning application which really gives you nothing’, but you’re wrong! The reason of it’s effectiveness is simpler than you think!

It organises your repetitions so you can repeat only words which are really close to being forgotten. This way you don’t waste time for repeating words one-by-one as written on the list. Normally you spend equal amount of time for repeating difficult words as the easy ones.

‘OK’ you think ‘how does it know that particular word is close to being forgotten and demands more time to memorize it?’ - it’s also very simple: after repeating the word you choose one of 6 grades - each one represents one level of difficulty (1 - ‘it wasn’t problem’ 2 - ‘I needed some time’ 3- ‘I had some minor doubts’ and so on). Programme simply collects that information and creates, let’s call it,  factor of difficulty.

The more difficult the word is to remind - the more frequently it’ll appear in the repetition list. The clue to efficient learning is regularity - you can order SM to teach you a very big amount of vocabulary (e.g. 1000 words) and it’ll generate only 10minutes/day of repetition (depending on the condition of your memory )!

And that’s all! I really don’t know why such easy and efficient way of learning isn’t yet worldwide known!

Of course you don’t have to learn only vocabulary - you can create any set of question-answer pairs (it’s called ‘knowledge database’) - biology, economy, or Call of Duty keyboard shortcuts it’s up to you!

‘OK’ more critical part of you says ‘What if I have 100 words to memorize and only 1 day?’

The answer is: SuperMemo won’t work here (because it’s designed for long-term learning)..

…BUT I’ve created SM-inspired system for zzz-learning (in polish “zakuj, zdaj, zapomnij” - ‘learn by heart, pass (the exam), forget’). It’s also very simple (you just have to be focused at the beginning)
though my friends think I’m batty seeing my sheet full of numbers (another important note - if you’re an enemy of ANY numbers - you won’t like).

Let’s say I have 0,5h to memorize a A4 sheet of numbered vocabulary (in table). I have to prepare also another sheet with long rows.

1. Cover answer part with another sheet and  read all questions one-by-one
2. If  it was easy to answer the question -  place it (by place I mean write its number) in  5th
   row, if less - 4th or 3rd, If it was hard but you managed to answer correctly - 2nd row. If you couldn’t answer it - 1st one.
3. Now answer the questions from 1st row and again write their numbers in correct row (depending on difficulty level) - if you couldn’t answer them - write them on the end of current row and repeat immediately.
4. Now do the same with rest of the rows when you feel that one word isn’t worth repeating - don’t write it in next rows - you’ll have more time for the harder ones.

Of course you can memorize knowledge like this for a test, but you’re not forced to forget it - you can insert the list into supermemo and  be sure you won’t forget it any more!

I won’t write about inserting knowledge to the programme, because this post is already too long  - if you want me to do do it.. leave your comment or e-mail me

PS. I’ve created some knowledge databases (polish=>english vocabulary (800 words from my lessons) and polish=>italian (1200 words also from my lessons) - I’ll publish them in GPL in the future, but if someone is interested now - I can send them via e-mail.

First post

Hi,

I know that first posts aren’t very interesting and no-one reads them, but it’s one of the things which have to be done.  So…

Recently I’ve had my head full of thoughts, comments, and ideas which I wasn’t able to share, because nobody listens to me in my surroundings. I had that before, but know it’s more intensive. I decided to set up a blog to have a place to post them.

By the way I want to practise my English - FCE exam is coming soon and I’m not really good at writing. It’s time to get used to writing in English - I hope this will give me thought-flow on the exam and later…

so now you know why I write this blog and what is it going to be about. Task achieved - that’s all