Resources for Everything

There are various sites that allow you to watch the news in French online and I try and watch a bit whenever I can. If you are trying to learn a language, you definitely want to get as much exposure to it as possible and I think the news is a great way of doing that, even if you don't understand everything.

I listened to this great documentary by Tim Harford about neuroeconomics last night and now want to know more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/pip/plke4/

I'm a complete beginner at guitar and not sure I'm ready to expose my uselessness to a real live teacher so I've been trying out http://www.guitartricks.com to see how much I can learn on my own.

I noticed recently how much new stuff I'm learning these days. In fact, it feels like I give myself more homework now than I ever used to do when I was at school or university. For example, in the past week I've been:

- teaching myself to transcribe 17th century manuscripts
- helping a friend rewrite a research report on Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (which meant getting my head round enough of the science not to mess up the meaning of what I was editing)
- editing a magazine about "commons" and "common sense"
- taking part in an extended email discussion about copyright and ethics

One of my favourite excuses for escaping from London is to go and help out with courses at the Blackden Trust. The Trust gives school students the opportunity to come and learn about archaeology, history and geography, working with leading academics in these fields and hopefully contributing to the ongoing process of research on this part of Cheshire:

http://theblackdentrust.org.uk/

A few months ago, a friend played me some remarkable recordings made by scientists at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, who had captured and made audible the "sound" of stars. I just discovered that these are available, with lots more information about how the recordings were made, on a recent edition of the observatory's JodCast:

http://www.jodcast.net/archive/200808Extra/

Particularly mesmerising is the sound of material falling into a black hole (just after 23 minutes in on the podcast), which someone described as "God playing the bongos"!

Just came across this great online community for people learning or looking to learn guitar. It's run by Jason Shadrick of US-based National Guitar Workshop, and is powered by Ning.

When I signed up to take a look round (I'm always interested in communities of people teaching and learning) the founder friended me immediately (and not as an automatic response either. And he messaged me back too!

So if you're after a friendly online guitar community, go check it out.

http://guitarworkshopcommunity.com

I've been blogging for a while now, and I now have four blogs:
http://sociablism.blogspot.com
http://sociability.org.uk
http://mindapples.org
http://schoolofeverything.com

So between that and Twitter I'm pretty busy online, and the prospect of posting lots of content here on my School of Everything Scrapbook felt a little daunting at first.

I've been looking for a new yoga teacher in the Brixton or Streatham area for a while. None of the yoga classes I'd found were quite right - too far away, too early in the evening, or not quite the right style. So I was dead chuffed when Anja Lange posted a new vinyasa yoga flow class just up the road from my house. I used to be an ashtanga yoga addict, but have let my practice slide in the last year as I've been working so hard; vinyasa flow yoga, is a bit different but really enjoyable - and it's nice to vary my practice from the strict ashtanga yoga sequence for a change.

Free Guitar Videos blog has a lovely video of some chaps using a tractor engine as a drum machine for their jam.

http://www.freeguitarvideos.com/blog/2008/10/how-many-mpg-does-your-drummer-get.html

Just spotted Black Cab Sessions, a site where sometimes quite famous musicians play a song while riding around in the back of a taxi.

What else could be simplified by happening in the back of a taxi? Siestas, meetings, more?

http://www.blackcabsessions.com/

I was talking to my friend's piano teacher Roland Perrin (http://www.rolandperrin.com/) recently about how to play jazz piano, and one of the things he said was that jazz piano rhythms are basically two conventional rhythms layered on top of each other.

And I've also been following Shawn Cheek's "Easy Piano Lessons" on YouTube, and he says a similar thing about jazz chords, that he hears jazz chords as two chords layered on top of each other. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MMXYdD7rDhc, about 1:30 in)

I've recently started re-reading a book I've had for many years now and I'm enjoying it just as much the second time around.

It's called "The Code Book" by Simon Singh:

http://www.simonsingh.net/The_Code_Book.html

It's about the history of cryptography and it's very readable. It is written at just the right level in my opinion, not too basic, so it keeps your interest, but not full of mathematics that might be frustrating.

I was on a panel chaired by Matt Locke of Channel 4 a couple of weeks ago, talking about the impact of social technologies on education and the classroom.

Here's me introducing School of Everything and explaining the ideas behind the project and what we're trying to achieve by connecting people online:

(Photo: mollycakes via Flickr)

Inspired by some of the fantastic beading teachers on School of Everything, I've been looking around for great beading resources online. Here are my five picks for great beading websites, including beading supplies, projects, patterns and discussion.

Five Great Beading Websites

I am hoping to finish my beginners Spanish book before my trip to Madrid.
I've never learned Spanish before although my French is reasonable.
The thing is I don't like going abroad and being clueless about the language if I can help it, so even if I can just get the basics I'll be pleased.

It's interesting that some things in Spanish are very familiar if you know French:

By foot - à pied (French) - a pie (Spanish)
Bread - pain (French) - pan (Spanish)
Wednesday - mercredi (French) - miércoles (Spanish)

but then at times Spanish is very different:

I've been learning French for many years now and one of the problems I have had is that there tend to be lots of resources available for beginners and conversely, if you are at an advanced level, you can watch French television online or buy French novels etc.

But if you are at an intermediate level like me then it can be a little tricky. The beginner stuff you already know, but you're not quite ready for the advanced stuff.

Great to get back into some Hungarian after about 15 years!

I've been having a go at Italian, great fun making it up from Catalan, Latin and Spanish.