Robyn Paterson's Blog, page 27
July 18, 2014
Skritter for Android
Yesterday, I blogged about the Chinese and Japanese writing study software Skritter, which I know some people are interested in, but turned off by the monthly subscription system they use. Well, good news! Skritter for Android is out and still in beta testing, which among other things means it’s free! So if you have an Android phone you can now be using Skritter to your heart’s content while helping them test the system.
If you want to try it, go here and follow the instructions.
Happy learning...
July 17, 2014
Skritter
Hello, my name is Rob, and I’m an iPhone addict.
No, I’m not addicted to Farmville, Angry Birds, Candy Crush, or any of the other hyper-addictive Apps that have come out for the iPhone. I managed to avoid all of those handily because I had no interest in wasting my time or money on something so pointless as those tricky games. I admit, I even considered myself better for not falling into those time-sucking traps and laughed quietly to myself at the people who did. But then, I found the most di...
July 16, 2014
Word Crimes
For English teachers everywhere!
July 15, 2014
Two Stories
Got this in my inbox today, and thought they were worth sharing. -Rob
-———
It’s been told before, but still worth reading again…………..
BOTH are true and worth reading.
Read to the end!
STORY NUMBER ONE
Many years ago, Al Capone virtually owned Chicago
Capone wasn’t famous for anything heroic. He was notorious for enmeshing the windy city in everything from bootlegged booze and prostitution to murder.
Capone had a lawyer nicknamed “Easy Eddie.” He was Capone’s lawyer for a good reason.
To show his appre...
July 12, 2014
How Godzilla (2014) Should Have Ended
Not one of their best, but pretty cute. “Let them fight…” 
July 7, 2014
Memrise This!
A year or so I found a site called Memrise, which is basically a really advanced memorization card system for helping you memorize stuff. I puttered around with the Mandarin course they had on there, found their system so-so and promptly forgot about the site.
Then in May of this year I happened across the App for it on the iTunes store (it’s also available on the Google Play store) and decided to give it another whirl. It’s free, and so are the courses, so I selected the Introductory Chinese...
July 1, 2014
June 2014 Writing Report
A month ago I wrote a post entitled How Much Should You Write a Day, where I talked about a minimalist approach to writing where you aim for a small daily writing goal instead of a larger one to keep word count from becoming a barrier to writing. Saying you want to write 2000/words a day is nice, but it can easily become an obstacle if you start to think it isn’t worth writing unless you have time to achieve that number. So, instead I opted for the smaller 250/words a day as my goal for June....
June 30, 2014
Benshi and Macross 7
Silent films were an international language. Taking advantage of the fact they had no natural soundtrack, they were designed and produced to be understood through purely visual storytelling. Even when dialog cards were later introduced to add key pieces of dialog, the core of the films were still visual. This allowed them to be watched and understood by audiences the world over, or world audiences which lived right next door, since this was the great age of immigration and your neighbour may...
June 29, 2014
Movie Review: Detroit 9000
Detroit 9000 should have been called “70′s Detroit Action Flick- The Movie” or perhaps “Detroit Cops of the 70′s- The Movie”, either way it’s an odd and unique little time capsule of a film. At it’s core, it’s a simple cop drama about police detectives trying to find the culprits behind a major robbery and a black cop and a white cop trying to get along in a service where even the police force seems divided along racial lines. However, there is nothing simple about this film.
The only way I ca...
June 28, 2014
Classic 12-Chapter Murder Mystery Formula
(Note: This has been floating around the internet for years, and I don’t know who first wrote it (if anyone does, let me know!) but it’s worth archiving and Camp Nanowrimo starts next week, so here it is.)
The classic mystery is popular fiction which follows a specific formula. Clever writers may try to change the formula, but the most clever will cling to it for a very good reason. They work within the bounds of the formula because it works!
The following outline serves the modern mystery nove...
