I picked up some TED talks, a short passage from “The picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde and some dialog from “Pirates of the Carribean”…
I tried different way to practice :
- hearing the video and recording at the same time (it was very difficult because of the speed)
- reading only (hard because I missed some word and their pronounciation)
Anyway I really look like an idiot…
There is the link : http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KVF6AURF
Tom Thumb
Tags: tales,culture
Blue Beard
Tags: tales,culture
Puss in Boots
Tags: tales,culture
The Dunce and the Beauty
Tags: tales,culture
The Magic Carpet
Tags: tales,culture
Jack and the Beanstalk
Tags: tales,culture
Dick Whittington and his Cat
Tags:tales,culture
Alice in Wonderland
Tags: tales,culture
to stock up (faire des provisions)
— ex: So twice a year she travel to Europe to stock up. –
Tags: vocabulary,chain store,verb
with a twist (“quelque chose de plus”)
– ex: It’s an amazing combinaison of simplicity and sophistication, but always with a twist. –
Tags: vocabulary,chain store,phrase
cost savings
– ex: Stressing environmental awareness and cost savings, the company uses recycled materials. –
Tags: vocabulary,chain store,noun
in bulk (en grandes quantités)
– ex: Surplus industrial fabrics that it buys cheaply and in bulk. –
Tags: vocabulary,chain store,noun
a branch
– ex: It hopes to have a network of 50 stores including branches in Germany and Italy. –
Tags: vocabulary,chain store,noun
a retailer (un détaillant)
– ex: Muji’s long term goal is to become one of the world’s top 10 global retailers. –
Tags: vocabulary,chain store,noun
put you through
– ex: Just one moment, I’ll put you through to M.Anderson. –
Tags: vocabulary,on the phone,communication,phrase
get to the point (aller à l’essentiel)
Tags: vocabulary,on the phone,communication,commentary,phrase
a switchboard (le standard)
– ex: Could you connect me back to the switchboard please ? –
Tags: vocabulary,on the phone,communication,noun
to ring off
– ex: You should say goodbye before ringing off. –
Tags: vocabulary,on the phone,communication,verb
trendy (=fashionable)
– ex: They (Muji) are known for being trendy. –
Tags: vocabulary,art,chain store,adjective
praised for +ING
– ex: The daily telegraph has been praised for performing a geat public service. ;
ex: Camilla praised for her bowling skills. –
Tags: vocabulary,on the phone,communication,verb ,-ING
give way to (donner libre cours)
– ex: Do not give way to evil. –
Tags: vocabulary,feelings,verb
a fit of rage
– ex: Chelsea go out in a fit of rage –
Tags: vocabulary,feelings,phrase
shiver with fear / a shiver of fear
– ex: Grim steals a kiss from my lips and a shiver of fear passes through me –
Tags: vocabulary,feelings,verb,noun
point out
– ex: He pointed out that I only had two weeks to get the whole thing finished. –
Tags: vocabulary,commentary,verb
an image-editing program
– ex: Photoshop is the greatest image-editing programm in the world. –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,noun
to crop (recadrer)
– ex: Some cameras can crop images before printing –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,verb
to retouch
– ex: Learn how to retouch eyes naturally with Photoshop and not overdo it –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,verb
to alter (= to falsify)
– ex: How to Alter the Picture on a Mac. –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,verb
to stich together
– ex: I have about 100 portrait photos that I’d like to stitch together both vertically and horizontally –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,verb
outlandish (= unusual)
– ex: Outlandish creations introduces my work as a ceramic designer. –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,noun
to take up a stance (prendre position)
– ex: The Church wanted the group to take a stance against abortion –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,phrase
a committed artist
– ex: Since then interest in socially committed art has quite definitely increased –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,noun
to digitalize
– ex: Google digitilize and bring old published newspaper articles –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,verb
a snap shot
– ex: This publication provides a snapshot of the most important features of the Social Security –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,noun
to tinker with (= to retouch)
– ex: I never understood why that man had to tinker with perfection, he looked fine. –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,verb
to highlight
– ex: A good way to upgrade your WordPress search page is to highlight search terms. –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,verb
the tonal values
– ex: Tonal values are what make a painting ‘talk’ not the colours used. –
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,noun
the range of grey
Tags: vocabulary,picture and photo,noun
previously
– ex: Previously on Lost. –
Tags: link word,sum up,commentary
surprisingly
– ex: SQL injection is surpisingly easy. –
Tags: link word,commentary
in order to
– ex: We tell ourselves stories in order to live. –
Tags: link word,commentary
in other words
– ex: 1;77. The reciprocal link is also present. In other words, you will also have a line 77;1. –
Tags: link word,saying sth another way,communication
More generally speaking
– ex: More generally speaking, the unconscious is not fit to establish an identity. –
Tags: link word,saying sth another way,communication
Indeed
– ex: I don’t like what he is saying, indeed, I strongly disagree with him. –
Tags: link word,commentary
As well as
– ex: I’m courageous as well as strong. –
Tags: link word,comparaison,commentary
Instead of +ING
– ex: He ordered chicken instead of fish; ex: Aren’t we all supposed to joke and laugh instead of being too serious about religious stuff? –
Tags: link word,-ING
to be keen on
– ex: She says she is very keen on Muji’s products. –
Tags: opinion,feelings
don’t know that much
– ex: I don’t know Muji that much –
Tags: opinion,phrase
don’t feel like +ING
– ex: I don’t fell like going to the cantine. –
Tags: opinion,phrase,-ING
to my mind (= in my opinion)
– ex: He’s got red walls and a green carpet which, to my mind, look awful. –
Tags: opinion,phrase
I am under the impression
– ex: I’m under the impression this person is afraid of becoming friend with me? –
Tags: opinion,phrase
to borrow
– ex: The government have to borrow nearly 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year. –
Tags: verb
I’m a bit confused
– ex: I’m a bit confused by all the names. Please explain. –
Tags: opinion,feelings,phrase
to be overcrowded (= full / to be jamed / to be congested)
– ex: The estimated number of overcrowded and under-occupied households is as follows : … –
Tags: verb
don’t need
– ex: Lakers didn’t need a break. –
Tags: verb
Come out
– ex: As far as anyone coming out of the closet, I wouldn’t be surprised. –
Tags: verb
Do you happen to know
— ex: Do you happen to know of another site for asking questions ? –
Tags: verb
Do you mind +ING
– ex: Do you mind opening the window please ? –
Tags: verb,-ING
to depend on
– ex: she can’t do without them, her work depends on these products. –
Tags: verb
Shaun and Daisy had a love affair five year previously and haven’t met since : his love turned to hate. Shaun is now an eccentric and arrogant well known painter who belong to abstract expressionism. Daisy becomes an critic and owns a trendy art gallery in Las Vegas. Surprisingly she has arranged a meeting between them for the “first year” exhibition.
The story takes place in Las Vegas. Shaun and his private secretary, a young girl named Emily, leave the airport.
The man wore hawaian shirt and dark sun glasses. The girl held a huge hidden picture covered with a sheet.
“I always hated holidays” he grumbled.
“I believed we are here to meet your former wife, this is not really holidays isn’t it ? And what about that heavy thing ?” She muttered after a pause.
“You sure like to complain don’t you Emily ?” Then hearing her last sentence he suddenly gave way to his wrath. “This heavy thing like you said is my last masterpiece ! Nobody has ever seen it ! Take care of it or I’ll kill you !” Emily was used to endure Shaun’s fit of rage so she just ignored him. His eyes went over it. “It took me five years to finally finish it… Trust me this would be the star attraction of the exhibition…” His smile was so odd that Emily couln’t ignore him much longer. She shivered with fear. “Something’s wrong with this painting…”
She called a taxi. The trip took one hour because of the traffic jam. During it Shaun hadn’t once cease looking at his covered picture. A huge board attracted Emily attention. “You know I wonder if one day this combinaison of symbolism and kitsch will be taken down” she said pointing out the famous neon designed by Betty Willis “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas nevada”. Each letter encircled by silver dollars were shinning, everything is glittering and twinkling.
“It’s sureal, in the middle of nowhere, just like Las Vegas that’s why it will never be destroyed. This neon sign is the god in front of which people bow. And remember, even if she die this great neon will be still there to tell everyone : look at me, I’m on the fringes, I’m her work, she is also fabulous… Betty is praised for creating this sign.”
“I see… What you would like to say is that the message she wants to deliver is seen by thousand people every day so there is no need to create something else.”
Finally they reached Daisy’s gallery. A cold beauty stood in the doorway waiting for them.
“Good afternoon my dear. And you, you must be Emily, am I right ? My husband has always liked young girl… Please to meet you. Should I take this picture of yours…” Shaun cut her short. “No you didn’t need to do it ! Emily give me my painting back ! I’m not that old, I take care of this myself !”
“Sigh. You seem to be in a good mood as usal honey…”
As they speak another man came out the gallery and went in their direction.
“Oh I barely forget ! Let me inroduce mister Smith to you. He’s a collector’s piece who have always admired your work.”
“Good afternoon everybody, I’m Smith and… Ah!” He turned blank when he saw the coverded painting. “I…I assume that you have bring with you your last painting, fantastic ! Incredible !”
“Curious reaction” Emily thought.
“What’s the price ? I’ll buy it right now !” he said grabbing a pen and a cheque.
“You don’t want to wait and take a look before ?” Asked Emily.
“Young girl, your master is a genius, I’m pretty sure that’s a great painting he made.”
“I see no point to selling you my masterpiece.” Shaun’s voice was loud and dictatorial so Smith has no chance to reply.
“The exhibition is tomorrow, what about going to the hotel right now ?” said Emily in order to cool down the situation.
“You want to move to the sub ? Oh my dear we have a lot of space here, all of you can stay here tonight.” Daisy smiled.
Shaun took from(?) the picture from Emily’s hands and entered into the gallery. “Do you know where I could get something to drink ?”
The collector followed him and kept trying to buy the picture. “100.000 $ ? 200.000 $? …”
“Do you happen to know why it was so important to Smith to possess this painting ?” Asked Emily to Daisy.
“I’m affraid I can’t answer to your question, I’ve just met him today morning. I don’t know anything about him…”
“Ok, nevermind, we may find out later. Do you mind showing me the bathroom please, I’ve to take a shower.”
Time for diner came and Shaun, Daisy, Emily and Smith gathered in the living room.
TO BE CONTINUED…
[about 800 words]
We all know that pictures can easily be manipulated with image-editing program like Photoshop (set up by the Knolls). Everybody can do that. Photoshop was always expensive but today there are new softwares which are cheaper so non-professionnal can falsify pictures. Moreover playing on a computer is a pastime for a lot of people, they spend their time altering digitals images and send them to their friends by email. Of course today we are conscious of the postive and negative aspects of these sofwares but to my mind their creators didn’t realize it would be used for other aims. In other words, they didn’t believe it would be misused and diverted with bad intentions.
I am under the impression that a picture is no more a picture, you know what I mean. Beyond the picture questions about moral values and ethic are raised. Should a picture always report reality ? When you distort a picture, do you have to act in keeping moral standart ? Where is the limit ? Another way to say it will be : what is supposed to be good and bad ?
In politic for exemple, I think modified pictures are often used (in a wrong way) because it may be very powerful. This is a way to communicate good and bad things, truth and lie, information and brain-washing. Indeed we can easily manipulate the image of a candidate or someone else to alter his point of view, in order to make him less important than he really is… Of course the power given by these images and Internet is like a double edge sword : it can also damage the other candidate (during a presidential election for exemple) because people think that he is behind this alteration. With these tools Internet become a place where everybody can attack another one instead of being a forum of discution where everybody can freely express his opinion respecting each other.
[about 320 words]
Extract of the diary of the crazy manager.
(a caracter I just created)
In todays’s society managers have to control their employees and more generally speaking to control everything in the compagny and in the world. To be efficient employees must be pressured and stressed. “Time is money” so a high rate of production is requiered. Internal rivalities have to ben anhiliated as well as rebellion and personnal initiatives because they destabilize the economy. Anybody that tells you the contrary is a fool.
THEY ARE SLAVES AND I’M THEIR BOSS !!!
Like sheeps they need someone to follow. Without a leader to give them order they can’t do their job properly, then they are fired, then waste their money and finally die on the street.
[about 125 words]
Just a repetition…
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=AV7SZRZU
Norman McLaren « Pen Point Percussion »
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0vgZv_JWfM
Everything with a sound looks like.
An artist might picture it this way.
But a musician sees it differently.
The sound engineer has an oscilloscope to help him see sounds. Let’s have a few notes on a guitar.
And there is another way these notes can be seen.
The vibrating strings set up vibrations in the air which travel to the microphone and then an electronic device translate them into vibrations of light.
This narrow beam of light is photographed on movie film and gives you the soundtrack which doesn’t appear on the screen. But let’s bring it up of hiding where we can see it. C’mon… alright now… give us that guitar again.
So that’s a picture of the guitar notes… Well can you show some other instrument ?
Aha. What else can you do ?
Not bad, try again.
You know that’s a modified looking voice. Wonder what you could do with my voice. Shall we try it ?
THIS – IS – MY – VOICE
Eh wait a minute, let’s hold that still and at it again. So that’s how my voice looks. Like every other sound it has its own distinct pattern of light and dark running down the side of a film.
Well if a sound will make a pattern on film, a pattern on film will make a sound. You can even create your own sounds by drawing directly on a film. Norman McLaren, the motion picture artist, has been making some hand drawing sounds and now he’s going to hear them for the first time, played on a movie??? a sort of miniature movie projector.
It’s not just guess work, the sound of any of these patterns of lines can be calculated : the size controls the loundness, a row of small marks would sound like this…
Larger marks are louder sound. That’s simple enough. Then there is the tone quality, it’s controlled by the shape of the marks. This series of thin straight lines give a sharp rather unpleasant sound. But these round dots are a bit smoother there. The marks can be any shape you like. Now how about this? Using a brush, Norman tries (?) a row of small triangles. These sharp angular forms what were they sound like ?
The distance the lines are apart controls pitch with the lines far appart a low pitch note…
A medium…
And a high note…
Now what can they be used for these hand drawing sounds ? Well, Norman McLaren finds that they are perfectly natural complement to some of his hand-drawn pictures. Each movment of the sceen can have its own specially designed sound. Making movies this way the artist has direct personnal control at every stage of the film’s production, sound and picture are planned and closely related to each other as they are drawn.
Now Norman is checking to make sure that each bit of sound is perfectly matched to its accompanying screen action.
Finally the picture and the sound will be printed together on one lenght of film and color will be added during the process.
« Anathem » Novel Themes
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=84hdVc6NDV8
Some of the things I worked with in past books have been sort of esoteric just because they were actually secret as in the case of secret codes or just no particularly well known to…to…to most people such as Isaac Newton’s fascination with alchemy or the fact that… that Leibniz built a computer.
With the Internet all of that information is now available and so you might think that it’s no longer particularly esoteric. Of course just because it’s available doesn’t mean the people actually go ahead and find it so I think now that things that are hidden are no longer hidden by being inaccessible they’re hidden by being just embedded in this giangantic fabric of… of.. of information such that most people don’t think to go and look for them.
In the case of “Anathem” there are some ideas in there there I think are… are fairly esotheric that come out of the works of… of a twentieth century philosopher named Edmund Husserl and his stuff is esotheric just keep because it’s so damned hard to read.
??? I’m interested in Husserl because Kurt Gödel was interested in Husserl so it’s another one of these sort of facts that’s out in the open but kind of esoteric because nobody goes and looks for it. That… the second half of Gödel’s career which he spent in Princeton he became fascinated with metaphysics and he embarked on a big project to try to return metaphysics to a sound rigorous intellectual footing and he felt that a way to do that was to begin with the work of Leibniz taking into account more modern ways of proceeding and… and of thinking. So the first thing that he had to do in order to accomplish that was to address the objections that Kant made to Leibniz’s work in The critic of Pure Reason. After a lot of looking around and reading and thinking Gödel ended up deciding that Husserl, who is almost his contemporary – he was a little bit earlier and he died in the nineteen thirties – And Husserl had kind of figured this out. And that in Husserl’s philosophy which is called phenomenology lay the answer to how you could work with… with Leibniz’s philosophy, Leibniz monadology taking into account the… the objections that it been made by… by Kant so for the last probably twenty years of his life Gödel devoted a huge amount of effort to reading the works of Husserl and…
This material is so impenetrable that I could not really have read it on my own because I wouldn’t have had any motivation to keep going but because of all this background that I’ve just explained I was able to read it as a kind of intellectual detective story. Trying to imagine what Gödel saw in it that he thought was going to answer the question that he was trying to answer which is by no means made easier by the fact that my IQ was about one tenth, you know, or less that of… of Kurt Gödel so you know it’s all pretty much flailing around in the dark.
Talks Jonathan Harris : The Web’s secret stories
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_harris_tells_the_web_s_secret_stories.html
So I really consider myself… a storyteller… but… I don’t really tell stories in a usual way in the sense of I don’t usually tell my own stories… instead I’m really interested in building tools that allow large numbers of other people to tell… to tell their stories… people around the world. I do this because I think that… I think people actually have a lot in commune, I think people are very similar but I also think that we have trouble seeing that… you know as a look around the world I see a lot of gaps but I think we all see a lot of gaps… and we define ourselves by our gaps, you know there is language gaps, there is ethnicity and racial gaps, there is…there is age gaps, there is gender gaps, there are sexuality gaps, there is wealth and… and money gaps, there is education gaps, there is also religious gaps, you know we have all this gaps and I think we like our gaps because they make us feel like we identify with something, some small community but I think that actually the ??? gaps we really have in commune and I think one thing we have in commune is a very deep need to express ourselves I think this is very old human desire, it’s nothing new, but the thing about self expression is that there is traditionally been some balance between the desire that we have to express ourselves and the number of sympathic friend who are willing to stand around and listen. This also is nothing new, since the ??? of human history with ??? some balance by making art, writing poems, singing songs, scripting editorials and send them in a newspaper , gossiping with friends, this is nothing new, what’s new is that in the last several years a lot of this very traditional physical human activities ??? moving into the internet. And that’s happened people ??? been living ??? footprints, footprints that tell stories of their moment of self expression, and so what I do is… I… I write computer program that study very large sets of this footprints and then try to draw conclusions about the people who leave them, what they feel, what they think, what’s different in the world today than usual, this sort of questions. One project that explores this idea, which is made about a year ago, is a piece called “WE FEEL FINE”. This is a piece that every ?? minutes scan the world newly posted blog entries for ??? all the phrases “I feel” or “I am feeling”. ??? is grab the sentences up to the period and then automatically try to ??? the age, gender and geographic location of the person that wrote that sentence. And then knowing the geographic location and the time we can also then figure out the weather when that person wrote the sentence. All of this information is saved in a database that collects about twenty thousand feelings a day, it’s been running ??? it’s reached ??? ??? human feelings now, and I show you a glimpse of ??? information is ??? visualized. So this is “WE FEEL FINE”, what you see here are a madly swarming mass of particles each of which represents a single human feeling that ??? in the last few hours. The color of each particle corresponds of the type of felling inside so that a happy positive feelings are brightly colored and sad and negative feelings are darkly colored, the diameter of each date represents the length of the sentence inside so that the large dates contains large sentences and the small dates contains small sentences. Any date can be clicked and expended and we see here “I would just feel much better if I could curl up in his arms right know and feel his affection for me in the embrace of his body and the tenderness of his lips” so it’s get pretty hot and steamy sometimes in the world of human emotions… and all of this are ?steaded? by people “I know that objectively it really doesn’t mean much but after spending so many years as a small fish in a big pond it’s nice to feel bigger again” the dates exibe human qualities, they… they can have their own physic and swam ??? around
So basically this is the structure of my oral presentation about the american painting in the 20th.
http://www.megaupload.com/fr/?d=KCPQNGKZ
