User Comments - pretzellogic

Posted on: The End of the Road

Interesting. Jenny's blog's name is "Important Chinese Things".

http://jennyzhu.com/

I wonder if she's going to change the name of her blog, or if the topics that she's covered on the blog are the things she's going to cover in this new show. Some of the topics she's already discussed on the blog are also lesson topics. Maybe that was by design.

Posted on: Bringing the Heat Home

The Cpod website looks and feels more like the Open Language website. I assume that means that the Cpod graphics and other website actions are being/have been migrated to the Open Language website template. It was my understanding from John's comments of a few years ago that there is an Academic Management System (AMS) on the back end of Cpod as well. This AMS is only partly responsible for how users interact with the Cpod website. Was that Cpod AMS migrated to the Open Language AMS as well, or are there plans still in the works to perform that migration? Any clarity here would help set user expectations.

Posted on: Participating in a Marathon

Nothing about the running and the training itself? The long runs, the short runs, the intervals? The occasional blister or knee pain or sore muscles?

Posted on: Antique Appraisal Reality TV

floalvarez, my casual searches indicate Hank Horkoff is still the Cpod/OpenLanguage CEO. Jenny is likely still around, but posts so infrequently, that it seems she's not around. Did you get private information specifically saying these people are gone? Right now, rumors are flying, but i'm wondering if there's verifiable information around.

Posted on: Shaven Dog

And I thought I was the only one here making references to arcane events/people/things/random/tangential items....

Posted on: 100 Episodes Special

John, I drove past Gainesville on Dec 22, but I didn't see you :)

Posted on: Chinese Graded Readers and ACTFL

Interesting to know. I'd agree with you on the formality of the grammar and vocabulary. That's actually been my frustration with some of the existing Chinese school texts as well. Doesn't seem like the language is all that useful day-to-day for us older folks. But my comment was more on the marketing side, not really on the pedagogy side.

Posted on: The Colors of Money

Amusingly, I looked up why the US no longer uses $1000, $500, $5000 and $10000. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing's website says that the denominations were discontinued due to lack of use. Implicit behind this rationale is that we've gone much more to electronic payments than in the past.

http://www.moneyfactory.gov/uscurrency/largedenominations.html

Also, seems really odd that a US govt website is called moneyfactory.gov, but there it is.

Posted on: Chinese Graded Readers and ACTFL

If you did this for a story you wrote, but then put the simplified Chinese, pinyin and English book into the iTunes bookstore for $.99 for the sample, that would really be inticing. I might go ahead and make the purchase for $9.99 at that point.

Posted on: Chinese Graded Readers and ACTFL

Just a thought.  I've noticed that there are plenty of texts in simplified Chinese in Xinhua and other bookstores in Beijing.  If I wanted to, I could get plenty of texts in Amazon if I know the name of the book in simplified Chinese.  There are also a decent number of books available in simplified Chinese and pinyin. But there are relatively few texts that have the language holy trinity; simplified characters, pinyin and english.  It might be a nice market niche test to see if you could translate 1 or 2 books into simplified, pinyin and English.  I know I'd at least strongly consider one for purchase.