User talk:Bob M

Archive 1 Archive 2

A suggestion

Bob, on my travels I often see oddly written signs in "minglish". Do you think that a gallery of poor English might serve as a useful teaching aid - asking students what they think is wrong with the pictures? I have already uploaded one. If you get enough of them it might even act as an entry point. Genghis Khant 22:34, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Good timing. Toast 00:49, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

That's quite a good idea Genghis. For some reason such signs seem to be (or are said to be) more common in Asia. One of the more popular names is Engrish, but there are many other local varieties as well. Our local Spanish newspaper sometimes produces its own stories in Spanglish, and having my students rewrite them in English is often an instructive activity. This is a very good exercise as the authors will have made exactly the same mistakes as my students.

But I must confess that it had never actually occurred to me to use these misspelled signs in class. There are, in fact, websites dedicated to listing such things, but it would be great to have some that were unique to Teflpedia. So great, if you find them I'd be delighted to have them. --Bob M 06:31, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

You want me to post the best emails I get from my Chinese business partners as well? Actually, they're not as good as what we used to call "Japlish" in user manuals for hifi equipment. Oh, nevermind, I'm sorry. But yes, Genghis' idea is a good one. Maybe you can rename the site "lost in translation"? Human 06:45, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Why not just find a terrible computer translator and feed a phrasebook into it? Phantom Hoover 07:31, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I doubt they would be as good as real mistakes PH. If I can find examples of things relevant to my students complete with mistakes that tends to be better. This is a sort of example, but it's not really "bad enough" to use.

Speaking of phrasebooks they sometimes contain examples of postilion sentences - sentences which only exist in phrasebooks. If anybody has any examples of these they would be most welcome.--Bob M 09:20, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

You need an article on English As She Is Spoke - the classic 19th century Portuguese-English phrase book (translated via a French-Portuguese phrase book and a French-English dictionary). Ⓖⓔⓝⓖⓗⓘⓢ 10:21, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

You are quite right I do need an article on "English as she is spoke" - a delight on every page. In fact, I spent quite some time writing one a couple of months ago, but something weird happened to my PC before I posted it and I lacked the motivation to write it again. But I must get onto it.

How about:

• "My hovercraft is full of eels"
• "Do you want to come back to my place, bouncy bouncy?"
• "My thighs explode with delight!"
• "If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me? I am no longer infected"

SuspectedReplicant 10:38, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Some of the above may be postilion sentences, though "My hovercraft is full of eels" is, sadly, an invention of Monty Python. Can you source any of the others to phrasebooks?--Bob M 10:49, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

They're all Monty Python phrases - all from the English-Hungarian phrasebook. Sorry - I thought everybody here was a Phython nut. SuspectedReplicant 11:00, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Really? Well you learn something every day. (Which is quite cool actually because now I've learned my thing for today and can stop thinking.) :-) --Bob M 11:54, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Here you go. Curses - it's "My nipples explode with delight". Serves me right for not having watched Python in so long. And I'd forgotten the Sir William line. SuspectedReplicant 12:02, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Ah yes, that takes me back.--Bob M 12:41, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Flashcard programs and the like

Might as well make myself useful...

Here are a bunch of flashcard programs and things you might be interested in:

• Anki, a highly customisable one, has many downloadable decks and cards are easy to add.
• Twinkle Flashcard and Mnemosyne, other programs I heard were good.
• Smart.fm, a website. It's easy to use, has many lists (decks) and most of the time they include audio and a sample sentence, but is not very customisable. Very useful for learning vocabulary.

So there, I thought they may be good for the Flashcard article so... NightFlare 21:32, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good, but if you have some actual experience with (or knowledge of) these programmes perhaps it would be best if you added them to the article along with some suggestions about how they could be best used?--Bob M 21:36, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

You mean technical information? I've used Anki and smart.fm before but not for learning english, so besides how to (barely) use these programs I don't know to properly learn with them. NightFlare 21:46, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Stumblin' around

Came on this: (18 Great Sites to Learn a New Language) Toast 02:18, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Copyright status of logo

PH - copyright status of logo. Hadn't thought about that. Presumably it's under the same copyright as the rest of the wiki. It was created by both you and Nx I think. Perhaps you should put a special disclaimer on the page stating it was created by and you relinquish your rights to Teflpedia? (If you want to that is.)--Bob M 19:43, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I consider all my work related to the logo to be under CC-by-sa-3.0, as it says under the edit box. Nx 20:40, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

I have sent you an important shilling

to put in teflpedia's meter. For allowing us to play in your classroom. Totnesmartin 20:25, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Ooo. Thanks very much. :-) --Bob M 20:59, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

export size

I just ate a good chunk out of your bandwidth - I did a test export of the Rationalwiki export category, and it's a whopping 30.5 megabyte xml file. Sorry! I'll only do it again once, when RW comes back, but I needed this one to test a few things. More importantly, these 30 megabytes will remain in your database eating your disk quota even if we delete the page on the wiki. There are ways to permanently delete them, including an extension or the maintenance scripts or database hacking, but of course those are dangerous things. Nx 13:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Agggg. AGGGGG. Um, OK.

I'm at 48% bandwidth used now. I was figuring at about 50% by the time we'd finished, so we're on track with that.  :-) Mmmm. With regard to the extension extension to delete pages or other stuff ... I'm not sure. I'm not hurting for disc space, and presumably if the site grows then it will become proportionality less relevant. ..... Best to leave them alone I feel. --Bob M 17:06, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

A huge thank you from all of us

Feel free to put this on your user page, Bob.

Human 22:38, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for having us, summer camp was great. I think we should come back next year. Pi 22:52, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you again Bob, and sorry for using up all your bandwidth. I've deleted the WIGO pages and their talk pages and archives. There are some pages left in Category:RationalWiki, and I'm not sure what to do with the categories. Nx 08:07, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for all your work Nx, you've done a lot. I suppose that we can get rid or RW export. I don't imagine that we really need the cat RW either. It's now all just users. Would there be any reason/use in keeping it? Could a bot just remove it?--Bob M 09:01, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, there's a bot to delete cats and remove them from pages too, but since we used the template mostly, it might not work. I'll see if there's a bot to remove templates. Nx 09:31, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Yup, there is. I'll set it up and remove the RW template. Nx 09:34, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I've deleted the RW template. What about the images that are still in Cat:Ratinalwiki, and the vote template? Nx 09:55, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

As far as the images are concerned, what about telling people on RW that they 24 hours before we delete them. I don't think the vote template has any real use here, does it?--Bob M 10:54, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

You can get rid of template:vote, it was just a decoration anyway. Oh, and the two arrows. I'll see if I can go zap them now. Human 21:11, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Welcome back to school!

Greetings Bob M - nice logo. Not sure that the syntax of the caption is quite right, though. And I see that I've got a lot of catching up to do... Regs., --Technopat 11:29, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

If you've got any suggestions on the logs they'd be most welcome.--Bob M 12:00, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Logs or logo? Puzzled in Madrid. --Technopat 12:07, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the small tyop there. "logo" :-)

If you want changes to the logo, I can make them easily; I would just like to know that I have a version which everyone is happy with. Phantom Hoover 19:09, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I was never totally sure about the IPA. Phantom Hoover 19:12, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'm waiting for TP to come back on that. Let's see what he has to say. Thanks for your offer.--Bob M 19:22, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, now I come to think of it, we never really finished debating the text when the bandwidth problem came up. I'm still not 100% with it, so any other ideas would be welcome.

• The English teachers' wiki.
• The wiki for the English teaching world.
• The wiki for English teachers.
• ?--Bob M 19:26, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll let you decide this amongst yourselves and make the changes once you agree on something. Phantom Hoover 19:51, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) I kinda like "The English teachers' wiki" mentioned above, but it excludes students & I've been encouraging some of mine to pop in here to look at exercises, etc. I suppose "The wiki for English teachers and students" is too clumsy? (Not especially inspired today) "The English language teaching wiki"? If there's no hurry to this, I'll be back one of these days... --Technopat 21:47, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Mmmmm. The thing is the objective is (or certainly was) a wiki for teachers. However, there are certainly a lot more students than teachers so I'd quite like to find a way to include them - though I'm not sure how.

So if we want to be inclusive. Your suggestion: "The wiki for English teachers and students" is a good description but perhaps a bit long. Is there a general word for "teachers and students"? Or for teaching and learning? (And one that isn't too technical)

On another point TP - does the Teflpedia in the phonetic font look OK to you? It looks good to me but the creator had some doubts, so a second opinion would be nice.--Bob M 22:04, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

As I mentioned, I have successfully convinced several students to make use of this 'ere great teflpedia's resources, so I do think the logo should be inclusive. The logo itself looks great, but now that you mention it, the phonetic transcription should be enclosed with //. Do the Creator's doubts refer to the mortar board, the phonetic transcription or the conjunto? Cheers! --Technopat 23:04, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi TP. The Creator had doubts about the phonetic transcription itself. I take your point about the // but I think we can probably omit them on the grounds of artistic licence as adding them would reduce the space for actual text.--Bob M 07:08, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Nice to see things getting back to TEFLing (it's my mother's pet charity) after that rather strange late August/early September "strangeness". How will you ever explain, Bob? ;) Human 08:53, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi Human. Thanks for the kind thoughts. Shhh. I think I got away with the August/September madness.--Bob M 18:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

It looks like your regulars turned up again and didn't notice the "irregular verbs" that overran the site for a few weeks. Nice to see things looking like they are back to TEFLspeed! Human 05:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Wanted pages

Do you want me to get rid of the RW links in wanted pages? Or is this not really an issue? And am I just indulging in distraction behaviour to get out of writing a boring article on RW I said I'd do? Totnesmartin 18:32, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Now that you mention it there would appear to be a number of RW links which we would be better off without. If you don't zap them I'll get on it tomorrow. Thanks for pointing it out.--Bob M 19:38, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Goat link

I couldn't bring myself to do that one. Totnesmartin 08:32, 15 September 2009 (UTC)