George W. Bush

Today is the 4th of July, the Independence Day in the US. I don't usually bother about it nor celebrate it but, casually, this week I've been working on some old videos of mine. One of them is the recording of a presentation I did two years ago in class, along with my pals Oroszlán and El gato agrio.

We turned a boring presentation into a somewhat fun stage act. It's about the former POTUS George W. Bush. I uploaded the video inmediately as private, but I haven't released it until now.

This week, as I said, I've been working on subtitles for this video, just to keep practising now that lectures are over, so I'm making it public on this 4th of July, NOW WITH SUBTITLES!!

Note: Subtitles are available in Spanish and English, translated by me. Don't be too harsh.

Comeacrossness: Italian Singers

Greetings, people!

When I have class until late, I usually have dinner at the Pizzería Agora, in the UJI. It's a good place to eat, with Asturian Veal as the main ingredient for its dishes. But today I'm not talking about the food: today I'm talking about some people I saw there last Thursday.

Exam Article: L4D Saga Review

Hello there! It's been a while since my last post in this blog. Sadly, I don't have so much time nor ideas, and when I write something, I tend to write in Las Chancletas de Hermes (you know, my other blog). But now I have something in English I wanted to show you - although I know no one will read it.

Recently I made a preparation test for the Advanced Cambridge Exam. One of the exercises in the Writing part consisted on writing an article of 180-220 words, comparing two videogames: their graphics, pros and cons and prices. Piece of cake.

This has been one of the best writing exercises I've made ever - my score was 18/20. So I decided to publish it (the corrected version the teacher gave me back).

Comeacrossness: Què!

This week in English class we learned some distinctions between English types of newspapers (tabloids and broadsheets), so I think this is an excellent occasion for talking about the most famous diary in the UJI: The free-distributed "Què!".

Comeacrossness: The Map

Hello there! It has been a while since I posted the latest Comeacrossness. That can mean two things: Either I'm becoming used to the City's weirdness, or there is no weirdness at all. I find both options bad, since it reduces dramatically the number of posts in this section of the blog. If it continues like this, I'll have to spark off weird situations myself!

Fortunately, this week I found something worth a post. I was around the cafeteria in my faculty (I was not having class because some English professor had broken her arm), and I found a tourism leaflet which included a map with pinpointed spots. I took it and I laughed my ass off when I read the names of the places.

First semester... finished!

Hello there!

This week I'm not talking about TF2 (although a new and interesting patch has been released), because it's been a long time since I last talked about University. So here we go.

Exams are over for now, and we have started the second semester (or term if you are British). We have new subjects (if we can call "new" the version 2 of the ones we alrady had), and finished with some others (Screw TI0906!!).

OVERTIME: Translation Fortress (part 2)

Note: This post continues where the previous one ended. If you haven't read Part 1, click here.

OVERTIME: Translation Fortress (Part 1)

Hello there! It's me again! No, please, don't close the window. This time I'm talking about something really interesting.

Some of my regular readers have complaint about not understanding a word when I talk about TF2. I usually try to explain it in a way that everyone can understand it, even without actually playing the game. Anyway, I'll try to be more clear. In this post, I'm attaching some links to TF2 wiki. Click them in case you find something you don't understand or want to increase your knowledge about the matter.

In this post (and maybe one or two more), I'll explain why I talk so much about a videogame in a blog about translation. This time I'm talking about the translation of Team Fortress 2. Sorry to my potential non-Spanish readers, because this post will have almost the same number of words in Spanish as in English.

Avatar and Na'vi Language

Hello there!

This is my first post of the new year, but it should have been my last post of the last year. I'm so lazy when I have to write in holidays...

Last week I went to the cinema to watch Avatar, the latest film by James Cameron. And I have to say that it is a great film. On the one hand, I agree that it's just a futuristic version of Disney's Pocahontas, with basically the same plot. On the other hand, I found the film quite amazing. The design of the background and the different species in Pandora is stunning (though I don't understand the biological strategy of shining at night. Isn't it easier to avoid predators when they cannot see you?). The plot is not bad, and the religion and philosophy of the Na'vi seem coherent to me. But the thing I liked most of the film was the language.

The Ducklings and Bill Bryson

Hello there!

Today is Christmas in my country (so I suppose to be in the rest of the world, lol), but I'm not really a religious person, so I'm not really celebrating it. The only thing I celebrate today is that Team Focata (my TF2 clan) has a new game server. If you play TF2, add this IP to your favourites: 85.234.148.41:27115

But today I don't want to talk about TF2 (the last two weeks have been exciting enough). Today I'm talking about University.

Exams have started for un poor students of T&I. The first we did was an English reading exam about one of these two books from Bill Bryson: Notes from a Big Country or Notes from a Small Island. I chose the latter.

OVERTIME: The Administrator and Demoman/Soldier Update

Hello there! This week I decided to create a new section in this blog. I once talked about Team Fortress 2, one of my favourite videogames, and I promised to continue talking about it. Well, now I will for sure, since it's going to be a whole section, titled OVERTIME.

Orthography on University posters

Hello there!

First of all, I have to apologise for being so late with this week's post. I also have to apologise because I'm not talking about what I promised. The reason is that I expected our Linguistics Professor to upload last class' powerpoint, and he didn't. So, the ducklings will be ready another week. [Insert sad emoticon here]

Instead of that, this week I'll talk about posters! Posters in the UJI, to be precise.

As I said in another post, I'm kind of a Grammar Nazi. In fact, I should, if I want to be a translator. So I have the obsessive craze of correcting all spelling mistakes I see on posters, notices, signs, even teachers' posts in forums!

Orthography on the Internet

Hello there!

Today I want to talk about a topic about which everybody who frequently uses Internet concerns or has concerned. It's the phenomenon known in my country as "Hoygan".