Competing with Pimsleur
Filed under: Languages, PHP, Programming, Technology, Web Programming
earlier, I’ve written the framework for a language learning system similar to Pimsleur. Well the approach is similar but the mechanics are different. Basically each phrase (in English, the target language, what the instructor says) is a seperate audio file. The system then chooses what you listen to automatically handling things like the right amount of repetition or you.
How often something is repeated is time based meaning if people do things slowly they will find themselves repeating more often (which makes more sense since slower equates to using the system less often). I almost have a demo ready. The big thing I need however is voice talent. I’ve just about accepted that I will have to suffer by hearing myself but it’s not very clear what’s going on if the instructor, the English voice and the foreign voice are all the same person.
It is also extremely modular. Each module (a module could be a conversation, a sentence, a whole topic – whatever makes sense in the circumstances) has a list of requirements that has to be completed first. This means no explicit ordering of modules is neccesary, the system picks whichever one the learner can do.
This also allows some cross-language capabilities. If someone learns more than one language and something is similar or the same in the two, it could tell and possibly speed things up depending on how similar they are.
So if there is anyone who might possibly be interested, let me know. If you’re learning a language this could be ideal (during my Maths degree I discovered if I could explain something to someone else, it was a good sign I understood it myself)
I’m not quite sure if, and how (or should) this make money but anyone who helps significantly would have a say in what happens with it.
iMode and cHTML
cHTML, or Compact HTML, is basically what WML should have been. Instead of completely new tags and new way of looking at things it's just a subset of HTML that makes sense for mobile devices. There are a few extensions to normal HTML but these aren't required and are very simple anyway (like using tel: in a link the same way you'd use mailto:).
Of course I don't really have any sites that would make sense ina mobile world...
Just search for imode chtml for loads of bits of info.
Galactic Horde
Galactic Horde, an online game, in the links bar but never thought to visit. Well the link is not there randomly, it’s something I helped in. Specifically I wrote the PHP back-end for it.
Well I never really had time to play it myself and never knew exactly how the client interacted with what I wrote. The result is that I can read the forums for the game and have no idea what people are talking about. It’s really scary.
Have a look in their forums for an idea.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
In 2004 they released original cast (near enough) dramatisations of the third, fourth and fifth Hitchhikers book without telling me! I always thought the book version had the better (and more developed) story and hoped (in vain I thought) they'd make an film/TV/radio/anything version of it. Well they did!
They've also given them interesting titles.
Tertiary Phase - Makes sense since "tertiary" comes after "secondary"
Quandary Phase - Annoyed me at first since "quaternary" comes after "tertiary". All is forgiven since they weren't being serious, see below for the
Quintessential Phase
End of Pimsleur
I still recommend it to anyone wishing to learn a language, at least if you can get access to it for free.
Google has updated Pagerank
The most notable is Luliriisi’s (Julia’s site) increase from no PR to PR4. 
Whether I’ll notice an increase in traffic is yet to be seen however. We can but hope
Taxing the stupid…
http://cgi.ebay.com/New-60-inch-Sony-Plasma-Tv-gmail-com-L-K-NR_W0QQitemZ5815875671QQcategoryZ116205QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Anyone who bids that much on something without reading deserves everything they get…
Unfortunately I doubt eBay will force payment.
WordPress and phpOpenTracker problems…
Comment spam..
I just had my first serious bout of comment spam. About 50 or so pointless messages about mortgages and refinancing. But since the spammer used the same IP it was really easy to delete them all using WordPress. Of course other blog software problably has the same features...
Scouse Dutch