Students of Spanish may be interested in the these sites that I use for practicing my reading comprehension. I generally read at least one major news story from a Spanish language newspaper site each day. I visit each and try to pick a story I will find interesting.
Here’s another useful resource for students of Spanish.
The UltraLingua Online Dictionary will let you look up English translations of Spanish words of course, but it also has a neat useful feature for helping you read entire webpages in Spanish. The site provides a “dictionary enabling” feature, where you provide a web address and the page loads with every word of the text as a clickable link which pops up the translation. This way, you can read as usual, but if you see an unfamiliar word, you can click on it for an immediate translation.
Existing hyperlinks are undisturbed, while the rest of the page gets transformed as described. My only complaint so far is that it appears to mangle non-English characters, such as letters with an accent over them in Spanish.
According to their terms, usage is free for light, casual use, but free use has a limit on the number of lookups per day, after which a subscription would be required.
In my daily exercise of reading the top news story in a Spanish language newspaper, I find myself referring to two books time and time again. One is quite obvious. Every student of Spanish certainly has purchased a general purpose Spanish to English dictionary. However, I find myself referring to a second book just as often.
501 Spanish Verbs by Christopher Kendris is a must-have resource. Kendris’ book, now in the 6th edition and published in conjunction with Barron’s, is decidely utilitarian. It’s a list of 501 of the most useful Spanish verbs, organized in an easy-to-use one-per-page layout. Every verb is defined, and then conjugated in 14 different tenses. An additional 1000 verbs are supplied in an appendix, with a pointer to a verb that is similarly conjugated.
When I first read the description of this book, I didn’t understand why I would want a list of verbs when I already have a dictionary for that purpose. The key difference is the complete list of conjugations, and the easy access. Once I added this book to my study tools, I don’t know how I got along without it.
If you’ve followed the advice in my last post of using Mexican telenovelas to help study Spanish, you might be interested in this find.
English language recaps of telenovelas
I’m trying different approaches with the closed captioning. For example, you might want to watch through once without captions on and see how much you can pick up. Then again with captions on.
My attempts to learn Spanish have been going on for a long time now, yet my comprehension abilities are still very limited. In recent months, I’ve been back at it, and in the process I searched the net for useful resources.
It takes a confluence of events to make a good evening for the telescope and last night delivered just that. By mid-afternoon, I had noticed the clear blue sky outside my window as I worked, and, just to be sure, I consulted the Clear Sky Clock for my area.
The Clear Sky Clock predicts viewing quality using four separate forecasts. Of great importance of course is the lack of Cloud Cover. You want to be out on a night where the moon isn’t visible for optimal Darkness. Those two criteria are fairly easy to predict, with the latter being merely mathematical and the other covered on your local weather report. The last two parts of the Clear Sky forecast are more unusual. Transparency in the atmosphere depends on the amount of water vapor in the air. Even clear skies can contain a high amount of water vapor and lead to a less than satisfactory viewing night. Rounding out the forecast is Seeing, a factor affected by turbulence and temperature differences in the atmosphere. You’re seen how things viewed through the turbulent air above hot pavement seem to shimmer? The same effect causes objects viewed through a telescope to be unclear.
Last night, all four factors were favorable in my area, which created a good night for astronomical viewing. In my yard, I have another issue to contend with. I only have a clear view of about a third of the sky, with the rest being obscured by trees. Fortunately, one of the premium astronomical targets currently spends much of the evening in a prime viewing location from my yard. That target is the planet Jupiter.
With good viewing conditions forecast, I was hoping for a chance to observe Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. The GRS is a huge storm visible in the cloud patterns on Jupiter. Since Jupiter rotates around its axis in just under 10 hours, it’s important to know the times when the spot will be in view. In particular, the best times to view the spot are around the times when it transits across the ‘central meridian’, which is the midpoint of the face of Jupiter that we see.
I used an online tool to check the time for the next transit of the Great Red Spot, and I was pleased to find that a transit would occur around 12:40 AM. I set the scope up in early evening and enjoyed viewing a variety of objects in the sky while waiting for a chance to get my first glimpse of the GRS. My favorites for the early evening were the globular star clusters Messier 3 and Messier 5. At low power, these look like hazy round areas of light, but with a higher power eyepiece, you can distinguish some of the individual stars around the edges of these clusters which are thought to contain half a million stars.
As midnight approached, I started trying out various combinations of eyepieces and filters to see which gave the best view of Jupiter’s cloud bands. Since Jupiter is a very bright object in the sky, I found it easier to view through a filter that blocks much of the light. Once I got accustomed to the view and started looking, I was able to see the Great Red Spot and watch it move across the face of Jupiter for about an hour. Very cool!
All in all, it was a great night. My only complaint was the attack of the mosquitoes, who decided they wanted to participate as well. Jupiter and my first view of its Great Red Spot are well worth a few mosquito bites though.
The clouds broke just long enough tonight to get the new scope out under the stars. After a few minutes of getting oriented, I pointed the telescope to Saturn and was rewarded with an amazing crisp view of Saturn and her rings. Within fifteen minutes, the clouds had returned, and my maiden journey came to a quick close. But wow, what a great first experience.
Once I came back in, I resolved to finally get a presentable recording of the Fernando Sor piece posted. So, here it is:
Fernando Sor Opus 6 Number 8 MP3
There’s still plenty to be unhappy with in this recording and I plan to continue working on the piece. In my opinion, the main thing that could use improvement is intonation and clarity of the notes in a few sections. I’m also not altogether happy with the dynamics of the piece. I’m finding it tough to get as much variation in volume as I think would be appropriate.
Advice and comments are welcome.
However, I’m sufficiently pleased with Estudio 1 that I’m willing to start work on another of Sor’s pieces now.
Today, the FedEx guy delivered a new toy to my house. A few days back, I ordered a Meade LX90GPS 10″ telescope from Astronomics in Oklahoma.
This afternoon, I unboxed the scope, set up the tripod, attached the optical tube assembly and aligned the viewfinders. Unfortunately, the sky is cloudy tonight and it appears that it may stay that way until I have to leave for a scheduled Vegas trip in a few days. It looks like the planets will have to wait some more.
Meanwhile, I just get to stare at this impressive piece of optical engineering in my living room. But, impressive it is. Man, I didn’t know it would be this big!
The Fernando Sor piece is less than 2 minutes of music. Just 39 measures and 298 notes.
Putting a lot of effort into such a small thing is something I haven’t done in a long while. I feel something of what it must be like to be a woodcarver, starting with a nondescript block of wood, working and working at it until the art within is revealed. There’s certainly no doubt that my initial read-through of the Sor was the musical equivalent of a block of wood.
Sightreading on the guitar poses an interesting problem. In comparison, consider the piano. Each note is at a single location on the keyboard so sightreading is the process of making sure that your hands are in a position that allows you to find each note as needed. On the guitar, that task is complicated by the fact that each note can be found at several locations on the fretboard. A skilled sightreader on the guitar must be adept at scanning ahead and looking for ways to make the notes physically possible. Years ago while studying with John de Chiaro, I remember being amazed at his ability to see around the roadblocks of a piece so quickly.
When I began with Sor’s study, what I did can’t be described as sightreading. Instead, it was a meticulous working-out of the details, measure by measure. I look forward to the day when I’ll be able to truly sightread a piece that moves around the fretboard so much.
For now, I’m still polishing up a few rough edges, including that darned spot between measures 4 and 5 which still produces a clunker now and again as I play through. The goal is in sight though, and I hope to post a recording soon.
I’m just returning from a week-long vacation in Belize. (See my Photos from Belize.)
Snorkeling, Maya ruins, and a helicopter tour over the Cockscomb Basin were the highlights.
If they came out OK I’ll soon post some underwater photos from snorkeling at Glover’s Reef.
Belize was awesome! Thanks FocalClick for sponsoring the trip!