sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5400 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 1305 of 1317 23 June 2015 at 10:05pm | IP Logged |
Hello! I finally got back from Montreal late last week and have been resting up (went straight back to work). Here's a plug the first part of my trip report. I'll be following up with a part two with links to more book shops I visited, books (including some of the BDs emk recommended and some that looked interesting in the store), cool spots to check out, music recommendations, and more soon :)
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Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5018 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 1306 of 1317 23 June 2015 at 11:28pm | IP Logged |
Thanks for sharing your experience with the VPN, I'm seriously considering it.
And, from anoher thread, for the Girls and Geeks blog, it's awesome!
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emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5541 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 1307 of 1317 27 June 2015 at 9:30pm | IP Logged |
Robierre wrote:
I never read anything by Damasio but I know a "song" produced by the French musician Rone
(great electronic music) where Damasio is reading a fragment from La horde du contrevent.
:-)
Rone - Bora |
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That is gloriously strange.
There's a long interview with Damasio on YouTube. Starting around the 9 or 10 minute mark, he explains why he thinks science fiction is an interesting literary genre.
sctroyenne wrote:
Hello! I finally got back from Montreal late last week and have been resting up (went straight back to work). Here's a plug the first part of my trip report. |
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Extremely cool! It was a pleasure visiting bookstores in Montreal with you. :-)
Cavesa wrote:
And, from anoher thread, for the Girls and Geeks blog, it's awesome! |
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Yeah, Girls and Geeks is a really fun blog, and it's just perfect conversational French (though sometimes NSFW).
Programming stuff in French, with a focus on Rust
For the programmers in the audience, a Ruby course and two introductions to Rust:
Introduction to Ruby (text, interactive, good source of vocabulary)
A tutorial for the Rust programming language (text)
A conference presentation on Rust (French audio and English slides)
French movies this week
This week, I'm just going to share the highlights.
Les combattants. I sometimes roll my eyeballs at French cinema, but this is a competent and interesting film. It's a love story (sort of) and a survival story (sort of), with interesting characters, good acting and gorgeous filming. Be warned, however: This a really difficult film, with lots of mumbled dialog and slang. I had to watch it twice: The first time felt like my first episodes of Buffy way back when, and the second time felt like the end of Buffy season 1.
Terminator 2. I saw the first half of this film dubbed into French. The dubbing is OK—there are some painful moments, but there's also plenty of fast idiomatic French. I always forget just how good this film actually is—there's a lot of very tight writing and editing, and the special-effects still hold up surprisingly well. My comprehension was high—not 100%, but more than high enough that I didn't need to worry about it.
This was a really great week, movie-wise: I used the SensCrituque weekly movie guide and Francophone TV to pick out interesting movies, and I could easily have watched two per day if I had enough time. And I'm increasingly convinced that movies are an excellent choice for me right now: I need to work on my listening comprehension, and I no longer require the boost that I get from a long series.
Streaming video with a VPN and an online "replay guide"
Here's my new toy for the week:
If you live in France (or if you have a VPN), this allows you to search for recently broadcast episodes and to watch them online at the site for each channel. You can follow series, and keep track of what episodes will expire when. You can also search for native French series.
Unfortunately, it turns out that VPNs are great for French TV series, but terrible for French movies. Right now, if I want to watch French movies in the US, the best bet is still Francophone TV + SensCritique. Well, at least until I figure out how to pay for French Netflix.
And yes, it feels like the VPN is really useful, especially as an advanced student—I no longer feel quite so isolated from the French internet, and the TV options are vastly better. I think I'll buy a plan for several months.
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daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4530 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic
| Message 1308 of 1317 27 June 2015 at 9:43pm | IP Logged |
Netflix has 1 account for all countries, just the offered movies change depending on
where you are right now. So VPN + American account should be fine.
Usually people use their local account + US VPN to get a better selection of movies
;)
Edited by daegga on 27 June 2015 at 9:47pm
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garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5216 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish
| Message 1309 of 1317 29 June 2015 at 11:15am | IP Logged |
Yep, accessing French Netflix is fairly effortless. The selection isn't incredible but it's certainly another convenient source of media.
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emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5541 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map
| Message 1310 of 1317 29 June 2015 at 1:45pm | IP Logged |
Just a word of warning: Netflix's subscriber agreement says that they reserve the right to cancel your account if you use a VPN. This is a relatively recent change, and they haven't actually cancelled any accounts yet. But it's worth keeping in mind.
By the way, Stargate SG-1, as streamed online via NRJ12, has pretty good subtitles. They're frequently shorter than the actual dialog, but they're abbreviations of what was actually said. And the dubbing is both reasonably good, and fairly clear. So if you're looking for your first or second French TV series, this might be worth further investigation. (Also, there are hundreds of SG-1 episodes, plus spinoff series.) I'm too lazy to do all the research here, but this looks like a very good intermediate French TV series.
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patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4542 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German
| Message 1311 of 1317 29 June 2015 at 3:06pm | IP Logged |
daegga wrote:
Netflix has 1 account for all countries, just the offered movies change depending on
where you are right now. So VPN + American account should be fine.
Usually people use their local account + US VPN to get a better selection of movies
;) |
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You can do the same for Mubi. Mubi plus Netflix is a pretty good combination, as you get many more arthouse style films from Mubi, which complements the Netflix lineup.
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numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6792 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin
| Message 1312 of 1317 05 July 2015 at 3:53pm | IP Logged |
emk, on the mailing list idea... It doesn't have to be one publisher many consumers where you
are saddled with providing all the content. I would think of it as something where everyone
posts content to it.
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