Tuesday, December 09, 2008
dear sacbee
If anyone still reads this who works at the Sacbee (if anyone still works at the sacbee)-since your redesign I spend about 80% less time reading the paper online. So if the goal was to make it hard to navigate so people wouldn't read it online and would subscribe, good job (except that I won't subscribe). If that was not the goal: fail.
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Does anybody have any recommendations for a podcast for learning basic French? Has anyone tried using a podcast to learn some phrases? Is it useful? I can check stuff out from the Davis library, too, but I don't know where to look. I know I have multiple librarians reading. Help me!
You might want to contact the Alliance Francaise de Sacramento www.afdesacramento.org
(916) 453-1723
af@afdesacramento.org
I don't know about podcasts, but...
If you just want kind of casual french phrases, the pimsleur cd box sets are fine. It will at least get you used to the correct accent. It's not going to teach you to conjugate verbs or anything. Just simple phrases. I would suggest getting a little French dictionary that you can carry with you on your trip too.
-ec not a librarian
Clearly you haven't tried grabbing their invisible RSS feeds. It took me about a week to find feeds providing about half as many stories as before the redesign, with the added bonuses of numerous duplicate reports and Nevada news mixed in with my AP State News. Win!
Alliance Francais or ask the owner of Le Petit Paris if they know somebody who'd do some cheapo lessons?
Otherwise this librarian used her alma mater's awesome Portuguese language podcast before going to Brazil. Their podcast for 1st year French looks pretty darn cute:
http://www.laits.utexas.edu/tex/gr/overview.html
This web site is about much more than just French grammar. It is also about the epic love story of Tex and Tammy, two star-struck armadillos, and Bette, the sex kitten bent on destroying their love. In addition to this ménage à trois, the cast of characters include Edouard, a pretentious French snail, Joe-Bob, a dim-witted squirrel from College Station, and Corey, a cockroach who prefers getting high and watching the X-Files on TV to doing his French homework.
Oops, also forgot. Sometime you can find foreign language learning podcasts on the BBC World Service's website.
here's one
http://freelanguage.org/feeds/french/learn-french-by-podcast
Another issue. There are some coffee connoisseur on this thread, right? My question is this. Is the jumpstart coffee at Coffee Works on Folsom the best coffee in Sacramento? It is the best coffee I've ever tasted, but does anyone think there is a better cup elsewhere?
OK, I struck out on looking up pimsleur language cds on the ucd library website, that "free" website that jeff linked to is not free, the bbc world services seems to only be good for learning English, and I'm not really inclined to contact the allaise francaise, because I would really just prefer podcasts or something I could check out from the library. Oh, and the other thing is a website, which won't help me because I can't do it at work. I know I sound ungrateful, but does anybody have any other suggestions? There probably aren't any good, free podcasts.
that shit wasn't free? oops. girl, just google that shit. here I'll do it for you. try this one
http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory/Languages/French
I know how to google! If there's one thing I know, it's that. I just found the itunes website to be hard to navigate but I finally got to the podcast directory and just subscribed to "coffee break French", so I'm good.
As for coffee, I shopped around but now I stick to Peet's Kenya. Peet's is seeming so lame and Starbucksy to me now that I wish I liked a local coffee as much as I like the Peets.
java jampit coffee at Temple=my favorite for now. though i like ethiopian and guatemalan coffees, in general, and lucky at the original old soul knows a lot about those beans. if you catch him roasting he'll cup for you and has a bunch of bags to look at unroasted beans, if that's your bag.
I like the Coffee Break French because the guy has a Scottish accent, it's pretty funny. Yeah, Shields really doesn't have much; it's more of a public library type thing. Sac public has lots of books and CDs of French instructional materials.
I like Rosetta Stone a lot. Contra Costa County Library used to have online access to the full suite of Rosetta Stone language courses, but Rosetta Stone got paranoid that they'd lose sales by having it accessible to the public, and pulled the content. (Come on, don't they know no one knows about or uses public library databases except librarians?)
Anyway, Sac Public has the French Rosetta Stone course in hard copy, but there are 62 holds on the one copy they have!!! Gee, do you think they might want to buy more copies?
JD
Instead of searching around in itunes, you can look at podcast alley, it's a better interface.
gbomb
Warning - you never come back from podcast alley.
-miller
I gots tomorrow off, so no new posts until thursday, when I will tell you about the weird thing in a can from Corti brothers that I ate so you don't have to!
hey dude!
Corine or I would be happy to give you some cheap (free!) basic lessons.
She's actually French, and I'm fluent.
do you know how to get ahold of either of us?
-Richard
Wow! Yeah, I will ask Olivia for your number tomorrow.
It's in a %$#@! strip mall, but Sargent's Coffee on Alhambra consistently rules. Of course, Temple is awesome, but we all knew that. For espresso, Pangaea cafe (across from Gunthers on Franklin) is amazing. It's the only place (outside eurpoe)that I've gotten espresso and not wanted any sugar in it.
omf
For coffe, I think Aioli's is great. Don't listen to the fake reviews that say otherwise. For those of you who don't know, Aioli's recently laid off a very troubled employee. Since then, fake reviews have been pouring in, in an effort to hurt the imagine of this otherwise super restaurant. The proof is in the pudding. As others have posted, it is not uncommon for the staff to hug long-time clients, and it packs a real crowd on weekends. Would you return to a restaurant enough times to a engage in hugging behavior with the staff if it was as bad as the fake reviews would have you believe? Oh yeah, and we shouldn't believe the Sacramento Bee either, on how Aioli fed the poor on Thanksgiving...
-miller
eurpoe?
why are you posting and not returning my call? i want a ride home!
I refuse to believe that that Aioli post was really miller.
jd
i know, i was about to go to sargents, but then when i discovered it was the best coffee outside of eurpoe, indiana, i turned my car around. i even made a screeching noise and the whooshing air made a dude's toupee fly off and blew up a girls skirt.
rosetta stone rules! best way to learn a language outside of total immersion. if you know anyone in one of the bootlegging countries (thailand is where i saw it), you can get a DVD of all the rosetta stone language programs for like 5 bucks. wish i'd bought one now.
chapstick
I get green coffee beans from Sweet Marias in Oakland www.sweetmarias.com
It's got great coffee. You can roast coffee beans in a hot air popcorn popper to your taste. I also have an Italian coffee pot that makes a neat sort of espresso. This seems crazy coming from me since I eat cold cans of soup since it's too much trouble to put it in a microwave.
For the Bee, if you get Firefox (which is a great faster and less of a security risk browser), you can download Ad Block Plus which removes ads. It makes going through the Bee (and most sites) much easier. I don't know your IT department so I don't know if you can do that at work.
The Bee, like most newspapers, still haven't figured out that they need to improve local news and make it easy to find. AP news is everywhere and free. Papers are still living in the 90s. Kicking out dough for investigative news is great, because that's what'll bring you back to their site.
Either way, the Bee and printed news are doomed because they're dumb and ignored the glacier coming at them for the last 15 years. I stole the glacier comment from someone much smarter than me.
Mainstream news won't face up that Craigslist would strip their goldmine of classifieds away. Much like the Big Three not realizing that years of planned obsolence and crap cars might turn away loyal customers.
Rah bah bah. tl;dr
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/03/broiled-pizza.html
-josh nice
I can't tell if anyone had tasted the jumpstart. IT's just so dang good. I'm only going to drink it now as special treat, so I don't get jaded about it. It has this almost sweet/berry aftertaste, and kinda like wine it gives you different intensities of flavors as it rolls over your tongue.
nick, I saw yr article about old soul and went to try the coffee last week or so, but I was so despondent about the renovations that had been done to the weatherstone I couldn't enjoy my beverage. That open space feeling works well at the temple, for example (nobody knows what I'm talking about here, do they?), but at the weatherstone/oldsoul it feels empty and stark. It has that feeling like when you were a little kid, and you have to move from the house you've lived in since you were a baby, and you walk through all the empty rooms and say goodbye to them, but it no longer feels like home because all the stuff has been packed up and taken away. that's the way I feel at least.
Sorry to ignore your Jumpstart comment JM-- I enjoy jumpstart, but it was never awesome enough to make me think about it outside of my regular visits to Coffeeworks. On the other hand, I'll actually make a special trip to Sargents or Temple.
it's interesting to think of someone yearning for the java city weatherstone -- I always remember the old piano-in-the-corner pre JC weatherstone most fondly.
-omf
AGREED (about the Bee). The same stories appear day after day...boring....
-Dave and Lois
Personally I prefer the Dark Star at Coffeeworks. My coffee-snob former barista friends, that's all they drink. My other "coffee my mouth thanks me for giving it the ability to taste" coffee is the Sulawesi Kalossi from William Glen. I only buy it like twice a year and then hold onto its fleeting $12 a pound memory for five months when I run out.
And yeah, the new Bee web format is far less readable than the old one. The old one, I'd actually flip through and read more stories after finished with one. This one, too much of a pain to find anything, I'd just rather not know.
How have I not tried the Dark Star?
-miller
You have tried the Dark Star Bro! You were just too caught up the magic of now to remember the coffee that was then, but really think about it, isn't then just another way to say now?
All the years combined bro, all the years combined.
-miller
Jumpstart's good, but I love Naked coffee. We usually buy our whole beans at the roasters off Broadway, but I also like just sitting down for a cup at Tupelo (or if you must be on the grid, at Naked Lounge).
I can never find what I want on Sacbee.com. I still subscribe though, and I'm not even in the AARP.
I adore smelling the coffee roasting at Naked roasters on Mondays. It reminds me of the smell New Helvetia's roasting in downtown's heyday*
Gbomb
*Back when we still called it downtown, not midtown.
I made my semi-annual trip to the Arden Fair Mall to shop for gifts for my family members who don't like gifts with any kinda personality, and I made two delightful discoveries. (1) Brands other than New Balance are making men's athletic shoes that are basic and monochromatic again, and (2) The man working at the Rosetta Stone kiosk/cart looked every bit like an outta-work college professor. He looked just like the bust of Berlioz above the toilet at the DAM House. I am zero percent exaggerating!
i'm not fluent anymore but my accent is still really convincing. i could certainly teach you any of the most important phrases you'd need to know and give you an idea of what to expect if you go to Paris. you've still got my email right?
alice
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