Richard Cowin

Back from Italy

I am back from Italy.

Had a great time - 3 couples traveling in a van.

We got rained out of Florence, but we spent an evening in Verona.  Verona was well worth spending a couple of hours walking around old town.

We did make it to Venice, but it started raining in the evening.  Venice was nice, but I am not sure I will do a repeat visit.

Spent two wonderful nights in Vernazza of the Cinque Terre. Vernazza was my ideal spot.  Peaceful evenings, minimal crowds (the weekend did start getting a bit busy though), views of the sea, friendly people (lot of them did not speak english, but were more than willing to talk to you with added hand gestures), ocean views.  The morning air had the scent of fresh bread and the sounds of people in a small town getting their day started and opening shops.  My kind of place.  We all started planning our next trip to Vernazza. 

However, I expect Vernazza is not the place for everyone.  You cannot drive into town and the walkways were very steep (some of our rooms required walking up 100 steps in windy alley like walkways.  If you look at pictures of the area, you will understand why.  I can't wait to get back.

The trip was full of food, drink, and walking/hiking.

We also spent a couple of nights in Garmisch, Germany.  Wonderful time there too.

Did not have time to think about software and did not check email for a good part of a week.

Well...  time to get back to programming.

Italy Trip

I am heading off to Italy until the middle of September.

  We are actually flying into Munich and driving in a van with a total of 3 couples to visit Venice, Florence, and Cinque Terre.  I have always wanted to visit Italy and this will be my first time, so I am pretty hyped. I will not have a laptop, so my connect time will be spotty to nonexistent.  So, no postings or email for a bit.  See you in a couple of weeks.

Learning Languages

About a month ago I came across a couple of posts from Graham Glass on learning Russian.  He talks
about using a product called Rosetta Stone .  It seemed like an interesting way to learn new languages.

I had a trip planned for Italy,so I decided to give Rosetta Stone a shot in learning some Italian for a month.  I can say that for the first week it was quite interesting and I felt I learned quite a bit.  No dictionaries or translations.  They simply have scenes with someone describing one of them and you pick which one.  The scenes were simple at first and then would have new terms that built on previous words so that you could apply some associative memory to the problem.  It seems similar to the way kids learn languages when very young.

However, after the first week, other things started filling up my time.  Now, that I am preparing for my trip, I realize I never got back into it.  Was I just too busy?  Did I feel that it was not worth while?  Did it require too much time to get immersed back in?  Was I not learning enough of what I needed?  Hmmm.  Perhaps a bit of all of these, but I think mostly because I have been too busy.  I do think it is the best tool out there.  However, I think they could take the immersive bit one step further. 

While we are at it, it seems like it would have been great to give me a larger problem/goal to solve (kind of like a quest).  Could have been a simple real life type goal like find a specific location.  I might have to interact with my environment to read signs, talk to people, listen, understand, and apply what I have learned.  Perhaps, I would only need a certain percentage of the information to solve the problem.  Very similar to what I would  experience if I were really in a foriegn country - of course it would need to be a bit more interesting to keep me immersed.

I have a lot of fascination in how people learn.  The education system has been getting worse for a good while now.  And, the teachers are poorly equipped - my wife is a teacher and she reminds me of this all the time.  Schools now are so geared towards tests with memorization  that they do nothing to teach the kids how to learn. Graham's latest venture is geared towards addressing education.  He has done some interesting software in the past and I would love to see him make any improvements in the education arena. 

Well, maybe I will spend a couple more days getting back with Rosseta Stone before my trip.