Daily Stuff--10/2/2012

Languages--Chinese:

I watched another BBC Chinese lesson. This one was about introducing family members to other people.

Articles:

There was an interesting article on politico.com about how technology is helping to stop online piracy. For example, Google has modified it's algorithm to de-emphasize pirated content when people do searches. This isn't a definitive solution to the problem but it certainly helps decrease the amount of pirated content. It's unlikely that this problem will ever completely go away since people will just keep finding ways to acquire pirated information, but what Google has done is made this information harder to come by and eventually, people may just give up on trying to find the pirated information and will instead acquire it legally since it will be easier.

Philosophy:

I read about what a Philosophy actually is. Essentially, it's a system of beliefs about the reality and the world. It deals with the nature of existence, humans, and their purpose in the world and the role they serve.

Internships:

I read about PaperPort on nuance.com. It allows users to access any information at anytime from in the cloud. They can also scan, copy, and organize all their information in one convenient location.

To-Do:

• Wake up: 8:30 am
• Italian discussion (1 and 1/2 hours)
• We went over masculine and feminine nouns and how to tell which is which. There are several that are irregular so you have to memorize the gender. We also learned how to make these words plural because it's different for masculine and feminine nouns. Unlike French, there is no "-s" suffix in Italian to make nouns plural. 
• Lunch (1/2 hour)
• Done
• Review Italian notes (1/2 hour)
• Done
• Read ahead for Italian (1/2 hour)
• Done
• Phonetics (1 and 1/2 hours)
• We went over the various articulators in the mouth. Most of them are on the lower jaw because it's the part that actually moves as a person talks. There are several different categories of sounds such as bilabial (made by pressing the lips together), palatal (made by pressing the front of the tongue to the hard palate), alveolar (made by pressing the tip of the tongue to the alveolar ridge), and dental (made by either pressing the tip of the tongue to the back of the upper teeth or in between the upper and lower teeth. This varies dialect to dialect). 
• Review Phonetics notes (1/2 hour)
• Done
• Read more of the ebook (1 hour)
• Didn't get to this today
• Dinner (1 hour)
• Done
• Finish reading for Muir 50 (1/2 hour)
• Done. 1 hour
• Work on blog (1/2 hour)
• I watched a video that explains how to create labels on a Blogger blog that take the user to different parts of the website. I also looked at the attached step-by-step directions. 
• Read ahead for Phonetics (1/2 hour)
• Done. 2 hours
• BBC Italian, Chinese, and French (1 hour)
• Done
• Tomorrow's schedule (1/2 hour)
• Sleep: 1:00 am