Neurótica FM and other stuff

I've just finished a translation for Neurótica.FM, courtesy of my friend Omar. It was great looking up stuff like Effective radiated power for that one. Hopefully, it'll be useful for him.

Classes are looking a bit slack at the moment, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my school will find something useful for me to do. We've got a meeting on Friday with the company running the "virtual study group". Apparently, we have to work on our collective teaching strategy!

I'm stuck in a Chinese restaurant off Tlalpan in the novel at the moment, so I'm hoping I get some free time soon to finish writing that chapter. I imagine the waiters must be getting pretty impatient too.

Teaching and books

I've been rather busy recently, sending a stack of emails for my "virtual study group" and trying to organise the more able ones into a Google Group so they can practise more. Who knows if they'll actually use it?

The novel's coming along, slowly. I'm somewhere in the middle of Chapter Five, which means I've written about 85 pages by hand. I have my doubts as to the plot, but I decided from the beginning that I wasn't going to look back, so anything broken has to be fixed as I go along. When I get around to editing it, I'll have plenty of chances to rearrange stuff.

Now, time for a very, very late lunch!

Label Cloud

Here's my new label cloud, which I'm pretty impressed with - hopefully, it'll be much easier to explore previous entries now. Clouds also make it possible for bloggers to use far more creative labels in a useful way.

The instructions on how to do it are a bit complicated, but worth wading through. You end up with a beautifully-organised list which shows you precisely what subjects/obsessions a blogger has to share with the world.

Or it could just be an enormous waste of time.

Translations and photos

I see that one of my translations is now online. It's always weird to look back at translating work again - I end up feeling there are things I could have done better, and some I don't remember writing at all. Still, it's nice to see it published.

Here's a photo of the Zócalo in the city centre, which I snapped on my mobile the other day. No reason, just felt like taking a picture of something so magnificent as I passed on my way back home.

Writing and Time Lords

I'm up to page 63 in the novel I'm writing, which also feels like the age I'll be when it's finished.

According to this site, my Timelord name is Mosdrashytonytanmorenoldacheengoldilden, although some Spanish friends of mine think that it repeats its choices too often, and they all seem to get called Tony.

Metro Woes

Got to class late today because the Metro decided to go wonky; a journey which usually takes twenty minutes took forty. The passengers were beginning to get restless at one point (after the second ten-minute stop in a row). Who can blame them, when the only information you get is a recorded announcement saying that "the train will resume its progress soon"?

How about a bit more information? Something along the lines of:

1. An apology
2. A reason for the delay
3. An indication of how much longer we're all going to have to wait for them to resolve Point 2?

Still, it gave me an excellent example in class for how to put "he explained why they were late" into direct speech.