Learngaelic.net 2014 Advent calendar, to date

Learngaelic.net‘s 2014 Gaelic advent calendar, to date. View on my wordpress blog if the hyperlinks are stripped out.

Mìosachan na Nollaig
a chiad latha – Is mise (1 Dùbhlachd)
an darna latha – Geamhradh (2 Dùbhlachd)
an treas latha – Preusant (3 Dùbhlachd)
an ceathramh latha – Sneachd(a) (4 Dùbhlachd)
an còigeamh latha – Bleideagan Sneachda (5 Dùbhlachd)
an siathamh latha – Bodach-sneachda (6 Dùbhlachd)
an seachdamh latha – Rèin-fhiadh (7 Dùbhlachd)
an t-ochdamh latha – Miotagan (8 Dùbhlachd)
an naoidheamh latha – Sgarfa (9 Dùbhlachd)
an deicheamh latha – Dèideagan (10 Dùbhlachd)
a chiad latha deug – Nollaig (11 Dùbhlachd)
an dàrna latha deug – Craobh Nollaig (12 Dùbhlachd)
an treas latha deug – Solais Nollaig (13 Dùbhlachd)
an ceathramh latha deug – Rionnag (14 Dùbhlachd)
an còigeamh latha deug – Aingeal (15 Dùbhlachd)
an siathamh latha deug – Cairtean Nollaig (16 Dùbhlachd)
an seachdamh latha deug – Cearc-Fhrangach (17 Dùbhlachd)
an t-ochdamh latha deug – Buinneagan Bruisealach (18 Dùbhlachd)
an naoidheamh latha deug – Pòg (19 Dùbhlachd)
am ficheadamh latha – Bodach na Nollaig (20 Dùbhlachd)
a chiad latha air fhichead – Similear (21 Dùbhlachd)
an dàrna latha air fhichead
an treas latha air fhichead
an ceathramh latha air fhichead
an còigeamh latha air fhichead

Beginner’s Gaelic Workshop 1/10/15 in Kirkland; Gaelic Class @ BC (Winter Quarter)

Hallò!

Gaelic Workshop (Kirkland)

Do you need practice with basic conversation / answering simple introductory questions / following or giving instructions, in Gaelic?

I am hosting just such a thing on Saturday, January 10th, 2015 from 1 PM to 4 PM at my house in Kirkland. Cost $30, due upon arrival.

Please PRE-REGISTER by emailing me and letting me know that you’re coming. Space is limited and registration is about half full.

Questions? Email me at macgeoffster [at] gmail.com.

Winter Quarter at Bellevue College (North Campus)

Winter Quarter offers a rare chance to start the Gaelic sequence at the beginning, or continue studying with regular and irregular verbs in the past and future tense. Registration info can be found by clicking here.

Nollaig Chridheil agus Bliadhna Mhath Ùr!

Geoffrey Sammons

Note: We have a giant dog in case allergies are a concern.
Note eile: The text is optional for the BC class. If you don’t have it from Z2G or otherwise, don’t buy it for the BC class.

New Gaelic Calendar and other files

Hai a h-uile duine,

Chuir mi mìosachan airson 2015 air loidhne. Briog air a’ chearcall dearg ri taobh a’ chearcaill soilleir-ghorm agus briog air an duilleag ‘Faidhlichean’ airson an liosta.

I have put up my 2015 Gaelic calendar. Click on the red circle next to the light blue circle and choose ‘Files’ to get the list of possible downloads. It is designed to print out on home printers and reinforces days of the week, months, and giving the date with ordinal numbers.

Please let me know what you think.

Update
It seems that there is a glitch with WordPress. Here is a direct link: 2015 Calendar

10 reasons why Irish is an absolutely awesome language

This is mostly the same for Scottish Gaelic, too!

Health warning! Learning Irish will open your mind, win you interesting friends and make you attractive to the opposite sex.I have devoted a large chunk of my career to learning Irish, working with Irish and making a living out of Irish. So I thought it would be fair to put together a list of reasons why I think the language is worth it. Mine are proper linguistic reasons though – none of that starry-eyed sentimental nonsense about the language being ‘beautiful’ or ‘romantic’! So, put your language geek hats on, here we go!

(Many of the features mentioned here are actually common to all Celtic languages, including Scottish Gaelic and Welsh, but let’s not be splitting hairs now.)

View original post 3,373 more words

Tech companies! Harrumph!

Angry Geoff!

Angry Geoff!

So Apple is going to do away with Aperture and iPhoto in favor of a new Photos app for OS X and iOS. Yeah, we know about how it is easier to build a new app from the ground up than try and update/fix old apps, but this is a real pain. All my Aperture plug-ins that I’ve paid for! It’s not just the cost of the new app, but all the plug-in upgrades or the time to learn how to do things a new way.

The new Photos app is supposed to import from Aperture/iPhoto libraries, so that is ok. But is now the time to switch to Adobe Lightroom?

We had this happen with Final Cut Studio and Final Cut Pro X. I couldn’t bring myself to switch to Adobe Premiere after going through everything to become an Apple certified Master Pro in Final Cut Studio. I keep a separate partition with OS X 10.8 just so I can keep Final Cut Studio alive. Maybe I should just do the same with Aperture?

Or is a switch to Adobe unavoidable? They have a photography version of Creative Cloud for $120 a year. I really don’t like subscription plans. At least with Aperture I have the option to keep a copy on 10.8! If you cancel your subscription, you don’t get to keep using the apps!

I don’t have to decide immediately.

When Microsoft made a bunch of changes to Office (and the apps became very unstable on my computer), I switched to Apple’s iWork office suite. It worked for me. Then Apple made a bunch of changes to the apps and a bunch of features went bye-bye. Our data is never safe from the changes these companies make!

Grrr!

Buntús Cainte for the 21st century

The Buntús Cainte series of books for learning Irish are an older set of books, but I like them very much. As a learner of Scottish Gaelic for 21 years and Irish for two years, I found the language in the initial lessons to be very similar to Scottish Gaelic. This ‘eased’ me into Irish, which I appreciated.

Well, now they seem to have an app! Check out buntuscainte.com and follow them on twitter @BuntusCainteApp.

Feis Seattle and Dr. Michael Newton, revisited by email

I have been going through my email archives and I uncovered this email from Dr. Michael Newton, from 10 years ago(!), who will be making another appearance at Slighe nan Gaidheal’s Feis Seattle this year. I find it rather amusing! Imagine if we had been able to do this.

25 June, 2004 (a.k.a. còigeamh latha air fhichead dhen Ògmhios, dà mhìle ‘s a ceithir)

Sgrìobh Mìcheal gu slighe@yahoogroups.com:

“Dear Slighe folks –

It occurs to me that we could generate a huge income for Slighe at the
same time as holding the Feis by producing reality TV shows! OK, here’s the initial scenarios I suggest:

Dating the Gaelic Diva!
==============
Each year Slighe brings a single all-singing all-dancing Highland diva to the Feis, and eligible Seattle Gaelic-learning males vie for her attention. Watch as they try all means, fair and foul, to win her affections. (All participants are strictly barred from soliciting advice from Dale Cummings.)

Survivor: The Genitive
=============
Seattle’s Gaelic learners must survive a week in Fort Wordon using Gaelic
in all communications; any use of English words, or calques, will cause them to lose the prize. There is no avoiding it: the genitive must be mastered if these would-be Gaelic survivors are to endure for any time in the pressure-cooker of Fort Worden. Watch as participants wax eloquent, or starve from their inability to request simple food items in the genitive case. (All copies of Dwelly’s or any other Gaelic aids are forbidden on
Fort Worden for the duration of this program.)

Who is going to notify Ted Turner about this?

Once again, many thanks to everyone for the generosity and kindness they showed to me and Rhiannon during our time with the NW.

Micheal”

Upcoming Scottish Gaelic learning opportunities

Latha math a h-uile duine!

Starting April 9th and continuing for 8 Wednesdays at Bellevue College (in Bellevue, Washington), I’ll be offering Scottish Gaelic 3. This class focuses on the GENITIVE CASE, regular and irregular verbs in the CONDITIONAL, and more. Conversation and review of what we did in Scottish Gaelic 2 (Regular and Irregular verbs in the past and future) will be where we start, so even if you didn’t take Fall and Winter quarter’s classes, feel free to join us! Need to review these topics, join us!
Here is the link for registration: Scottish Gaelic 3  (http://bit.ly/1cEpSv9)
Also, May 10th I’ll be presenting a 6 hour workshop of the “Is” verb! There will be three sessions. The first is the “Basic Is Verb”, after lunch will be ” ‘S e and ‘S ann for defining and emphasis” and in the later afternoon will be “Using Is phrases.” Please see the flyer for more info, including attending via the internet if you can’t make it to my home in Kirkland, WA.
Space is limited and we already have six people registered, so don’t delay.
Here is the link for the flyer and registration: ‘Is verb Workshop‘ (http://bit.ly/1pVS6ob)
Leis gach deagh dhùrachd,
Geoffrey Sammons

Deadlines tempt Murphy’s Law

With the shutting down of PCM Business Solutions, Inc., this month, I have to finish my current video archiving project. The final product of this project is a distribution of iDevice ready video files and a set of DVDs.

Background: The video files started life as Super 8 movies, going back as far as 1939. Some of the video was transferred directly from film to Standard Definition DV at another company. Some was transferred to VHS at another company many years ago and I transferred it to DV. Once in Final Cut Pro 7, I segmented the DV streams into clips which I and Joe B. color corrected in Color (part of Final Cut Studio 3). Audio descriptions of the films were collected (hindsight – get an actual audio technician next time). I did a bit of audio repair in Soundtrack Pro, but some things can’t be helped – like reconciling travel schedules and construction noise in the building at the remote site in which the audio is being captured.

As Apple has EOLed (End of Life-ed) Final Cut Studio, I wanted to play around with Final Cut Pro X. So I imported the audio and color correct clips and made 100+ “projects” (formerly called timelines in FCP7). Then I exported “Master Files” from FCPX, which I wanted to run through Compressor 4 to create .m4vs which could be used on iDevices. That is when the fun began.

I have a 12 core 2010 Mac Pro with 32 GB of RAM which I got to do this kind of transcoding as quickly as possible. Compressor won’t use all the cores by default. It is necessary to create a Quick Cluster and select it as what you want to process with instead of the “This Computer” option. This is all about the ability to create multi-computer processing/rendering farms and so on. I had not been able to coax Compressor 4 to do this properly as I had been able to get Compressor 3. This annoyed me. To the Internet I turned to fix this problem as I wanted to convert 108 files in a timely fashion – using Compressor 4. Scouring the Internet, I found many tidbits of information.

Also in the mix of variables is that I had upgraded from OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) to OS X 10.9 (Mavericks). It turns out that 10.9 breaks the QMaster System Setting pane, which is the GUI that allows for the configuration of the QMaster Quick Cluster which allows Compressor to work – sort of. See, here’s the thing: When you download and install the new Final Cut apps, it moves all the Final Cut Studio apps into a new Final Cut Studio folder. Compressor 4 has a QMaster menu which allows for the same customization as the QMaster System Preference pane did. What I really think is going on is that having Compressor 3 (32 bit – Final Cut Studio) and Compressor 4 (64 bit) co-installed – while different programs – have some degree of overlap.

With OS X 10.9 breaking the QMaster System Preference pane, configuring QMaster via Terminal is the only option. My hypothesis is that this configures 32 bit QMaster for Compressor 3, whereas the QMaster menu in Compressor 4 configures 64 bit QMaster. Into Terminal I went, and I setup QMaster just as a promising example showed me.

QMaster

I became really good at changing parameters and trying again. I changed the number of instances. I turned things on and off. I did this on both the command line and in the QMaster menu on Compressor 4. Nothing improved. Eventually all Compressors got frustrated with me and wouldn’t process anything. It even took away the “My Computer” option. I restarted the computer. No change. Now what?

When I upgrade the Operating System on my computer, I always know that it will break something that I use. So I install the new OS on to a blank hard drive so that I always have the previous version (AKA last known working setup) available (it also gives me an ability/excuse to move up a hard drive size). So I thought, OK, I need to get this done, so I’ll boot into 10.8 and do it there. I changed the startup disk to the disk with 10.8 on it and clicked restart. The computer restarted and the boot-up “gear” spun and spun. After quite a while, and I mean a while, I decided that this wasn’t working. I hit the power button (my least favorite thing to do). I try booting again. Same thing. I booted into the recovery partition to use Disk Utility to check out the drive. The Repair Disk function in Disk Utility said to me, “This drive cannot be repaired.” It provided further advice to back up whatever data I could gain access to and reformat the drive. Oh dear. Now what?

Since all my data had been copied over to the OS 10.9 installation, I decided to wipe the drive and reinstall 10.8. Which I did. I then installed Final Cut Studio 3 into this fresh and clean environment. BTW, installing FCS from disk images instead of DVD goes much faster. It took about 30 minutes to install from disk images while installing from 7 DVDs takes many HOURS. Optical media is SLOW. The result of all this was that Compressor 3 worked without any issues in the clean environment. I was able to convert all the files with no issues what-so-ever. The QMaster System Preference Pane works in 10.8. I was able to setup a Quick Cluster to maximize processor use and averaged 95% utilization. Note to self: the magic number was 11 instances (N-1 where N = the number of cores in the computer).

I’m going to keep this new OS X 10.8/FCS 3 installation just the way it is. It will be my separate video editing system and I’m not going to install anything else there. I’m thinking of removing FCS 3 from my OS X 10.9 installation and keeping the new FCPX programs there. Maybe this will untangle Compressor 4 and get that working? As an Apple Certified Master Pro for Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, I’m a bit nostalgic for those apps.  Anyway, my deadline for the DVDs awaits…