Harry Potter

Back in the U-S-(S)-A!

Submitted by David Snopek on July 30, 2008 - 7:03am

I just got back on Sunday!  I'm still trying to recover from the jet lag (I wake up completely awake at 3am) and I just came down with a cold.  But I'd rather suffer in the USA than while on my vacation so I'll take what I can get.

Anyway, the trip was brilliant on several levels!

I bought a whole bunch of awesome stuff:

  • A few bottles of Żubrówka (if you buy it in the USA, it doesn't actually contain any bison grass, its signature ingredient).
  • Lots of Harry Potter stuff: All the books and audio books I don't already have, as well as all the DVD's currently released.
  • A post apocalyptic sci-fi book: Apokalipsa według Pana Jana by Robert J. Szmidt.
  • June and July editions of Science Fiction magazine (Robert J. Szmidt was also founder of this magazine).  These are collections of short stories.
  • A CD by Kazik Staszewski.
  • More random assorted magazines and news papers.

Another Harry Potter bites the dust!

Submitted by David Snopek on June 10, 2008 - 4:56pm

On Friday, while walking home from work, I finished listening to Harry Potter i Więzień Azkabanu (the 3rd Harry Potter book in Polish). This is the first one where I had both the text and the audio. I tried doing a couple of things with this:

  1. Simultaneous reading and listening.
  2. Listening then later reading.
  3. Switching off, doing which ever one I feel like at the time.

#1 turned out to be waaay harder than I thought. I read at a different speed than the actor read the text. I kept wanting to pause the audio so I could catch-up. This turned out to not be very enjoyable for me. #2 worked great, although it was a little boring at reading time. There would sometimes be a word or two that I failed to catch in the listening that the later reading would clarify, but nothing that ever changed my understanding of the text.

Harry Potter i Więzień Azkabanu

Submitted by David Snopek on May 1, 2008 - 7:42pm

My copy of "Harry Potter i Więzień Azkabanu" (the 3rd Harry Potter book in Polish) just arrived today!  Hurray!  And this time, I have got the audio book too.  My copy of the audio for the 2nd book is still in transit somewhere, but I'm done with that one anyway.  Rock.

Polish Update

Submitted by David Snopek on April 11, 2008 - 6:40am

I meant to write about this weeks ago! But it slipped my mind. Anyway, I finished reading the first Harry Potter book. I didn't reach my goal of pages to translate, but that never mattered anyway. I reached page 223 and I was shooting for page 250.

I've already started reading the 2nd book, but the audio book which I ordered from Empik hasn't arrived in the mail yet and I'm worried it may have gotten lost. Usually, I buy all my Polsh books/audio-books from one of the great Polish bookstores in Chicago (Polonia, Quo Vadis), which is how I got the paper book right away. Anyway, for some reason I can't find a local bookstore that has the audiobook for the 2nd one, even though they've got the 1st, 3rd, 4th, etc... So I had to order that from Poland.

Harry Potter: The book that taught me Polish…

Submitted by David Snopek on February 19, 2008 - 9:06pm

The title of this post is very misleading... I could already speak Polish at an intermediate-ish level before I started reading Harry Potter. However, this experience has really taught me alot!

What and why?

First, some background. Along with my own evolving ideas about language acquisition I've recently (maybe over the last 6 months?) become interested in the ideas of Stephen Krashen and Steve Kaufmann. They both emphasize "comprehensable input" as the primary means to language acquisition. This means reading and listening.

So, I decided that I wanted to read more in Polish. I had two primary goals:

  • To expand my vocabulary.
  • To read something interesting that I would enjoy.

I chose Harry Potter for the following reasons:

Ash Wednesday Update!

Submitted by David Snopek on February 6, 2008 - 10:08pm

I haven't posted in awhile, I apologize! Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, however, I didn't make it to mass because we were hit with a massive blizzard. I walked home from work, partly because the buses stopped running and partly because I'm bad-ass. ;-) It was good exercise.

Here are my projects as of late:

  • Released POE::Component::MessageQueue version 0.1.8! I have to give most of the credit to Paul Driver who really did all the work this release. But its still exciting!
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