Iversen's second multiconfused log thread

[Iversen]

EN: Today I have worked with a number of languages, but the most time consuming ones were Bulgarian and Indonesian. In both cases I have worked through a couple of pages from the bilingual printouts I told about a couple of weeks ago - well, I don't have to feed those printouts so it doesn't matter if they lie around for a time before I get to use them - and I have done wordlists in Bulgarian, but not in Indonesian.

The Indonesian text was about dark matter, and it goes without saying that it is from BBC's Indonesian treasure trove - it is hard to find texts about such topics in Indonesian from genuinely Indonesian sources. I didn't care much about Bahasa Indonesia when I visited Sulawesi, Bali and Eastern Java some years ago. I do remember that I just for fun asked for a small honey drink and used the word 'kecil' with a flat a, and that the sales lady corrected it to something like /kötsjil/ - but apart from that I don't remember anny attempt to try to speak the language, and I didn't visit any bookshops. OK, there aren't many in the countryside on Sulawesi or Bali, but I did spend a night in Yogyakarta and could have looked for bookstores there.

When I later visited Singapore, Brunei, Serawak and Kuala Lumpur I did however check out several bookstores, including the big one in the shopping center at the Petronas towers - but practically all books about science were in English. I did pick up a slim tourist guide in parallel some-kind-of-Bahasa and English versions during my stay in Singapore, and I bought a Malaysian dictionary in Jalan Carpenter in Kuching, but when I returned home and tried to use it on the folders it turned out that they weren't in Bahasa Melayu at all, but in Bahasa Indonesia - and then I took the expedient decision that it would be more logical to study Indonesian which is spoken by far more people. And luckily I had a good pocket Indonesian-English dictionary which I had bought in Manila so...

IND: Artikel Indonesia adalah tentang materi gelap, dan itu menimbulkan pertanyaan substansi misterius ini tidak hanya mengarahkan penempatan galaksi, tetapi juga mengatur pembentukan bintang-bintang individu. Saya telah menulis banyak tentang hal ini, jadi saya ingin tetap pada perbandingan. Massa gelap sebanding dengan angin: kita tidak melihat angin sendiri, tetapi kita melihatnya bergerak daun dan hal-hal lain. Tetapi angin adalah gerakan partikel udara, bukan partikel-partikel ini sendiri, jadi perbandingannya tidak akurat. Tapi mungkin itu masih berhasil karena saya bisa merasakan tekanan partikel udara di angin tetapi tidak melihatnya.

BU: Българската статия разказва за разкопки в Пловдив - споменах ги по-рано, но по това време не завърших статията. Разкопките се провеждат в центъра на града в близост до древния театър (виж снимката). Разбира се аз не бях там, но преди 31 години посетих града и беше съвсем ясно, че градът е много стар - на улиците дори имаше разкопки под стъклени прозорци!

EN: As I mentioned I also did wordlists in Bulgarian, based on the archeological article, and of course I used the method I described recently: instead of taking the words from the notes in the margin of my text copy I take them directly from the text. And this functions better than the 'old' method: I get a reason to read the text again, but now with a better sense of the meaning because I know the words, and on top of that it is easier to read the printed text than my own scrabbles (which I however do keep within sight). It might be tempting to stop notating the new words in the margin when I don't look there, but that would obviously be an error - the compilation of my wordlists only functions smoothly because I already have isolated the problem words and found out what they mean, and writing them down the first time I see them is an indispensable part of the memorization process. So it seems that I soon will have to make a revision to my fivepart guide to learning languages.

We recently had an active thread about things we had learned about the study of languages within the last two years, and I nonchalantly wrote "nothing", But with my change in wordlist-making habits I have to admit that I have learnt (or discovered) at least one thing new about language learning. I suppose I also have to make a statement about this fact in the relevant thread.

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[Iversen]

I have been on a family visit, and as usual this limited my study time to a minimum - though this time not to a total zero since I brought along my latest Bulgarian text collection plus my little yellow Langenscheidt Bulgarian-German dictionary, and I actually used them during my stay!!! I made wordlists with some 200 words, and I studied two texts about ....

BU: ...боллестта ха Алцхаймер. Това заболяване изглежда се състои от не един, а два синдрома - един с ранно начало (преди 65 години), вторият с късно начало. Първият тип се дължи главно на генетичното разположение, а втората а другият има всички възможни причини - като например липсата на изучаване на чужди езици (последното е то мин допълнение, но изглежда научно документирана).

During my previous family visit my sister and I visited the museum of Haithabu, but it rained so much that we couldn't walk along the path to the collection of reconstructed viking houses of the museum without getting wet. This time we visited not only the houses, but also Dannevirke, i.e. the collection of old fortifications that once defined the border line between Danes and Germans - which in this context refers both to the Saxons who actually lived just South of the ramparts and walls, but also to the Mordor-like empires down there - including the empire of Charlemagne and that of the Ottonian emperors. The first traces are dated to around 500 AC (which is a long time before the officially quoted beginning of the Viking age, which mostly based on the rather peripheral plundering of Lindisfarne and other hangouts for rich and learned monks who could write down their laments in latin), and then they were extended first around 650 and later around 800 AC, where Charlemagne did some quite vicious things to the Saxons - but since the Saxons weren't wailing Latin-savvy monks few people have heard about the atrocities committed there.

Then the German-Roman emperors Otto I and II threathened the Southern part of the Danish kingdom, and for a time Otto II even had occupied Haithabu (which he later destroyed) - so in this period the defences had to be strengthened again. According to the 'small' Jelling stone Gorm the Old's queen Thyra Danebod was responsible for this (quote "kurmr kunukr karthi kubl thusi aft thurui kunu sina tanmarkar but", but the works took place slightly later, under the reign of Harald Bluetooth. And after that the ramparts were strengthened by stone work under king Canute the socalled 'holy' and the Valdemarians, but they were already losing their military significance around that time, and the local people robbed most of the stones for sundry building projects ..
DA: (hvilket ikke forhindrede den danske hær i at forsøge at bruge resterne som bastion under den mildest talt uheldige krig i 1864, som tyskerne under Bismarck vandt).

IMG_2142_Dannewerk.jpg

IC: Það er einnig safn á Dannevirke, og auðvitað geturðu óg lært um sögu þess, þar á meðal dapur tímabilið milli 1864 og 1920, þar sem dönsku norðurhluti Slésvík var undir þýska stjórn.
GER: Die südliche Hälfte von Schleswig und Holstein sind immer noch unter deutscher Herrschaft, aber die Mehrheit dort spricht zumindest deutsch und hat seit langem deutsch gesprochen.
IC: Steinninn að neðan stendur í safnið í Haithabu og einn leið eftir hinn er lýst með grænum texta, en textinn er sýndur með latneskum stöfum og þýðingu á gólfinu fyrir framan steininn. Það er nokkuð snjallt, og sýnist óhjákvæmilega hversu lítið textinn í sögunna nútímalegra hegðunar lítur út fyrir tungumálanotkun á rúnasteinanna.

IMG_1654_haithabu.jpg

[Iversen]

Next weekend the polyglot conference will take place in Ljubljana, but I have not submitted a lecture proposal and for once I'm not going there. Actually I haven't submitted a lecture proposal for the confrences since they rejected my offer to talk about typical errors in Google translate and simple ways to improve it in 2015 - but I then presented my talk at the gathering in Berlin in 2016, and I have written a whole thread here about this subject later so my effort to study it wasn't wasted. Seen in retrospect, this one mishap (plus simple facts about the number of lectures) have meant that I since then have prioritized the gatherings at the expense of the conferences. And this year, where I have been to the gathering in Bratislava and the UEA Esperanto conference in Lisboa I also felt that three language conference in one year would put too heavy constraints on my travelling.

There are however several interesting things on the program, and I seee forward to watching some of the lectures on the internet later - like Vanderwalle's talk about one of my most important learning tools, namely bilingual texts. the one of Humanes' about the Pirahã language (the impertinent Amazonian language that undermines the most important of Chomsky's universals) and Arguelles' speech about personality traits of polyglot learners versus 'mormal' learners, based on his recent questionnaire.

This morning I was thinking about a totally different topic, namely artificial intelligence, which in my opinion already is integrated into auto-learning software like Google translate.

I read an article (in Danish) about AI a few days ago, and one implicit prediction was that we will have to merge with the machines. Young people today have almost done this since they always seem to be looking down on their mobile phones, which would certainly have fused with their hands if they didn't have to let go of them a few hours each night. But the day where your brain can access better translation programs plus full dictionaries and voice decryption directly, we will see humans transforming themselves into linguistic androids. And those who refuse to do this will be severely handicapped compared to those who do.

People already now look at me as some kind of delayed neanderthal when I show them my old Nokia to explain why I can't just check something on the internet here and now, and I am sure that normal people soon will demand to have protestics attached to their bodies so that they can run faster and see ultraviolet light and scratch their bum with a third arm while they play cards. And those who refuse to buy the gadgets - or can't afford them - will be left behind.

But first GoogleTranslate has to improve - it has been steadily adding new languages along the way, but I can't see that the translations are becoming better at the same speed...

My goodnight reading yesterday was once again the Russian guidebook to the Palazzo Ducale di Venezia. I have read some of it earlier, but then found other things to read because it wasn't very interesting - mostly some name dropping without the expected follow-up of salacious gossip stories - although when I reach the passage about the prison they can't really avoid mentioning il signore Casanova. Or can they?

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[rdearman]

I watched an interesting TED talk on AI where the computer scientist was talking about ensuring we developed a complete set of morals before we developed AI. The problem being is that within a matter of months a self-aware, self-learning AI would to humans as we are to monkeys. So we need to instil a sense of moral justice in order to avoid being exterminated. Our future could be a merger with machines, or it could be simply kept as pets like we keep dogs and cats.

[Iversen]

So far we haven't been able to instill the necessary minimum of moral consciousness in humans (especially not those at the top levels of society), so I doubt that it will be possible to do it in robots. And even if we try, their inbult logic may be stronger than Asimov's three rules for robot behaviour - like in 2001, where HAL correctly judged that the mission of the spaceship would be accomplished with less fuzz if no humans were on board.

SER: Пошто сам написао последњу поруку, са инспирацијом из предстојеће полиглотске конференције покушао сам да прочитам малу књигу о Постојнским пећинама у Словенији, "Postojnska Jama vodnik". Тешко је јер нисам проучавао словеначки језик и немам превод као водич, али ја ипак разумем много.

IT: Al mio arrivo alle grotte di Postojna c'erano molti tedeschi e molti giapponesi e molti altri da diverse paesi chi tutti capivano l'inglese - quindi si ha stabilito tre grandi gruppi per le guide che parlavano queste tre lingue. Ho scelto l'italiano e quindi sono andato in tour con me solo più una guida. Andava bene, salvo che la foto nelle caverne non è permesso, e mentre le persone dei grandi gruppi potevano facilmente barare e prendere i suoi foto, era più difficile per me nel mio gruppo diminutivo. Ma ho scattato una sola foto (vide sotto), e dopo il tour ho comprato la guida nella lingua slovena come ricordo del viaggio.

F4627b05_Postojna.jpg

[Iversen]

I have been reading about Alzheimer again, this time not in Bulgarian but in Irish. The first short text is taken from some kind of information sheet from a mattress company, and according to Google translate the title "Is féidir drochchodladh a bheith nasctha le galar Alzheimer?" means 'Bad sleep can be linked to Alzheimer's disease' - or in a more literal version: 'is (it) possible bad-sleep to be linked with illness Alzheimer?'. The answer in the article is of course yes, but I have seen the same message in other sources so it is quite possible that people who routinely get too little sleep harm their brains, which can't come as a surprise. Neither can the fact that it precisely is a mattress company that has taken upon its shoulders to spread this precise piece of information.

The language in the first isn't too far from what I would expect and from what I'm able to decrypt with the help of my trusty dictionary, except that too many sentences begin with a prepositional clause of some kind .. and one thing more: the page surrounding the message contains several Spanish words and expressions such as "Noticias relacionadas".

The second text raises more questions. Its title is "Galar Alzheimer agus gadhair: an gearr uainn leigheas?", and it is found on a homepage called tuairisc.ie, but I wonder whether it actually was written in Irish from the start. As usual I have made a bilingual version using Google Translate, and the translation goes as follows: 'Alzheimer's disease and nutrients: the short of our medicine?' My first problem is with the word "gadhair": it looks like the genitive singular of "gadhar", which according to my dictionary means 'dog' (not 'nutrients')- and if you isolate it from the context even GT translates it as 'dog'. The general meaning of the title should be that we have reached a dead end of our medicine when it comes to Alzheimer, and I can't really see what need there is for a dog in a discussion about Alzheimer, but dogs keep coming back..

The text continues: "Tugtar idir ‘mada’, ‘madra’ agus ‘gadhar’ air sa Ghaeltacht. Cibé ainm is rogha leat féin a thabhairt air, d’fhéadfadh sé cabhrú linn galar uafásach a chur de dhroim seoil sa deireadh thiar thall…", which Google translates as 'The 'Gaeltacht' is known as 'mada', 'dog' and 'dog'. Whatever your favorite name is, it can help us to make a terrible disease in the long run ...".

Has the Gaeltacht (the small Irish-speaking enclaves in the Irish republic) really deserved to be known as a spelling error, a dog ("madra") or (another) dog ("gadhar")? It could at least be a selection of dogs, but... My guess is that the illness is called something like a dog's disease in the Gaeltacht, which is an insult towards the poor canines, but not unheard of.

Furthermore I shudder at the thought that anybody on purpose should want help to produce terrible diseases, but the horror gets slightly more malleable if you cut the last sentence at the comma - the last part then translates as 'It can help us to put a terrible disease in the end ...' - so now the project has been redefined to putting the disease 'in the end' instead of right now. Maybe the real meaning is that somebody should put an end to this terrible affliction.

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[Iversen]

Yesterday I went to a meeting in the senior section of my old trade union ('Magisterforeningen') where one of my earlier collegues told about the history of the alphabet and about the fonts that were used from Gutenberg and onwards. I didn't learn much from the first part, but there were a few surprises in the second part. The biggest shock was probably that the numbers 0-9 of the Garamond fonts (named after the Parisian engraver Claude Garamond) weren't originally all placed on the same baseline - 345 dropped below that line so if you wrote 352 it would look as if you intended to write 35 square. But we have to bear with Monsieur Garamond: he lived from approximately 1510 to 1561, and it seems the modern notation of exponents as hyperscripts was not even invented back then.

I have tried to find out when exactly the modern notation was introduced, but even in the large table in the midst of Wikipedia's article about the History of mathemtical notation I fail to spot the word "exponentiation". However the article about exponentiation gives a few clues - such as the information that a certain Jost Bürgi used Roman numerals for exponents during the lifetime of Garamond, and that Newton only used hyperscripts for exponentials higher than 2. In the article about a certain Chuquet - hitherto unbeknownst to me - there is actually an image that shows a line with jumping numbers à la Garamond. Luckily the numbers in the font named after Garamond have been asked to behave on modern computers so there they stand on line.

Apart from that detail the typeface Garamond is also known for another curious trait, namely the saberlike diacritic tail attached to the letter Q. I really like this idea, and I have extended its use to the letters in the Cyrillic alphabets that share this feature, like Ц and Щ.

Chuquet_Parisien.jpg

Apart from that I have been doing Irish wordlists (based on the articles I have mentioned earlier), and I have studied the Greek Wikipedia's article about Einstein's cosmological constant.

IR: Is teanga spraoi é an Ghaeilge. Scríobh mé cheana faoi fhocail iasachta, agus anois déanann mé seo arís:

Let's take a few examples:
"quality" became cáiliocht
"level" became leibhéal
"question" became ceist (and "questionnaire" became ceistiúchán)
"island" became eileán

You can almost see the poor Irish farmers trying to wring their tongues around the ugly and unpronouncable words of their foreign overlords - words which to them must have seemed like the growls of orks from Mordor. But now the Irish have learnt to speak English, and that has solved the problem.

In fact the Brits are even worse at dealing with foreign words than the ancient Irish farmers. A few days ago I watched an otherwise splendid program about the underground of the 'Naples' area (the correct name is of course "Napoli"), and the speaker unabashedly pronounced the name "Campi Flegrei" as something like /kampi flAYgree/. Actually this particular place got its name from Greek φλέγω phlego, "to burn" because it is an active supervolcano and the soil is burning hot just a few centimeters under the surface there - and the whole thing may explode any moment, which would eradicate Central Italy and throw the whole planet into climatic turmoil. It has been blamed for killing off all hominids in Central and Eastern Europe well into Russia 35.000 years ago - and since that was the main habitat of the neanderthals they perished lamentably except for a small population in Spain. With such a threat it wouldn't have been too much to ask of the speaker that he look the pronunciation of the name up somewhere (like in Wikipedia).

Speaking of Greek: the Greeks are as bad as the Brits to murder foreign names, but at least they can blame their alphabet for abominations like "Χαμπλ" for Hubble (who discovered the expansion of the univers) and "Αϊνστάιν" for Einstein - who at first thought the expansion could be prevented by introducing a cosmological constant in his equations, but then discarded this item when he was told that the univers actually is expanding - and now it is being reintroduced to explain that the univers is expanding far more than it ought to... haha

GR: Δυστυχώς, δεν μπορώ να μην παραδεχτώ ότι δεν μπορώ να συμμετάσχω σε αυτή τη συζήτηση στο μαθηματικό επίπεδο, αλλά μπορώ να διαβάσω το άρθρο της Βικιπαίδειας για αυτό το θέμα. Και τότε θυμάμαι πως κάποτε έχω τόσο πολύ κόπο με την ελληνικά όπως έχω τώρα με την ιρλανδικά. Αλλά τώρα αισθάνεται χαλάρωση όταν διαβάζω για την κοσμολογία στα ελληνικά μετά από να μελετήσω ένα μικροσκοπικό κείμενο στα ιρλανδικά.

[Iversen]

While the forum was down I suspended my language studies and spent the time on adding 3D-maps in the system where I have registered my travels.

I did however read a few articles as goodnight reading - three in Allemannisch (which in Wikipedia terms basically means Schwiizertüütsch) and three in Platt/Low German - and of course I read them in monoglot printouts since Google can't translate those languages ... yet. In Platt I have read about the Permian and the Triassic periods, and in Alemannisch an long article about Albania and two ultra short ones about Ada Lovelace (who invented the programming system for Charles Babbage's machine) and Astrid Lindgren (who invented Pippi Långstrump, Emil i Lönneberga och Karlsson - plus a certain Bollibomba in frustration over the Swedish tax system which expected her to pay more in tax than she earned).

Since I can't write in Alemannish I'll add a few words in Platt about the Alemannian Wikipedia un sien Gemeenschap-Portal.

PLATT: So ik höff nu mien Sass Woordenboek funnen und bün kloor to schrieven. Toeerst vün de Gmeinschap-paginas vün de Allemannische Wikipedia - un jo, dat is "Gmeinschhaft" ahn 'e' na 'G'. De Allemannen (oder Schwiizer, as wi sie kennen) maken dit bannig veel, as in Woorden wie "s" (hoogdüütsch "es"), "d" (hoogdüütsch 'die"), "z" (för "zu") un "e" (för "eine"), un so können se so wat schrieven as:

Wurum soll i bi däre Alemannische Wikipedia mitmache? isch e gueti Frog.
Do het s e baar Antworte:
Mer chaa im Dialäkt vyl frejer un volkdimliger schrybe wie im styfe Hochdytsch.
Mer chaa in dr Alemannische Wikipedia au iber Lyt un Sache schrybe, wu in dr hochdytsche Wikipedia vilicht nid gnue «relevant» sin.
Di Alemannisch Wikipedia isch e gueti Megligkeit z zeige, ass di alemannische Dialäkt au im 21. Johrhundert im Zytalter vum Internet no ne Daug hän un au uf modärne Fälder chenne brucht wäre.
S macht Spass, sy Wisse z deile.
Wänn mer syy Wisse nit nutzt, no goht s verlore.
E Wiki isch e Megligkeit, dr frej Zuegang zum Wisse im Internet z erhalte un z verhindere, ass all meh Wisse nume no gege Bezahlig un dodermit nume fir Lyt mit Gäld verfiegbar isch.

Un mit so wat kann ik blots enig sien.

Aver nu höff ik so um de 2357 Planen te maken voor mien Reissystem voor ik wedder mit vollem Damp aan mien Spraken kann werken. Ironisch is't dat ik een reis na Schweiz in 2002 kamen wöör als ik höff sien dat 't Language-learners wedder toeganglich wöör.

Kunst193_WilhelmTell sien Söhn.jpg

[Iversen]

I mentioned the Greek article about Einstein's cosmological constant yesterday and promised to write something about it. Well, I now see that I already has commented on the strange Greek ways of writing foreigns names after working my way through the first page. SInce then I have read and copied the whole thing from A to Z, and I do have one thing new to report, namely that I now also have seen what they do to the first name of Mr. Hubble down there: they spell it as "Έντγουιν" ('Edwin '). The foreigner friendly alternative would be to use transliterations based on Ancient Greek which would be much easier to deal for us, and then 'Edwin Hubble' would be spelt something like "Έδουιν Χόβλ" (or maybe "Χούβλε", which would be more literal, but liable to cause mispronunciations caused by the absurd spelling 'system' of the English language). It is not our fault that the Greeks have let their consonants soak in resinated wine for the last 2000 years so that they now all have become soft and squishy.

Have you ever wondered why Tchaikovsky is spelt like that in English when the Russians spells him "Пётр Ильич Чайковский"? In Denmark I have seen him spelt as "Tjajkofskij", which is more in tune with the Russian spelling. On my own computer I have dubbed him "Tschaikovskij", which has borrowed the beginning from German "Tschaikowski", the middle from English and the end from one of the possible Danish versions of his name (there are more than one around). I don't know why I did like that since it happened many years ago, but now that's what I do. I bought the man's second symphony on an Italian vinyl thing in Pisa in 1972, and there they spelt his navn like "Ciajkovskij". In Serbian Cyrillic it is "Чајковски", while the Croatian and Srpskihrvatski Wikipedias have "Petar Iljič Čajkovski". And the Greeks? Well, "Πιότρ Ιλίτς Τσαϊκόφσκι", which actually is a surprisingly sober rendition of the great man's name.

Tschaikovskij.jpg

[Iversen]

Since the last message I have been watching television from a number of countries, including Serbia - although I must confess that I understands less than half of the speech (which isn't surprising, given that I almost never listens to my TV apparatus because I listen to music instead). My Montenegrin TV station has apparently stopped, which is a pity since it was the one from the Balkan area that was most likely to just present speak with no music in the background. Polish ... even less speech understood. And I need to do something serious about my comprehension of written materials soon, but then I expect my reading skills to come back in a flash - I have seen that with other languages. The situation for written Serbian (and Croatian) is OK, but right now I can actually understand texts in Slovak better than those in Polish. My Russian reading skills seem to be mediocre but stable - I haven't heard any spoken RUssian recently, but I can read non-fiction at a reasonable level in spite of my despicable lack of effort to bulk read extensively in Russian.

The problem is of course that I have been doing other things, and right now there are two big time bandits on the loose. One is that I'm listening through my music collection, but there is hope: I have passed Louis Vierne and expect to get through Vieuxtemps. But then there is the map-adding operation, which I restarted this weekend during the blackout of LLORG.

Since I haven't studied I can just as well write a few words about the map section of my travel registration system.

I have one set of maps with clickable red dots. When I click on a dot I see all photos and postcards from that location. There will be no changes to this system, except of course the regular opdates. But then I also have a page with maps corresponding to individual trips, and that's where I have decided to add a few things. And just to have fun I'll write about it in Esperanto (I have just renewed my membership of UEA so it is even a justifiable moment to do so).

EO: Mia unua vojaĝo sole estis vojaĝo sur Velovap ĉirkaŭ Jutlando en 1971 (kiam mi havis 17 jarojn). Mi forgesis kiujn kartojn mi uzis, kaj mi ne elportis fotilon. La vojaĝo nur povus esti rekonstruita ĉar mi restis ĉe junulargastejoj kaj akiris datumitajn piŝtojn survojo.

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Poste mi faris ses vojaĝojn kun la Interrail-cardo de 1972 ĝis 1979. Dum la tria vojaĝo en 1974 mi vojaĝis 30,000 kilometrojn, kaj post ĝin mi komencis desegni primitivajn kartojn mane ĉar mi vojaĝis en ĉiuj flankoj tra Eŭropo kaj la itinero estis tro komplika por teni en mia kapo. Mi alportis kiom ebla maldikajn danajn gvidlibrojn ("Turen går til") de la biblioteko, sed en la sekvaj vojaĝoj mi komencis alporti anglalingvan gvidlibrojn, precipe de Lonely Planet, ĉar iliaj libroj havis plej bonajn mapojn kaj urbajn mapojn kaj kovris pli da lokoj ol la dana serio. Poste, la gvidlibroj de Lonely Planet malboniĝis iomete, sed en la malnovaj tagoj antaŭ la interreto iliaj hotelistoj kaj lertaj de malfermohoroj estis nemalhaveblaj.

Kaj nun ni saltas ĝis ĉirkaŭ 1990, kiam mi komencis pensi ke mi ne povus memori iomete bone miaj malnovaj vojaĝoj. Mi tiam komencis rekonstrui ĉi tiujn vojaĝojn, bazitante, inter aliaj aferoj, sur pasportaj poŝtmarkoj, fotoj kaj bildkartoj kaj sur miaj propraj notoj kaj memoroj. Kaj nun mi ankaŭ komencis desegni kardojn de la itinerojn. Ĉio okazis sur papero, ĉar mia Comodoro 64 ne povis esti uzata kiel mapofarilo, kaj eĉ la unua 'trenebla' komputilo kiun mi aĉetis komence de la 1990-aj jaroj malbonis por fari grafikojn. Do mi skribis miajn vojaĝajn raportojn pri maŝino. Nur kiam mi aĉetis hejman komputilon kun fenestroj kaj skanilo mi povis komenci konstrui elektronikajn dokumentarojn. Evidente mi scanis ĉiujn la malnovajn manfaritajn kartojn (vidu ekzemple sube), kaj mi daŭrigis fari mandesignadojn kartojn ĝis la jaro 2014. La mapo sube montras mian itineron el Venecio al la unua poliglota konferenco en Budapesto en majo 2013 (pli unu el la urbomapoj).

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Dume, Google komencis fari sufiĉe utilajn urbajn mapojn, kaj mi havis grafikan programon kiu povis marki rutojn kaj forigi la plej senrilatajn
kaj disruptivajn reklamajn markojn, kaj mi do uzis la kartojn de Googlo post 2013. Mi eĉ faris tiajn kartojn por kompletigi la desegnitajn kartojn reen al 2006. Sed hodiaŭ mi ankaŭ povas fari 3D-ajn Googlokartojn, kaj mi faris ilin kiel suplemento al la normalaj plataj kartoj por miaj vojaĝoj ĉi-jare.

Mia celo de ĉi-semajnfine estis ke mi havus ĉu 2D aŭ 3D-kartojn por ĈIUJ miaj vojaĝoj. Mi havas skanitajn manfaritajn kartojn por preskaŭ ĉiuj - krom Interrail 1,2 kaj 3, sed eĉ por tiuj lastaj mi kutime memoras iomete kie mi estis en la urboj vizititaj. Kaj nun ankaŭ ili devas esti dokumentitaj.

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DA: Og hvad er det værste der kan ske, når jeg har fyldt mit system med 2- eller 3-dimensionale Google-kort? Måske at jeg også vil have håndtegnede kort ved alle de nye rejser fordi de viser præcist de steder jeg har været og de ting jeg har set (og ikke blot dem der også var der, men som jeg ikke havde tid til eller ikke gad besøge). Og på mine egne gamle håndtegnede kort var der ikke henvisninger til irrelevante parkeringspladser, hoteller, spisesteder, advokatkontorer og frisørforretninger og andet ligegyldigt stads der kun er markeret på kortene fordi nogen har betalt til Google for æren.

EDIT: (SER) Мој црногорски телевизијски канал се вратио. Ово сам прославио тако што сам га слушао и разумем сам више него што сам схватио када сам написао текст изнад (иако вјероватно говоре црногорски, а не српски као у Србији). Да ли сам тврдио да је канал увек говорио? Тренутно, црногорци пјевају меланцхолици песме своје земље, али се надамо да ће се ускоро вратити.