Happy Birthday, Mr. Jobs!

Today is a very special day for me and for all other Apple fans and Macintosh evangelists:
Today, Apple-cofounder Steven Paul Jobs, born February 24, 1955 should have become 57 years old.
Sadly, this day is celebrated without him.

Of course, I wrote a condolence letter in October and my first YouTube video was partially devoted to him. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVawp7bn0Zk&feature=g-upl&context=G263181cAUAAAAAAAAAA>

And featured there is also a kind of tribute portrait of him, shown below.

For those, who cannot read Beneventan minuscules nor learned Latin, the text under the main picture says "Rest in peace, iGod of  computers, mobile phones and iPods of the Apple company."


That's all for now, stay hungry, foolish and tuned!

You want an Anti-ACTA Song That's Rhythmic and Retro? Check This Out!

ACTA is so infamous, I've taken a very famous song of the 70s and transplanted my own anti-ACTA lyrics to it. The original song is called "Video Killed the Radio Star" (© Buggles, 1979) and was the first MTV video. My remake is called "ACTA Will Kill the Internet" and fills some instrumental chords with lyrics - to emphasize the importance of the internet users.

Passages sung in the background are marked with brackets and comments with "<" and ">".
Have fun singing along! ^^

Lyrics - ACTA Will Kill the Internet
You wonder what would ACTA really mean for you?
Censoring Twitter, weblogs, Facebook and YouTube,
or killing half of them right along when ratified. <= approved>
(Oh no-o!)

Free speech is gone - be critical and you are blocked.
And of course, if you download only one song;
your internet connection's cut off, no-one told.
(Oh no-o!)

There's more to tell ya!
(So, so-o?)
I've got to tell ya:

ACTA will kill the internet <2x>

My Mac's screen, it will stay black
(Fo-or goo-ood)

The US blocked MegaUpload already -
and closing Wikipedia is on the way!

I couldn't go on constructing my Romance!
<i.e. Lingua Communa Romanica - Common Romance Language>
(Shall not happen!)

Digital Natives!
(Oh yeah!)
Stand up and protest!

Tim Cook won't come and save us with another Macintosh! <reference to the "1984" commercial>
(Orwell's "1984" - I fear it will come)

<instrumental interplay>
<electric guitar> SCREW THAT GOD-DAMN ACTA!
ACTA will kill the internet! <2x>
Middle Ages 2.0 we are just ahead of you! New Latin is on the way, EMI, GEMA will be blamed!

<quiet> (ACTA will kill our liberal internet; ACTA will murder our Information Age!)
ACTA will kill the internet <4x>
(Jo-in a demonstration!)
(Si-gn a petition!)
(Get your government to know!)
(So that ACTA will be stopped!) <fadeout>

Any other news?

Of course: Apple has released a developer preview of their next Macintosh operating system, OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion", which is integrating iOS features further. Also, apps like iCal, iChat and Address Book will be renamed to match their iOS counterparts!

But sadly, a bunch of Macs won't be able to run it - white "polycarbonate" iMacs (Intel Core2 Duo) for example.

I'm excited what more new features it will have. Likely, it will be released in summer in the Mac App Store only.

Stay hungry, foolish and tuned!

ACTA goes on... new iLog entry

Phew... Germany does not sign the ACTA-treaty yet, copying Poland. ACTA isn't effective in the EU (European Union - 28 countries in summer [adding Croatia then]), because not every country signed it yet. But I see the digital "1984" coming.
And I fear Apple won't come and rescue the freedom of the internet.

Anyway, I've got to talk about the weather here in Germany. It's damn cold. That's it. No snow (at least, not much), just -18°C and below. Can't there be just a wave of warm days in February?


iLog (12/Feb/2012)

iWizard
On the other hand, I have news in the progress of iWizard:
The class trip to the pile had a violence-high, but it dissolved just before the classmates of the main character gather around the teacher - and go back to the youth hostel.
Later, his two roommates go away - leaving him locked out of the room for two hours.
As they return, he feels tired and a bit dizzy. He wants to get a snatch of sleep, but there is a party in the room.
He falls asleep anyway, only to wake up in the night with a strange feeling expanding from the left arm...

I have a more detailed idea for the third chapter: a classmate of the main character is (secretly) possessed by a demonic ghost which wants to destruct the world as soon as a certain paragraph of a spell book is read aloud - in the Tuscany. 
The name of chapter 3: Legends can be deceiving.


Lingua Romanica Communa
I brought a scribbling pad to note down the grammar of my language.
The present tense looks virtually like Classical Latin and may sound like it in the classic, restored pronunciation.
Speaking of sounds, I worked also on the phonetic features, taking various developments of Vulgar Latin into account.
It may sound half Italian and half Old Spanish.

In orthography, it follows mainly Italian and Latin, with the inclusion of a special letter: the "e caudata" (tailed e): ę, which symbolized originally an abbreviated version of the AE-ligrature in Latin.
As far as I plan, the demonstratives and definite articles will be completely shifted to match the endings of the nouns.
But it does not have to be like this for the articles.

Stay hungry, foolish and tuned!

Breaking News - Feb/12/2012
Sad news as soon as I switched on my iMac today: Whitney Houston has died at age 48.
I didn't know much about her, but I know her iconic song "I Will Always Love You".
I literally witness the 80s falling apart:
Michael Jackson (died June 25, 2009) , Steven Paul Jobs (died October 5, 2011) and now Whitney Houston died relatively young. We will miss them.

Requiescant in Pace vox angelorum  - Rest in piece voice of the Angels

ACTA is Killing the Internet like Cancer did Jobs

Horrible news - 22 countries signed ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) on Thursday, January 24.
What this could mean is ceasing the internet as we know it today - a free platform to exchange data and retrieve information - free in the sense of expression and freedom of speech and (also) data.
US government blocked Megaupload last week - on the 29th anniversary of the Apple Lisa (Jan. 19), ACTA comes next to kill digital freedom. The Polish people are protesting on the streets against the law which could block Wikipedia and other useful sites.
And remember: in the 60s, when the internet was set up first (as ARPAnet) - nobody cared about digital copyright. And today there is a movement, going out from young people which use the net daily. This movement is noticeable when you download a song - we want everything for free and we don't see any use in copyright - nobody will ever control the internet completely. And no law will be ever able to in force it. Where are we living? In a totalitarian dictatorship like in "1984"?
NO! We are living in a (mostly) peaceful and democratic world - If we will give in to a dirty sheet of paper, the internet - the last outpost of total freedom - will slowly deteriorate to a grade it will just vanish from existence. The freedom in the internet will end more or less surprisingly - like died Steven Paul Jobs: Foreseeable, but still surprisingly.


Today is also the day of Holocaust: Take a minute of silence and think about the things that happened in the concentration camps during the Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s.


That's my thoughts on today.


Stay hungry, foolish and tuned! 

The Computer for the Rest of us is 28

January 24, 2012 - Finally opened my blog. There's a reason why I did it exactly today:
Exactly 28 years ago, Apple Computers, Inc. introduced the original Apple Macintosh at a price of $2,495. This one was the third industry standard, of which I have got two later descendants.
Macintosh - The computer for the rest of us. That event happened on Tuesday, January 24, 1984.

The title of my blog is Latin for "Books, Languages and I", which is exactly the suppose for: Commenting about my (second) book and a constructed language of Latin origin. And maybe you will see something about me...

This post is re-issuing my "iLog" entries in Facebook, for everybody who wants to catch up.

November 16, 2011: Friday will be a torture for me, since I hate watching football games. But then again, I can go on and write some passages into my second book and develop the verb conjugation system of my constructed language. The present is already done, I need a past (maybe two or three) and a future tense (or two). And that's gonna be version 2.0 Alpha (0.0.2 final) of Lingua Latina Nova - a Vulgar Latin, mixed with Spanish (primarily), French, Italian and maybe Portuguese.

And the time scale of the iWizard is already set: October 6, 2011 [guess why] until the beginning of the summer holidays. Well, that's a plan for Friday afternoon.

November 20, 2011: Had been working in the pseudonymes and time scale of my iWizard. October 6 - 10 days after the Tuscany Trip with my class. A perfect place for a showdown. Writing that in Bastard Secretary hand. I love that script. ;-)

iLog (Dec/18/2011)
Lingua Romana (Communa) - The noun declension tables are finally fixed on paper (three declensions - one for each gender [preserving neuter BTW], three cases each [nominative/vocative (casus rectus), genitive/dative (c. obliquus)], accusative/ablative [c. directalis]) - It's not going to be much simpler.
Present time is resembling Spanish more than Italian - both descend from Vulgar Latin and that's where my LRC comes from: Rome's simple Latin.

iWizard - slowly leaving October 6. I've got so many ideas, but no way to get to them. But I'm gonna make a time leap to October 12, sure.

Stay tuned for more - and hungry and foolish! ;=)

iLog (Dec/25/2011)
iWizard: The class trip has begun and it's close to the first deciding activity. A potion is being made - it will work, but the main character will throw up in the end. ^^

No news for Lingua Romana yet, except for some words not yet written down - oh right, I will use the diphthongs IE <i.e. tierra -Spanish> and UO <i.e. schuola - Italian> for my Vulgar Latin "ancestor". Stay tuned, hungry and foolish!

iLog (01/01/2012) 

iWizard
It's going to be pretty... Thriller-like, the protagonist is alone with... a good friend, while the rest of the group is far away. Ad then, there is a werewolf facing them. - Oh my God, that's gonna be amazing --- INSANELY GREAT!

Lingua Romana Nova

Guess what was the first saying in my Neo-Latin: Happy New Year! - Felicu annu nuovu!

iLog (Jan/16/2012)
iWizard - The werewolf came (no, there were two...) and it's gonna be a bit bloody - but first aid will fix it. I've got a ton of ideas for chapter 2 - "Differences come with a price". And much more is coming :-)

Lingua Romanica Communa - Phew... I changed some u's into o's in the male section of the noun's declension table and tweaked some endings of present conjugation. The imperative looks like Polish. ^^

Stay hungry, foolish and tuned!

iLog (Jan/18/2012)iWizard /only/ - Beginning in the middle of chapter 2...
The man character is really pissed by a classmate and escapes to the restroom - and must face a really "chinchillian" surprise. And then a good friend wants to know what made him scream... -.-

Stay hungry, foolish and tuned!

That's all for now. Please comment.