I love the Internet

Linguno has been my favorite language learning website for a while now.

For the longest time, I really only paid attention to the excellent verb practice exercises.

Recently, though, I ran out of other online games to play and tried one of the Linguno crosswords. I don't think I had realized that they offer lots of monolingual crosswords - with the clues in the language you're practicing - but I was immediately delighted. I am repeatedly amazed at how well those relatively simple phrases in the practice language reinforce and expand my understanding.

Back in July, there was a great thread on Ask Metafilter called Upgrade my tourism answering the question:

What do you do when you visit a new city? I feel stuck in a rut of going to the well known museum, maybe visiting a local landmark or the downtown arts district or food hot spot. Everything starts to feel kind of the same. Any suggestions or ideas?

I was never all that interested in space as a kid. I enjoyed reading The Martian Chronicles and some other sci fi classics, but I was barely aware of NASA or the science of space exploration.

That all changed for me on the Fourth of July, 1997, when I watched the Mars Pathfinder land on the red planet.

My current approach to studying French is to make my way through some popular literature, picking up vocabulary words along the way.

I've found a number of Jules Verne works at Project Gutenberg, many available in both French and English. (I've seen several posts on one of the learning language forums reporting good results from reading a book in English and then in the original language. So far, I'm starting with the French, but I may change my mind.)

I decided to start with Around the World in 80 Days.

Karen's Weekend Assignment this week asks What else do you do for fun?

I love the Internet.

I popped this into Google:

analyzing pop music structures

The results include a huge glossary from the Society for Music Theory's Popular Music Interest Group and the usual ton of other interesting-looking stuff.