Narnia

Kenny and I got to go see Disney’s rendition of C. S. Lewis’ *The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe* in *Chronicles of Narnia*. He didn’t want to at first. He’s read all the books, some more than once. But he knew from the commercials that some of the scarier characters looked, well, scary! I kept good-naturedly needling him to go until finally he asked “Papa, why should I go and have those images in my head?”

Oh… uh… good point. Great. Now I’ve got a kid who it turns out has actually listened to me and values the sovereignty of *his* imagination over that of the director.

Continue reading Narnia

Greek 2 – second class

Reading was fun tonight. It was nice to have my brain start to see things, albeit with help. I can start to see what I don’t know. Maybe that sounds weird. What I mean is I am starting to recognize enough to say “I know what that is *supposed* to be, but I don’t know that form yet.” I really need to get a better handle on vocab, though. It’s not much good figuring out how a word is to work in a sentence, but not knowing what it means.

Notes from tonight: I must nail the full paradigm of definite articles. And I need to remember the definite articles on the vocab cards, since I can’t just *figure out* the gender of third declension words.

Assignments:

– Read Chapter 11
– Chapter 11 Vocab
– Workbook: Pg 33 parse odds
– Workbook: Pg 34 translate 1-5
– Memorize 1st and 2nd person personal pronoun paradigms
– Memorize πας paradigm

Preview (what we need to understand) from this chapter:

– Memorization noted above
– The difference between accented and unaccented pronouns
– How the case of a pronoun is determined
– How the person of a pronoun is determined
– How the gender of a pronoun is determined
– Distinctives of dentals in the 3rd declension

Book Recommendations:

– D. Hagner, Matthew, two volumes by Word
– W. D. Davies & D. Allison A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Matthew, three volumes by ICC
– R. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on his Handbook for a Mixed Church Under Persecution
– R. Guelich, Sermon on the Mount: A foundation for Understanding

Retaining it all

It really is true that a huge part of learning a language is the habit of it. It’s repetition which makes this data I’m trying to assimilate accessible when I need it. And it’s neglect which allows it to get buried with all the other cares and tasks and happenings of the day. And after a few days, it’s hard to dig it back out.

This shouldn’t be surprising to me after learning programming languages from Lasso to JSP to Javascript to PHP and so on. I think the difference between a programming language and Koine Greek (a dead language) is that I can experiment with programming languages and get instant feedback and instant gratification. Failure in a programming language can be an annoying but benign null pointer error. Failure in Greek can be heresy.

As I’m learning the third declension nouns, I’m feeling like I don’t have the first and second declensions solid enough yet. Which just piles on the stress. I know them, but they’re not “at the ready” like I want them to be. Maybe I’m just being impatient.

Will that stop me? μη γενοιτο! Heck, four months ago, the word declension scared me. :)

Good morning music

Helen often wakes up to the alarm playing the soundtrack CD from Sophie’s Choice. It’s nice, gentle, a little wistful.

Anyway, when she wasn’t looking, I cranked up iTunes, copied the CD, and made a new one with the first song the same as always (to give her that sense of familiarity), but the second song was [this annoying little tune][1] from an [old Sherlock Holmes movie][2]. I warn you, if you listen, it will stubbornly lodge itself in your head. Even singing it like Bob Dylan won’t get it out.

[1]: http://www.kpmartin.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/ayeaye.mp3
[2]: http://www.archive.org/details/secret_weapon

Greek 2 – First class

Assignments:

– Read Chapter 10
– Chapter 10 Vocab
– Memorize σαρχ paradigm
– Workbook: Pg 31 chart
– Workbook: Pg 31 parse odds
– Workbook: Pgs 32-33 translate 1-5

Book Recommendations:

– H. Alford The Greek New Testament 7th Ed. (number one pick, more technical greek)
– W. R. Nicell The Expositor’s Greek Testament
– I. H. Marshall New International Greek Testament Commentary
– G. Fee New International Commentary of the New Testament (number two pick, more homiletic/application)

To my fellow Lackian followers, you can view just the “Greek Class” category [here][1] (you can bookmark that, too).

[1]: http://php.kpmartin.com/wordpress/?cat=2

Great looking weather app

I’ve been interested in weather since I was a little kid with my little home weather station. I know. Dweeb. Anyway, some years ago, I got to mix that interest with my geek work while I was working for Digital Cyclone helping build different bits of [My-Cast][2], which I still use daily.

Well, something new is courting me for daily attention: [Seasonality][1]. So many nice bits of information, well displayed, and easy to use. Great sunrise/sunset display. Satellite photos with radar and satellite transparently laid over (user definable transparency). Ooo, graphs.

There’s a free demo; check it out!

Don’t worry, DCI; I can’t [run it on my phone][3]. :)

[1]: http://www.gauchosoft.com/Software/Seasonality/
[2]: http://www.my-cast.com/
[3]: http://www.digitalcyclone.com/mobile.html

Trading up

OK, so [this guy][1] has apparently been all over the news in various places. Why? He started a blog and had a red paperclip. He’s hoping to trade it for a house. It looks like it’s going to work. He’s already traded up to a truck in something like seven or eight trades. And, of course, there’s the book deal, the radio and TV interviews. Wow.

[1]: http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com

Get this, and get it straight: Crime is a sucker’s road and those who travel it wind up in the gutter, the prison, or the grave. There’s no other end… but they never learn.