Great Design

October 30, 2023 Alexander Van Berg

Tonic Mnemonic: NOISE Soon

In Spanish, the tonic syllable is the syllable that sounds loudest when pronounced.

• When an accent mark (tilde) is present, it is very clear.

sofá: so – FA

• When then there is no accent mark, a set of rules must be used instead. When the word ends in a consonant other than n or s, the last syllable is the tonic syllable.

feliz: fe – LIZ

• And when the word ends in the consonant n or s, the second-to-last syllable is the tonic syllable.

oasis: o – A – sis

So how do we remember the n-or-s rule for penultimate syllable stressing? As usual, from a hodge-podge of mostly complementary mnemonic aids – it’s not necessary to remember all of them for the mnemonic to work.

First, noise and soon both have the operative consonants n and s. These are the only consonants the mnemonic is keyed to.

Second, when “noise is soon” to occur, you obviously cannot be on the last syllable yet. So we’ll say you must be on the penultimate syllable.

Third, there are two words in the mnemonic itself (noise and soon), which corresponds to the number 2, and the number 2 corroborates the penultimate nature of the mnemonic.

Fourth, the mnemonic words themselves, conveniently enough, have only two consonants (n and s). The number 2 once again corroborates the penultimate nature of the mnemonic.

Finally, in the mnemonic phrase, the (capitalized) word NOISE is the only word out of the two words that you would expect to have tonic emphasis. By its very definition, noise would have audible precedence over a temporal concept like soon. So from the reading of the mnemonic itself, once again the penultimate syllable is stressed.

October 5, 2023 Alexander Van Berg

Language-Learning Efficiency

I recently realized that the most efficient time to start reading a book in a foreign language is after you can reliably pronounce words in that language (at least to a reasonable degree). That capability allows you to get near-instant translations from translator apps on your phone via voice commands.

Great Design

September 16, 2023 Alexander Van Berg

El Dorado Is In The Mind

Technically, El Dorado – if it exists – is massively distributed underneath South American soil and in similar South American sites, at locations that only Inca record keepers had memorized. According to a documentary I just saw, this is a close and in fact probable approximation for the El Dorado that many (including myself) had considered to be mythical.

When Pizarro held the final Inca Emperor Atahualpa hostage, and demanded gold, an untold amount was brought to him, from parts unknown, and without any understanding of how it could have possibly been stored somewhere.

The best theory is a large, distributed set of Inca record keepers memorized countless hidden locations where portions of the mammoth Inca gold reserves were individually secured. After Atahualpa was killed, the details of any such system may have died with him.

The suspicion is much more Inca gold remained hidden throughout that part of South America, and in fact treasure seekers still haunt that region and occasionally find more Inca gold that unfortunately ends up on the black market instead of museums.

Great Design

August 20, 2023 Alexander Van Berg

Use The Bottom Half Of A Spray Cleaner Bottle To Soak Paintbrushes

I needed to soak a paintbrush in paint thinner overnight to clean it. While it’s said that used paint thinner is still usable, my goal was to use as little new paint thinner as possible, and no typical container really met that goal.

I find it hard to believe no one else has ever thought of it, but none of the most popular internet articles and instructional videos suggest using the bottom half of a spray cleaner bottle. In fact one of the more popular videos – by someone who obviously had a lot more experience than me – illustrated how one can balance a cylindrical can on its edge precariously so that the gasoline he put inside the can would soak more of the paintbrush.

We had dozens of different spray cleaners – 409, Lysol, generic brands, and a near-empty Frosch-brand cleaner. The Frosch bottle had a thinner profile, fit the paintbrush like a glove, and worked perfectly.

Great Design

July 9, 2023 Alexander Van Berg

Diphthong Mnemonic: The Spanish Language Is Greater Than You & I

In Spanish, two vowels side-by-side may be pronounced as one syllable or two syllables, depending on the vowels in question. (Note that the order of the vowels doesn’t matter.)

“Strong Vowels”: A E O

“Weak Vowels”: U I

• 2 strong vowels together = 2 separate syllables

aeropuerto: a – e – ro – puer – to

• 2 weak vowels together = 1 syllable (diphthong)

ciudad: ciu – dad

• 1 strong vowel + 1 weak vowel together = 1 syllable (diphthong)

pueblo: pue – blo

An accent mark on a weak vowel will undo what would otherwise be one syllable.

día: di – a

The true pronunciation of aeropuerto still kind of messes with my mind. I also used to think of ciudad as 3 syllables. That’s the whole idea behind having the mnemonic.

As for the mnemonic itself, it’s simple and pretty self-explanatory – just convert “you & I” to “U & I”, and those are the two things noted as being smaller or weaker than something else. It helps you remember which two vowels are the “weak vowels”. As for the rest of the rules, one could make up something like the following: Two “strong vowels” side-by-side will each demand their own limelight; they each demand to be pronounced separately. Conversely, two “weak vowels” will band together to be pronounced.

Of minor interest is the fact that if you perhaps disagree with the jingle, in its surface-level reading, then that mental dissonance would, in general, probably create a more effective mnemonic for you.

Great Design

March 17, 2023 Alexander Van Berg

Committing To Advance The User-Experience State-Of-The-Art

Like millions and perhaps even billions of other people, it happens to me at least several times a day: I’m prompted by a computing device to make a decision I don’t care to make.

In most cases, I don’t want to make decision. In fact, I don’t want to even read about what the decision is about, much less make the decision. But if I had to make a decision, I would usually just want to keep the current state of whatever it is the prompt it talking about.

But of course, the prompt almost never tells you what the current state is, nor how your potential decision might affect the current state.

A lot of times, there is an ‘X’ somewhere that you can click to make the prompt go away, but even that is not ideal. I usually have to think for a split second and translate that ‘X’ in my mind to “probably non-committal so I’ll click that”.

The industry standard for user experience (“UX”) ought to be updated such that this entire idea is finally recognized as a first-class concept.

Specifically, there ought to be a separate button, that is at least as prominent as the other buttons, and which says something to the effect of “Non-Committal”.

The collective amount of time that would probably save humanity can not be under-estimated.

Poor Design

March 11, 2023 Alexander Van Berg

Cheating Windows Out Of Cheating You (The Fingerprint Reader)

For all I know, this is a well-known problem with an easy solution, but after searching online, it seems like many people have the same problem, and nobody has a solution.

The problem, for some reason, is this: If you have a fingerprint reader (as a faster log-in method so you don’t have to type your password), and the sensor/Windows doesn’t verify your fingerprint after about 3 tries, Windows will require you to type your password.

It seems like Windows is being insane. I can’t think of a reasonable security rationale for not allowing unlimited fingerprint tries, when of course you have unlimited password attempts.

The workaround is this: Alternate the fingers you use in between unsuccessful fingerprint verifications.

If finger #1 doesn’t work, try finger #2 next. If that doesn’t work, go back to finger #1. Windows allows you to register at least two fingerprints, so everyone who has this problem ought to be able to use this workaround.

When you use this workaround, the number of tries that Windows gives you goes way up. It seems like more than enough to eventually get a successful fingerprint verification, at which point you’re logged in.

Of course, this makes the whole thing seem even more insane. If there were no security rationale to begin with, then I really, really have no idea how to describe the security rationale for this extended workaround.

Great Processes

March 5, 2023 Alexander Van Berg

Chicken Or The Egg, When To Really Learn Spanish Tenses, And What Has Worked For Me

One challenging aspect of language acquisition is the chicken or the egg problem. Languages tend to have many moving parts, which in turn are all dependent on each other. Thus, there is not a strict, orderly sequence of lessons you can simply march through to learn the language.

Although I suspect language experts and theorists have studied this concept in detail, as well as specific manifestations of the problem, I’ve never really heard anyone talk about it as it pertains to learning tenses in the Spanish language.

In my experience, you can only learn so much Spanish before a lack of proficiency in the tenses start to become an learning bottleneck or roadblock.

To illustrate with an overly simple example, you can learn how to say different colors in Spanish, without any comprehension of the Spanish-language tenses, but it will be quite painful to at the same time study general Spanish idioms, which have a much greater dependency on tense knowledge.

The interesting question is this: Where would one draw the line in Spanish curriculum, and say that Spanish-language tenses must really be learned before this arbitrary line in the sand is crossed?

I’m definitely not an expert, but I’ll share my personal observations and use popular Spanish educational books as a proxy for Spanish curriculum and the Spanish language in general.

You can really learn up to, and probably finish, Spanish 3: Advanced Conversation, without really learning Spanish-language tenses.

However, starting with Ultimate Spanish Beginner-Intermediate: A Complete Textbook and Reference Guide, I would say you really want to have already learned Spanish-language tenses.

I read Spanish 3: Advanced Conversation while concurrently writing and learning Flawless Recall: Universal Memorization Method For Conjugating Regular Spanish Verbs, For Students And Teachers.

My results have been very good. Where as I would have previously been blocked or significantly slowed down while trying to read Ultimate Spanish, I am now able to read it normally.

I would also point out that Spanish 3 and Ultimate Spanish (both by Living Language) are pretty good books. I definitely recommend both of them. Just looking at the marketing, I was worried Ultimate Spanish might be a rehash or regurgitation of Spanish 3, but it’s not. It’s a completely separate book, and it’s definitely a step up from Spanish 3. Finally, both of those Living Language books have some typos that might tend to really confuse you if you don’t have a decent understanding of the Spanish-language tenses!

Miscellany

February 20, 2023 Alexander Van Berg

ChatGPT: A Wily Son Of Gun

I previously shared my thoughts on the new, experimental AI-enhanced search engines.

Here I’ll share some chat excerpts that showcase some colorful and interesting discoveries. At this early stage, you really can’t read too much into them. However, one has to suspect the following: The heart of these issues will be difficult to tamp down.