Tag Archives: Great Design

Great Design

Great Design

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

Great Design

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

Great Design

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

Great Design

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.

Great Design

Great Design

Flawless Recall: Memorizing Spanish Days Of The Week, For Students And Teachers by Alexander Van Berg

Flawless Recall: Memorizing Spanish Days Of The Week, For Students And Teachers has just been published, and this book is interesting.  The paperback version is short, it’s $10, and it’s full color.  It’s roughly 38 pages and mostly pictures, so you could almost call it a “picture book”, but it’s for all ages.  In my opinion, it’s the sort of thing that’s perfect as a small gift for new students of Spanish – for Christmas or any other gift-giving occasion.

The book description probably has the best summary:

Flawless Recall: Memorizing Spanish Days Of The Week is a refreshing and highly effective take on a very old subject: English speakers memorizing the days of the week in Spanish.

Part educational and part mnemonic insight, part riddle and part whodunnit, part comical and part cautionary tale, part celestial and part sinister, and part quixotic and part horrifying, you will never look at Monday morning the same way again!  Most importantly, once and for all, you will remember the days of the week in Spanish!

As a minor rest stop in the Flawless Recall series on the Spanish language, you will analyze the same simple story, forwards and back, several times over.  Afterwards, your mind will thank you as it sinks its teeth into the extremely tractable content.

Memorization is involuntary once you read this short, easy, breezy, and unforgettable Flawless Recall book!  You are now one step closer to conversational Spanish!

Right now the book is working its way to the different marketplaces.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BLFYBHNV

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BLPBB7TT

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/flawless-recall-alexander-van-berg/1142630724

https://books.apple.com/us/book/flawless-recall-memorizing-spanish-days-of-the-week/id6444242339

https://books2read.com/daysoftheweek

Great Design

Great Design

Flawless Recall Expansion Book: Memorize Irregular Conjugations Of QUERER, For Students And Teachers by Alexander Van Berg

Flawless Recall Expansion Book: Memorize Irregular Conjugations Of QUERER, For Students And Teachers has been published, and in a fitting tribute to the Spanish verb querer, the book will be available for FREE, or as close to FREE as each individual marketplace will allow!

This represents an unbeatable value for anyone who has already learned the original, foundational system in Flawless Recall: Universal Memorization Method For Conjugating Regular Spanish Verbs, and for new students of Spanish, it makes the value proposition even more alluring.

A very motivated student could learn the foundational system in the original book, read this expansion book for free, and then start writing memorization content for any irregular verb that he’s interested in.

The book is currently working its way to the different marketplaces.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJF6KF1STEST

https://books.apple.com/us/book/flawless-recall-expansion-book-memorize-irregular-conjugations/id6443878756TEST

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/flawless-recall-expansion-book-alexander-van-berg/1142529427TEST

https://books2read.com/querer

Great Design

Great Design

Flawless Recall: Memorizing Spanish Demonstrative Pronouns & Demonstrative Determiners, For Students And Teachers by Alexander Van Berg… A Handy Visual Chart for 99¢

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BH2LKSC4/

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1302901522/flawless-recall-memorizing-spanish

Spanish demonstrative pronouns (e.g. este, esta, esto, etc.) and demonstrative determiners have always been too easy to get confused and too asymmetrical for my mind.  I drew up a pretty good chart that really helps with that, and I found that it’s surprisingly easy to take something as small as a couple of visual charts and offer it for sale.

Great Design

Great Design

Flawless Recall Expansion Book: Memorize Irregular Conjugations Of SER, For Students And Teachers by Alexander Van Berg

My third book is currently being published.  My first follow-up book covered the Spanish verb estar, and this second follow-up book covers the Spanish verb ser.  Both of these expansion books utilize and extend the foundational system in the original book.

Considering estar and ser are loosely related, conflated, and easily confused, I figured it made sense to publish distinctive works on this pair of frequently used verbs.  And so in a way, these two expansion books are worth more than the sum of their parts.

In my opinion, this book has some of the best mnemonics and visualizations yet.

One of the strong selling points of this series of Flawless Recall books is it provides enough instruction so that you can eventually generate your own custom expansion content for any irregular verb that you like.  And for the ambitious student or teacher, they could possibly take the entire system, and look at adapting it to a completely different language.

The book is currently working its way to the different marketplaces.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BHNZ4WSV

https://books.apple.com/us/book/flawless-recall-expansion-book-memorize-irregular-conjugations/id6443567341

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1142359150

https://books2read.com/ser

Great Design

Great Design

The Claim (2000), Extremely Underrated And Much More

American poster for The Claim (2000).

 

I was very impressed the first time I saw The Claim, which wasn’t that long ago.  I had never heard of this film, and at 6.3 on IMDb, this has to be one of the most underrated films on the site, after filtering out more minor works.  I’d have to rate it at least 9.0 out of 10, and I don’t say that lightly.

The Claim is various complex stories wrapped up in a very simple story.  The simple story being an old, cruel America finally being replaced by a more effective and newer, old, cruel America.  (And of course, all of these iterations of America would finally get us to the relatively advanced America we live in today.)

Although American politicians and the United States military demarcated America’s boundaries, all of that land would only become America through the confluence of various inviolable determinations, and this is captured brilliantly in The Claim.

There were always two manifest destinies, or at least two facets to the ill-defined term.  The simple story in The Claim is a haunting story.  The original victors of the geographical manifest destiny are rendered extinct by ushers of the chronological manifest destiny.

I’m not sure why, but this film has not received the attention that it deserves.  I believe it should be inducted into the US National Film Registry as important and compelling Americana.  And all of this is made just slightly more strange by the fact that it was a co-production between Canada and Britain.

I purchased the DVD and I watched it for a second time with Spanish audio.  It transferred very well with Spanish audio, although some of the Spanish translations do not do justice to the original English lines.  The film definitely holds up over time, and my guess is that it delivers in any language.

Great Design

Great Design

Flawless Recall Expansion Book: Memorize Irregular Conjugations Of ESTAR, For Students And Teachers by Alexander Van Berg

I released my first book last month, and now I’ve released a follow-up to it – Flawless Recall Expansion Book: Memorize Irregular Conjugations Of ESTAR, For Students And Teachers.

This follow-up book is very, very interesting because it demonstrates how the original system for regular Spanish verbs can be re-used, to a significant degree, for different irregular Spanish verbs.

To anyone who’s struggled with this aspect of Spanish, and wanted to finally memorize these conjugations, I can’t recommend these books enough!

Right now the book is working its way to the different marketplaces.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFCVN3NX

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/flawless-recall-expansion-book-alexander-van-berg/1142239905

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1305006085/flawless-recall-expansion-book-memorize

https://books2read.com/estar

Given that irregular Spanish verbs tend to be even more jagged and chaotic than regular Spanish verbs, a good memorization system really makes sense.

The common teaching style in schools tends to revolve around rote memorization, and the analogy here would be traveling in Japan from Tokyo to Kyoto.  Rote memorization is like crawling there with a heavy ball and chain shackled to your ankle, while a good mnemonic system is like taking the bullet train.  Yes, the bullet train still takes time to get there, but it gets there a lot faster than crawling, and more importantly, it’s also reliable.