Happy birthday here, happy birthday there !

Hi everyone,

After being in four classes today, and heard four times the “Happy birthday song”, well I think that everybody who reads me now must know about my 21th birthday ^^’ thanks Karine & Florianne for making the entire planet aware of it, and the others (of course!) for singing which such enjoyment !

Anyway I’m posting this know because I’m certainly going to forget it for next week, here is the little story we’ve imagined in class this morning, by Nassim, Karine, Laetitia, Jordan, Maxime, and me ! As you see, the title is very original =p enjoy !

Sophie’s Birthday

Today I took the bus, as usual. My bus driver talks a lot, sometimes, he even stops driving just to talk, which passengers find very annoying.

This morning, he wished me a “Happy birthday”. How could he know that it was my birthday? He might have seen my blog. I assume he got to know the everyday life of every passengers.

He made sure to tell everyone to sing along the Happy birthday song. His voice is just terrible.

After 5 minutes singing loud, everybody started complaining. People who are not used to take this bus must have trouble understanding the situation.

What is the conclusion? Just being a cool driver will not necessarily mean involving into people’s private life.

He was an entertainer, althought a better talker than a bus driver.

BTW : Karine’s birthday, revenge on November 7th !

Game development on web

So, here come the results of my “googling” about game development :

I started with those key words :

1) game development how to because it’s quite explicit after all, if we want to work on game industry

• http://www.gdmag.com/homepage.htm :
  A game development magazine, could be interesting
• http://www.gamasutra.com/ :
  Game development / Job offers => developers’ reference
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_development :
  Game development description
• http://www.parisgdc.com/ :
  Paris game dev conference / Interviews – Conferences (French)

others :

• http://www.garagegames.com
• http://www.devmaster.net
• http://www.gamedev.net

=> Game developers sites

2) Then , I looked for interviews so I added the key word : game development how to interview

• http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060518/sheffield_01.shtml :
  2006 interview with Tose, asian developer, talks about his job (text)
• http://www.xbox-platinium.com/Game-Development-Magazine,1733.html :
  2003 interview, game dev journalist – (French – text)
• http://plus.maths.org/issue7/interview/index.html :
  Andrew Wensley career in Eidos (Tomb Raider) – (text)
• http://mashable.com/2008/09/27/gendai-games/ :
  Game dev on web / iPhone / Drag & drop system – 2D & 3D maybe / Future possibilities (video 10:00 min) => Interesting but specific

3) So I was looking for videos, I added the key “video” but with “interview”, otherwise we would have too many results with “video games” so it wouldn’t be helpful : game development how to “video interview”:

• http://www.jobmonkey.com/videogamejobs/video_game_developer_interview.html :
  Game designer interview / About the job (Text)
• http://kidconfidence.com/blogs/2007/03/06/game-developer-conference-gdc-coverage-a-podcast-interview-with-dr-debbie-denise-reese-about-video-games-as-a-learning-tool/ :
  Game development as a learning tool / (Podcast) => Interesting but once again very specific
• http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/beyondgoodevil/video/6075520/beyond-good–evil-developer-interview-2 :
  Ubisoft / Michel Ancel / (Video) => French speaking English, very bad accent, interesting about the way of designing a game : Beyond good and evil
• http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/02/video-interview.html :
  Smash Bros developer / Character design / (Video)

3) I had too many videos in specific games so it wasn’t always interesting, I searched for some podcasts : game development how to podcast

• http://www.se-radio.net/podcast/2008-04/episode-92-introduction-game-development :
  Software Engineering Radio / (Podcast 40:00) => Introduction to Game Development => Very interesting but a bit long, advertissment in the beginning
• http://www.gdcradio.net/2007/09/game_career_sessions.html :
  About careers / Lots of podcasts-conference

Another assignment …

It’s funny because we had to transcript a podcast made by Steve Kaufmann, a linguist and a former diplomate who talks nine languages. My dear teacher Mr Gerome told us about him, so we have started to transcript a podcast which deals about the right way to learn languages, he says that it isn’t enough just to talk a lot without listening : if we really want to improve ourselves, we also have to want to improve. Anyway I’m trying to sump-up this because I was really going to do my assignment as my teacher told us to do, but the thing is … in the page he gave us to listen the podcast, the transcription of the podcast has already been made by its author, so it was really difficult to try to avoid it and pretend that “Oh gee I haven’t seen it and I will make my own transcription like I was blind -_-” you know what I’m saying… The other thing is that my friend Karine has kinda warned me about it, and so I couldn’t just do like her and pretend that I had never seen it, because even if I didn’t want to, I’ve read it all before I clicked on the link (ahah, that was fast uh? umh.. anyway…). You know, it’s like giving a test online and have the answers on the bottom, just right here and all you have to do is … not to look ! Well, I believe in a lot of things, but surely not in something like that, and I’m sure that you either.

So… Instead of making a pathetic copy & paste of the transcription, I was thinking that this little story about “how come I didn’t make my own transcription” would be a very-healthy-english-improvement-exercice ! Because at the moment I’m writing this, I’m thinking that it is not as easy as it seems. When we write in French, we think of the right way to make the sentence, and choose the words, (and even that is not easy for everyone, still…), when we write in English, we think in French, then in English, then we try to think of a better way to say it, or write it. Because, as Mr Gerome said in class last week, sentences translated in English or French do not sound the same after the translation. Passive form, for example, doesn’t sound as good in English as it sounds in French, and I’m realizing that now, while I’m trying to share my thoughts, and I really want to make it simple : no hard words, no complicated grammar, I just want to send a very simple message, and somehow I’m making my own reflection about langages too (but I know, I’m not a linguist, and I don’t have a beard either, ahah!).

Anyway, for you Mr Gerome (because now that I’ve read your e-mail, I know now that you DO watch our blogs, I’m aiming to do my assignment about the google search, so don’t worry, this time you will have it before 9:00 am tomorrow, and even before 10:00 pm) see you later !

Welcome

Hi everybody,

As our English teacher Mr Gerome wanted us all to create our own English blog, tadaa here it is !

My audio presentation is available here