Pukman @ WinK: the community that time didn't forget

My favorite presentation in this class was Yui's. It was about Amakusa, and it had a cute picture of dolphins! Also, check out Misaki's one on Ozu (with no wizard!). And Ayumi talks about Koshi City, while Kyoko introduces the Kuma region.

As you know, the Euro 2008 football competition is coming to an end soon. Last night, and the previous night, the two semi-finals were played, and the final will be held on Sunday, I believe.

Actually, I don't know the result of last night's semi-final, between Russia and Spain, and please don't tell me! The match started at about 3:30 this morning, so I recorded it and am planning to watch tonight. The previous semi-final, between Germany and Turkey, saw Germany emerge as victors after a very tough match, in which everyone says Turkey looked much better but couldn't score many goals. Unfortunately, it wasn't shown on Japanese terrestrial TV, so I just saw the goals.

Everone seems to agree that this year's competition is much more exciting than last year's. Interestingly, though, the number of goals in the group stage was higher 4 years ago in Greece. Another interesting feature of this year's competition is that, generally, the teams that had a long rest before the quarter- or semi-finals lost their matches. This is surprising because in the domestic leagues it is usual to have about a week between matches, and everyone says that two matches a week is too much.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the final!

On today's menu:

1. Juppun ha juubun
2. Uploading presentations to Slideshare
3. Weblog Assessments / Free blogging

Notes on Slideshare:

1. If you already have an account on Slideshare, click Login (top right). (Remember to use Safari with Slideshare.)
   
2. Click on the Upload button (top left).
3. Click on Browse and select files, then find the file on your computer.
4. Add tags to your file. For example, if your presentation is about food in Kumamoto, you could use the tags kumamoto and food. Also make sure the title is OK, and add a short description.
5. Click Publish.
6. When you see a green check mark, click on the word here.
7. When the slideshow appears on your my-slideshows page, click on the title.
8. When your slideshow appears, click on the orange Blogger symbol to send it to a post on your blog.
   

Remember that you cannot upload Keynote files. If your presentation was created in Keynote, export it to PDF before uploading.
Also, the uploading and sending to Blogger stages don't always work perfectly. Please be patient. If things don't work, stay calm and just try again!

Hi. Check out my podcast.





Woops. That doesn't seem to work very well. I wonder if there's a free alternative to VisualHub?

As I mentioned above, the Euro 2008 competition has reached the quarter-final stage, and the first quarter-final was held last night. It was between Germany and Portugal, and Germany won 3-2.

Traditionally, Germany is known for performing badly at the beginning of competitions, but somehow beating teams that look stronger in the later stages. But this time Portugal looked really strong and attacking, and Germany looked quite weak, so I thought it would be different. But it looks like the old saying that "Football is a game where two teams kick a ball around for 90 minutes and Germany always wins" is more accurate than I suspected.

The Euro 2008 football tournament has reached the knockout stage, after 24 (?) matches in the group stages, and the quarterfinals are now being held, starting last night, I believe. Who do you think will win? I support Holland, and I think maybe this year they will be successful.

The quarter-finalists were/are:
Portugal v. Germany
Croatia v. Turkey
Holland v. Russia
Spain v. Italy

On today's menu:

1. Juppun ha juubun
2. Comments
3. Continue creating your presentation

If you've almost finished your presentation, please look at it again. If you have five or fewer slides, please add a few more. And check your grammar and spelling (or ask a friend to)!

When you've finished, try uploading your presentation to Slideshare, and then see try sending it to your blog from Slideshare.

If you change your presentation after uploading it, just upload the new version, then delete the old one. Also delete any blog posts containing the old one, and send the new one to your blog.

Remember that, based on last week's experience, Slideshare works best with Safari, not Firefox.

Note that the deadline for this assignment is next Thursday (June 26th). If you finish today, please start preparing a script to accompany your presentation.

Tonight, there are two exciting soccer matches scheduled and then one tomorrow. I don't know whether I'll be able to find the time to watch all three of them! Tonight's matches are Euro 2008 fixtures, involving Holland against France, and Italy against Romania. Holland had a surprising and convincing victory against Italy a few days ago, while France had a scoreless draw with Romania, so both Italy and France are in some danger, even though they were originally favorites to top the group.

Tomorrow night, Japan will play Thailand away. If Japan wins, their chances of going through to the final qualifying rounds of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa will be very good. If they don't win, they will be in something of a crisis. Okubo is suspended, while Nakamura Shunsuke has a slight injury, so I wonder what their line-up will be.

Last night, I saw Japan's Under-23 team play against Cameroon. Japan played really well, but the game ended in a scoreless draw.

Charlie Wilson's War is a movie that is playing now in Kumamoto. It's based on a true story, and is about a politician in the US who decides that his country should help Afghans fight against the Soviet Union. I don't know enough about the true story to judge his actions, but my interpretation was that individuals need to think clearly and work hard to do good things when the systems in our society are not working well. On a more pessimistic note, the movie seemed to suggest that there are limits to how far this approach can go. While in the beginning some determination from Charlie is almost enough to make things happen, at the end his efforts are blocked.
The movie stars Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, and you can read about it here.
(135 words)

Check out the search widget in my sidebar, and use it to search the KGU English Reading Garden collection. Some sample searches to try:

• Usborne
• I Can Read
• Bookworms
• Cambridge

If you want to add a search widget to your own blog, go ahead!

Last week, we didn't have much time to work on "Essay" 4, a presentation about Kumamoto, but you did have a chance to start thinking about the topic, and to experiment with Keynote and/or PowerPoint. This week, we'll start serious work on the presentation. Key points are:

1. Save the work you do, preferably in at least 2 ways/places;*
2. 5 slides minimum, and about 10 slides maximum;
3. You can base your presentation on Essay 2, or do something a little different;
4. You shouldn't have long paragraphs on your slides. It's better to use small amounts of text and some images;
5. Because the amount of text is small, please make sure it's well-written!

If time allows, I'll show you how to sign up for SlideShare, the service we will use to put the presentation into our blogs.

* Please save images and notes as well as your presentation file. In the future, we may use those again to present the information with your voice.

One other thing: I had forgotten all about the "Word Count" widget, but was reminded about it when I saw it on a few students' blogs. I recommend that you install it in your blog footer; then you can count the words in your posts easily.

The Euro 2008 football tournament is proving to be quite exciting. Teams that are generally considered very defensive, such as Italy and Greece, have lost their first matches, while attacking teams like Holland have been doing very well. There have been some major upsets, such as Holland's 3-0 victory over Italy, and last night's defeat by Croatia of Turkey. Unfortunately, not many matches are on terrestrial TV channels, so I have only seen one match so far. Tonight, another two matches will be on TV, featuring Holland, France, Romania, and Italy.

(This was created in GarageBand and converted to Windows media (.wmv) using VisualHub.)

(This was created in iMovie. I had a voice track and a podcast track, into which I dragged pictures.)

Another movie that's getting a lot of attention is the second Narnia movie, The Chonicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Apparently, it didn't do as well as expected in the U.S.A. BUt I think it's much better than the first Narnia movie, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When I first saw the trailer for the first movie, I felt that the makers weren't really comfortable in the Narnia world, and were kind of copying The Lord of the Rings, and that feeling continued through the movie. In the second movie, the makers seem more liberated and comfortable exploring the world of Narnia, and the special effects were much better. The one thing that wasn't so good was the four children. They weren't the focus of the movie as much as in the first one, and they seemed a little detached what was happening. You can read more about the movie at IMDB, and you can see the trailer at Apple's trailers site.

Please be sure to use the Edit HTML tab!

Woops! I seem to have messed things up! Let's see how you do!

Please be sure to use the Edit HTML tab!

This is generated from a sample weblog report in Google Spreadsheets. You can also embed this at the bottom or top of your blog.

This is session 8, 8 weeks after the beginning of the semester, so you should have written at least 40 posts this semester, including 8 book reviews and 3 essays (self-introduction, Kumamoto, movie review).

On today's menu:

1. Juppun ha juubun
2. Weblog evaluation 1
3. Starting "essay" 4: Kumamoto Presentation

For number 2, useful tools are Excel and Google Docs & Spreadsheets.
For number 3, we'll use Keynote or PowerPoint.

It's very important, especially with your Keynote or PowerPoint file, to keep your work safe. If you have a flash memory stick, please be sure to keep your file there. You can also use the school teishutsubako system. And emailing the file to yourself is another good way; if you do this, email it in two formats: the original, and one other (e.g. an archive if you use PowerPoint; PowerPoint if you use Keynote).