Saturday, 6 July 2013

On inconsiderate people, spell checkers and Skarzysko biking

What a kerfuffle!The flat beside mine has been empty for a long time and I got used to tranquil nights spoiled only by occasional dog  dog bark or a rare car. Last night was different. The wild party woke me up at small hours: loud music, conversations, shouting, running up and down the stairs. No way I could get back to sleep. Hope it was a one off event and that lack of sleep won't bring about that nasty headache.
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I feel fine having made up for the missed sleep! While exercising my knee, I looked for a full version of a poem that shows how tricky a spell checker can be. I've decided to paste it in here to give an opportunity to re-write it to  those of you who are still learning English. You can submit your version in the comments section below this post and I shall think of a special reward for the author of the first correct answer!
Let me tell you what prompted me to look for this poem. Firstly, somebody kindly pointed out to me that I used the word 'bear' while meaning 'boar'. Of course, the blog spell checker didn't underline it and I didn't notice. That brought back an excellent BC seminar on spelling myths for the teachers of English. The speaker, Johanna Stirling mentioned this poem during her excellent presentation which was an excellent 'food for thought' on teaching the English spelling. Here is the poem:

Eye have a spelling chequer,
It came with my Pea Sea.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss Steaks I can knot sea.
Eye strike the quays and type a whirred
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am write oar wrong
It tells me straight a weigh.
Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your shore real glad two no.
Its vary polished in its weigh.
My chequer tolled me sew.
A chequer is a bless thing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right all stiles of righting,
And aides me when eye rime.
Each frays come posed up on my screen
Eye trussed too bee a joule.
The chequer pours o'er every word
Two cheque sum spelling rule.
The original version of this poem was written by Jerrold H. Zar in 1992. An unsophisticated spell checker will find little or no fault with this poem because it checks words in isolation. A more sophisticated spell checker will make use of a language model to consider the context in which a word occurs.
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Tadeusz Rolke is an 84-year old Polish photographer. I heard about him on the radio today and looked up his black and white works here and there. I simply had to google him up having seen Marian Maurizio Abramowicz's black and white photos from Spain recently.
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My cellphone snaps are saturated with colours when it's as sunny as these days. Do look:
















After swimming I was biking home and decided to stop at a new for me place adjacent to The Venecja Restaurant. It was an ideal moment to try freshly made juices on offer there. I asked for carrot juice which I like a lot. In no time a large glass was filled with the freshly squeezed liquid and I got so involved in a chat with the lady who made it for me that I forgot to take a picture of my my delicious beverage. Carrot one cost only 7 zloty for a large glass. One pound is now around 5 zloty, to give you the idea. There are many fruits and veggies to choose from at this place as well as various deserts. I was told that in August they are going to make the place bigger and also serve home made gyros and salads. When I'm next there, I'll take more pictures.

Now it's time for bed! The sun is long gone.
Good night!

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