Weird Hamlet — retranslated from the French

Back when I was researching Hamlet for something I would later write up in Hypnotized by Hamlet, I came across reference to a French translation.

The translation of Shakespeare’s play was written by Dumas — yes, the same one who wrote Count of Monte Christo and Three Musketeers.  Since Count is a classic revenge story, I figured it would be worth a read.

But I couldn’t find it in English.  Even the miracle of inter-library loan couldn’t help me.  Finally, I had the good fortune to cross e-paths with Frank Morlock, who at that time had a nearly-completed translation.  He has since put the completed Hamlet, by Alexandre Dumas online.

If you’re curious, the Conrad he mentions is indeed me:  I nagged him to complete the project.  I was surprised to see the mention.  It was a selfish nag.

Dumas’s Hamlet is interesting in comparison to Shakespeare’s and Bellefrost’s, because both Dumas and Bellefrost wrote comparatively normal stories, whereas Shakespeare’s is pretty weird.  If you’re interested in identifying those weirdnesses, one tip is to compare with a non-weird text.

…as you can see, I don’t much go for proper academic terminology.

(I kind of want to read the Klingon Hamlet, but not badly enough to learn Klingon.  I admit I did have a copy briefly, but not knowing the language…

(If only some Klingon bilingual would take a tip from Mr. Morlock and translate the Klingon Hamlet in English!)

Play _Unicorn Story_ online!

I wrote a little online text game available for you to play online  (written with Ramus)!

The blurb goes–

“Unicorn Story –

A lyrical piece by Conrad Cook, hosted here for your pleasure. Not only it looks gorgeous, it also uses the medium in a fairly intriguing way.”

Many thanks, Felix, for the kind words and for supplying a web space for the game! This game is also mirrored, so you can play it here. Ralphmerridew hosts the mirror — thanks too!

(I’m reposting this from a comment in the Ramus announcement after it came to my attention it was effectively hiding there.)

Introducing Ramus! — a very nice dynamic document creator

Ramus is a nifty little document creator, created by Felix Pleșoianu, that allows you to start with a paragraph-long document and keep adding text, almost as if it were being written in front of you.  It’s designed to be an Undum lite (or a Vorple lite):  fewer features, but much easier.

And Ramus is very easy.

There are three things you need to make a basic, non-state-tracking document, like a CYOA, and those are laid out in this simple template file:

http://www.intfiction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=4678

A more complex demo can be found at the Ramus website.

Many thanks, Felix!

The Shakespearean Tabletop RPG!

Paul Budra, of Simon Fraser University, has created Play Extempore, the Shakespearean tabletop role-playing game — and has put it online free!

Learn Khmer Online: Another Free Cambodian Language PDF

http://pratyeka.org/csw/

This is like the Cambodian FSI course in format.  Unfortunately, I’m not finding the mp3s anywhere online.  The author has a web page here:

http://spokencambodian.110mb.com/

–where he explains the whole thing is free, and where he has put apparently just the first few lessons online.  But these he has considerably modernized.

He mentions that the mp3s are online, but I haven’t found them.  If you know where they are, post a comment!

This same guy also has an ebook for cheap where he talks about tooling around Asia on a motorcycle when he was 28.  It’s called “Monks and Motorcycles.”  Sounds like a groove:

http://www.lulu.com/product/e-book/monks-and-motorcycles/5751642

–I figure, if he’s going to put his “Modern Spoken Cambodian” course into the public domain and online, then I can give him some free advertising.  Franklin E. Huffman, here’s to you.

WTF?! – a free side-scroller development package!?

 There’s a free software package that allows you to create World of Warcraft-seeming side-scroller games.  They’ve released the whole thing for free, but they don’t provide a lot of  info to go along with it.

I’ve been keeping an eye on this, and I haven’t noticed anyone taking advantage of it.  The programming is mostly scripting, although I haven’t figured out how to put it all together yet.

If you know something about Flash- based programming with XML, or if you want to try your hand making games with this thing, let’s put our heads together:  I’ve created a google group for the purpose.  Let’s see if we can’t figure out the procedure for making a game.

–If anyone knows how to get the attention of the WTF?! guys, let me know.  Maybe we can get a demo of how the tools work, or some such.

 

Might Be Going To Korea…

Because there’s not enough work here.  Or, there’s work, but it’s difficult to get many hours, and the pay is pretty bad.

I’ve heard things are better in Phenom Phen, the Cambodian capital, but the basic trouble is just that Cambodia’s starting to feel the pinch, and there’s not a lot of money going around.

Anyway, if you want a good free Korean language course, this is the one I’ve found:

the FSI (Foreign Service Institute) Korean language course, by Unit

the FSI (Foreign Service Institute) Korean language course, by Volume 

BTW, it’s shockingly expensive to fly to Korea from Cambodia — as much as it would cost me to go home!  What’s with that?

English Teaching Geeking

I have previously sung the praises of Inspiration Pad Pro, which is a free, nifty, simple little program that picks items from lists and puts them into blanks in a template you write — like an automated version of Mad Libs.

I’m currently using this tool to create problem-sets for my English students.  This will allow me to tailor daily quizzes to focus on each individual student’s needs — with a little bit of tinkering per student, but not much.

And, once I’ve defined a problem set, I can just aim the computer at that set and tell it how many examples I need.  So, if two weeks from now I want 3 passive voice questions and 2 first conditional questions, I just aim the thing at the problem set I’ve already defined.

And, it’s better than cutting-and-pasting old questions, because there’s variety to the wording.

It’s a nice little program.

Academic Earth and Open Culture

Okay, this is very cool –

You can now get college lecture videos off the web for free.  The primary disadvantage, in comparison to going to college, is that you don’t get to hassle the teachers.

Links here (to Academic Earth) and here (to Open Culture).

The difference seems to be that Open Culture is organized more like a blog, apparently with links to off-site material, while Academic Earth has all their own videos that they put together in-house.

So expect consistency from Academic Earth, and variety from Open Culture.

Free ebook – Emotional Logic, by Aristotle

We’ve been talking about emotions a great deal, but it’s all been about using emotion to write powerful stories.  We haven’t said much about how emotion works.  Let’s remedy that.

I have for you here a classic work on emotion, by Aristotle.  It’s part of a larger work, which you may have heard of, called The Rhetoric.

Aristotle was a greatly practical-minded guy, and human nature hasn’t changed all that much in the past 2,300 years.  Definitely worth a read.

Here’s Aristotle on Emotional Logic.

ps – Also, you’ll notice I’ve conveniently added an item, “resources,” to the sidebar, where you’ll find this and any other ebooks I may add.