I’m working on my ukrainian blog and dude, it fucking SUCKS.
Expression Engine 2.x is much different from 1.x and this very template is from 1.x, so.
Hello, learning curve.
To combat that, I’m using an ugly free template and a tutorial. The template is fucking ugly, but once I get a handle on how EE 2.x works, I’ll change out the ick and make it my own. Assuming I can remember how to do that… It’s not like I do fancy shit, but I haven’t worked on an HTML/PHP/CSS/RSS document in a very long time, and I do enjoy tweaking and personalising and generally recreating the wheel.
Because I’m a fucking moron.
The tutorial is awesome but looooooong. I’m on page 62 out of a 370 page book - that’s how in-depth this tutorial is. It’s actually quite perfect, because my ukrainian blog is going to be a bit different from this and any of my other blogs, for that matter. Might as well build it once and build it right.
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Also, I’m unbelievably pissed off that the default template EE supplies has hidden bits and I can’t get them to show, no matter how much I fuck with the config file. I HATE default settings that keep you from getting what you need… While I love the Agile Records site design, I do not love the fact that I can’t get into chunks of the site and change them. (This is why I’m using the ugly template.)
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I still haven’t written that letter… I barely got their birthday card out in time. I just don’t have anything to say. My life right now is work and Ukrainian homework and finding some weird ass shit in the iTunes store. I’m not sure the recipient would be cool with a letter that’s half written in Ukrainian and contains nothing but “OMG! I LOVE Ukrainian Ska!”
True story - I went looking for the Mad Heads XL in both the US and UK iTunes stores and they have other albums by the band, but not the ska one I just bought. How fucking weird is that? It’s like I hallucinated it or something.
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Apparently, a very shit faced Draco believes that ducks say moo. That stupid line has been cracking me up every time I think about it… but mostly because I modelled drunk Draco on someone specific and that is a direct quote.
I love my friends… even when drunk, they’re all kinds of awesome.
I finally bought a ‘textbook’ for my Ukie class, and after looking at it carefully, we decided that we had gone through the first four chapters.
Guess who has to work through four chapters of homework before Thursday’s class?
I definitely not going to complain about it (too much) - it’s nice to have some structure and some real information. It’s not that she’s a bad teacher. She’s really not, but she’s a native speaker (an expat from Lviv to be exact) living in Manchester (UK)) and sometimes, she has to work through a verb (or a noun, for that matter) to remember which declension / conjugation you need to use. It slows us down and sometimes she gets confused. On the handouts she created sometimes she made spelling mistakes. (I will forever love “Wowel”, but I’m not as amused by the mistakes in the Ukrainian words.)
Not to say that textbooks don’t have typos, but they have a specific order in which they teach things, good samples, and lists of related words.
I didn’t know how badly I needed that structure until I got it Friday AM.
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In other news, I can actually read Ukrainian now. Slowly, of course, but I’m recognising words and getting better at sounding them out.
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In other, other news, I have an idea for my ukrainian blog and I’ll probably start to work on it today in between writing fan fic, scouring iTunes for more Ukrainian music, and homework.
I’ll try to keep all this crap over there because I’m sure you don’t really care about it.
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It’s rare when all things in a person’s life go well. It’s been my experience that if your personal life sucks, then work is good and the opposite is true.
I love my job and I’m still excited to go in every day. Granted, it’s not the job I thought I was hired for, and I feel like I’m already outgrowing it, but I still love it. My co-workers are awesome and I get a little thrill when have to flash my arena staff badge.
My personal live is good. I have time to do things now. I’m learning about my roots. I’m exploring what life has to offer. I’m doing what I can to ensure my continuing happiness.
There are still things I need to work through and a few things I need to handle before I’ll reach my real happy place, but I can see it.
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Still getting kudos on the Cabin Pressure trilogy. It makes me happy like I can’t even express because it’s so rare for me to give up control and put certain bits of myself out there.
And on that note, I suppose I should write a letter to my prison pen-pal before I get to start on the good stuff…
if i had a ukie textbook, it’d definitely win the ‘thrown book’ award, but handouts don’t fly through the air quite as nicely
The University of Basketball does it again… whoo-hoo.
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I’ve been working hard on the Drarry fanfic and thinking about how fucking hard it is to keep characters in character. I had the same problem with the other fandoms, too. I suppose I’ll get over this one as well.
It’s just that I have a very concrete idea of how utterly broken both men are. The things that Harry went through his entire life… I see a guy with PTSD who is terrified that the peace won’t last, that suffers from a bone crushing depression when he looks at his life in terms of the people he’s lost. I see Draco as wanting to be redeemed. He was afraid at the end, when he had to kill Dumbledore and he was unsure of the choices he’d made. He was weak. He was human. He’d transcended whatever it was that being a Malfoy meant. Whether or not JKR meant for him to be ‘read’ that way, I did. I always sympathized a little bit with Draco. (I don’t know why…I just did.)
So… anywhoo… it’s just that these are two very different paths for these characters to take and they don’t quite wind up that way in canon, do they?
*sigh*
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Baczynsky’s - in the East Village - the Ukrainian meat market that kept my Easter baskets full of kielbasa and kobanos when I was growing up does fucking MAIL ORDER. I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am by this news. I don’t go into to the City (EVER!!!) and since I lost my connection, this has been a kind of huge problem. The local Polish deli makes, well, POLISH kielbasa and kobanos and it doesn’t quite taste the same. I don’t need to worry any more and I. Am. Ecstatic.
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Conjugating Ukrainian verbs sucks. How did I ever survive Latin and it’s six noun declensions (six each singular and plural)? Gah.
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I have a serious hard on for this album. I mean a serious hard on. I cannot, I repeat CAN. NOT. stop listening to it. I’m catching words here and there and I try to sing along, but it’s been a struggle. A fun struggle, a very loud, very fun, struggle, but a struggle nonetheless.
I think there really needs to be some sort of program on personal music playing system thingies that keeps you from listening to the same album for weeks. This can’t be healthy, no matter how much I’m enjoying it.
Three types of verbs in the Ukrainian language, with three different types of conjugations. Does the stem end with a vowel? A consonant? Is it irregular?
Fuck. Me.
I’m trying to remember if it was this hard with French and Latin, and all my memories are that they were easy. Of course, they used Roman letters. I’ve been banned from using transliteration, which means I’m pretty well fucked. I can’t remember how to pronounce the letters without a cheat sheet and it’s easier for me to use transliteration to do that.
However, that doesn’t fly in the ‘real world’ now, does it? The odds of finding transliterated official documents - like those needed to get a copy of my grandfather’s birth certificate - are slim to none. In fact, I know that they don’t exist… I already downloaded the forms I need.
Making matters worse—my idea for the different keyboard was BRILLIANT - however, I’m back to hunting and pecking. The Cyrillic ‘O’ is the same as a Roman ‘J’ on the Mac keyboard. The ‘T’ is on the ‘N’ and so on… This is impeding my forward progress and that is not cool.
This would be so much easier if I could lean on transliteration.
But.
I’m a big girl. I’ll put on my big girl panties and deal with it, but I’m definitely going to bitch about it. I need to vent or I’ll explode. I know this is a choice I’ve made, and I’ve invested a lot of money, so I’m going to do this right… but wow.
Difficult language is difficult.
To put things into perspective for myself, Latin is difficult, and I never got anything less than a B in that class. (Of course, I got As in French, but I actually had French speaking neighbours at that point.)
Maths is difficult. I still struggle with it, despite the fact that I work with it every single day. Being an accountant is about logic, more than it is about being able to add, subtract, multiply and divide. I was told, point blank, by my father to never become an accountant… well, guess who graduated with a 3.89 and loved all her classes?
(And, apparently, I’m learning British English… but that’s more by osmosis. ‘Maths’ looks so weird, but I know it’s correct.)
So… this shouldn’t be that hard once I get out of ‘what the fuck did I get myself into’ mode.
