Study Abroad

Hello, long-forsaken readers (should any of you still exist). In the next few weeks, I will be resurrecting this blog in order to chronicle my year in Poitiers. I leave Houston on September 1, stop briefly in Dallas (because that makes a great deal of sense) and arrive in Paris at Charles de Gaulle on the morning of September 2. At that point, I will meet up with a fellow intrepid study abroad student and take the train to Poitiers, arriving at approximately 16h10 (that's 4:10 p.m. to Americans), at which time I will hopefully be met by one or more of my host family (who, by the way, sound amazing). Orientation commences at 10h on September 4, so I will have a day to adjust to the time difference, unpack and hopefully explore the city a bit. I will be living here:

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with Brenda Marshall and Bruno Jorigné, as well as several of their children (including a daughter my age). I am enrolled in the Université de Poitiers, and will be taking classes in French language, literature, history and culture, as well as some math, if I can manage it.

I'm generally very excited, although I still have a longish list of things to do before I leave and there seem to be a daunting number of things to accomplish in my first week there (not to mention a daunting amount of money to be spent in doing them). I will try to post regularly, but I make no promises as hopefully I will be busy. Also, I may or may not write my posts in French once I get there, but if I do I'll be sure to run them through Google Translate for your amusement and (limited) comprehension.

As a final note, my mailing address in Poitiers will be:

Hallie Gammon
Chez Mme Marshall
2 allée des Aubépines
86550 Mignaloux-Beauvoir Poitiers
France

À bientôt!

Nitwit, Blubber, Oddment, Tweak

The operative word being oddment. To the left is my new favorite desktop image from Pixelgirl Presents. They have a pretty fantastic collection of desktops for people who like colorful, busy backgrounds as well people who really don't like clutter. Or just for the same person in different moods.

In the same vein, my grumpy new Adium dock icon, the devil duck. I think he's cute and feel quite bonded to him. You can find him and others like him at the Adium Xtras page. You should probably get Adium first. FYI, it's a multi-protocol instant messaging application that works with all the major clients and a lot of ones I've never heard of, is highly customizable, and obviously has lots of fun and completely useless add-ons. Its biggest drawback is lack of AV support. Also, Mac only. Sorry, PCs... ;)

And finally, I am addicted to Firefly. I've never really bought TV shows or movies off iTunes before because I don't think the resolution is good enough (and still don't), but I have fallen prey to the ease of downloadable content. Hopefully I can get the rest of the season (how sad that there's only one) on Netflix before I spend much more money.

A Few Of My Favorite Things

Found while trawling the internet, as I am wont to do (insincere apologies to PC users, as two of these don't apply to you):

• Flip4Mac, a free QuickTime plugin that opens .wmv files in QuickTime Player and lets you stream them in Safari. Bye-bye, Windows Media Player. I always hated you anyway. Opens files with no delay; haven't had a chance to test streaming yet because I don't run across many web videos in .wmv.
• FlickrBooth, a free Photo Booth plugin that lets you upload snapshots to Flickr automatically or at will. Works like a charm so far.
• The new version of Flickr Uploadr, apparently standard for Mac and PC (I have no PC to test that theory with). Since the FlickrExport plugin for iPhoto started costing money (heaven forbid), this is my new favorite option, and this version seems far superior to the old one. Since all editing now takes place in one window, you can perform batch operations and then change them for individual photos. You can also reorder pictures (and actually be sure of how they'll show up in your photostream). Now if they would just integrate it with iPhoto, life would be perfect...

From Scholastic Trammels Free

Since I'm taking J-Term off to hopefully regain a state of good health, I've had a quite a bit of time to fill. I've been doing so in the past week by hanging out at operetta rehearsals. It is a Saint Michael's tradition for the upper school (grades 7-12) to perform a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta every January, this year's being the Mikado. I participated in five of them (Sorcerer, Gondoliers, Patience, Ruddigore, Yeomen) in my SMA years, but this is the first time I've had a chance to watch one of the productions. Considering it's not a voluntary affair (which means even the kids who would normally be "too cool" for theater have to don tights, wigs and facepaint and twist their tongues around Gilbert's tricky lyrics), it's not bad at all. This is the first time I've heard the Mikado (except for Three Little Maids, which practically everyone knows), and it's definitely funny, but probably the most politically incorrect G&S I've encountered. The directors found it necessary to expurgate several instances of the n-word, rewriting some lyrics in the process. My question for you, dear readers: is it right to engage in clandestine editing of an author's work to render it palatable to modern audiences? Should there be an "official" expurgated G&S? Should it be left as-is for authenticity? I am undecided, though I think especially for a high school performance it would be inappropriate to leave such an offensive word in the lyrics. Ponder, ponder.

I leave you with one of the fun new words I've learned from Mr. Gilbert:

persiflage |ˈpərsəˌflä zh |
noun formal
light and slightly contemptuous mockery or banter.
ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: from French persifler ‘to banter,’ based on siffler ‘to whistle.’

Old Dog, New Tricks

I've been taking a mental health break from blogging for the past few months, but I'm (hopefully) back! I put a new toy on here to motivate me: snapshots from snap.com. If you hover over the little speech bubble next to a link, a window will pop up and give you a site preview. I find this fun, but if you find it annoying, bring up a snap preview window, click on the gear in the top right corner, and you can disable it for this site or all sites. That's all for now.