Firefly in Chinese

螢火蟲 (yínghuǒchóng)

That is quite a bunch of 火 and 虫.

French porcupines and Porky Pig

After listening to my Larousse dictionary app pronounce porcupine in French (porc-épic), I could not help but think of Porky Pig, an American cartoon character.

That link can serve as a mnemonic for remembering the French word for porcupine, if nothing else. 

Stir and wind/crank pronounced the same in Chinese

I found it interesting that in Chinese, the verb for a circular motion typically done in the horizontal plane (to stir, e.g., like sugar into coffee; 攪) shares the same pronunciation (jiǎo) as the verb for a circular motion typically done in the vertical plane (to wind/crank, e.g., like a fishing rod; 絞), although the characters differ.

Clean out iPod microphone hole

Some time ago, my iPod's microphone stopped recording sounds at their full volume. I typically use the microphone only occasionally for videos (which I might not have played back soon) or Voice Memos, so it could have been months before I noticed this problem existed.

An Internet search for this problem led me to a couple of YouTube videos, which led me to clean out the microphone gently with a needle, which restored the microphone to its apparent former sensititivity.


Doing the analogous cleaning for my iPad 2, whose microphone doesn't record any noise at all now, didn't help. Although there was a time when I got back some recording sensitivity by blowing hard into the microphone hole, that microphone seems to be totally unresponsive now.

Slideshow Builder (Lite) 2.3.2 by BitWink Ltd.

Initially tested under iOS 5.1.1 on a 4th generation iPod touch.

I wanted to make, entirely on my iPod, slideshows with captions. Primarily, I wanted to be able to share such slideshows in person, but ideally they could also be shared with (at least) other iOS users. The latter is possible, although the other parties must similarly install the free Slideshow Builder Lite (or the paid version SlideShow Builder) app, and then download slideshows. Users of the Lite version can make a single slideshow (at a time; you can delete one and make a different one repeatedly). I used the free Slideshow Builder Lite to test whether this app suited my needs. Subsequently, I bought Slideshow Builder.

Within the iOS Camera Roll, the right-facing triangle starts slideshow (you would presumably use an album of images for slideshows, as opposed to the entire Camera Roll), but captions would have to be added to the images in some other app, after which the images would need to be re-added to the Camera Roll (and your targeted album). Music is an option. Beyond these Camera Roll's basic capabilities, Slideshow Builder allows:

• Reordering of pictures
• Basic captioning (3/28/15: When viewing a slideshow, captioned images can be saved as iOS screenshot images, which I first did under iOS 6.)
• Sharing of slideshows
• Special effects
• Option to store independent copies of images and music, insulating slideshows against deletion of the original source from Camera Roll or the Music app, at the cost of using more storage memory. I particularly like this option because I prefer my slideshows kept separate from Camera Roll.
• Each slideshow can be saved either on only the device where it was created, or on all devices using the same Apple ID. In the latter case, updates (at least revised captions) will automatically be shared across devices via iCloud.

Lite has a limit of 20 pictures, and includes one advertising slide (which is displayed for a shorter time than the default 3.5 seconds of other slides). 20 slides may be a decent limit even in the paid version to avoid taxing viewer tolerance.

Slideshows can be shared with other iOS users via Dropbox/email/iCloud (time limited) running either the Lite or full version of the app, so iOS only. iPod photos with their relatively low resolution don't look great on an iPad 2 up close, but look "good enough" (depending on your photographic sensibilities) from farther away. iPhone picture quality is better than that of an iPod so shouldn't suffer as much. According to what I see, the Dropbox/iCloud (though I only tested iCloud) apparent advantage over email is that until the recipient downloads the slideshow, you can continue to make changes (e.g., tweaking captions), so the recipient will see the most up-to-date version when they download it.

My settings choices (in case I ever have to reinstall):

• Photos and Music: Copied to Slideshow
Default Settings for Slides (can be overridden for any slide):
• Play Each Slide For: 3.5 seconds (default)
• Zoom to Fill Screen OFF
• Ken Burns effect OFF
• Faces Animation OFF
• Slide Transition: Dissolve

My two Chinese keyboard choices (Chinese - Traditional: Handwriting; Chinese - Traditional: Zhuyin) are not available for captions.

Mnemonic for the tone of 摸 (and 磨, 摩)

I have long had trouble remembering the tone of 摸 (mō; to touch). One of the reasons may be that the following two other characters, which have formal or implied meanings of "to rub" (sort of close to "to touch" in meaning), both have mó as their Pinyin:

磨
摩

I normally remember the tones for those two characters. They are parts of multi-character words which are firmly in my vocabulary, and of which the pronunciations of all syllables come easily to my mind:

摩/磨擦 (mócā; friction)
按摩 (ànmó; to massage)

However, the most common usage for me of 摸 is the much less distinctive:

摸不到 (mō bù dào; can't reach [some physical object])

The last two characters 不到 commonly follow a wide variety of verbs, in all cases (that I can imagine) with a similar meaning of not being successful at something. Being so generically and commonly used, those two characters don't facilitate (for me, anyway) remembering the tone of 摸 or of any other verb placed before them.

In any case, my new way to remember that 摸 is first tone:
Extend the idea of 1 being less than 2 to the characters' tones -- a touch (摸) is lighter ("less") than a rub (磨/摩).

Pairs of two-syllable Chinese words having swapped Pinyin spellings in their syllables

Here are some pairs of reasonably common, two-syllable Chinese words, of which the Pinyin spellings (disregarding tone) of the two syllables of each word could be swapped to yield the other word of each pair. As usual for this type of blog entry, I may modify this list over time.

Ordered by Pinyin. Different members of a pair may share characters, though such a shared character doesn't necessarily have the same meaning in both words.

• 部分 bùfen part (of something)
• 分部 fēnbù branch (e.g., branch store of a larger company, etc.)

• 記念 jìniàn commemorate
• 年紀 niánjì age

• 解釋 jiěshì explain
• 世界 shìjiè world

• 時鐘 shízhōng clock
• 重視 zhòngshì attach importance to; take something seriously

• 相信 xiāngxìn believe
• 信箱 xìnxiāng mailbox

The above pair show two qualitatively different meanings of 信; the first is a verb, meaning to believe/give credence to, the second is a noun, meaning letter (as in mail).