Category: digital storytelling

  • Changing Hosts

    After 20 years with Webhostinghub, who have overall done very well, I am moving to a more bare-bones (cheaper) option at hostinger.com (referral 20%off/$4/month). This reflects less of a need to put stuff out there as I move away from producing stuff in English and toward integrating into the culture here in Japan, which is requiring a lot of time for language learning.

    I feel good about this change. But it means my personal email address at ryan@kevinryan.com no longer works. It was flooded with too many ads and I had moved most of my important account maintenance to another address.

    Kevinryan.com will continue here, with my personal thoughts and ideas. I’ve decided to follow Cory Doctorow’s idea of posting in one place and then sending out links on social media to that one place. WordPress makes that easy, except for Facebook, where it only posts to my page, and not my timeline. That may change as Zuck keeps loosening restrictions and allowing more “free speech” on the site, but I am less and less engaged there.

    I’ll post once a week in Facebook to point to my blog. Hope to see you sometimes. Comments available but I have to approve your first one. Going old school. You can email me at my gmail address too.

  • Word Quiz

    NYTimes (gift article) checks your knowledge of current words that are popular. A good example of a quiz working as a learning tool. I got 6 out of 10, which I consider pretty good. I especially liked the new meanings of “preppy” and “Ohio”.

    Take the quiz.

  • Words of Culture, Culture of Words

    Nowhere better can you find the nuances of culture than in the words that are used. Nancy Friedman tracks those at Fritinancy. This year we get a bonus, wordS, not just word.

    My favorite: The Fall of the Broman Empire, on the X-odus of people from Musk’s vanity website. Others include 4B (from Korea), Debank, social tonic (laced with THC), Pretendians. I have a couple of young HENRYs in my family tree. And there is the Hawk Tuah girl.

    I can tell Nancy has been around a while at this game because she is writing on TypePad, a platform that had its heyday many years ago.

  • 100 Heartwarming Stories

    From the BBS, many with short video clips, and most short and simple enough to be used in ELT classes.

  • Rotating Sandwiches

    Rotating Sandwiches

    At least 6, and maybe 8, of these Rotating Sandwiches are not sandwiches. But controversy aside, this is a great resource for language teaching. Besides our yes/no, we can compare, we can guess the prices, we can list ingredients, we can make recipes. I’m sure there is more. Thanks to Kottke for the link.