Buenas noches.
I suppose it kind of bugs me when people start writing logs for the next day before I get to this ones... but hey...
Got up this morning to check my email. Somebody mentioned on a mailing list that o ž não existe em inglês, and so I had to answer that; it took me some time, considering that Portuguese is not my L1; I had to do a lot of looking in the archive for certain words, and dashing to Babelfish for others. Babelfish is not very good for technical terms in Portuguese, apparently; I think it didn't even have allophone.
At breakfast I kept up reading about the Hittites for my Archaeology class. (I have to finish this book and write a book report by the end of the semester.) Now I know that apparently, the Hittites did not actually call their language "Hittite"; they spoke Nesite in H̯attus̆a. But Nesite gets called Hittite, and actual Hittite gets called Hattian.
In Production Animation class I tried to continue working on my project: I have to model a fairy in Maya. I get to use subdivision surfaces, which are interesting, only the model I have to build isn't very well specified (they drew one, yes one reference concept art rendition)...
I fell asleep in Lighting class, so I'm afraid I can't tell you what happens when you mix tungsten and daylight in a single scene. I wasn't the only one to go sleepy though... it's so easy to: our class meets on a living room set, and half of us are on the couch or in armchairs.
Archaeology class was about the fall of Babylon; Nebuchadnezzar this, Nabopolassar that, Nabonidus and Belshazzar the other. And Daniel too; MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
The Christmas tree lighting was today. A lot of people sang and played music; there was a choir of children who, er, tried valiantly. Some irregularities in the sound system didn't help them; I know some people were laughing at them... I felt bad about that. After the music, the firetrucks came by with Santa Claus in them. He was lifted in the, ah, whatchamacallit
crane-ladder-thingy, and him and his helper tossed candy canes to the crowd, just like every year... only the little kids underfoot seemed a lot more determined to get every last one than usual. Then when Santa reached the top of the tree, the countdown (5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1..) went and the tree light up. Then donut holes and hot chocolate for everybody--I'm afraid the hot chocolate had milk in it though, urkh--but all in all, it was okay.
My friend wanted me to help him learn Spanish some. It's very odd: Spanish seems (to my ear) a horrifyingly simple language, especially in terms of pronunciation. But he had big troubles, especially with epenthetic r's (I told him--you can't just make them up!), with the d's, and with the vowels! Aii! Relatedly, does anyone know a good way to describe how to make a palatal fricative to someone whose language doesn't have it? I tried, but to little avail. :\