Fridaygram: learning English, counting legs, playing games
By Scott Knaster, Google Developers Blog
Editor
Google Developers Live (GDL) is
designed to bring you great technical content, live as it happens and archived for whenever
you need it. We want GDL to teach you about our tools and platforms, but
Eiji Kitamura, a Google
Developer Advocate in Tokyo, had another idea: use the captions on GDL videos as a tool for
picking up English while learning about technology. As Eiji says, “Learning English and
technology at the same time is a killer feature, because it is time efficient, practical, and
enjoyable”.
For the best translation, make sure English
is selected (shown circled in
red).
For the best translation, click the CC button and make sure
English is
selected (shown circled in red in the image above), and not
English
(transcribed). The
English translations are usually available
about a week after each event.
Eiji posted about this idea on the
Google Developer Relations
Japan Blog, and it proved to be very popular, so several other Googlers around the
world picked up the thread and created their own versions of the post, translated into
Korean,
Spanish,
and
Hebrew,
with more translated posts in the works. If you’re a developer learning English while studying
a new technology, now you can absorb both at the same time.
Switching our focus to nature, we’ve often wondered: how many legs are enough? 2? 4? 100? The
answer turns out to be 562 to 750, which is the number of legs you’ll find on
llacme plenipes,
a rare millepede species. This creature was long thought to be extinct, but according to a
recent journal was
rediscovered
in 2006 in a densely foggy area of central California. (Note: humans thought the species was
extinct, but
llacme plenipes itself was not fooled.)
Finally, if you need some new gaming fun this weekend, check out
Ingress, a
game
that takes place online and in the physical world. Just be sure to stop playing and come back
to your family at some point.
On Fridays we
depart from our usual fare of new tools and events, and instead tell you about general cool
stuff you might find interesting. This week we’re wondering: are you disappointed to learn
that millipedes don’t really have 1000 legs?
