LKL's Blog

If you run across a website written in another language, it’s great to be able to plug the site into an online translator and find out what it says. But that’s about all they are good for. By definition, online translators can only give you an idea of what is said – they should never [...]

Have you ever noticed that when you bookmark sites or add them to your favorites, they sometimes come with a little image next to their name? This is called a favorite icon (favicon for short), and I just discovered a site that will make them for you. If you have a website, you can upload [...]

I recycle pretty much everything, but I’ve always drawn the line at food – I just throw those scraps onto the compost pile. But an enterprising graduate student has come up with a way to get just a little more use out of inedible food scraps: wasteware. The scraps are ground up and then molded [...]

Bastille Day is rapidly approaching – celebrate à la française with some of my favorite French recipes, including crêpes, French onion soup, and vichyssoise.

Italy beat France in the 2006 World Cup in penalty kicks. But for me the game was lost when Zidane headbutted Marco Materazzi in the chest, apparently in retaliation for a verbal insult from the Italian player. Up until that moment, it was a fun and exciting game, but afterwards I could barely stand to [...]

Here’s an amusing way to kill time until the World Cup match. Provide the URL of a web page and then see it “translated” into one of the following dialects: Cockney, Elmer Fudd, Hacker, Jive, Moron, Pig Latin, Redneck, or Swedish Chef: The Dialectizer

Tomorrow, the whole world (almost) will be watching France face Italy in the 2006 World Cup Finals. Isn’t it funny how American kids grow up playing soccer, the roads are filled with soccer Moms, yet the US is virtually the only country that doesn’t care about the World Cup – the ultimate soccer match and [...]

The verb “to google,” meaning “to look up on Google,” is now in both the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary. I can’t wait to see if French comes up with an equivalent authorized by the Académie française.

If you love French wine but hate ordering it, here’s a page that can help. This list of French wines and related vocabulary includes sound files to help you pronounce the names of French wines.

I saw Mission Impossible: III the other night, and was happily surprised – it was pretty good. I’m not a huge fan of Tom Cruise, but I don’t dislike him either, and he is a great actor. I was a little worried that the MI theme might have been overdone, but part 3 was definitely [...]