Talk to the Clouds

Category: meta

  • Spotlight: (Thriving and) Surviving in Japan

    I’d like to spotlight a new addition to the recommended blogs here, Surviving in Japan (without much Japanese). This blog/how-to-directory is an ever-growing guide to how to improve your life in Japan if you are not perfectly fluent in Japanese, but are in English. The author, Ashley, is a writer (and part-time teacher) with a…

  • No.

    I do not accept guest posts or link exchanges with “online degree” sites or “online TESOL certificate” sites. Of course, people contacting me to offer such undoubtedly have never actually read my blog. They’re just hunting (or using a program to hunt for) keywords. But just for the record: The answer is “No.” (Genuine offers…

  • Twitter in Print

    Thanks to the recommendation of author and Twitterati star Mayumi Ishihara, my Twitter account for English learners (@readable) was featured in a Japanese business magazine. I think it’s still on the stands in Japan–look for the 9/21 issue of 日経ビジネス Associe. On page 98, Ms. Ishihara introduces a few Twitter accounts and hashtags that can…

  • Updated Links

    The summer was just packed–unfortunately, not in the ironic Calvin and Hobbes sense. Between flying to the middle of the country to help my parents with my dad’s knee surgery, getting my new computer in working order after my laptop was stolen, and job-hunting, I haven’t been able to finish any of the posts I’ve…

  • CATESOL Handouts; Conference Survey

    My handouts from CATESOL 2010 and one prior conference are now available under the Resources tab at the top of each page. If you spot any problems or broken links, please let me know! Don’t forget to fill out the conference evaluation form if you went. As far as I know, there were no paper…

  • Hi, CATESOL visitors!

    If you came to my segment of the Internet Fair and are looking for an online version of the handout, I’ll upload that and any further thoughts on Sunday, if I can. For now, the basic links I used are here: A Visual Feast A previous post on the subject is Free Illustrations. The blog…

  • Distraction

    I’ve been distracted by getting Readable Blog relaunched. I’m also job-hunting, both at community colleges in the Bay Area and possibly at schools in Japan. If your school is looking, please get in touch with me! (I know the school year is about to start n Japan, but sometimes there are openings on other schedules…

  • New Twitter Account, Spiffing Up

    I mentioned this briefly in an earlier post, but there’s a new Twitter account tied to this blog. So please feel free to follow @talkclouds. I’m delighted to follow other English teachers back, and if you have some other people to recommend that I should follow, please let me know! Also, I’ve cleaned up and…

  • Twelve Days of Christmas

    Stay tuned… I’m going to try to do Twelve Days of Christmas here at Talk to the Clouds. That means that starting on December 25th, I’ll post a useful and/or fun free resource every day for twelve days! The Twelve Days of Christmas does traditionally start on Christmas, and isn’t the twelve days before, as…

  • Time for a New Layout

    Well, when I chose this design for the blog I didn’t associate it with Twitter, because I never saw it when logging into Twitter. But apparently everyone else associates it with Twitter–it just showed up in an e-mail from a retail book chain plugging their account there. Sigh. So I guess I really have to…