Features:

• Add the “translate” class to a containing element, such as a blockquote or a ul tag. Then, any em tags with a title attribute will automatically swap their content for the title when you move the mouse over them.

Planned features:

• Allow any tag or classname to be specified as the containing element.
• Allow any tag or classname to be specified as the translate element.

Download
The current version can be downloaded at WordPress.org.

Changelog

• 0.1
  • Initial version

Last month, I started a new web site, www.FluentEveryYear.com, and I am excited to report that I have already started to gain subscribed readers and Facebook fans!

There will be plenty of tips and tricks for learning any language, and even more useful information if you’re interested in learning Italian — or whatever the language of the year is — so go check it out!

My career had basically stalled at the company I was working for, but out of comfort I didn’t want to leave. Amazingly, I spend the majority of last year getting paid to sit on my hands. My company actively ensured that I (like most of my coworkers) did no real work since fall of 2008. Would I like to have been more productive career-wise? Yes. But overall, I think I used that dead time effectively.

For starters, I did manage to do some work-related work, and with a wealth of free time to do it in, I made the choice to learn more advanced languages, tools, and architectures. Using those more advanced development strategies was almost certainly overkill for the tasks I performed, but the knowledge I gained was valuable for my career. And frankly, when a company isn’t interested in using my talents effectively, I’m going to use their resources to improve my marketability toward finding a better company to work for.

Next, I managed to use a lot of my free time, both at work and at home, to study Russian. I began 2009 knowing perhaps 10 useful phrases in the Russian language. A year later, I am beyond conversational and close to fluent. I understand 70-80% of what I hear, and have a vocabulary of approximately 3500 words. I can read, write, speak, listen, search the web, order dinner, and withdraw money from my bank in Russian.

But I didn’t stop there… I’ve also begun learning Italian, Ukrainian, and Polish. Admittedly, Italian is easiest for me, being a fluent Spanish-speaker… but I can successfully read and understand Ukrainian and Polish, and I have even followed a few simple recipes written in Polish on food packages.

On finances, I dropped more than $10,000 in debt last year and paid off all but one of my credit cards. I might have done even better — maybe even completely paid it all off — but supporting two additional people, paying for repairs from a house fire, covering high medicine expenses for a Medicare donut-hole, and a handful of other large purchases prevented me from complete success. I will complete this, however within the first couple of months this year.

That financial progress was boosted toward the end of the year as I changed jobs not once, but twice in November — in spite of all the horror stories about our economy. I’ve upgraded my career to one that is thoroughly enjoyable and far more fulfilling, and I manage to bring home more money too. All of this leaves me with good prospects for what’s to come in 2010.

And with regard to my photographic passions and goals, I was contacted last year by an editor compiling a book of photography, and I will have my work published. While it won’t actually be published until this year, I count this as recognition given last year for the amazing progress my artwork saw in 2009.

And 2009 was also a year filled with new experiences. I had many firsts, including seeing a symphony, going to the ballet, attending a master piano recital, riding a train across country, seeing showgirls dance in Las Vegas, and learning to make crepes.

So what’s on tap for 2010? There’s no knowing for sure, but here are my thoughts at present:

I had intended to do international travel last year and I failed that. Partially due to poor planning, but mostly due to a new economic situation for the world, and for myself. This year, those excuses won’t work. My finances are completely under control, and my plans are more specific: For my two (minimum) international trips, I want to drive to Canada to see Niagara Falls, and I want to fly to Russia and ride the Trans-Siberian express cross-country.

While continuing to study and improve in Russian, I intend to achieve at least conversational level in Polish and fluency in Italian. This is an aggressive goal, but one which I feel I can achieve. I will measure my success in Polish by shopping in the many Polish stores here in Chicago while not using English. And I will measure my success in Italian by finding Italians with whom to converse… perhaps by Skype, or perhaps by finding a local group… or perhaps by traveling to Italy.

I also intend to experience some more “firsts”, including (but not limited to): riding in a hot air balloon, skydiving, and snowboarding. This is also a good year for me to cross of more states which I haven’t visited yet. I wonder if I could use Alaska as a jump-off point to Russia…

A software team could implement a Twitter account for bug tracking, and include the API into their projects within various try-catch blocks around potential points of failure. Then, all the members of that team would just follow that twitter account. For more critical applications, they could turn on device updates. It seems like a more available version of the elderly developer’s standby of programmatically emailing bug reports.

For sensitive applications, the tweets could be “protected”… but for less critical uses, the visibility of the public timeline would seem to be an added incentive for developers to fix bugs quickly.

It’s an interesting thought.

That’s right. Microsoft is going to try to conquer Google, by playing Google’s game, on Google’s terms, in Google’s market, in the uphill battle against name recognition. In a world where “google it” has become the English language equivalent for doing an online search, Microsoft has decided to invest one hundred million dollars into Bing.

Bing. Yes, it’s called Bing. And I can’t help thinking there’s a “Bing Is Not Google” acronym hiding in there. Dude, you can’t beat Google by naming your web site after Google!

Well, whatever. As Mark Hurst puts it:

Everything Microsoft has tried recently hasn’t worked. They tried the “I’m a PC” ads, a knockoff of the Mac ads – didn’t work. Tried the Zune, a knockoff of the iPod – didn’t work. Tried redoing MSN Search again and again, as a knockoff of Google – didn’t work. What’s the world coming to, when Microsoft can’t build a monopoly around a knockoff?

It’s those effing customers. They keep choosing the best experience.

So we’ll see the MS hype for five minutes. All the nerds will try Bing for the next week. But in the end, we’ll all be using Google.

But at least Microsoft is doing something to stimulate the economy.

Let’s think about that for a second.

Religion is one obvious example. If we are talking about religious beliefs, fundamentalism would mean strict adherence to the oldest teachings of their particular belief. For Christians, that would include killing your own children when they misbehave! I don’t know any Christians — even fundamentalists — who are willing to do that.

Another obvious example is conservative politics. If we were talking about government, fundamentalism would mean strict adherence to the documents upon which your government was founded. For Americans, that would mean that African-American people were only 3/5 of a person, and women couldn’t vote. Good luck with that platform!

And why stop there? Let’s also apply fundamentalism to sports. It would mean that football players wore leather hats and no pads, and that boxers didn’t have gloves. If you’re a fundamentalist, you’ll toss out your fancy new Ping golf clubs. A true fundamentalist would throw away the Nike running suit and get back to jogging nude, or perhaps with a well-placed fig leaf.

Examples like these really start to make it clear how ridiculous fundamentalism sounds. And yet fundamentalism is well-represented in every aspect of life. Why is that?

In technology, like everywhere else, fundamentalists hold everything back. Fundamentalist programmers refuse to learn the new technologies — often until it’s too late. Fundamentalist managers refuse to accept new technologies. And fundamentalist corporations fail to adapt when the world changes.

But believe me… the world changes. New companies spring up with new technology. Then dozens of companies. Then hundreds. And one day, you realize that you’ve been holding out too long, and you’re not competitive any more. You’re stuck catching up, while other people innovate.