Various – Page 3 – Harmonia Philosophica

Free Blogging Advice: Embrace imperfection!

Free Blogging Advice: Writing is hard. And easy. The goal of the Free Blogging Advice (FBA) series of short articles is to provide some free advice on… blogging! All you have to add is some time and effort. And love. Lots of love.

FBA Episodes

One of the things bloggers find difficult to cope with, is the fact that their site is not perfect.

Most of us are perfectionists, especially when it comes to the child of our creativity. Our site should be flawless, full of perfect articles, with embedded perfect pictures, saying perfect things.

The truth is much more different than that though.

Every human is imperfect. We constantly change and grow, we learn and forget, we are literally a new person every passing second as Harmonia Philosophica has explained more than once in various philosophical contexts.

How do you expect your blog to be perfect?

Being perfect was never the goal in the first place.

The goal is to expose your thoughts to the cosmos. To let out your thoughts and give others the opportunity to get to know them. Perhaps even reply back and establish a community wandering about the same things.

A blog is a window that exposes your soul to the world.

Trying to believe that what others see through that window needs to be perfect is simply a denial of your very nature. No matter how much you try to make things perfect, there will always be things that could be done better, small spelling mistakes, broken links or missing images.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that you must not do your best to have a perfect site. I am just emphasizing the fact that if this is the first and only thing you care about you will indeed have a perfect unpublished site…

Blogging is about letting go.

Blogging is about having fun.

And who can have fun while trying to play everything to perfection?

Experiment!

Write!

Love what you do!

Your blog will ALWAYS be imperfect!

That is what makes is so perfect…

Harmonia Philosophical is dead. Long live Harmonia Philosophica!

Photo by Spiros Kakos (Kakia Lagada, Kythera)

Harmonia Philosophica exists for more than a decade now. There has been many years since it had a major revamp, but the time had finally come.

And just like that, everything changed.

New template that is more lean and modern. The old template was an old favourite one, but all things die at some point.

(And that adds more to the love we have for them)

New type of posts. From now on the articles will be of a more poetic type without any specific link to a news or scientific discovery article that they comments on. Anyway we had always been advocates of the irrational, so why stick to writing articles about something in such an ordinary way? (Of course posts already scheduled will be posted as scheduled)

(What is the point of writing with logic if you are to sound logical?)

Every moment all things change.

Every moment we change.

And yet, we stay the same.

There is nothing closer to eternity than the ephemeral…

Harmonia Philosophica is dead!

Long live Harmonia Philosophica!

Programming and Philosophy: Not so much different as they seem…

What is common between programming and philosophy?

Well, at first glance… nothing!

Yet, if one scratches below the surface he or she may find some peculiar correlations.

People like philosophy.

Because they like to ask questions and seek their answers. Because they are interested in the major questions of humankind and would like to reach that holy grail we seek since we were born: Truth.

People like programming.

Because they like to create things that work. They like it because it enables them to bring life to their ideas and to an extent, even touch the idea of life itself via artificial intelligence and neural networks.

In both cases the most primitive of instincts are the cause of our actions.

Instincts that make us “do things”.

Instincts that make us “create things”.

Instincts that make us ask and then answer. And with every knew answer, seek ways to ask new questions and improve the answers even more.

That was since the dawn of civilization our best quality.

And our tragic fate.

Always on a quest.

Creating things.

Destroyers of the worlds.

Perhaps we were programmed to be like this.

And that is why we constantly try to be free…

Learning Greek for Beginners series

Goal

The “Learning Greek for Beginners” series is a series of articles that aim at giving you fast-pace lessons on how to speak Greek. They were originally posted in Google Knol in a contest for articles for ‘Dummies’.

List of Lessons

The list of lessons available can be found below

Please do not hesitate to contact us for any comment and/ or suggestion.

Learning Greek for Beginners – Lesson 4 [Asking for food]

Learning Greek for dummies – Lesson 4: How to order food!

This Knol is part of the Learning Greek for Beginners collection.
Please ask any question you have regarding Greek by posting comments! I will gladly help you! Post comments and / or send me emails to do so!
Learning Greek Tip: Use the daily Harmonia Philosophica Philosophy Wires to learn Greek! Each Philosophy Wire is written in both English and Greek (with the specific goal to convey the same exactly meaning), so by reading both you can have some very good learning guides on Greek language!!! Contact me for any help you might need!

Lesson 4 summary

This lesson will focus on practical Greek. How to speak and manage to ‘survive’ in Greece, i.e. how to order food.

Eating food in Greece is always a delight… (source: eating-everyday)

Dialogue No. 4: Food!

Let’s start with the most important thing: Food!

Greece is know for its great food, so knowing how to order it is vital. Without further adieu…

– Γεια σας. [Geia sas]

– Καλημέρα. [Kalimera]

– Θα ήθελα δύο σουβλάκια παρακαλώ. [Tha ithela dyo souvlakia parakalo]

– Ευχαρίστως. Θέλετε και κάτι άλλο; [Euxaristos. Thelete kai kati allo?]

– Θα ήθελα και ένα μουσακά και μία ντομάτες γεμιστές. [Tha ithela kai ena moussaka]

– Μόνο αυτά; Κάτι άλλο; [Mono auta? Kati allo?]

– Και λίγες πατάτες τηγανητές παρακαλώ πολύ. [Kai liges patates tiganites parakalo poly]

– Ωραία. Θα πιείτε κάτι; [Oraia. Tha pieite kati?]

– Ναι. Λίγο κρασί. Και μια σόδα. [Nai. Ligo krasi. Kai mia soda]

– Ευχαριστώ πολύ. [Euxaristw poly]

In English that same dialogue means:

– Hello.

– Good morning.

– I would like two souvlakia please.

– Gladly. Would you like something else?

– I would also like a moussaka and a portion of stuffed tomatoes.

– Only these? Anything else?

– And some fried potatoes please.

– Good. Will you drink something?

– Yes, some wine. And a soda.

– Thank you very much.

Asking for things

As we saw in the dialogue above, the main verb here is Θέλω (Thelo), which means “I want”. If I wans to say “I want a moussaka” I simply say “Θέλω ένα μουσακά” (Thelo ena moussaka).

Always remember to be polite and say please (parakalo) when asking something.

Lesson Questions & Answers

Do you have any comments or questions? Please post here as comments and I will get back to you!

Translation Help

In case you need any assistance in translating something to or from Greek, contact us directly via email or via comments in the bottom of the page.

This Knol is part of the Learning Greek for Beginners collection.