Klaas

Yeah when I was in South-Tirol this summer I could understand the people quite well, but speaking German was impossible. I've never learned it in school, I only know it from tourists here, tv/radio or holidays. Yeah the vocabulary can be a problem. It's not that hard for me since I hear French all the time and the Flemish use many French words, but I can imagine it's hard for a German native speaker.

I never learned the passé simple in school, I probably use it not knowing I do. Could you expand on that a little, when to use the passé simple and basic conjugation?

Lol, how can you be a beginner at understanding if you're good at speaking? Atleast in my case in can speak it fairly well because I've listened to French a lot (tv, radio, on holiday, family), that's how I learned it. Just sounds strange the other way around, a bit artificial

Officially I started learning French in school when I was 10-years-old, until I was 18-years-old, so that's 8 years. In reality I learned it since I was born since my dad was partly raised francophone (though he never spoke French to me, being a Flemish regionalist) and since I live in Belgium where 40% speaks French. Add to that that foreigners often think we all speak French in Belgium and that the Flemish use quite a lot of French words (we say salut if we say goodbye for example) I had my education since I was born. But that doesn't mean I speak French fluently. Never been a great student in that area, so I'm only fairly good at speaking it and mediocre at writing. But I can read and understand French very well.

Thanks for the rep Red

Well html isn't constantly updated, only every 4 years or so. If you buy a decent book on XHTML 1.0 you're fine, that's the current standard and it's still a long way for XHTML 2.0. Regarding the language itself: W3C is the organization that makes the standards for HTML (and CSS, XHTML, XML, etc.). However, even if for example XHTML 2.0 is ready it doesn't mean it will be implemented on the day it's done. It needs to be implemented by the various browsers first and then people need to update their browser. Anyway, for some good sites regarding the languages: http://www.w3schools.com That site is great as an introduction and especially as a reference. http://www.sitepoint.com Good site for more advanced stuff, and for things like tricks combining css, javascript and xhtml. http://www.alistapart.com Quite advanced, this is more for the standards and accessibility purists. http://www.mezzoblue.com/ Advanced blog, especially for CSS. If you're into CSS check out the links on the site, there are a whole bunch of these. One piece of advice: Don't learn HTML 4, learn XHTML 1.0. Never neglect standards or abuse the freedom html gives you (for example, always use double quotes, always use lowercase). Also don't learn XHTML 1.1, it's not a newer version of XHTML but a version developed for other mediums than browsers. Once you know enough XHTML you should really learn CSS. Try to understand the basics first and eventually move on the creating whole layouts with only little XHTML tags but much CSS. CSS is the future and it gives you more control over your layout. Hope this helps Edit: check out this link, it's a blog entry with comments giving links to good tutorials: http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/08/...ds_re/comments/

Wouldn't this cause too much overhead? Basicly that's one extra db Query/post and one str_replace/username. So if you consider the amount of posts on a page and the amount of usernames in the db you'll add quite a bit of overhead.

Starting the 27th september

I'm from Flanders, Belgium. Well the weather is nearly the same as in the Netherlands, though a bit less rain.

I have two half-brothers of 40 and 42-years-old.

Nope but the functionality is the same, tim coded it. Converge is already for a year and a half under development though. It's already used in the commercial apps of Invision and IPB2 should have it too.

Lol, the Flemish and Belgian national days are separated by 10 days, 11th and 21st July

I believe Tacitus wrote that Germanics had wooden temples. I don't know how this compares to Celts, but probably they had them too. It should be quite possible, since some Celts lived in cities (cfr. Alesia), so it would be strange to have Oak groves in them for worshipping of gods. I haven't read through it yet, but maybe some info could be found here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/rac/

One book is all you need: History of Art, aka 'The Janson'. It's a huge book spanning the history of art starting from cave paintings to contemporary art, including painting, architecture, music, literature, etc. I'm sure they have it in Berlin too, but it's quite expensive though, so you might want to look for it in a library.

Hmm I always thought it was resources, not ressources Don't know any sites too, but you might try those online dictionaries that Mozilla provides, some offer more than just translating only. http://www.interglot.com seems to be quite a good one For more: In Firefox you have that google search thing, keep the G of google selected and you'll see "add engines". Click on it and you'll be directed to Mozilla's search engine page.

Here are a few:) http://www.firstworldwar.com/ (great WW1 site) http://www.flwi.ugent.be/IAHRG/ (from my ex-university, tons of websites regarding ancient history and more, usually quite academic though, some are pay sites) http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/labyri...rinth-home.html (medieval studies resources) http://www.humbul.ac.uk/history/ (history portal from Oxford university)

Looks great Regarding "Stonehenge": Megalithic constructions weren't built by the Celts, they're a few thousand years older, built by meso- and neolithic people (mid and new stone age). It is possible the Celts used them for ceremonies, like they did with old oaks and such, but they certainly didn't build them. That's another Asterix legend

Yeah, but that's the high school system 1492 wasn't so important as the fall of constantinople since the real discovery only started later on. If that would have been used as a mark we should also consider the discovery of trade routes to India and the trade with Indonesia and such. Those were, at that time, more important than south or north America. But 1453 defines a political and cultural clash inside Europe, the end of what was left of the Roman empire, the rise of a very powerful Muslim empire. Both economically, politically, religiously and socially that event had a huge impact. Dating the renaissance between 1492 and mid 18th century doesn't sound reasonable to me. The renaissance isn't about the discovery of America nor about any period in the 18th century; that's rather enlightment which isn't the same thing as the renaissance. There were several renaissances, and in fact the one that is taught in school wasn't really one. A very important renaissance was during Charlemagne's rule. An even more important one is the rise of the big trade cities, especially in Italy, Germany and Flanders. Particularly in those regions the renaissance started: gothic renaissance in Germany and Flanders, and renaissance as in the popular renaissance taught at school in Italy. The Italian renaissance eventually made its way to other parts of Europe. But the thing is, did that influence the whole society or merely architecture and art? Frankly I don't think it's right to say that during the renaissance everything suddenly changed. Due to the liberty in the trade cities there was already a big change of mentality and society as a whole. As for using mid 18th century as the end I suppose this concerns the industrial revolution. That's right for England, but it doesn't apply to the rest of Europe, again we were roughly 80 years behind. I do think that's a good idea to separate time frames as it influenced society a lot. I guess the French revolution is used in the university system because it was the fall of the Ancien Régime and the rise of democracy.

Yeah but the dark ages belong to the Middle ages. In high school they usually divide the middle ages in the dark ages and high middle ages. But in general terms history is divided like this: prehistory (before writing was invented) protohistory (writing was intvented but about cultures that didn't use it yet though other cultures wrote about them, Celts for example) classical ages (Greeks, Romans, ...) middle ages (476 fall of Rome - 1453 fall of constantinople) new ages (1453 - 1789 French revolution) newest ages (maybe referred as modern too in english) (1789 - now). Anyway, just some dates that in reality mean nothing. As I said, some scholars make the middle ages stop around 1250 - 1350. Or the renaissance happened much earlier in Italy (13th - 14th century) compared to other parts of Europe (late 15th - 16th century).

Nope, one of those dates is 476, the so-called fall of Rome. By 1066 you would be close to the end of the Middle Ages according to some groups of scholars who put the end at the rise of the first big (trade) cities (1200s).

Hmmm, is that all you get at university or are you on a part-time plan? Don't you get anything related to historical practice or historical criticism?

At university too, so no homework either. Well next year I could maybe ask some help from our programmers since I'm going to study electronics-ICT.

this is it I think: - digital technique 1: combinatory systems - digital technique 2: sequential systems - analogue technique 1 & 2: electric chains - informatics 1: MS Office, programming structures, software development - informatics 2: operating systems, webdesign, software development - communication networks 1: phones, linux - communication nerworks 2: internet, local networks - maths 1: complex numbers, matrix, Mathcad - maths 2: integrals, Mathcad One week of stage with a company

Interesting story It's sad what happened to the Jews those days and before. Luckily Flanders had a military regime for the most part during the war, so few Jews were deported or killed here compared to other countries. My grandmother also hid a family for a few days here, though they moved further since the Germans came here often and an officer was stationed here (an anti-Hitler one though). Never knew what happened to them. As for Alsac, well that has always been a strange situation. Would have been better if they just made it independant after WW1 instead of constantly using it to fight over. The German region in Belgium which used to be part of Alsac-Lothary (don't know the correct Englis term), also used to be German before WW1. Again a stupid situation created to satisfy the leaders of Belgium, ending up in a region that isn't keen on being Belgian, nor wanting to become German again. Strange you only know one dialect. I know around 20 or so Each city has its own dialect, and so has each province. Inside the provinces dialects can differ too. For example the town where I live has a totally different dialect of the town east of us, as well as the town west of us. That is mostly because standardisation only start in the 70s on a local scale. Before it only used to be in universities, and before Dutch wasn't even an official language, only French was. Btw, if you're interested in some other languages like French you should check out Walloon. It isn't an official language, rather considered as a dialect, though if you hear or read it there's a huge difference between French and Walloon. This is a site dedicated to it: http://www.wallonie.com/wallang/

Hola polifemo, nice to have you here Yeah, una cerveza por favor is also the only sentence I know, can't live without it