Catastroika

Finally the Catastroika is available here from the team of Aris Xatzistefanou and Katerina Kitidi.

You can watch here with English susbtitles

The site is also available in
French
German
Espaniol

Role Playing

Greeklish

All latin based languages had it easy with computers because their letters were common and actually present in English when computers became available.

In Hellas before Unicode, we had a lot of issues with the codepages, so initially when we wanted to make sure that our text would be readable by other parties, we used latin characters to write down the words. Because, we have been using for ages the term Greek for our nationality, this form of writing became known as Greeklish.

I started communicating heavily throught computers at the age of sixteen around 1996. As every other person, I used Greeklish to communicate and I didn't care much about the harm I was doing to my language, mainly because I was a teenager and I was never good with languages. Some years later when cell phones became available, the first devices were serioulsy lacking the Hellenic characters support. So everybody and especially the youth was texting in Greeklish which they continiued with the im-texting frenzy that followed the same period.

Unicode was widely adopted around 2001 if I remember correctly, but even aftwerwards corporate world used Greeklish because of limited knowledge and because external partners couldn't always read the emails. I still know past colleagues, that when writing internal emails they will automatically write it in Greeklish.

During 2001 I did my first thesis for the university. Then I realized how much damage I had already done with the Hellenics. So I started using the Hellenic character set as much as I good and steadily became annoyed when reading greeklish. Around 2003 I became a member of a technology forum and wrote in hellenic as an effort to improove my forsaken skills in my mother tongue. There was a debate on the same year about whether the Hellenic language should become a rule for valid posts, which I voted for, even though I did a lot of proofing mistakes. And I wasn't the only one. Luckily ADSLgr was actually the first big forum in Hellas that dissallowed the usage of Greeklish and this helped with the cause. 

From my experience I can understand how harmful it is for children writing in greeklish. Hellenic charcter set and language is richer and more difficult than the latin one. When writing in greeklish, proofing is really simplified because combinations of character or different characters or letter for the same sound are reduced to one latin character. It is really easier and this part of the reason I originally accepted it. But this is the reason why people forget their original mother tongue and thus their culture and history. As a kid I used to write Hellenic without proofing errors. Sadly now I can't and I'm to dependent on proofing tools. Even so, my original blog is filled with proofing errors and a lot of friends have been complaining about this.

If you are Hellenic or your mother tongue uses non lating based charcters and you are using a form of greeklish to communicate, please stop. Language and culture is part of our heritage and should at least be respected. And this is comming from a guy that is not that fond of culture.

Hellas and Hellenic. Not Greece neither Greek

I am a Hellenic citizen. I have a Hellenic nationality.

Official international name of my country is Hellas and not Greek. Greek is sadly a name that has been stack with Hellenic people, from the years of Turkish occupations. It meens something between slave and the one who is occupied. It is name actually given by Turks to the Hellenic people the occupied.

Sadly thing about this is that we as a nation don't seem to care much about the etymology of the world. Although all international references are based on the world Hellas (Ελλάδα), we as Hellenes always try to hurt our heritage. I also did this error, although in the past I had been informed about the importance of the subject.

All my CVs and all my initial presentations were referencing the Greek nationality which is completely wrong. I was thinking about this and I decided I need to change this. The difficult part will be to all the people that I have already been indroduced as Greek, including my colleagues.

At some point we as Hellenes should start trying to protect our heritage that we so often call upon. Naming is one thing. Also greeklish,a form of writing greek using the latin characters to write down the words based on sound, is also exremely bad for our culture. Also guilty about this subject but this I will analyze with another post.

Soldiers without name (Anonymous/Telecomix)

This is the latest production/documentary released by Warzone . This is an internation show about internation matters. This show is about the Anonymous and Telecomix groups and freedom in the internet and real world. 

Although the production is Hellenic and there are parts that are in Hellenic, because Warzone usually deals with internation matters, in most of the show guests speak in English. Only the guy with the white blouse and ski mask, speaks in Hellenic language but he is not saying something completely different from the rest of the show. 

Also there is a part about the attacks in Hellenic goverments sites, which is also mainly in the Hellenic language. As long as you can endure the Hellenic subtitles, I think this show is really interesting. Warzone is a show with many internation awards.

Funny thing is that the show is host on one of the two most anti-people interests channels in Hellas.

Painting on Water