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To begin, I would like to remember a phrase that someone told me long time ago: “Never talk about something you don’t know”. I’m pretty lame when it comes to being a “walking Wikipedia” about issues like environment. Therefore, right now I reduce the expectations about this article.

But let’s cut this crap and start to work here. I don’t recognize myself as a “garbage contributor”, like most of Chileans right now, but neither a Greenpeace guy. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all against what Greenpeace does to improve common habits in the lives of many people that aren’t likely the indicated ones, but I just can’t imagine myself telling other people what is right and what is wrong with environment, like some preacher or “Messiah” that shocks people in order to get attention and transmit his point of view —considering that I don’t know very much about Greenpeace, I couldn’t say this is likely the truth about them. It’s just what it seems to me—. What I do agree that has to be done it’s trying to convince people by chats and examples of how you can use easy daily methods for having more awareness about environment, rather than forcing someone to do something about it.

Many of these simple tasks are used by my, like throwing garbage to cans instead of streets, taking shorter showers, riding on bike or walking (God knows when I’ll get a car driving license). So, it seems to me that I do have some certain awareness on environment stuff, and I guess that I’ll welcome any suggestion to improve these habits (one that seems logical to me). But in the end I guess that the first and most important advices in this topic are the ones that are learned in the family. Like many things in life, this is the starting point for all of us that pretty much will determine our actions and its consequences in the tomorrow that you and I will spend the rest of our lives, so we have to give some credit to the relatives, don’t you think?

I’m not interested in hearing opinions from guys like Bono to help making a world a better place. I would like instead to hear opinions from people that walk in daily streets or ride on buses and wonder: what can I possibly do with this ice cream bundle? Throw it on the street? Or put in my pocket?, which it seems like the most exaggerated way to care about you planet. I mean, come on. Seriously?

PLAY IT. LIVE IT. KILL FOR IT.

I remember that when I was child I used to go very often to the malls and persas, and I saw a lot of kids playing videogames. Most of them were fighting and racing games, and I used to play them too. Back in those days, the new Nintendo 64 was on the market and I really wanted one, but because we didn't had much money I had to get used to an old NES (the first Nintendo console). Although I'm not complaining about that. That console show me some of the first videogames that were popular on the market like Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, Tetris, Donkey-Kong and so many others. Several years later, on my first years as a teen, I discovered the real-time strategy games (Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, Empire Earth, etc...) that were more complex for my taste and called my attention on History.

Having said that, I stop there to emphasize about the impact that videogames have on our culture. We make them, we play them, and eventually enjoy them. But sometimes I wonder, how much control do we have upon them? I mean, now on these days I limit myself to play on-line games when I have free time on Internet, and yet try to not spend so much time on it for not to become an addiction, which happens to many people nowadays. Sometimes that addiction becomes something else that it's really dangerous. Take for instance the Grand Theft Auto Saga: this very known series has the reputation of being highly controversial with most of its titles that comes out. I know cases of people who after playing the games had tried to do the same things from it on real life. Near where I used to live, there were these guys who played GTA a lot, and recently I knew that one of them is in jail for trying to rob an old man.

As for me, GTA is one of the greatest sagas ever created (maybe I'm exaggerating). I mean, I like its gameplay consisting of freedom of actions and the plot that are presented on the titles (great script and many references to the action and crime/drama films and TV series). But we are talking about games and, no matter how much of realism has on its graphics or whatsoever, nothing will likely change that.

IF YOU WANT TO BE UNDERSTOOD... LISTEN

For those who study in this career; when it comes to pronounce words that we don’t know it’s likely possible that we make a few mistakes (or more, depending on different cases). For improving our pronunciation, we use various methods to do it: reading, more practicing and, of course, using websites (specifically the “Text to Speech” pages). 

But, in my opinion, you have to be a bit selective at finding useful webpages. You might be wondering why. Well, there are websites that do not truly fulfill all the requirements that are needed for a good study. For instance, when you tip certain text sometimes the digital speaker that interprets them is not from a good quality and you can’t always understand a sort of robotic voice. Sometimes texts, according to the site, are very big to be interpreted, which results on just a portion of the spoken text.

But many of these problems might be over when you use the ImTranslator Voice website. Maybe the most interesting feature that you first recognize it’s its voice: Speakers, not only have lack of any machine-like pronunciation, but the audio it’s so realistic that sounds like hearing a real person. Besides of English, you have other languages like Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese and many others. Although, clearly the site system doesn’t work entirely as it should be: there’s still problems with the capacity of interpretation like having enounced just the first 100 words, but I guess if you order a complete version of it this couldn’t happen.

So, if you are interested in checking and improving your skills in English, or any other language you might want to learn, let me tell you that there’s even a link on the Google Toolbar for easier access, or you can access here on text-to-speech.imtranslator.net