John here. Some of you have asked for a list of the lessons in the system. It shouldn’t be surprising that I, as academic director, possess such a list. I’ve been pretty busy fixing all the issues with old lessons while simultaneously producing new content, but I have put together some spreadsheets for our users.
The first spreadsheet contains all the names of the ChinesePod lessons online, through today. It also has their ID numbers (which relates mainly to the filenames associated with the lessons). You can download that lesson here:
ChinesePod-Lesson-List.xls (Excel file) | ChinesePod-Lesson-List.csv (CSV file)
The second spreadsheet contains the new names and the old names of all the lessons that have been renamed in V3. It ends at March 30, 2007.
ChinesePod-Old-Titles.xls (Excel file) | ChinesePod-Old-Titles.csv (CSV file)
We hope this helps those of you that are trying to reorganize your files. A torrent file for downloading lessons en masse is also on the way, but we need to first make sure that all the audio is as close to flawless as possible. We’re not there yet, but we’re working hard to get there.
-John


Sorry John to break into your reverie but what is a CSV file?
Michael: CSV means ‘comma separated values’, and is automatically opened by Excel, if you have it installed.
John: there is no central place where all bugs can be reported, is there?
I have following bugs to report:
1) The Other Woman: Dialog / Vocab / Expansion - all MISSING (text and sound)
2) A Business Dinner: Dialog / Expansion audio level much too low, hardly audible (vocab audio level normal)
3) The Breakup: Dialog/Expansion sound near inaudible (Vocab by comparison VERY LOUD, but actually it is normal level)
It’s just things I’ve come across without looking for it …
@Michael Butler
“C”omma “S”eparated “V”alues (tables as text files, lines separated by newlines, columns sepatated by commas or tabs).
Michael: CSV stands for “Comma Separated Values”
Can be regarded as the lowest common denominator for the exchange of structured data.
Michael,
That would be a Comma-Separated Value file. Unlike Excel files, the CSV file format is non-proprietary and is widely accepted for data storage.
(The people who may want to use these lists to manipulate their data know what all this stuff is…)
-John
Hi John,
do you also have a list of the lessons that have been rerecorded and of those that have been dumped. E.g. the lesson “Podcasting” seems to be gone (although I learned some important vocab in that one)…
testing blog behaviour….
What about the Advanced Level Lessons prior to July 2007 ? Have they all been dumped ?
Ningkun - You mean the 22 Advanced Lessons prior to July 2006 - yes all dumped, however, I’ve noticed at least one of them has been “recovered” as a “new” Advanced Lesson under the Chinesisch-Chinesisch (post-July 2006 class), I guess there will be more than one undergoing that treatment. I’m glad I’ve downloaded all that stuff, I’ve burnt it onto a DVD, like all the rest, in IT the more one multiplies saveguarding, the better chances are that at least one copy survives …
great (built my own list but it’s great to see such generous sharing).
on a different subject but still v3, lessons now have html titles reflecting lesson topic, but could the section be indicated too instead of just “xxx | ChinesePod”, namely “xxx | Discussion”, “xxx | Dialogue”, “xxx | Vocabulary”, “xxx | Expansion”, “xxx | Exercices”.
it’s just that preparing for my daily lessons it helps having all tabs open at once in Firefox when working off a slow connection as often happens when I travel. Being able to kind of pre-download them all (including sentence level mp3) is convenient, and seeing them all at-a-glance even better.
hope it’s not just me
John: there is no central place where all bugs can be reported, is there?
I have following bugs to report:
1) The Other Woman: Dialog / Vocab / Expansion - all MISSING (text and sound)
2) A Business Dinner: Dialog / Expansion audio level much too low, hardly audible (when vocab audio level normal)
3) The Breakup: Dialog/Expansion sound near inaudible (same situation as under 2)
It’s just things I’ve come across without looking for it …
html version of D0344 Marketing Proposal and a few other also appear to be missing: F0485, A0478, E0464, C0442, A0439, B0430, F0426, B0407, E0398, F0394, E0391, C0390, A0386, F0384, E0373, E0370, F0345, D0344, F0337, F0328, C0319, E0312, E0303, C0302, F0300, E0276, B0266, E0261, E0258, B0254, F0246, F0237, E0234, E0225, E0222, E0207, E0201, E0195, E0193, E0190, B0143, C0070, C0069, C0068, A0067, A0012, A0011
Advanced - 话中带刺 - won’t let you add yet-to-learn vocabulary (I’m not talking about the pre-defined keywords) to the Voc-List. I vaguely remember other Advanced behaving alike. Maybe it is to do with the fact that when hovering your mouse all you can see is pinyin, but no translation in the popup bubble. Is that normal?
Pushing ahead with LABS - what about some functions that do not work, or have not yet been implemented as promised:
Vocab lists:
1) Exported lists result in garbled pinyin and non-existent hanzi
2) Still missing a button to delete (a) all vocabulary at once, and (b) to delete all marked words in one go.
Thanks in advance
Hans,
fortunatelly the delete-all-button has been up and running for a while. Only after that my vocab became manageable.
Henning - I’m either nuts, or blind, or both, so I’m asking you where is the button, I click on Vocabulary which brings me to the page with the main vocabulary list page ready for tagging, and there I see no delete button. So it must be on another page, which page?
You see, I’m not an Internet newbie, apart from being a database designer, I created my first professional website in 1997, and am still running several websites, but somehow this site is counter-intuitive, although slowly I’m getting used to it.
Thank you in advance for facilitating - as we say in German “Aha-Erlebnis” = aha-experience.
Hans, it’s the small gray trash bin right of the header “Vocab tagged XXX”.
@goulnik - thanks. we’ve regenerated those files on the backend. They should go online the next time we do a mass upload to Amazon. just hunting down the last of the chipmunks and regenerating some pdf files before we take that step.
Speaking of the html files, I noticed the DOCTYPE declaration at the top of them is not closed properly. It doesn’t affect display, but confuses an HTML parser I’m using, which is how I found it.
Also, here is my list of missing HTML files:
A0011 A0012 A0386 A0439 A0478
B0143 B0254 B0407 B0430 B0492
C0302 C0319 C0390 C0442
D0344
E0190 E0193 E0195 E0201 E0207 E0222 E0225 E0234 E0258 E0261
E0276 E0303 E0312 E0370 E0373 E0391 E0398 E0464
F0237 F0246 F0300 F0328 F0337 F0345 F0384 F0394 F0426 F0485
Hope this helps!
Anne M. - thanks, I really hadn’t noticed it.
GREAT FEATURE, i.e. on the feed page regarding the last MEDIA lesson, there are links for the htm page and for the mp3, so the mp3 is directly downloadable instead of having to visit the page first.
WHY DON’T YOU IMPLEMENT THIS FUNCTIONALITY THROUGHOUT ALL LESSONS?
Hans,
http://rfc.sunsite.dk/rfc/rfc1855.html
Henning, I’m grateful for the link, I’ve quickly gone through the referenced contents, it might even be very helpful for my own activities, but at this moment I’m too occupied to read it through carefully, I just understand that something I’ve written doesn’t comply with standard behaviour, is it the capitals? Honestly, it’s the first time I’m using capitals in this exaggerated way - it denotes my impatience, and I admit it’s ugly, I don’t like it myself, so I’ll abstain from now on.
Hans,
don’t worry. I just cannot focus very good on the actual message if it is transported in a loud upper case. Just blame it on the coffee in the keyboard…