This is one in a series of cheatsheets. Full list here.
PRONOUNS
If “they” refers to a group all males or male and female or its gender composition is unknown, αυτοί is used.
Εγώ
I
Εσύ
you (singular)
Εσείς
you (plural)
Εμείς
we
Αυτός
he
αυτή
she
αυτό
it
Αυτοί
they (male)
αυτές
they (female)
αυτά
they (neuter)
TO BE
Important note: the pronoun (Εγώ, εσύ) …is not always needed.
Εγώ είμαι
I am
Εσύ είσαι
you (singular) are
Εσείς είσαστε
you (plural) are (or είστε)
Εμείς είμαστε
we are
αυτή είναι
she is (or he, or it)
αυτές είναι
they (female) are
TO HAVE
Singular
Plural
First Person
I have – έχω (“echo”)
we have – έχουμε, έχομε
Second Person
you have – έχεις
you have – έχετε
Third Person
she has – έχει
they (f) have – έχουν, έχουνε
First Conjugation Verbs
Many Greek verbs fall into this same pattern for changing their endings (or conjugating.)
We call this group of verbs the first conjugation verbs.
Here are a few more of them, given, as always, in the first person form:
I see
βλέπω
I buy
αγοράζω
I drink
πίνω
I know
ξέρω
I take
παίρνω
I give
δίνω
I eat
τρώω
POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS:
Person
Pronoun (own one thing)
Pronoun (own many things)
1st person singular
(Δικός/Δική/Δικό) μου
(Δικοί/Δικές/Δικά) μου
2nd person singular
(Δικός/Δική/Δικό) σου
(Δικοί/Δικές/Δικά) σου
3rd person singular (masculine)
(Δικός/Δική/Δικό) του
(Δικοί/Δικές/Δικά) του
3rd person singular (feminine)
(Δικός/Δική/Δικό) της
(Δικοί/Δικές/Δικά) της
3rd person singular (neuter)
(Δικός/Δική/Δικό) του
(Δικοί/Δικές/Δικά) του
1st person plural
(Δικός/Δική/Δικό) μας
(Δικοί/Δικές/Δικά) μας
2nd person plural
(Δικός/Δική/Δικό) σας
(Δικοί/Δικές/Δικά) σας
3rd person plural
(Δικός/Δική/Δικό) τους
(Δικοί/Δικές/Δικά) τους
(masc/fem/neuter)
(masc/fem/neuter)
EXAMPLES:
Ο άντρας μου=My husband
Ο δικός μου άντρας= My own husband (emphatic).
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Δικός, δική, δικό?
Δικός is used if the owned object is of masculine gender: Ο άντρας είναι δικός μου=The man is mine.
Δικός becomes δικοί when the owned object of masculine gender is in plural.
So, οι άντρες είναι δικοί μου=the men are mine.
Δική is used if the owned object is of feminine gender: Η γυναίκα είναι δική μου=The woman is mine.
Δική becomes δικές when the owned object of feminine gender is in plural.
So, οι γυναίκες είναι δικές μου=the women are mine.
Δικό is used if the owned object is of neuter gender: Το παιδί είναι δικό μου=The kid is mine.
Δικό becomes δικά when the owned object of neuter gender is in plural.
So, τα παιδιά είναι δικά μου=the children are mine.
THE DOUBLE ACCENT RULE
When μου,σου,του,της,μας,σας,τους comes after a word that is accented on the antepenult (second syllable from the end e.g. αυτοκίνητο), then it is accented also on the last syllable.
Example:
το αυτοκίνητό μου=my car
το ραδιόφωνό της= her radio
η τσάντα του=his bag (no double accent here because the word τσάντα is not accented on the antepenult!)
I’ve been using DuoLingo, which is great in some ways, but utterly bewildering in others. The app asks you to remember random sentences and words with no apparent attempt to explain any basic grammatical rules or word endings. In fact that info is available on the DuoLingo website, but is still a bit haphazard even there, so I’ve created some cheat sheets with some useful basic rules:
Up until last week, my ten-year-old couldn’t quite tie a shoelace. These days you can easily get away with it, because apart from walking boots, most kids’ shoes don’t have laces. But his new school shoes have laces. So it’s time for us to get this sorted.
I enjoy teaching, but there is this thing called “Expert-Induced Amnesia“. It’s about that skill you’ve had for so long, you don’t know how you do it. When you try to teach it to other people, you struggle. As a parent, I’ve been starkly reminded of this in two examples: One is riding a bike, and the other is tying your shoelaces.
Teaching a child to ride a bike is extra hard, because you know at some point you’ll have to let go and hope for the best. And have the band-aid ready. But the shoelaces thing… maybe it’s just me, but wow, I found it hard to explain what I do and how I do it. My fingers just know. I don’t think about it. It’s muscle memory. And as soon as I try to slow it down and explain it, I can’t even remember what to do. I can only do it quickly, in a blur.
Also, learners need to practice repeatedly to get it right. Explaining this repeatedly can get wearing, particularly as most of the teaching opportunities come when you’re in a hurry to get out the door, and really you just want the shoes on the feet, with minimal fuss.
One of the hardest parts of teaching is patience. Resisting the urge to do it for them. “Oh, I’ll show you,” you say. You think you’re being helpful, but really you’re just being impatient. They need to do it for themselves.
That was a ridiculously long preamble.
The original version of this post was based on a series of diagrams I drew for my sons, to teach them how to tie their shoelaces the way I learnt. But then people showed me two videos which claim to teach revolutionary new shoelace-tying methods which are super-easy to learn.
A video my son and I failed to follow
The second video was supposedly even better than the first, and therefore my 10-yr-old son and I started there:
We played this video, rewound the crucial bit, played it again, rewound it…
Half an hour later, we were none the wiser. The crucial instruction, “pinch both of them and pull” is accompanied by a blur of activity, and no matter how much we watched it, we couldn’t make head or tail of it. My main problem was that if both hands were holding the bits of lace we were directed to hold, then the fingers got in each other’s way and it wasn’t possibly for both of them to pull. Even if we briefly let go with one hand, we got nowhere. It was frustrating as hell but in the end we gave up and had a look at this video instead:
A video my son and I got our heads around in the end
This one had a similar sticking point – “Feed them through each other’s loops”. Again, we had to rewind a few times and replay. Neither of us could work out which bit went through which bit. One problem is that both of these videos are shot from the point of view of a spectator, NOT from the view of the person tying the knot.
In the end I worked out what was going on and added this one extra instruction for myself and my son, and finally we both got it: After you have created the two loops, when you get to the “pull the loops through each other” part, you will have two loops facing you. At this point, one pair of fingers should grab the front of the other hand’s loop. The other hand should grab the back part of the opposite loop. Then each hand pulls the part it holds, through its own loop.
Oh, and that first video is describing the same technique. If you imagine yourself grabbing the front and the back of each loop and pulling it through, and if you turn the “zigzag” into two loops, you can make it work. That’s the only way I managed to make sense of it, but maybe my brain is just broken.
Some really good diagrams
This set of diagrams here is really good, and shows the knot from the knot-tyer’s perspective: https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm
My original diagrams
The original version of this post was based on the diagrams I drew below, and I have to confess I’m rather proud of my lovely diagrams. So I’m going to leave the rest of this post in place, despite the fact that I now think the Ian Knot (above) is a better technique. Oh well.
I forced myself to sit down and work it out, step by step. Then I drew diagrams and stuck them to a piece of card with laces attached. Then I gave it to my eldest son and left him to practice on his own. And now it’s my youngest son’s turn, so I dug the card out again (which is why it looks all tatty and old).
And here it is. Apologies for the tattiness. But just in case you’re teaching somebody to tie shoelaces, or learning to do it yourself… here are some diagrams that just might help.
(Also, apologies if you thought this was going to culminate in some fantastic metaphor, where the laces represent the meaning of life, the universe and everything. It really is a post about shoelaces.)
This was originally the submission for a talk which I’ve now delivered in a few places. There’s a recording of the talk here.
“I know nothing.”
“I know less than nothing.”
“I am an impostor.”
“The more I learn, the more I realise how little I know.”
These are sentences that will be familiar to the vast majority of IT professionals. But how about these?
“They know nothing about X.”
“They have no relevant experience.”
“Wow, I just discovered my colleague doesn’t understand Y. I’m shocked.”
“Can you believe, I just interviewed this dev, and they didn’t even know what a Z was?”
Over my 18-year software career, those last two have been said to me countless times. They are said derisively, scornfully, impatiently. And every time those words are said, we lose both existing and potential members of our profession. We lose them because they feel stupid; because they believe they can’t keep up; because they have given up on ever really knowing what they’re doing; because they’re terrified that people are saying the same things about them.
We work in an industry where knowledge is highly valued, and where every time we look for a new job we have to prove how much we know. We find ways of posturing to one another, of proving how well-informed we are. Sometimes we join in when others’ knowledge is criticised – relieved that we are not the target ourselves.
And yet, we know that everybody has gaps. There are a million different paths through software development, touching a million different combinations of technologies and skills. On a day-to-day level we have to specialise on one task at a time. The skills we don’t need right now are necessarily forgotten, or delegated to someone else. And that’s fine.
If somebody already feels like they don’t “fit in”, then this kind of pressure and insecurity can be the final shove that persuades them to leave the profession or not try and join in the first place. Women and non-binary people, people of colour, older people, LGBT people and many other under-represented groups are strongly impacted by intellectual elitism. But of course, ALL software professionals are impacted.
Let’s stop putting pressure on individuals to know everything, and focus instead on how teams can work together to build and provide the unique combination of skills required to deliver their current project – in the certain knowledge that whatever that combination was today, it will be different tomorrow.
Instead of knowledge, let’s focus on aptitude. Instead of judging people about what they don’t know, let’s help them to feel excited about all the new things they’re going to discover.
Instead of saying “For God’s sake, do you really not know about X?” let’s say “Fantastic, you don’t know about X! Lucky you. That means you get to learn it. What can I do to help?”
(I’m hoping to do talks on this topic at events in 2018 – let me know if you have an event you’d like me to talk at).
I used to be a high school maths teacher. It didn’t go well. I miss the energy and creativity of the young people I worked with, but apart from that I have no regrets about leaving that profession behind me.
A friend of mine has just completed his first term of teacher training, and it’s HARD. You would think that now the Christmas holiday period has started, he’d be able to have a rest. Nuh-uh. Too much work to do.
Coincidentally I’ve also been facing a giant to-do list this week, and with the festive season fast approaching I’ve struggled to stay focused. But I have various coping mechanisms, which I just shared with my teaching friend and I thought were worth preserving for my own benefit too. And if they can help anyone else (particularly teachers), so much the better:
“What you have to remember is that you’ve been working flat out for months without even the option of slowing down. Whether you like it or not, your mind and body need a rest and what’s happening right now is that your subconscious is forcing that rest on you whether you like it or not. Sadly your conscious mind knows that there isn’t really time for that rest, and that’s preventing you from enjoying it – which is a shame.
So…
1) Accept right now that the workload is impossible. Therefore it’s either not all going to get done, or some of it will have to be done to a poor standard. There’s no point lying to yourself about that. You can’t bend time. You and thousands of other teachers are in the same position and you just have to accept it.
2) Given that you’re not going to get all of it done anyway, just pick TWO OR THREE SMALL THINGS and do those. Be unambitious. Don’t tell yourself “today I’m going to do the top 50 things on my to-do list,” because that’s a lie. You’re not going to achieve that, no matter how much you hope. And you already feel shit about that, and the whole thing is so depressing that it’s preventing you from doing anything.
Instead, aim low. Tell yourself you’re going to do a small number of things. Then do them, and feel good about having achieved your goals for the day. If that glow of success gives you the energy to do a little more, fantastic. But don’t plan for that, otherwise you’re back to square one.
Baby steps. You need to get back into a rhythm. If somebody gives you a mountain to climb when you’ve just eaten ten mince pies, you’re going to tell them to sod off. But a flight of stairs? Yeah. That’s a possibility.”
POSTSCRIPT:
I just did something which I realised I often do, and may also be good advice:
I scrolled down my to-do list until I found something I could easily do. The thing in question is pretty pointless and not at all urgent. It can easily wait til after Xmas and the world wouldn’t end if I never got round to it at all. But it’s a gateway drug. It’s not only easy, it’s vaguely enjoyable. And I know that it represents an “in”, ie once I’ve done that, I’ll be in the swing of Getting Things Done and I’ll find it easier to tackle a more worthwhile item from the list.
I know from experience that if I don’t do this, I’ll just arse around on the internet and do nothing from my to-do list. So it’s better to do something slightly pointless, but knowing I’ll find it much easier to follow it with something pointful… than to do nothing at all.
I recently travelled to India for work, and before I went I asked for advice, which of course I noted down in a big list, as is my habit.
I’ll be honest, altogether it felt like a big List of Things to Worry About and didn’t exactly relax me, but in the end I had a lovely time and everything was fine. 🙂
For what it’s worth I didn’t get ill. I didn’t eat any meat, ice or salad, I used bottled water to clean my teeth and I took strong probiotic pills twice a day. I can’t prove that any of that made any difference though.
Anyway, here it is.
Headline simple tips
Water is the main source of bacteria that could affect your gut (ie Delhi belly – normally diarrhoea, which can be very extreme indeed).
Only drink bottled water and check the seal. Some shops / street vendors refill bottles from the tap.
Avoid salad (because it’s washed in tap water)
Mosquito killer is pretty hard core – you set it off, leave the room for a few minutes, come back and they’re all dead – but if they’re really bothering you, this can be the most effective way of dealing with them in your room.
Don’t have ice – it’s made of unfiltered water.
You’re advised not to use your left hand to eat food, because this is seen as a filthy habit (left hand is used for the toilet, right hand for eating). But I never remembered this and wasn’t aware of anybody being disgusted by my eating habits.
Don’t open your mouth in the shower
Get up and walk around on plane, talk to staff, take shoes off
Only brush teeth with bottled water
Drink coconut juice from street vendors, but check how clean any knives used are, and carry your own straws around.
Best water brands: Bisleri, Kinley and Aquafina (in that order)
Good fruit drinks: nimbooz, mango frooti
Drink chai if cup is clean and water is boiled
You can’t take more than 25,000 Rupees into the country with you (a little under £300). Make sure it’s the new denominations as banks won’t accept old.
Avoid meat.
Other Simple Tips
Taking spare pencils, pens and toiletries to give out goes down well if you want to directly give to children who are begging.
Be prepared: the disparity between rich and poor is unlike anything you’ve seen in your life.
Wear light linen or cotton or silk clothes, no unnatural fibres.
Carry a hand fan (electric or old-fashioned) at all times
Wear a wide-brimmed hat outside
Try and make sure you sleep in an air-conditioned room, at least
Take a container of alcohol-based hand cleaner, and use it several times a day.
Prepare yourself for lots of bureaucracy. The Indians love bureaucracy, thanks to English colonialism.
“Overnight flights suck.”
“Indian notes tear really easily so be careful with them in a zipped purse. If they’re even slightly damaged they won’t be accepted and even the bank may not accept them.”
Aim to use an ME3 airline – refers to the 3 big middle eastern airlines that clean up on long-haul services by routing everything through their hubs. Emirates, Qatar, and Etihad.
“Probiotics are good to take before going to India, they boost up your gut bacteria. I took acidophilus Lactobacillus before I went and only had mild runs once.”
“Be prepared for the visual and sensual assault. The pollution is hardcore and its a v frenetic place.”
Avoiding jetlag: “If it’s daytime at your destination, try and stay awake with daylight or at least blue light in your eyes, eating when you would eat when you are there. If it’s night time at destination, don’t eat, close your eyes, try to sleep, but even if you don’t (I rarely do), just limiting the light coming in does wonders.”
“When eating communally with Indian colleagues, eat with your right hand. Most importantly, don’t pass anything or touch anything on a shared plate with your left hand. (I find it easier just to sit on my left hand for the first couple of days!)”
Surviving long-haul flights:
Seatguru.com is your friend – use it to work out which individual seats on each plane are most comfortable
“some are in awkward positions, or next to smelly loos or noisy baby basinets, or have media equipment boxes under the seat in front (massive bugbear if you’re tall) or will be constantly bumped by the food carts (big issue if you want to sleep). The plane nerds have crowdsourced info on every seat for each route so it’s really useful.”
Take your own films on iPad (don’t assume you can charge on the plane though – a portable charger is a good idea).
Take your own headphones.
Check in early as you can online and bag the seat you want.
But then also check the checkin screens when you arrive at the airport to see if there’s a seat with an empty next to you.
You can change your seat at last minute. Either at the check in desk, or on the touch screen check ins.
A lot of airlines also have apps, which in addition to offering electronic boarding cards, will let you see a live seat map so that right up to the door of the plane you can change seats and hopefully avoid a dreaded middle seat!
“If you’re on Etihad you could listen to some of the expertly selected CDs hand picked by perhaps the most dashing audio producer this side of Doha or the AMAZINGLY mixed (if really cheesy) Dance program.“
[this from a friend of mine, who actually does this for his job!]
(or they also have quite a lot of movies.)
But take ipad too in case your screen is broken or their systems crash
“I’ve found travelling with a hoodie is a godsend as it can be super cosy, and provides a nice buffer between your head and the window (if you’re leaning against it) and can be pulled down over my eyes for shade and you can tuck your hands into the pockets so that if you fall asleep, they don’t randomly land in your neighbour’s lap.”
“As a white woman you will unfortunately get hassled a lot. It’s not uncommon to have men pinching your bum as you walk down the street.”
This never happened to me!
“No ice in anything ever (my 24 hours on the loo were from a fruit juice from a fancy place – where I forgot the no ice rule).”
“Prepare to have your privilege exposed like never before.”
“Professionally, no-one says no. Even when they should. If you are getting vague answers, don’t assume the best. Don’t assume someone will tell you bad news you need to hear.”
I found this not to be true.
“The water thing isn’t because all the water there is dirty. We don’t have the gut flora to cope with their normal bacteria.”
My Indian colleagues didn’t drink tap water either, so I’m not sure about this one.
“hotels with restaurants are often the best source of Delhi belly, because they have large freezers & when they suffer power cuts (which in some places happens a lot) their food defrosts & refreezes, thus making people sick.”
“Directions – if you ask someone on the street for directions or if you ask someone at a bus terminal where you get the bus you need for XXX they will tell you. It won’t always be right. Indians think it’s ruder to say “I don’t know” then tell you something wrong.”
“If you want to go on day trips out of the city, hire a driver for the day. They’ll stay in the cab while you go sight seeing and it costs @*&^!? all. Like £20 for a day. Just be nice & buy them a drink of fanta if you’re getting one. I imagine if you hire one from via the hotel it’ll be a lot more than walking down the road to a taxi rank and asking there.”
“If you go sightseeing somewhere like the Taj Mahal (although they may do it more ordered there – but it’s India so unlikely) you’ll be mobbed by tour guides offering you tours. It’s really easy to get pissed off and turn them down cos it can be a bit stressy & also cos it’s easy to be suspicious of everyone and assume they’re all on the make. The tour guides are actually really knowledgeable & know all sorts of stuff you don’t get in the little guide books.”
“You might also find you get stared at. It bugged the hell out of me until I realised that Indians don’t have a culture of don’t stare. And as soon as I smiled at someone staring they’d smile back. And quite often wave.”
“Don’t expect food to come quickly. It might, but don’t expect it. They do work on Indian time. I mean it’s hot, so why rush?”
“You can buy any prescription drug you want from a pharmacy without a prescription. Pharmacies do also sell knock offs.”
“Carry small denomination notes to give to beggars”
…but some people say, give out pens and pencils instead.
“Take bag space for bringing stuff back. you’ll want all the fabrics and knicknacks. maybe that’s just me.”
“You’ll probably have AC but the best trick I found in the hottest place I stayed was to have a shower in my pajamas & then lie on my bed with the ceiling fan on high. It was only one night but I think I woke up three times stone dry & boiling hot.”
“Apparently men come back thinner and women come back fatter after a trip to India. Men clearly have weak stomachs. Bunch of pussies.”
LOL
“You absolutely must do Taj Mahal if you can, ideally get there for sunrise – it’s totally worth the early start! Nothing prepares you for how beautiful it is IRL, even though you think you’ve seen it a million times.”
Re jet lag: “it’s always harder going east than west”
“Two weeks of air pollution is fine. If it’s a bit dusty as well you might want to take a light scarf that you can pull up around your mouth and nose. Also faces masks do @*&^!? all for pollution they really just stop dirt particles getting in, which you cough up anyway eventually.”
Not sure that’s actually true, I’ve seen some articles suggesting face masks really do make a difference… but also others that suggest they make very little difference.
“I was a bit “meh” before I went to India. But when I got there, I was “f*cking hell, wow !” It’s just a mad, crazy place. Every day there, you witness things that are so massively different to life in the UK : the contrasts between opulent wealth and extreme poverty (way bigger than anything I have seen in the UK)……the crazyness of Delhi rush hour white knuckle ride…..the touristy stuff was excellent (I went to Taj Mahal / Agra temple, and also the ginormous Hindu temple on the eastern side of Delhi – which is well worth a visit)….the wildlife, the architecture…..etc etc. Some of the poverty stuff was quite upsetting – seeing leprosy sufferers begging at the traffic lights was a real eye-opener. But when I was there, I was treated incredibly well by my Indian hosts. It’s just a really intense and full-on place. It’s exhausting being there, but exhilarating too.”
“We went to a few places where they make stuff as part of our tour and I loved seeing how the handicrafts are still being practiced such as inlaying wood and marble with precious stones or wood-block printing fabrics or weaving silk for saris. I know it’s a dying art – as it is everywhere in the world – but it’s very satisfying watching a skilled craftsperson at work. And the fabrics! Omg i could have bought it all! Such beautiful cloth with gorgeous patterns and colours.”
“podcasts, hoodie, in-ear buds (which work nicely for noise mitigation with podcast on softly) plus a decent amount of booze and popping 10mg of melatonin – that’s usually me sorted for a longish (i.e. 5+ hours) flight.”
“don’t feel like you have to keep your shoes on (but do wear clean socks, obvs), and do take a walk now and again if you’re uncomfortable. I often hang out at the back of the airplane and chat to the stewards, particularly on night flights when they don’t have much to do.”
From an Indian colleague of mine from Delhi: “lots of places to see …
Qutub Minar, Jama Masjid and Red Fort are my favourites
you can very easily and cheaply rent a car with a driver for a day
Leave early morning though … As early as possible … Otherwise there are too many queues
Taj Mahal is best at dawn … It opens at 9 though … So you can plan to be there then …
And do get a guide … But only the official ones with a badge … Plus they tell nice stories ?”
“there is a smog these days in Delhi … get a mask if you are bothered by it … Masks are easily available at any medicine shop
Office & shops be okay though … It’s all temperature controlled hence sealed”
“If they try to put you up in a guest house … Say no ? … They are not good”
“u can take uber everywhere because it’s ridiculously cheap.”
(Picture from The Illusion of Normal: https://everydayaspergers.com/2012/03/19/day-50-the-illusion-of-normal/)
As always, do please correct me if I’ve got anything wrong.
tl;dr: Normalise = make it look normal = separate fields out into separate “normal” entities like Customer / Address, which then link to one another via foreign keys.
In relational databases: A normalised database is one where every possible entity has its own table, typically with an Id column, which other tables will reference using foreign keys. “Normalisation” refers to the fact that each entity has been separated out into its own table, with the links between entities being upheld via Ids and foreign keys. Each separate piece of data exists only once, and can be accessed by navigating a series of relationships.
For instance you might have Address, Customer, Employee, Invoice, etc. A customer may have a Sales Rep which links to the Employee table via EmployeeId. Meanwhile, the invoice links to the customer via CustomerId, and the customer links to an address via AddressId.
Denormalisation is the process of reducing joins in queries, by adding some redundant and duplicate data to tables. A denormalised database has some duplicated or redundant data. But it means that your queries will have fewer joins. Joins are costly.
Two examples of denormalisation:
1. In the above example, in order to get from Invoice to Sales Rep you have to go via customer, to get the employee Id of the sales rep. Instead, you could duplicate the SalesRepId in the Invoice table.
2. You may want a snapshot of the customer name and address, as they were when the invoice was created (they may have changed since then). If the invoice only accesses name and address via a link to the customer table, you can’t recreate the invoice as it was when it was first sent out. The solution is to copy customer name and address into the Invoice table.
Context:
I worked with relational databases via SQL for many years, but as is often the case with binary terms, I frequently forgot which was which out of “normalised” and “denormalised”, and what exactly they meant.
I’m currently learning about graph databases via Neo4J, and the term “denormalise” came up, and I had to remind myself – yet again – what it meant.
This time though, I wrote it down. Therefore I’m hoping it’ll stick.
I’ve had a Mac at work for a year now, but I’m still a Windows girl at heart: I’ve only just learnt how to project slides to an external screen from my Mac. It’s useful info, so I’m recording it here.
Unlike Windows (where it’s just Windows key + P), there’s no simple keystroke for this.
Project to an External Display from a Mac:
!! This functionality is only available when you have an external display connected !!
Apple icon (top left) | System preferences | Displays (top left, second row down).
Click the Arrangement tab (it won’t be there unless you have a cable connecting your laptop to another display).
Uncheck Mirror Displays.
The good news is that this setting will be remembered, so unless you change it back again (for instance when pairing), it will still be set that way the next time you connect an external display.
If you want, arrange the displays so that the extra display is to the left / right of your laptop (to match the actual setup – this can be helpful if you want to drag things between the two screens).
This will extend your desktop to two screens, one of which will project to a connected external display, and one of which will be your laptop screen.
Then you just make sure your slides are on the projected screen, and your speaker notes are on your laptop.
Hover over the bottom left of the screen while slides are being shown.
Click the icon that looks like lines of text on a page
Select Use Presenter View
Google Slides:
When not in presenter view, there is a Present menu, top right
This has a presenter view option – which will open a new tab in the browser with a Speaker Notes header.
Click on Speaker Notes, then just separate that browser tab onto your external screen.
Keynote:
If you have an external display connected to a Mac, then Keynote will automatically display slides on the external display and show presenter view on your screen (but not necessarily speaker notes – see below).
To add speaker notes while editing slides, choose View | Show presenter notes
To see speaker notes when presenting (only works when connected to an external display), hover over your screen to see this icon, top right:
Click on that icon and it will give you a bewildering array of choices… find the Presenter Notes checkbox, bottom left, and click that. You can also move components around and resize them to look however you want.
