A torrent of the Princeton Russian courses

September 22, 2007 by Josh | 12 comments

I posted previously about the wonderful Russian courses available for free from Princeton. They have, however, recently taken the courses down. This happened once before in the past, and the courses were later put back up, but there’s no real way to know whether Princeton will do this again.

However – I have come to the rescue! Before the files disappeared, I had downloaded them all to my hard drive. I was able to contact the creator of the courses, David Freedel, and asked if he had any problem with me sharing them. He said, basically, “Nope, I don’t work at Princeton anymore – feel free to share them however you wish!”

So, I’ve created a torrent of the files. You can download the torrent here. Please note that, since I just created the torrent, I’m the only seeder – so you’ll need to be patient with the download! I’d also ask, if it’s not too inconvenient, that you please help seed the files, at least for a while, once you’ve downloaded them. That way the whole brunt of the downloads won’t be placed on my internet connection.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: I screwed up the creation of the torrent, using a tracker that won’t work. I’m recreating the torrent now; I’ll post a new link soon. Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE #2: Alright, here is the new torrent link. Please ignore the numbers (0 seeds, 0 leechers); I know for a fact they’re wrong. I checked the actual seeding files a few minutes ago, and there were 25 peers connected out of a total queue of 66. And I know there’s at least one seed – me.

  1. Thomas(babelhut.com)’s avatar

    Thomas(babelhut.com) on October 7, 2007 at 11:47 am

    Hey Josh. My friend Peter and I just started a new language learning blog. I was wondering if you wanted to exchange blogroll links. You can check out my blog at http://babelhut.com

    Let me know if you’re interested!

  2. Josh’s avatar

    Josh on October 7, 2007 at 12:52 pm

    Hey Thomas,

    Certainly! I’ve added you to my links.

  3. Thomas(babelhut.com)’s avatar

    Thomas(babelhut.com) on October 7, 2007 at 1:44 pm

    Thanks Josh! I added you to mine too. I hope you’ll visit my blog again in the future!

  4. Andrew’s avatar

    Andrew on October 16, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    Josh, я не знаю, почему ты не хочешь мне ответить…
    Мне даже неловко… но вот испытываю я
    сильное желание с тобой пообщаться.

    Ты мне прости мою настойчивость, но и не
    отвечать совсем… тоже не есть хорошо.
    Пишу тебе уже по-русски.
    В сети нашел 2 ресурса, о которых ты не говорил здесь.
    Может быть тебе пригодятся, ну или будут полезными….
    в изучении языка

    http://www.spoonfulofrussian.com/
    http://tasteofrussian.com/

    и еще один интересный подкаст…
    http://www.international.ucla.edu/languages/technology/podcasts/index.asp

    пожалуйста, ответь …
    жду…
    Андрей.

  5. Paul’s avatar

    Paul on March 6, 2008 at 8:35 pm

    Andrew, why not try addressing inEnglish?

  6. Josh’s avatar

    Josh on March 7, 2008 at 6:50 am

    Paul: indeed, when Andrew first posted this, I didn’t understand the Russian bits at all (and indeed, I still only understand a few words here and there). However, your comment brought my attention back to his comment, and I just used Google Translate to get his message.

    And so: Andrew, thanks! I’ll check out those resources. Alas, I know that a Spoonful of Russian at least is no longer being updated.

  7. Sarah’s avatar

    Sarah on June 5, 2008 at 6:30 pm

    Hi!

    I was just wondering if anyone is still seeding the Princeton or if I only go online at the wrong times?

    Thanks very much

  8. Josh’s avatar

    Josh on June 5, 2008 at 7:40 pm

    Hi Sarah,

    I know I’m at least not seeding it anymore, as I ended up having to format my computer. I still have the Princeton stuff on a DVD, but I’m not sure how to line up the old torrent with the files if I copy them back to my hard drive.

    All hope is not lost, however! Freelanguagecourses.com has the file up as a direct download. You can grab it here.

  9. oksana’s avatar

    oksana on September 2, 2008 at 2:54 pm

    Кстати,сердечно поздравляю всех-всех-всех участников блога с 1 сентября. (Автора наверное не стоит поздравлять, так как у Вас я думаю первые сентября уже в прошлом ;) ) Вчера забыла поздравить, не до этого было. Сейчас вот только отошла немного :)

  10. Катя’s avatar

    Катя on September 6, 2008 at 11:29 am

    Рассмотрите идею создать электронный сборник по вашему ресурсу? Например, все интересные и полезные посты скомпилировать в pdf и давать возможность скачивать и читать в офлайне?! По-моему очень полезно!

  11. Camilla’s avatar

    Camilla on September 12, 2008 at 5:58 am

    >>Например, все интересные и полезные посты скомпилировать в pdf и давать возможность скачивать и читать в офлайне?!

    Это прекрасные идеи! PDF да, или добавьте к своим ‘Resources’ страницу?

  12. Camilla’s avatar

    Camilla on September 12, 2008 at 6:00 am

    Oh, and apologies because i just read above that others would prefer English – maybe Russian and then a translation would be cool? What i said above (probably very badly in Russian) was that Катя’s idea of a collection of resources such as these is an excellent idea, either in PDF or perhaps just added to the Resources page on this site. :)