Tues, April 21. Very tired today. Only slept around three hours last night. And then, despite that, after teaching math for two hours I hit the gym and pressed bench 'til exhaustion. My arms are dead, if I lie on my stomach I can hardly push myself back up ;) In spite of being sleep-deprived, I feel very good :)
6:36PM. Opened japtemp. 1 scheduled, 3 unmemorized (I added those 3 earlier). Passed everything.
6:37PM. Opened kanjiaid. 10 scheduled, 1 failed. Accidentally held down the space key because I was contemplating changing my mind on a kanji's reading after already starting to press space to reveal the answer. Discovered that Mnemosyne doesn't have any safety mechanisms against that, and when Windows key-holding behavior kicks in, it counts as pushing spacebar over and over repeatedly. Which brings up one of my biggest complaints about Mnemosyne, if you push spacebar while the answer side is shown, it automatically counts as a "4" rating... which is stupid since spacebar is the same key you push to show the answer side in the first space, making accidental 4 ratings very common! In this case, it 4-rated six cards in a flash before I even registered what was happening. I tried killing the program from ctrl-alt-del to undo it, but it somehow autosaved. Ugh.
Besides that, I failed one other scheduled card and still didn't learn the original failed card, so now the deck's at 0 scheduled, 2 failed.
6:42PM: Opened the flagship deck, which had 65 cards scheduled and 205 in the failheap. By 6:56, I got through the due cards, and now the failed ones number 212 (meaning the passrate was 58/65 or about 89%). Now to do the remaining 35 to make 100, and hope I can make some headway against the congestion of this main deck...
7:05PM: Finished the flagship reviews for today. I'm happy that I got the failed heap down to 196... finally below the 200 mark!! :)
7:09PM: Opened latekanji. A perfect match!!! 24 scheduled and 24 failed/unmemorized. Yay, the universe is balanced and yin and yang have been achieved!! (Or wait, that's Chinese, isn't it...;) At 7:38, I finished the scheduled cards, and just like yesterday, I had a 100% pass rate!!! Woohoo!! 7:51PM: I got the deck down to 0/0. It took 40 reviews (in addition to the initial 24 scheduled reviews).
Weds, April 22. I've been feeling a little bored and unmotivated today. As we speak, a slightly dirty bowl I used for eating some tuna and salmon and an empty yogurt container lie on the desk, and I'm too lazy to even put them away. It took some willpower just to come do my daily Japanese study. But here I am, because a language isn't something you learn all at once, it's something you learn every day of your life... (that includes your mother tongue, as well as second languages) Amazingly, I'm feeling a little better just from typing.
10:11 PM: Opened japtemp. Found 4 cards due, 0 failed or unmemorized. I passed them with ease.
10:12 PM: Opened kanjiaid. There, I encountered 9 scheduled cards and 2 failed. Passed everything but one card (where I misread some kunyomi).
10:14 PM: Opened the primary deck, sam.mem. Lots of stuff due today, 82 cards, with the failed pile at height 196. 10:31 PM: Finished the 82 scheduled cards, but with a mediocre pass rate. Passed 69 out of the 82, for a passing rate around 84%. That leaves 209 failed cards and only 18 more reviews for today to try and make the ground back up.
10:39PM: Finished the main deck's 100 daily reviews, with the failpile ending up at 202, a net step backward of 6 cards :( I thought I'd at least get back under 200, since I was at 202 when I got down to 5 more reviews, but then I proceeded to miss every single one of the last 5 items. Oh well, you win some, you lose some!
10:40PM: Opened latekanji. 31 kanji due, 0 failed/missed. 10:48: Finished the scheduled late kanji cards, with a pass rate of 26/31 (about 84%). Hmm, roughly the same pass rate for the scheduled cards here as there was in the flagship deck. I'm pretty tired today, which is probably partly to blame. On the second go-through, the remaining five cards were passed without trouble.
Thurs, April 23. Today I was quite busy. I taught/tutored for three hours, then presented at for another hour and a half at a logic seminar, where, because I accidentally left a book back home in the dining room, I had to present about "the ordinal analysis of inductive definitions" from memory. After that I went to the pool with my girlfriend for a long time, and we had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, my wallet seems to have gone missing while I was swimming. Nothing irreplaceable in it, so I'm not very concerned about the contents (I might have to use a passport to buy alcohol for awhile), but I am pissed because the wallet itself was a gift from Glowing Face Girl, a nice Coach wallet. Hopefully it'll show up at lost & found.
11:33PM. Opened japtemp. 4 cards scheduled, 0 failed or missed. Passed them all with ease.
11:34 PM. Opened kanjiaid. 6 scheduled, 1 failed. I passed 5 of the scheduled ones, leaving the deck at 0 due, 2 failed.
11:35PM. Opened sam.mem, the main deck with over 9000 Japanese flashcards. There were 65 cards scheduled, and 202 on the failpile. 11:45PM. Finished the 65 scheduled cards, but with a dismal pass rate of just 80% (52 out of 65 passed). Then I started doing the 35 reviews on the failpile to bring the daily reviews to 100... 11:53PM: Finished the 100 daily reviews, and managed to get back under 200 on the failpile, ending up with exactly 199 cards there.
11:54PM: Opened latekanji. 29 scheduled, 0 failed. By midnight, I passed 26 of them (pass rate almost 90%), failing 3. One of the three fails was a dumb one, I for some reason made the middle vertical part of 瓜 ("melon") have a mouth in the middle, sort of like the middle part of 風 (wind). No idea why I did that.. probably confusion with "wind". Another go-through and the three failed cards were passed right away.
I now feel it's time to add the cards for lesson 53. The latekanji deck is starting to generate a significant amount of reviews required per day, which is bad. But I've got to keep momentum up and push through these last few lessons. I imagine by lesson 56 I might suffer 100+ items due each day from the latekanji deck, but once I've got all the Heisig kanji, that's it, no more items will be added to this deck, so the work it creates will start to dwindle, as described in my article, Language Maintenance through Spaced Repetition.
Lesson 53 is a whopper, containing 50 kanji, from #1927 ("nest") to #1977 ("statue"). According to Heisig, these are "small animals". (Of course, "statue" isn't a small animal-- presumably, it'll turn out to be a kanji which is built up of pieces, one of which is a little critter.)
Heisig's keyword for 桜 is "cherry tree". I'd argue this should be changed to "sakura". Anyone enthusiastic enough about Japan to be studying the entire Joyo kanji set, should know what sakura is.
Finally the "bird" card has been added to the deck! This is something of a milestone because I always like to joke about how in the Heisig ordering, something like "decameron" (旬, #67) comes in the first chapters while something like "bird" (鳥, #1941) comes in the last chapters. Of course that's because Heisig orders kanji by their componental complexity rather than their commonness-- a much better method, if your goal is to learn 'em all anyway.
Heisig's idea of using Jiminy Cricket as the visual image for the radical on the right side of 偶 is brilliant. When your brain has become flexible from hours of kanji study, you can almost see how this ancient Chinese symbol could indeed be a prophetic pictograph of the Disney character who would come thousands of years later. More importantly, it makes for some hilarious and very memorable visualization stories.
What the heck is a hawser, anyway?? Curse you Heisig, you and your huge English lexicon!
12:36 PM: Finally finished adding all those cards. I have a feeling this is going to be a lot to digest. I rushed through adding the cards because my GF wants to watch a movie. Even rushing, it took forever to add this giant strand of RTK. We'll see how I do on this tomorrow when it's time to start reviewing.
Lesson 49
Lesson 50
Lesson 51
Lesson 52
Lesson 54
Lesson 55
Lesson 56 (Not Online Yet!)
6:36PM. Opened japtemp. 1 scheduled, 3 unmemorized (I added those 3 earlier). Passed everything.
6:37PM. Opened kanjiaid. 10 scheduled, 1 failed. Accidentally held down the space key because I was contemplating changing my mind on a kanji's reading after already starting to press space to reveal the answer. Discovered that Mnemosyne doesn't have any safety mechanisms against that, and when Windows key-holding behavior kicks in, it counts as pushing spacebar over and over repeatedly. Which brings up one of my biggest complaints about Mnemosyne, if you push spacebar while the answer side is shown, it automatically counts as a "4" rating... which is stupid since spacebar is the same key you push to show the answer side in the first space, making accidental 4 ratings very common! In this case, it 4-rated six cards in a flash before I even registered what was happening. I tried killing the program from ctrl-alt-del to undo it, but it somehow autosaved. Ugh.
Besides that, I failed one other scheduled card and still didn't learn the original failed card, so now the deck's at 0 scheduled, 2 failed.
6:42PM: Opened the flagship deck, which had 65 cards scheduled and 205 in the failheap. By 6:56, I got through the due cards, and now the failed ones number 212 (meaning the passrate was 58/65 or about 89%). Now to do the remaining 35 to make 100, and hope I can make some headway against the congestion of this main deck...
7:05PM: Finished the flagship reviews for today. I'm happy that I got the failed heap down to 196... finally below the 200 mark!! :)
7:09PM: Opened latekanji. A perfect match!!! 24 scheduled and 24 failed/unmemorized. Yay, the universe is balanced and yin and yang have been achieved!! (Or wait, that's Chinese, isn't it...;) At 7:38, I finished the scheduled cards, and just like yesterday, I had a 100% pass rate!!! Woohoo!! 7:51PM: I got the deck down to 0/0. It took 40 reviews (in addition to the initial 24 scheduled reviews).
Weds, April 22. I've been feeling a little bored and unmotivated today. As we speak, a slightly dirty bowl I used for eating some tuna and salmon and an empty yogurt container lie on the desk, and I'm too lazy to even put them away. It took some willpower just to come do my daily Japanese study. But here I am, because a language isn't something you learn all at once, it's something you learn every day of your life... (that includes your mother tongue, as well as second languages) Amazingly, I'm feeling a little better just from typing.
10:11 PM: Opened japtemp. Found 4 cards due, 0 failed or unmemorized. I passed them with ease.
10:12 PM: Opened kanjiaid. There, I encountered 9 scheduled cards and 2 failed. Passed everything but one card (where I misread some kunyomi).
10:14 PM: Opened the primary deck, sam.mem. Lots of stuff due today, 82 cards, with the failed pile at height 196. 10:31 PM: Finished the 82 scheduled cards, but with a mediocre pass rate. Passed 69 out of the 82, for a passing rate around 84%. That leaves 209 failed cards and only 18 more reviews for today to try and make the ground back up.
10:39PM: Finished the main deck's 100 daily reviews, with the failpile ending up at 202, a net step backward of 6 cards :( I thought I'd at least get back under 200, since I was at 202 when I got down to 5 more reviews, but then I proceeded to miss every single one of the last 5 items. Oh well, you win some, you lose some!
10:40PM: Opened latekanji. 31 kanji due, 0 failed/missed. 10:48: Finished the scheduled late kanji cards, with a pass rate of 26/31 (about 84%). Hmm, roughly the same pass rate for the scheduled cards here as there was in the flagship deck. I'm pretty tired today, which is probably partly to blame. On the second go-through, the remaining five cards were passed without trouble.
Thurs, April 23. Today I was quite busy. I taught/tutored for three hours, then presented at for another hour and a half at a logic seminar, where, because I accidentally left a book back home in the dining room, I had to present about "the ordinal analysis of inductive definitions" from memory. After that I went to the pool with my girlfriend for a long time, and we had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, my wallet seems to have gone missing while I was swimming. Nothing irreplaceable in it, so I'm not very concerned about the contents (I might have to use a passport to buy alcohol for awhile), but I am pissed because the wallet itself was a gift from Glowing Face Girl, a nice Coach wallet. Hopefully it'll show up at lost & found.
11:33PM. Opened japtemp. 4 cards scheduled, 0 failed or missed. Passed them all with ease.
11:34 PM. Opened kanjiaid. 6 scheduled, 1 failed. I passed 5 of the scheduled ones, leaving the deck at 0 due, 2 failed.
11:35PM. Opened sam.mem, the main deck with over 9000 Japanese flashcards. There were 65 cards scheduled, and 202 on the failpile. 11:45PM. Finished the 65 scheduled cards, but with a dismal pass rate of just 80% (52 out of 65 passed). Then I started doing the 35 reviews on the failpile to bring the daily reviews to 100... 11:53PM: Finished the 100 daily reviews, and managed to get back under 200 on the failpile, ending up with exactly 199 cards there.
11:54PM: Opened latekanji. 29 scheduled, 0 failed. By midnight, I passed 26 of them (pass rate almost 90%), failing 3. One of the three fails was a dumb one, I for some reason made the middle vertical part of 瓜 ("melon") have a mouth in the middle, sort of like the middle part of 風 (wind). No idea why I did that.. probably confusion with "wind". Another go-through and the three failed cards were passed right away.
I now feel it's time to add the cards for lesson 53. The latekanji deck is starting to generate a significant amount of reviews required per day, which is bad. But I've got to keep momentum up and push through these last few lessons. I imagine by lesson 56 I might suffer 100+ items due each day from the latekanji deck, but once I've got all the Heisig kanji, that's it, no more items will be added to this deck, so the work it creates will start to dwindle, as described in my article, Language Maintenance through Spaced Repetition.
Lesson 53 is a whopper, containing 50 kanji, from #1927 ("nest") to #1977 ("statue"). According to Heisig, these are "small animals". (Of course, "statue" isn't a small animal-- presumably, it'll turn out to be a kanji which is built up of pieces, one of which is a little critter.)
Heisig's keyword for 桜 is "cherry tree". I'd argue this should be changed to "sakura". Anyone enthusiastic enough about Japan to be studying the entire Joyo kanji set, should know what sakura is.
Finally the "bird" card has been added to the deck! This is something of a milestone because I always like to joke about how in the Heisig ordering, something like "decameron" (旬, #67) comes in the first chapters while something like "bird" (鳥, #1941) comes in the last chapters. Of course that's because Heisig orders kanji by their componental complexity rather than their commonness-- a much better method, if your goal is to learn 'em all anyway.
Heisig's idea of using Jiminy Cricket as the visual image for the radical on the right side of 偶 is brilliant. When your brain has become flexible from hours of kanji study, you can almost see how this ancient Chinese symbol could indeed be a prophetic pictograph of the Disney character who would come thousands of years later. More importantly, it makes for some hilarious and very memorable visualization stories.
What the heck is a hawser, anyway?? Curse you Heisig, you and your huge English lexicon!
12:36 PM: Finally finished adding all those cards. I have a feeling this is going to be a lot to digest. I rushed through adding the cards because my GF wants to watch a movie. Even rushing, it took forever to add this giant strand of RTK. We'll see how I do on this tomorrow when it's time to start reviewing.
Lesson 49
Lesson 50
Lesson 51
Lesson 52
Lesson 54
Lesson 55
Lesson 56 (Not Online Yet!)
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment