Sunday, April 26. Today I mostly just lounged around and didn't do much but read Tintin graphic novels. Earlier my keyboard seemed to short out or something after Glowing Face Girl wiped it with some hand-wiping towelette. The keys became very irresponsive, so I had to hit a key repeatedly to make it register. I was just about resigned to order a new laptop keyboard from Dell, but a few hours later the problem had vanished. Happy :)
11:39PM: Opened japtemp. 5 cards scheduled, passed them all easily.
11:42 PM: Opened kanjiaid. 8 cards scheduled, 1 in the failpile. Passed everything.
11:43 PM: Opened sam.mem. 79 cards scheduled, 206 failed. I finished these by 11:56, with a pass rate of just over 91% (passed 72 of the 79). That leaves 21 reviews to make 100 for today... and, I finished at 12:04 AM, having gotten the failstack back down to where it began, 206. Net change in # of failed cards today is zero. Sometimes it seems like it's taking forever to unclog this deck, and all because of just a few days without reviewing. (But then, those few days were just after going overboard in December. Learning too many cards can be just as bad as not reviewing enough, if you pass more cards than you'll be able to review later...) But largely it's a problem of poor design. In this Final Sprint, I've learned that it's very important to embed the actual story for the kanji into the card (using invisible text). Many of these cards are kanji which I've forgotten good stories for. When I finish the Sprint I'll start adding new stories to these old items and someday get this deck totally unclogged...
12:07 AM: Opened latekanji. 33 scheduled, 28 unmemorized. Of the items due, I had a pass rate of 27/33, or about 82%. Some of these kanji are so complicated that I have to blow them up to see their exact details (like 麗). 70 ratings later, at 12:52 AM, I got the deck down to 0/0.
Monday, April 27. 11:37 PM. Opened japtemp. 8 scheduled (a high number for this cardstack-- I'm seeing the ripples caused from adding some new vocab here a few days ago). Passed seven of them, failed one; I should've gotten the one, but I was recklessly rushing through the cards. Just call me speed demon ;)
11:39 PM. Opened kanjiaid. 12 scheduled, 0 failed. Only passed 9 of them.. maybe today's not a good day for my Japanese..
11:41 PM. Launched sam.mem, the primary deck. I found 63 cards due and a failed pile of height 206 waiting for me. 11:52PM: Finished the scheduled cards, with a passing rate of 55/63 or about 85%. Then I started on the remaining 37 reviews to make 100 for today.
Talk about timing. Some (very few) of my cards in this deck are vocab cards where the question side is a picture and the answer side is the Japanese word. So there I am, doing reviews, and a card comes up where the question side is a picture of lots of worms crawling all over each other. The answer side, of course, is just the Japanese word for "worm" (ミミズ). But right as that picture pops up, my girlfriend walks in the room =P Hope she doesn't think I was looking at worm pr0n... ;)
12:08 AM: Cheers! I passed a lot of cards which were previously failed, and now the failpile has shrunk to a "mere" 192 items. A net shrinkage there of 14 cards, very cool for a single day when the file is so clogged up.
12:09 AM: Launched latekanji. 45 scheduled (and 0 failed or unremembered)... whew, this deck is starting to really pile on the due items.. thank god I only have two more lessons to add (one of them very short)! I'll have to tough it out just a little longer, and then "reinforcements will arrive" as I stop adding new kanji and the existing ones get spaced into oblivion.
12:32 AM: Finished the scheduled kanji for the day. Pass rate was 37/45, or about 82%... usually I do a lot better. On the second pass through for the missed cards, I passed them all. But even though I passed them on the 2nd pass through, I reviewed the stories for each-- an easy task since the stories are now embedded in the cards in invisible text and I can read them just by clicking "edit card".
Tuesday, April 28. Actually, technically it's the 30th, since it's just past midnight. 12:26 AM: Opened japtemp. 4 items scheduled, 1 item failed. Passed everything.
12:28 AM: Opened kanjiaid. 12 items scheduled, 3 failed. Passed everything except a scheduled sentence card.
12:34 AM: Opened sam.mem, the main deck. 81 scheduled cards (a direct result of passing so many failed cards yesterday) and 192 failed. And of course, the first card is my good pal, the worm-picture-card from yesterday. By the way, every day I write kanji in a different color, so I can tell where one day stopped and another began on my writing pad. Today I'm happy that I can use black, my favorite color for kanji writing. Yesterday it was pink.
12:49 AM: Finished the 81 scheduled cards and began doing the remaining 19 reviews to make 100 on this deck for today. When the dust cleared, I was back where I started-- 192 items on the failqueue. On the other hand, tomorrow there'll be fewer scheduled cards, giving me some room to make more progress.
1:00 AM: Opened the latekanji deck. There were 36 kanji kards scheduled and 0 in the failpile. I passed 29 of the 36, for a pass rate of just over 80%-- fairly poor for this deck. Another run through, and I passed all the ones I failed.
1:14 AM: Began reading through lesson 55 and adding the cards. This is the last "real" lesson of Heisig, as lesson 56 is a special-purpose lesson to show some techniques for handling non-Joyo kanji which the student might encounter which aren't covered by Heisig.
The Theme of Lesson 55 is awesome: "fantastical animals and beings". Here the reader learns kanji for talking about things like magic, earthquakes, ghosts, and enchantment. It's a pretty short lesson, going from Heisig #2006 to #2025, only 20 in all.
I took the liberty of renaming Heisig's "witch" (魔, #2022) to "magic", since it's used much more often in that more general sense. This is one of my favorite kanji of all time, and it's one you'll see tons of if you play most Japanese RPGs.
And that's it! I've now plowed through all the "main" part of Remembering The Kanji! Only one more "side-lesson" to go and I'll be done with the book! It's an almost magical feeling, after such a long time. Woohoo :)
Lesson 49
Lesson 50
Lesson 51
Lesson 52
Lesson 53
Lesson 54
Lesson 56 (Not Online Yet!)
11:39PM: Opened japtemp. 5 cards scheduled, passed them all easily.
11:42 PM: Opened kanjiaid. 8 cards scheduled, 1 in the failpile. Passed everything.
11:43 PM: Opened sam.mem. 79 cards scheduled, 206 failed. I finished these by 11:56, with a pass rate of just over 91% (passed 72 of the 79). That leaves 21 reviews to make 100 for today... and, I finished at 12:04 AM, having gotten the failstack back down to where it began, 206. Net change in # of failed cards today is zero. Sometimes it seems like it's taking forever to unclog this deck, and all because of just a few days without reviewing. (But then, those few days were just after going overboard in December. Learning too many cards can be just as bad as not reviewing enough, if you pass more cards than you'll be able to review later...) But largely it's a problem of poor design. In this Final Sprint, I've learned that it's very important to embed the actual story for the kanji into the card (using invisible text). Many of these cards are kanji which I've forgotten good stories for. When I finish the Sprint I'll start adding new stories to these old items and someday get this deck totally unclogged...
12:07 AM: Opened latekanji. 33 scheduled, 28 unmemorized. Of the items due, I had a pass rate of 27/33, or about 82%. Some of these kanji are so complicated that I have to blow them up to see their exact details (like 麗). 70 ratings later, at 12:52 AM, I got the deck down to 0/0.
Monday, April 27. 11:37 PM. Opened japtemp. 8 scheduled (a high number for this cardstack-- I'm seeing the ripples caused from adding some new vocab here a few days ago). Passed seven of them, failed one; I should've gotten the one, but I was recklessly rushing through the cards. Just call me speed demon ;)
11:39 PM. Opened kanjiaid. 12 scheduled, 0 failed. Only passed 9 of them.. maybe today's not a good day for my Japanese..
11:41 PM. Launched sam.mem, the primary deck. I found 63 cards due and a failed pile of height 206 waiting for me. 11:52PM: Finished the scheduled cards, with a passing rate of 55/63 or about 85%. Then I started on the remaining 37 reviews to make 100 for today.
Talk about timing. Some (very few) of my cards in this deck are vocab cards where the question side is a picture and the answer side is the Japanese word. So there I am, doing reviews, and a card comes up where the question side is a picture of lots of worms crawling all over each other. The answer side, of course, is just the Japanese word for "worm" (ミミズ). But right as that picture pops up, my girlfriend walks in the room =P Hope she doesn't think I was looking at worm pr0n... ;)
12:08 AM: Cheers! I passed a lot of cards which were previously failed, and now the failpile has shrunk to a "mere" 192 items. A net shrinkage there of 14 cards, very cool for a single day when the file is so clogged up.
12:09 AM: Launched latekanji. 45 scheduled (and 0 failed or unremembered)... whew, this deck is starting to really pile on the due items.. thank god I only have two more lessons to add (one of them very short)! I'll have to tough it out just a little longer, and then "reinforcements will arrive" as I stop adding new kanji and the existing ones get spaced into oblivion.
12:32 AM: Finished the scheduled kanji for the day. Pass rate was 37/45, or about 82%... usually I do a lot better. On the second pass through for the missed cards, I passed them all. But even though I passed them on the 2nd pass through, I reviewed the stories for each-- an easy task since the stories are now embedded in the cards in invisible text and I can read them just by clicking "edit card".
Tuesday, April 28. Actually, technically it's the 30th, since it's just past midnight. 12:26 AM: Opened japtemp. 4 items scheduled, 1 item failed. Passed everything.
12:28 AM: Opened kanjiaid. 12 items scheduled, 3 failed. Passed everything except a scheduled sentence card.
12:34 AM: Opened sam.mem, the main deck. 81 scheduled cards (a direct result of passing so many failed cards yesterday) and 192 failed. And of course, the first card is my good pal, the worm-picture-card from yesterday. By the way, every day I write kanji in a different color, so I can tell where one day stopped and another began on my writing pad. Today I'm happy that I can use black, my favorite color for kanji writing. Yesterday it was pink.
12:49 AM: Finished the 81 scheduled cards and began doing the remaining 19 reviews to make 100 on this deck for today. When the dust cleared, I was back where I started-- 192 items on the failqueue. On the other hand, tomorrow there'll be fewer scheduled cards, giving me some room to make more progress.
1:00 AM: Opened the latekanji deck. There were 36 kanji kards scheduled and 0 in the failpile. I passed 29 of the 36, for a pass rate of just over 80%-- fairly poor for this deck. Another run through, and I passed all the ones I failed.
1:14 AM: Began reading through lesson 55 and adding the cards. This is the last "real" lesson of Heisig, as lesson 56 is a special-purpose lesson to show some techniques for handling non-Joyo kanji which the student might encounter which aren't covered by Heisig.
The Theme of Lesson 55 is awesome: "fantastical animals and beings". Here the reader learns kanji for talking about things like magic, earthquakes, ghosts, and enchantment. It's a pretty short lesson, going from Heisig #2006 to #2025, only 20 in all.
I took the liberty of renaming Heisig's "witch" (魔, #2022) to "magic", since it's used much more often in that more general sense. This is one of my favorite kanji of all time, and it's one you'll see tons of if you play most Japanese RPGs.
And that's it! I've now plowed through all the "main" part of Remembering The Kanji! Only one more "side-lesson" to go and I'll be done with the book! It's an almost magical feeling, after such a long time. Woohoo :)
Lesson 49
Lesson 50
Lesson 51
Lesson 52
Lesson 53
Lesson 54
Lesson 56 (Not Online Yet!)
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