SC bookkeeping and other language learning whimsy

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Cèid Donn
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Re: SC bookkeeping and other language learning whimsy

Postby Cèid Donn » Sun Jan 17, 2021 7:14 am

One problem I have with returning to any regular exercise after a period of not doing any is I always, always get sick within the first couple of weeks. I anticipated this. And yep, I'm sick. Not terribly so, just a really boring and (at the moment) mild sinus infection, but it does explain why I have been feeling a bit more run down that usual. I exercised today, although I kept it limited to just 20 minutes, nothing extra, and it was mostly stretching.

I didn't sleep well last night and that hasn't helped either, but at some point during the night I had a strange dream where I was getting off a boat--I haven't been on a boat in real life in over 2 decades--and everyone there was speaking French and I was speaking French and suddenly a man ran up to me and started talking to me in Indonesian and I got really flustered trying to switch from French to Indonesian.

Despite being sleepy and low energy, I got a lot done today. I finished my Corto Maltese novel, I did my OC work, I read a few articles online on Spanish grammar (Spanish verbs are weird!) and read this Lonely Planet travel article in Spanish about Galway, Ireland that I'd bet would make a native Gaillimheach cringe at a few points (those kinds of travel articles are always so cringey, I know), and I listened to more Go Filipino: Let's Learn Tagalog podcasts than my tired brain could handle.

Fitness challenge

Mostly just stretching today, plus a few barre exercises for strengthening my bad hip.

Today's verb was ir--such a basic verb yet so annoying. :lol:

OC progress

I did 18 minutes of speaking Irish, describing pictures on my tablet's camera roll. Most of them were of my cats. :lol: I got this idea that describing images would be good practice, and that was the easiest thing to do, since I hadn't prepared anything ahead of time.

SC progress

I finished Corto Maltese: La ballade de la mer this morning. I didn't have a lot left to read, only about 40 pages. I enjoyed it a lot, even if a few elements of the story are a little dated. The translation is really good and that made it a lot of fun to read. I'll probably re-read it soon. Next up I am going to do another re-reading, of De synthèse by Quebecois author Karoline Georges. I read this one at least twice for my last SC. It's one of my favorite French books I've read so far. I liken it a bit to Virginia Woolf's The Waves, a novel I also love, although the narrative is less complex and less experimental. It's an intimate, surreal meditation, and it's bit of a challenging read at some points, in terms of the prose.

I only watched episode 4 of Lupin last night. I was too tired to watch the last episode, or anything in one of my TLs, tonight. Instead I zombie-watched some of Stargate: Atlantis episodes. :D

French Films : 2302 / 18000 Books : 1921 / 10000
Spanish Films : 1690 / 18000 Books : 1366 / 10000
Celtic Films : 2842 / 18000 Books : 1019 / 10000
Germanic Films : 1285 / 9000 Books : 148 / 5000
Russian Films : 1373 / 4500 Books : 0 / 2500
5 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Cèid Donn
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Re: SC bookkeeping and other language learning whimsy

Postby Cèid Donn » Tue Jan 19, 2021 9:49 pm

EDIT: I goofed and this post got lost. :cry:
2 x
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Re: SC bookkeeping and other language learning whimsy

Postby Cèid Donn » Thu Jan 21, 2021 4:57 am

I lost my previous post because when I went to quote it so to copy my SC progress bars into my new post, I hit edit instead without realizing it. I then wrote over the old post and then submitted it. The old post does not seem to be in my history anymore. Oh well.

***

I got a pretty good night's sleep last night. Yay! And my rib muscles feel better.

This morning I worked on Swedish. It wasn't the plan, but it was what I was in the mood for. I read some easy stuff on 8 Sidor and listened to some stuff on Sverige Radio, and I did extra work on Clozemaster--200 new sentences and then enough review sentences to level up. Then I remembered that I hadn't seen any tweets recently from the @beginnerswedish Twitter account so I went to look it up, and Twitter told me it no longer exists...in Irish.

Image

I don't have my Twitter UI set to Irish--I didn't even know that was an option (I checked today--it's in beta), and it's not an option for Additional Languages either. I have French, Spanish, German, Welsh and Other marked as additional languages so maybe their algorithms have determined that my Other must be Irish?

Anyhow, @beginnerswedish was a rare language Twitter account that wasn't a bot posting graphics or someone trying to direct you to their website or YT channel for views. They would post translations of humorous stuff, Swedish memes, grammar quizzes and questions that followers could answer in Swedish. Sadly, some time late last year, they expressed being unhappy with Twitter and was considering deleting the account. After taking a break and only sparsely posting after their return, it seems that was what they ended up doing. :cry:

In addition to working on Swedish, I began reviewing Colloquial Russian 1. I'll do a quick review of that before resuming the second volume. Finishing the second volume is one of my New Years resolutions.

Also, I've been enjoying reading Expanse fans tweets in various language, especially in Russian. One fan posted this from season 5, episode 6, a "poem" by one the characters, Clarissa Mao:

я убивала, но я не убийца,
потому что убийцы — чудовища,
а чудовища не боятся


It was fun to see this since I knew exactly what it was, because I knew убийца and чудовище from watching The Witcher in Russian. :mrgreen:

Fitness challenge

I just did some stretching and lower body exercises. My ribs are still a little sore but much improved since yesterday. Yesterday it felt like I had been in a car accident.

I was lazy and just reviewed the sheets again for my conjugation portion.

OC progress

I honestly forgot to plan anything for today. :lol: Yesterday I was such a mess, and usually I make a note on the Sticky Note on my PC's desktop that I use to keep track of my study plans, so I don't get too sidetracked (like I did today with Swedish), and I didn't do that last night. I just wanted to get to bed early.

SC progress

Most of the rest of my study time today was working on the German Russian texts of Metro 2033, but I also watched 3 more episodes of the second series of Ros na Rún on You Tube.

I didn't watch anything for my SC last night because 1) it was The Expanse night and 2) I wanted to go to bed early. I'll probably watch something tonight, although I haven't decided on anything. I should look to see if there's anything good Swedish shows that's been added to Netflix. Usually when they add new Scandinavian shows, it's in any other Scandinavian language but Swedish. Icelandic? Sure. Norwegian? Yep. Danish. Of course. Finnish? That too. Swedish? Nej. :x

French Films : 2345 / 18000 Books : 1921 / 10000
Spanish Films : 1690 / 18000 Books : 1366 / 10000
Celtic Films : 3058 / 18000 Books : 1019 / 10000
Germanic Films : 1285 / 9000 Books : 148 / 5000
Russian Films : 1471 / 4500 Books : 0 / 2500
8 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Cèid Donn
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Re: SC bookkeeping and other language learning whimsy

Postby Cèid Donn » Sat Jan 23, 2021 8:19 am

I watched 2 films today.

The first one was an Irish film, Finky, which I mentioned in the Celtic Language Study Group because for another 14 days or so it's available to view on the TG4 website. It's not a perfect film--I take issue in particular with how it uses disability as a kind of purgatory for the protagonist to work through his guilt. Like, can film and TV writers come up another way to represent disability that doesn't make it a metaphor for evil, moral failing or punishment? Please? :roll: Anyhow, there were some things I did like about it, like the acting and cast, and the surreal elements of it. So it was worth a view.

The other was was Солярис (Solaris), which is currently on HBO Max. I've never see this one before, despite being a huge sci fi fan. Years ago I read the the English translation of the novel, that Stanislaw Lem reportedly hated ( there is a more recent English translation that is suppose to much better). But I have never gone out of my way to see the 1972 film by director Andrei Tarkovsky. I've heard and read a lot about Tarkovsky but I've never seen any of his films. One of the things I had heard about Солярис was it was Tarkovsky's answer to Kubrik's 2001, a film I personally do not like very much.

OK, before a Kubrick fan gets mad at me, let me say that I understand very well that Kubrick is a god of cinema and has had unparalleled influence. I understand his importance and I in no way wish to diminish that. It's just some of his films for me feel dated, tedious and the cinematic equivalent of wearing a heavy wool coat on a Texas summer afternoon, and 2001 is one of them. Sorry.

But that bias kept me from seeing Солярис all these years, and I have to say, that was unfortunate, because I really liked it. I could see how it was response to 2001, but it is also so much more than that. It is very much in the tradition of a lot of my favorite sci fi literature that comes from the period just pre-dating this movie, the mid-1950s thru the late 60s/early 70s, where one of the major themes many writers, including Lem, were exploring was "Reality not being what you thought it was" with intertwining themes of disillusionment, alienation, anxiety, trauma and grief as the precursor or the consequence of that realization. Some writers, like Herbert and Le Guin, wrote complex sagas about it, others wrote more futuristic-politically about this, like Clarke (who wrote the novel 2001) and Heinlein, and others centered more the individual's psychological experience, like Philip K. Dick. And I would put Lem's novel somewhere on the spectrum between Clarke and Dick, where he merges the futurist and psychological orientations preferred by these two authors respectively.

Not only does the film stay true to Lem's themes of becoming alienated from the reality one once knew (or thought they knew), it does so in a really beautifully cinematic way that is completely Tarkovsky's own creation, not really owing to either Lem or Kubrick, and makes me want to go watch his other films. Yeah, I'm really late to the party but that Tarkovsky guy--wow! :lol: And while I know this film is compared a lot to 2001, the film that came most to my mind when watching this was La Jetée, one of my favorite sci fi films of all time. La Jetée came out in 1962 and was so well regarded that it's hard to believe Tarkovsky did not see it and perhaps was influenced by it.

Anyhow, enough about films!

Yesterday I worked more on Swedish, and did all the reviews for Swedish 1 and 2 on Memrise, which are the only modules for Swedish I have done so far. I suppose I could do 3 now. :D I also worked a bit on Swedish phonology--my recall for vocabulary is strong (I only got 3 wrong in all those Memrise reviews) but my pronunciation is in a sad state.

I've watched a lot of LeSteam on Twitch. I haven't been watching any Twitch since Christmas so it was nice to get back to that, just having a French live stream up on my monitor as I worked on my OC writing and other things. I watched some of their tabletop show, a segment on MCU movies (where they repeatedly pronounced "Benedict Cumberbatch" in the French-iest way possible) and their most popular show, Le Récap. In the latest intro for the Le Récap they have a graphic where the PogChamp emote disintegrates from view, which I thought was pretty funny (sorry to anyone who doesn't know what that's about--I'll only say that LeStream is opposed to COVID misinfo and I like that).

Today was less productive because I was fighting a migraine for most of the day. While I didn't work on any of my rotating languages, I did read this article in Irish on the classic Irish rock band Thin Lizzy and this article in Spanish on the prehistoric ancestor of the black Iberian pig.

This afternoon, to help ease my migraine, I took a nap and I dreamed about doing exercises in a grammar workbook for Galician and all the sentences were like the sentences from the Clozemaster course.

Fitness challenge

Yesterday I did some aerobics and upper body work, and for my conjugation practice, I did mögen.

Because of my migraine, I took today off.

OC progress

Yesterday I wrote 1112 words in French, most of it in response to the prompt "Tu vas faire ce week-end?" I wrote about my plans to make orange sesame chicken tomorrow night as well as other things.

Today I wrote 550 words in Irish, about the film Finky. I spend too much time looking up vocabulary and had to stop after about 90 minutes because my head was hurting too much.

SC progress

I read about 60 pages of De synthèse yesterday. I didn't do any SC reading today.

Last night I watched one episode of the Swedish series Störst av allt (Quicksand) on Netflix. The premise is a little...uncomfortable for me, but I'll give it a few episodes and see if it's worth it. I also re-watched an episode of Toon. Then today I watched the 2 films mentioned above.

French Films : 2345 / 18000 Books : 1921 / 10000
Spanish Films : 1690 / 18000 Books : 1366 / 10000
Celtic Films : 3135 / 18000 Books : 1019 / 10000
Germanic Films : 1355 / 9000 Books : 148 / 5000
Russian Films : 1637 / 4500 Books : 0 / 2500
10 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Cèid Donn
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Re: SC bookkeeping and other language learning whimsy

Postby Cèid Donn » Mon Jan 25, 2021 6:05 am

This will be a much shorter update. I haven't been feeling well over the weekend--it seems my migraine on Friday was a harbinger--so I haven't done as much as I had planned. Then this evening my mom's Kindle tablet wouldn't download any Kindle e-books. It seems a recent update royally may have screwed up the Kindle app on her Kindle Fire tablet, so I had to mess with that for a 2 couple of hours. It's still not working properly but I had to stop for the night as I just didn't have the energy to deal with it any further. So now I'm not feeling well and I'm in a sour mood. :x

Fitness challenge

Yesterday I did stretching and aerobics, For my conjugation practice, I did wollen.

Today I skipped on this challenge.

OC progress

Yesterday I made a deal with myself that if I did the fitness challenge Saturday I'd skip this challenge for the day and then swap today. :P

Today I spoke French for 25 minutes. I started trying to talk spontaneously about my health issues that were acting up and then I read a little from De synthèse aloud. I ended up talking for longer than I realized.

SC progress

I finished De synthèse this morning. I also read quite a bit of Dune (es) between yesterday and today--I hope to finish it this week.

Yesterday I watched German language documentary on the DDR (East Germany) and listened to 2 most recent Radio Ambulante podcasts. Today I watched this short video in Spanish that gives a nice overview of Tarkovsky's cinematic style, as well as this video on Hitchcock made by the same people.

French Films : 2345 / 18000 Books : 2151 / 10000
Spanish Films : 1802 / 18000 Books : 1366 / 10000
Celtic Films : 3135 / 18000 Books : 1019 / 10000
Germanic Films : 1402 / 9000 Books : 148 / 5000
Russian Films : 1637 / 4500 Books : 0 / 2500
5 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Re: SC bookkeeping and other language learning whimsy

Postby Cèid Donn » Thu Jan 28, 2021 12:27 am

I started feeling better on Tuesday, although today I feel like I've taken a step back. It's probably because a lot of the house cleaning I usually do on the weekend, I didn't get done this past weekend, and so I've been fitting it in where I can over the past couple of days. By this afternoon, I was super tired, so I skipped on my OC. The weather isn't helping either. We got snow here yesterday! And also a -10 wind chill! Granted it wasn't as bad as other places in the US, but I'm originally from Southern California. I'm just not a cold-weather person, so this kind of weather makes me want to crawl back into bed and hibernate until spring. :lol:

I've been doing extra Clozemaster this week--I've gotten all the sentences in the Occitan and Galician courses to 50% mastered or higher, so I hope to finish them soon. I'm going to start dropping a few other courses after today as well. I want to cut back on the Romance languages to just French and Spanish. It does mean letting my year+ streak in the Italian course go, but I want to free up more time to focus on my higher priority languages.

Another course I'm going to stop is the Japanese course. For a while it was pretty helpful, but after the big update last year that reorganized the sentences in many of the bigger courses, this particular course has been much less helpful and I am completely unable to progress further in the course without devoting a lot of time to learning clozes that are completely new to me. And I don't have that kind of time for Japanese right now.

What I hope to do, after cutting back on the number of courses I'm doing on Clozemaster, is to work on Cloze-collections for the Celtic languages in particular and progress more in the other courses I'm sticking with.


Fitness challenge

Monday: I still wasn't feeling very well so nothing.

Tuesday and Wednesday: both days I worked out to this episode of Classical Stretch



I love Miranda's method, it works very well with the kinds of health problems I have and when I do my own workouts I usually do exercises I've learned from her Classical Stretch series in the past. I learned the best exercise for my particular hip problems from her and I really like how she focuses on keep your spine flexible, which is a big thing for a woman my age. :D I keep some of my favorite Classical Stretch episodes (translation: ones that are all or mostly standing) on my DVR, but I've done them so many times I can do them from memory while watching something else on TV, although today and yesterday I followed the above workout because I wanted the extra motivation.

For verb conjugation practice, I did hacer on Tuesday and avoir today.

OC progress

Monday: 25 minutes, Irish. Reading from Ó Lúibíní Lú out loud.

Tuesday: 677 words, French. I wrote about what I cooked for dinner last weekend: poulet à l'orange. I explained how this dish is usually prepared here in the US and how I make it gluten-free.

Wednesday: Nothing. I'm been feeling very low-energy today and just couldn't manage. But I have some prompts to choose from tomorrow.

SC progress

I re-read the Irish novel Ó Lúibíní Lú--it's really short. It's the 1st of a 3-book series, and for some reason I have never been able to find out, the 1st adn 3rd books are available in Amazon Kindle format, but not the 2nd. So I will re-read the 3rd next. Aside from that I read more Dune, I haven't done much reading this week so far. I plan to work on Metro 2033 tomorrow and Friday.

I listened to the most recent Radio Ambulante episode yesterday and watched one episode on Selena with Spanish audio last night, although I am not really liking this series so I don't think I'll be watching any more episodes. Besides, I was living here in Texas when Selena was murdered--I know how it ends. :?

French Films : 2345 / 18000 Books : 2151 / 10000
Spanish Films : 1888 / 18000 Books : 1366 / 10000
Celtic Films : 3135 / 18000 Books : 1091 / 10000
Germanic Films : 1402 / 9000 Books : 148 / 5000
Russian Films : 1637 / 4500 Books : 0 / 2500
7 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Cèid Donn
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Re: SC bookkeeping and other language learning whimsy

Postby Cèid Donn » Sat Jan 30, 2021 3:27 am

I've been so busy with other not-language related things today and yesterday that on both days I forgot to eat lunch. This never happens when I am free to do my regular study blocks because lunch means I get to take a break from studying. :lol:

En lieu of my rotating languages, which I've mostly taken a break from this whole week, I've been doing French dictations, transcribing and extra writing. Not sure where the motivation is coming from although I think part of it is with how messed up my schedule has been since last weekend, I just want to do something that's familiar to me. I've done 3 dictations from Une dictée par jour and have been transcribing portions a VOD of an old stream by a French gamer. I stayed up to past midnight last not working on transcribing this--I had to stay up because I had a pot of homemade chicken stock stewing on the stove--and found it nicely challenging without being frustrating. If he said something I simply couldn't make out, I'd just skip it. 8-)

Another, less structured activity I've been doing today is translating snippets from Bob Ross' The Joy of Painting show into French, for no reason besides it's enjoyable and it is something I could spend the afternoon doing amid multiple interruptions to go do other things that needed to be taken care of. I was watching LeStream on Twitch this morning, but because they're in France, their daily programs usually wraps up around noon-1 PM my time, and because it's Friday, I just switched over the Bob Ross marathon on Twitch that streams episodes of his old painting show from Friday morning to Monday morning. For those who have never seen his show, Bob liked to share little bits of his personal philosophy about life and his approach to painting as well as words of encouragement for his viewers, and when he says something interesting I jot it down in my French journal and translate it. Like this:

"When you first learn to paint, it's not learning to paint that's difficult but knowing what to paint."

Quand on débute à apprendre à peindre, ce n'est pas apprendre à peindre qui est difficile mais savoir quoi peindre.

I liked that statement because it reminded me of how often I want to write in a target language but am stumped by not knowing what to write. :? Bob said a lot about painting that you could apply to learning a language or learning any skill, really.

Fitness challenge

Thursday: I had a bad histamine reaction the night before. I'm not sure what triggered it, but in the morning my joints were really stuff and achy, so I just did stretching. For conjugation practice I reviewed the sheets for the Spanish verbs I've done so for.

Today: I did free weights/upper body exercises. For conjugation practice I reviewed French verbs I've done so far.

OC progress

Thursday: 807 words, Irish. 375 words, French. For my Irish writing I tried to write at least 1000 words on Thursday but I just didn't make it. :( I wrote about making my vegetable and bean soup the night before, about how it snowed here earlier in the week and about a dream I had the other night where I was speaking Gaelic. For the French writing, I wrote about a memory from college.

Today: 646 words, French. I was suppose to do the speaking portion today but because of people and phone calls interrupting me all day I didn't try to record anything. I wrote about Romance languages, about which ones I've studied and which ones I like and which ones I don't like as much.

SC progress

I plan to work on Metro 2033 tomorrow and Friday.


Nope, didn't happen. :lol: It's just been too crazy here for that. I hope to work on it this weekend.

Thursday evening, after watching some Russian grammar videos (which don't count toward my SC), I watched 4 videos by this Korean woman who makes videos in Russian on various things about living in Russia and South Korea. The four videos I watched were all about food (and 2 of them were about kimchi).



French Films : 2345 / 18000 Books : 2151 / 10000
Spanish Films : 1888 / 18000 Books : 1366 / 10000
Celtic Films : 3135 / 18000 Books : 1091 / 10000
Germanic Films : 1402 / 9000 Books : 148 / 5000
Russian Films : 1699 / 4500 Books : 0 / 2500
9 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Cèid Donn
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Re: SC bookkeeping and other language learning whimsy

Postby Cèid Donn » Wed Feb 03, 2021 6:06 am

Quick update so I don't get too far behind in updating my challenges. I had a good weekend, but Monday I had really bad vertigo and today I had really bad nausea, and on top of all that, I've been extremely tired and sliding into some depression, so it hasn't been a great past couple of days.

I have finished the Occitan course on Clozemaster so that's another course I can take off my active list. The next is the Galician course. It is has about twice as many sentences as the Occitan course but I have about half of those mastered and the other half at 75%, so I'm in the home stretch. Also on Clozemaster, I reached a 2 year streak in the Irish course. I wanted to celebrate by grinding it up to the next level, which would be 170. But that would have been about 40,000 points and I just didn't have the energy. I'll get there eventually, just at a slower pace.

On Memrise, I have been working mostly on Russian courses as well as the 2 Belter courses on there, but I've been slow to get back to doing my other courses regularly.

Last bit of news is I'm dropping Dutch, for the time being. With having to study while fighting with my health issues, I simply have to admit that I don't have the motivation to keep working on Dutch at this point.


Fitness challenge

I worked out on Saturday and Sunday, but wasn't able to do this for the past 2 days and I expect probably not tomorrow either.

The verbs I worked on were видеть and выпивать. There are a lot of Russian verbs that start with в, by the way.

OC progress

Saturday: I read aloud in Irish again for 20 minutes. I read both from Ó Lúibíní Lú and this article on a priest in Donegal who tweeted the 4,000,000th tweet in Irish (according to Kevin Scannell, who tracks this sort of thing). There doesn't seem to be any prizes for doing that, except maybe getting an article about you on Nós.

Sunday: I read poems by Prévert aloud for 26 minutes. And since this is the first mention of Prévert in this log, I get to post this song--it's a tradition of mine :mrgreen:



Monday and Tuesday: nothing, as you probably suspected

SC progress

I plan to work on Metro 2033 tomorrow and Friday.


Nope, didn't happen. :lol: It's just been too crazy here for that. I hope to work on it this weekend.


I actually did this! Between Saturday and Sunday, I spent over 6 hours doing Metro 2033 Spanish/German/Russian parallel reading and trust me when I say, it's very taxing. :? I'm halfway through chapter 11. I might actually finished this project, folks! :D

The only SC thing I've done since Sunday is watch all of season 1 of Tuto Beizh, which I think is suppose to translate as something like "Totally Brittany." The host, Juliette, goes to different regions around Brittany and looks at something that's special or unique to it. In the intro the text reads "Juliette, 23 years old, born in Portugal, grew up in Catalonia, learned Breton 2 years ago, she is discovering Brittany." Juliette is living her best life, apparently. :mrgreen:



Both seasons of this show are on You Tube, which is easier to use than the Brezhoweb site. But for some reason, the second season doesn't seem to have Breton subtitles yet, only French.

French Films : 2345 / 18000 Books : 2151 / 10000
Spanish Films : 1888 / 18000 Books : 1366 / 10000
Celtic Films : 3210 / 18000 Books : 1091 / 10000
Germanic Films : 1402 / 9000 Books : 148 / 5000
Russian Films : 1699 / 4500 Books : 0 / 2500[/quote]
6 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

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Cèid Donn
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Re: SC bookkeeping and other language learning whimsy

Postby Cèid Donn » Fri Feb 19, 2021 4:53 pm

Well, it's been quite a month, and this month isn't even over.

First, I have continued to have health problems that are bad enough to slow me down but not bad enough to keep me completely down.

Second, I live in Texas, which is really, really bad for a number of reasons, but the newest nightmare is we have had massive energy infrastructure failures thanks to our bastard governor's deals with greedy privatized energy corporations. No, it was not wind farms. That is an absolute lie and it's a total joke to anyone who knows how much Texas, and the Texas GOP especially, is invested in fossil fuels to think wind makes up anywhere enough of our power supply to cause this (the biggest failures reported were actually natural gas) and I will not tolerate anyone promoting that BS. This on top of our bastard governor and his party's absolute greed-driven and cruel mishandling with pandemic that has cost so many Texas lives and nearly broken the health care system in all major Texas cities, while our senators sh*tpost on twitter, incite violent anti-democracy lynch mobs and run off to Cancun....<insert a long list of highly offensive and profanity-laden curses directed at a particular US poltical party>.

ANYHOW, while El Paso has escaped the worst, there's been a ripple effect across the state and my neighborhood had an power and internet outrage last evening and I lost my Clozemaster streak. I requested on their forum for it to be restored but we'll see. They usually do but if they don't for whatever reason I may be done with Clozemaster for a while because I'm really that upset about it.

Lastly my PC is down. I have to rely on my tablet., so sorry for any typos, as it's not easy for my to type on. But with my PC, all signs point to a motherboard failure. I had noticed a few problems in recent weeks and hoped my mobo would last a little longer but I guesss yesterday's sudden power outrage was all it needed to just up and die. I have plenty of stuff to keep up my studies without what's on my PC, but I was using Win10's Sticky Note app to record my progress with my various challenges and so I can't access that to update my progress until I get my PC running again (I hope).

I ordered a new mobo but due to infrastructure problems here, I have no idea when it'll arrive, so this will probably be all from me for a while.
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Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.

User avatar
Cèid Donn
Blue Belt
Posts: 513
Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:48 pm
Languages: en-us (n); français, gàidhlig, gaeilge, cymraeg, brezhoneg, español
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Re: SC bookkeeping and other language learning whimsy

Postby Cèid Donn » Mon Feb 22, 2021 1:42 am

ANYHOW, while El Paso has escaped the worst, there's been a ripple effect across the state and my neighborhood had an power and internet outrage last evening and I lost my Clozemaster streak. I requested on their forum for it to be restored but we'll see. They usually do but if they don't for whatever reason I may be done with Clozemaster for a while because I'm really that upset about it.


Update: I've deleted my Clozemaster account. They only restored 4 courses that I said I prioritized, not anything more than that, not even my overall streak. It seems that was the bare minimum they would do, and without explanation. Since I've seen them do more for other users, I took it as a sign to move on. At least they let me know I could go eff myself before my Pro sub renewed for this month. :lol:

My health problems have gotten exponentially worse since the outrage and I am feeling very taxed by the various problems it has caused, including ones that weren't mentioned in my previous post, so I think it's best for me to just walk away from this. The lovely thing about language learning apps is while they may be convenient, they are not essential.

Update: Today (Monday) in the national news people are praising El Paso for being the only major Texas city to not have widespread outages and power grid failures, which is true and I am glad. El Paso has been investing in preparing its utilites for extreme weather for the past 5 or 6 years. I just got to be one of the few here who live where we had localized problems. We haven't had another outage since Thursday but today, the water coming into our house is brown amd unusable due to the fire department having to clean out their hydrants after the storm, and the water company promises it will clear out in a couple of hours. Also my new motherboard will be arriving late due to weather-related problems. It is just one thing after another. Honestly not having to worry about keeping up streaks is a welcomed change. I'm so tired.
3 x
Note from an educator and former ESL/test skills tutor: Any learner, including self-learners, can use the CEFR for self-assessment. The CEFR is for helping learners progress and not for gatekeeping and bullying.


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